We know everything about bankruptcy
24/11/2024
Sunday
24 November 
1970 The United States and the USSR ratified the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
1970 The Central Committee of CPSU restored the national autonomy of the Kalmyks, Karachais, Balkars, Chechens and Ingush.
1970 Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species - the first edition was sold out in a day.
The largest co-working space in Minsk is closed for political disloyalty
A description of the reasons for what happened in the Belarusian IT industry is given by Mike Butcher, the editor-in-chief of TechCrunch. The authoritative journalist leads the reader to the conclusion that the closure of the largest hub, in which Belarusian IT developers and entrepreneurs were gaining global success, was a completely predictable consequence of the political processes that took place in Belarus over the past year.
The Imaguru leadership fully aligned with the country's protest movements, helping the PandaDoc team release videos in support of the opposition (for which the team members were detained).
The strike, which took place in Belarus on October 26, also received support of the co-working space. World Entrepreneurship Week, organized by Imaguru, opened with a speech by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Let us add to this that the head of Imaguru became a member of the Coordination Council, which is in opposition to the president. All this, according to the foreign journalist, is more than enough for the authorities to decide to get rid of the "hotbed of Western infection."
We should recall that during its existence in Minsk, the Imaguru co-working space (the name comes from the expression “I’m a guru”) has become a haven for many startups that have made Belarusian IT developers famous, for example the MSQRD service, acquired by Facebook in 2016 for an estimated $ 100 million. And then there was the TrackDuck application, which was bought by InVision. The PandaDoc team, whose founders graduated from the TechMinsk accelerator, created on the basis of Imaguru, raised $ 6 million for their service. Lithuanian Infogr.am was the finalist of the competition organized in Minsk in 2013.
According to experts, in just 8 years of its existence, Imaguru has attracted about $ 100 million in investments, and has reconstructed 2,000 sq. meters of the Gorizont plant and paid about $ 1.5 million for the lease.
Termination of the lease agreement is not the worst thing in this story, since there are more than enough vacant premises on the territory of Minsk. However, according to Marynich, it is inexpedient to look for new premises to host a startup in the country.
Last fall, at the initiative of Imaguru, a sociological survey was conducted, the results of which indicate that almost half of the startups have decided to leave the country, or in fact have already done so.
According to Bloomberg, more than 40 startups have transferred their developers (about 900 people) to neighboring Vilnius, and about 30 companies are planning to move abroad.
At the initiative of Belbiz Group of Companies, a study of the venture business of Belarus was carried out. The study was supported by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The respondents were representatives of 260 organizations. The respondents stated that they saw legal problems as the main barriers for the development of IT projects: the default of the legal system (61.5%), illegitimate power (54.8%) and distrust of the judicial system (26.9%). A couple of years ago, startup executives named a lack of investors (75.4%) as the main obstacle to business.
