How can a student create a multimillion-dollar startup? Lifehacks from FESS RANEPA student Marianna Geringer.

— Marianna, please tell us a little about yourself and how you came to work on the startup?

— In the first and second years, I desperately tried to find myself: I worked as an English tutor, waitress, real estate agent, makeup artist, photographer, produced a commercial for an international company in Dubai, even got into managing tinder profiles in a marriage agency and a network pyramid. When I realized that I had not even come close to my dream, I took an academic leave. There was a pandemic, and I started studying design in Figma, and then a fateful event happened – I got into School 21 at Sberbank, where I studied C programming for 4 months. That's when I realized that I see my future at the intersection of IT and business.

We successfully performed and entered the top 20 startups that passed into the accelerator of the Eurasian Innovation Center.

Returning to the third year, I resumed my studies and tried my hand at startup entrepreneurship. Together with a fellow student and a teacher-investor, we developed ESG NOW – an informational, rating, and consulting ESG platform. About 20 students from 1st to 4th year also worked on the project for about half a year. Although the team disbanded before the platform's launch, this invaluable experience laid the foundation for my career.

— At the beginning of the 4th year, a speaker from the IT company, Ilya Karyakin, was invited to an Advertising seminar. He introduced me to his business partner, Igor Konovalov, who was looking for a person to realize his vision. So I became a product manager at AIINS – a platform for automating, aggregating, and managing a company's insurance portfolio. For a year and three months, I have lived with this product and want to turn the startup into a unicorn company. We do what Tinkoff did in banking and Uber in taxi. We reduce business insurance costs by up to 40%, automate processes, and improve the quality of insurance coverage. I would say it's 3 in 1: an ERP system, a tender platform, and a big data analysis tool using artificial intelligence for effective management decisions.

We do what Tinkoff did in banking and Uber in taxi.

I like working in a startup because I can directly influence the development of the product. In a large corporation, I would feel like a cog in a big machine. But here, in conditions of limited resources, I am a one-man band. My responsibilities included packaging the product (website, developing a sales kit), testing internet marketing, modeling company processes, implementing Bitrix24 and project management, testing the product, developing questionnaires for clients, commercial offers, and pilot projects for the enterprise segment (Roscosmos, Rostec, Rosseti, Miratorg, Gazpromneft).

— Last week I organized our participation in the Russian Venture Forum in Kazan, where we successfully performed and entered the top 20 startups that passed into the accelerator of the Eurasian Innovation Center. At the forum, we presented the startup to the entire investor community of the Russian Federation and the President of Tatarstan, Rustam Nurgalievich Minnikhanov. He immediately gave instructions to his advisers, and the next day at 9 am, we were invited to present at the board of directors of Tatneftekhiminvest-holding, which generates ~33% of the gross regional product.

At the forum, we presented the startup to the entire investor community of the Russian Federation and the President of Tatarstan.

In general, working in a startup for me means making many mistakes, sometimes working up to 80 hours a week, living with the idea, taking responsibility, constantly learning, and stepping out of the comfort zone. And I’m thankful to FESS for making me a fearless fighter ready to change the consumption model of insurance products both in Russia and worldwide.