Draft:HSE Business Club

INTRODUCTION

HSE Business Club is a student-run business club based on the Moscow campus of the Higher School of Economics.The idea of the Club is to unite talented student-entrepreneurs with working on business projects within a community of like-minded people, where one can exchange their experience, knowledge, and network.

HISTORY

HSE Business Club was founded in 2017 by a graduate of HSE University — Sergei Shmelev. The format of this society was borrowed from the undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University — Skull and Bones.



In 2018 Viktor Lvov — at that time sophomore student in the Business Administration BA program at HSE University — took over the role of Club’s president.

In 2022 Ekaterina Zhaglovskaya — a student in the HSE/NES Programme in Economics BA program at HSE University — took over the role of Club’s president.

In 2022 Dmitriy Palchikov — a student in the Business Administration BA program at HSE University — was appointed the role of vice-president.

One of the Club’s main activities is organizing meetings with entrepreneurs, investors and businessmen on the regular basis. In 5 years the Club has held 50+ open events (Spring 2023), and 40+ private club events (Spring 2023). In total, among the speakers of the Club there are over 10 from the Forbes list.

STRUCTURE

HSE Business Club consists of students who want to learn more about business and who have already developed their own ventures. These two types of members are divided into two smaller units within the HSE Business Club.

PRIVATE CLUB

One of these units is called ‘The Private Club’ and was established to create an environment for more effective collaborations to make it possible for young entrepreneurs to learn and gain skills from the best business professionals, as well as enrich their network.

This part integrates 37 (Spring 2023) student entrepreneurs who collectively have surpassed a $100 million annual turnover. Areas of their businesses are diverse. These include real estate agencies — Evgeniy Bisovka (Saola), EdTech start-ups — Artyom Tatulov (TutGood ), advertising agencies — Alexey Pack (Purple door ), mobile app development — Gleb Fedorenko (Galt Agency ), etc.

ENCLOSED EVENTS

Enclosed events are accessible only to members of the Club and organized in the format of joint sports activities, trips, mastermind group sessions, and behind-closed-doors meetings where attendees exchange experiences, ideas and write down insights.

Speakers of such events are billionaires, entrepreneurs, and politicians. For now (Spring 2023) there have been undertaken 14 enclosed events with the following speakers: Leonid Boguslavsky (RTP Global ), Boris Belotserkovsky (Unikum ), Alexey Gidirim (YouDo ), Peter Fedchenkov (Instamart ), Tos Movsisyan (Boft ), Sergey Klimentiev (Texel ), Vadim Fedotov (Bioniq ), Andrey Kovalev (Ecooffice ), Mikhail Prokhorov (ONEXIM ), Arsen Tomsky (InDrive), Dmitry Konov (Sibur), Dmitry Kibkalo (Mosigra), Vladimir Sedov (Askona ), Mikhail Voronin (Atlanty ).

TEAM UNIT



Another unit is called ‘The Team Unit’ and was established to organize open events which will be accessible to any student. This aims to give people an opportunity to talk to professionals in the area of their’s interest — especially business.

This part integrates 60 members (Spring 2023) who are responsible for the organization of open events with entrepreneurs and business executives, expansion of Club’s networking base, taking care of Club’s indoor environment and social media marketing for the promotion of HSE Business Club as an NPO — a nonprofit organization.

OPEN EVENTS

Open events have a diversity of formats which include Q&A sessions, Instagram Lives, panel discussions and forums.

Q&A is the most involving type of open event as it requires constant communication between the speaker and audience in the form of questions and answers.

Instagram Lives became a legit form of the Club’s event in 2020 when the COVID-19 lockdown happened. Due to social media it became possible to keep Club’s activities going.

The Club has held 2 panel discussions for now (Spring 2023). The first one was attended by entrepreneurs from ‘Forbes: 30 under 30’ list (Ilya Kobyakov — Tiltech Capital 2, Vladimir Zhuravlev — Waves Ducks , Valery Matyuhina — SberTroika ) and devoted to the following topic: ‘How to own a community that helps to achieve success?’. The second panel discussion got the name ‘The flavor of business’ and was attended by 3 restaurateurs (Yury Levitas — Black Star Burger, Georgy Karpenko — Hurma Group of companies , Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanaevsky Blanco — Rosinter ).

FORUMS

Forum HSE Business Club is an annual open event dedicated to Russian entrepreneurship day and held by the Club every spring at the end of May. The Forum is usually arranged on the base of HSE University’s campus and is free to attend for everyone in condition of their registration. The aim of this format is described as providing people with an opportunity to ask successful entrepreneurs the issues of their concern, get practice-oriented knowledge and expand their personal network.

The first ever Forum took place on the 29th of May in 2021 and got the name ‘Forum HSE Business Club 2021’ which started a tradition of naming the forthcoming events likewise.

Forum HSE Business Club 2021 :

Date: 29/05/2021

On this day Forum was attended by 250 visitors who were able to participate in workshops which were arranged in the halls of Cultural Centre of HSE University and supported by 13 partner companies of the Forum HSE Business Club 2021 who turned out to be: Sberbank, MTS, VkusVill, Ozon, HeadHunter , Puma, ANCOR , KPMG, HSE Inc. , GSB HSE , Netology , Changellenge>> Education , ASI.

Another activity was organized in the main conference room of the HSE Cultural Centre where speakers with different types of businesses were holding speeches and participating in Q&A.

Forum HSE Business Club 2022 :

Date: 28/05/2022

On this day Forum was attended by 700 visitors who were able to participate in workshops which were arranged in the halls of the Cultural Centre of HSE University and supported by 15 partner companies of the Forum HSE Business Club 2022 who turned out to be: Sberbank, CROC, VK, Novostal-M, KPMG, ReBOOT , Alpina , Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, HSE Inc. , Changellenge>> Education , Unity Coffee Roasters, IKRA , MBM.MOS , Petroglyph , GSB.

Another activity was organized in the main conference room of the HSE Cultural Centre where speakers with different types of businesses were holding speeches and participating in Q&A.

Forum HSE Business Club 2023 :

Date: 27/05/2023

On this day Forum was attended by 770 visitors who were able to participate in workshops that were arranged in the Small Hall of HSE University’s Cultural Centre and led by the following speakers: Vyacheslav Kim (Skillbox ), Ekaterina Vavilova (Yakov&Partners ), Vladimir Samohvalov (SBS Consulting ), Oksana Ozernaya (Netology), Anna Rudakova (Woman who matters ).

Another type of activity was organized in the halls and supported by 9 partner companies of the Forum HSE Business Club 2023 which turned out to be: KEPT, CROC, Airport ‘Domodedovo’, Alfa-Bank, Level Group, SBS Consulting , VkusVill , etc.

Meanwhile, in the main conference room of the HSE Cultural Centre speakers with different types of businesses were holding speeches and participating in Q&A.

INTERNATIONAL INTERACTIONS:

HSE Business Club is a collaboration-oriented community that is always in search of mutually beneficial partnership activities. Members of the Club constantly negotiate with businessmen, business organizations, and communities. Some of these negotiations are international-oriented and aimed to strengthen worldwide communications. These collaborations result in the following activities:

Trip to the USA:

The first-ever Club’s international trip was arranged to the USA in August of 2022 in case to strengthen their’s partnerships with student societies (Yale Entrepreneurial Society, Berkeley Entrepreneurs Association) from the States.

In 2 weeks 6 members of the Club have visited 4 cities: San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, and New Haven. During the trip there have occurred collaborations with students from Stanford, Berkeley and, Yale universities where students discussed further joint projects and shared their business experience.

Apart from the meetings with representatives from different universities there have happened to be several visits to Apple Park Visitor Center, the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley, and MakeHaven — community of innovators.

Meanwhile, members of the trip have also attended meetings with entrepreneurs: Nikolay Davydov (DVC ), Arsen Tomskiy (inDrive), Sergey Kuzmin (Animaccord).

Partner universities:

As international partners the Club has 3 student societies from the USA which are YES — Yale Entrepreneurial Society, WUEC — Wharton Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club, and BEA — Berkeley Entrepreneurs Association.