PRACTICAL APPROACHES TO STARTUP DEVELOPMENT FOR KYIV'S UTILITY COMPANIES: PARTICIPATION IN THE CITY ACCELERATOR 2025 WEBINAR

On October 13, 2025, members of the “IT Innovations: Technologies and Products” student club participated in the webinar “Startups for Municipal Enterprises: A Path to Creating a Technology Cluster”, organized as part of the City Accelerator 2025 municipal corporate accelerator initiative, focused on “Innovative Solutions for Kyiv’s Municipal Enterprises”.

The webinar was led by Mykhailo Maksymov, PhD in Economics and Associate Professor in the Department of Economic Cybernetics and Applied Economics at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. He has been an entrepreneur since 2008 and has over eight years of experience supporting startups and entrepreneurial teams.

During the webinar, participants learned about practical approaches to creating and developing startup projects, formulating business strategies, and preparing proposals for potential clients.

Particular attention was paid to strategic analysis tools, specifically SWOT analysis, and to defining the project’s mission, vision, and objectives according to the SMART principles.

The course also covered identifying the target audience and its needs, developing a value proposition for an IT product, resource planning, evaluating financial metrics, and applying unit economics. A separate aspect was the preparation of a startup presentation for a potential client—from justifying the relevance of the problem and presenting the proposed solution to demonstrating its value and defining the next steps for collaboration.

In the context of developing innovative solutions for Kyiv’s municipal enterprises, these approaches are particularly important because they help align technological ideas with customers’ actual needs, assess the potential for product implementation, and plan its further development.

Participation in the webinar broadened the students’ understanding of technological entrepreneurship and the practical aspects of developing IT products—from analyzing a problem and justifying a startup idea to planning resources and presenting a solution to potential clients. The knowledge gained can be applied in the future work of the “IT Innovations: Technologies and Products” club as they develop their own project ideas and innovative solutions.

13.10.2025