St. Petersburg startup-accelerator Ideal Machine, with $190,000 venture financing, has started taking in bids from Russian IT-teams, ITAR-TASS reports citing Vladimir Vasilyev, the rector of the National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Mr. Vasilyev specified that “the participants would start working on their projects in Spring 2012 in St. Petersburg”. According to him, startup-accelerator was founded by the university in cooperation with the US venture fund RSV Venture Paerners for investing into companies at early development stages. “The fund combines in itself elements of the incubator of startups, programs for mentoring entrepreneurs and seed investment fund, and focuses on searching in Russia and development of technological companies and ideas, initiated by local community and academic environment, as well as imported from other countries for further development in Russia,” Mr. Vasilyev added.

The accelerator is located in the educational-science-innovation complex of the academic center of the city in the Vasilyevsky Island. The complex has comfortable offices, computers and office equipment for 10-15 teams that will work on their projects in the accelerator.

Each team will receive about $15,000 at the starting stage, as well as other necessary services. “We don’t just invest money needed for realizing this or that project. The most important component is direct and individual work with each team, participating in the accelerator program. Accelerator is what we call “smart money”, Mikhail Averbakh, the managing partner of the venture fund RSV Venture Partners, said. The accelerator is especially interested in projects related with robot technology, applied mechanics, optics, smart systems, artificial intellect systems, methods of communication with machines, work with large masses of data, cloud technologies and other high-technology projects in the IT-sector, he specified.