Any business needs to be thoroughly analysed and undergo a range of expertise to meet success. Especially, it is about startups. Most of them confront failures at their initial stages for many reasons: lack of developing and scaling plans, weak management, unoriginal idea. Consequently, it leads to a lack of funding and prospects. Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Timofeev), the founder of venture capital fund Adventures Lab, commented on step-by-step analysis components each startup undergoes to receive funding.

As soon as a new IT project comes up, it is taken to profound expertise by investors. Therefore, the first step every startup undergoes is legal expertise. It focuses on searching for similar projects around the world. According to Ruslan Tymofieiev, experts check it for likely coincidence with other startups in concept and algorithms. Also, they look for the existence of intellectual property protection. Thus, it helps to predict potential legal risks and possible copyright infringement on intellectual property objects. The businessman underlines that the project is bound to meet further legal issues by missing this kind of expertise.

Studying the market for similar projects is also essential to find out the existing drawbacks of other projects. As Ruslan Tymofieiev notes that the negative experience of others can come in handy and minimize the negative impact in the future. He adds that it is better to abandon the project if there are too many doubts in its process.

Marketing research and forecasting is the next step of the startup to be experienced. It contains the analysis of its business attractiveness, financial plan, and the possible competitors’ reaction. The experts also provide other actions to study the project comprehensively: conduct group meetings, assess the target audience’s opinion, audit the first sales when the startup team has an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and launch it on the market, define the risk of investment non-recovery and avoid such scenarios. Therefore, everything is accounted for at this stage, including consumers’ mentality, behavior, and stereotypes of behaviour.

At the stage of scientific and technical expertise, the startup is tested for its innovativeness. This feature differentiates startups from each other and presents them as unique. Ruslan Tymofieiev explains that a thorough analysis is held to determine solutions’ innovation and whether they satisfy the target audience’s needs. From the technical point of view, the experts also audit the technologies used, verifying structured code and software architecture, assessing internal processes, etc. Thus, the businessman states that thanks to scientific and technical expertise, it is possible to define the uniqueness and innovation of the project’s product and how it really meets modern trends.

There is one more critical analysis provided within the project team. Due to it, investment fund analysts carefully study the team of the startup. Ruslan Tymofieiev points out that Adventures Lab focuses more on the project’s founders and their experience than on the startup itself. He believes that a union of strong managers is the foundation to success.

Adventures Lab was established in 2019 by Ruslan Tymofieiev as a venture fund to invest in promising startups in their early stages. In addition, the venture fund regularly invests in various IT projects focused on education, marketing, and technologies. Reface is one of those projects.