Applications for participation in the 2017 Start Fellows Grant Program open today. Start Fellows is a VK initiative to support technological entrepreneurship which we are restarting this year.

We are looking for companies that can use VK's potential to make it even more useful for users. The project's sphere could be anything: new media, eSports, and initiatives related to data analysis are equally interesting. Only implemented projects can participate in the program. If you are still working on an idea or prototype, use these 2.5 months to make them real.

The Start Fellows grant is worth 2.5 million rubles. Winners will also receive budgets for promotion in VK and mentoring support of our social network team. Additionally, event partner, Selectel, Russia's largest IaaS provider, will award valuable prizes to the best contestants. Applications are being accepted until November 24th.

The projects will be evaluated by a jury drawn from the VK Team. The projects will be initially evaluated by looking at the idea's relevance and scalability and the quality of its implementation.

Apply to participate and learn more about the program in the Start Fellows community at vk.com/startfellows.

In addition to holding the Start Fellows, VK also holds events for the IT industry, such as contests for developers, programming championships and hackathons.