Aside from Russia’s somewhat grandiose “Skolkovo” project to replicate a Silicon Valley-style startup campus just outside of Moscow, entrepreneurs who have preferred to stay outside any governmental overtures have resolutely stuck to the city, just as Startups in the Bay Area, post 2001, gravitated towards San Fransisco. The early pioneer in this was (Digital October), carved out of the of old chocolate factory in the red-brick, ‘Red October’ building (yes, it really was called Red October once).
But now another, new hub, has emerged in the last couple of years in the shape of DI Telegraph and its sister company, Dream Industries.
Telegraph, the brain-child of British entrepreneur Simon Dunlop and co-founder Victor Frumkin, has become a co-working space and an incubator for a number of Russia’s hottest startups.
Operating in 1,400 sq metres of the old, iconic Central Telegraph building — which was literally the hub of Russia’s telecoms system until the advent of newer technologies — has incubated early stage Russian startups like Bookmate, Zvooq and Unisound.
The area has over 100 working places and an education area for lectures, workshops and master classes in 600 meters of space.
But it probably doesn’t hurt that outside of co-working, Telegraph also has a huge events space, flooded with natural light from all sides.
It will be interesting to see how DI Telegraph will fair in the geo-political world of 2015, but, as Dunlop explains in our video above, they think they have a good shot…