AlterGeo history

In 2008, in the Best IT Innovation nomination , the winner was the Wi2Geo project, today better known as AlterGeo .

The idea that you can “locate objects via Wi-Fi ” was born to Denis Alayev at the end of 2007. A couple of months later, Denis was joined by friends - Alexander Dorzhiev and Sergey Kurlovich , and it was decided “to create a user service - a geolocation social network that will allow you to see who is around, where friends are, etc.”. Although the decision was made, the guys did not immediately abandon their jobs and plunged into the lives of entrepreneurs. This process went gradually.

“Without speeches, the project is in a vacuum,” says Alexander Dorzhiev. - We went to events like RIF , we made pitches . It seemed more important to tell people about your project, to test the idea, than to find an investor. ” Responses were not always positive, people asked: why is it necessary at all? But there were those who believed in the project, for example, the AddVenture business angels fund, which invested about 50 thousand dollars in it. Fund assistance was not only in money. “They organized for us meetings with experts and investors. When you answer the question ten times: “Who is your audience?”, Then you yourself begin to think about it, ”Denis Alaev says smiling.
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In June 2008, the beta testing phase began. “We realized that we had to immediately roll out prototypes to illustrate the idea,” Alexander shares his experience. “It was a surprise for me that even with a raw product, people are ready to participate and help, for example, to specially assemble Wi-Fi bases”.

Alexander recalls that the team created the first versions of mobile applications itself and it was not without problems: “We thought: what is there to do - an interface to do? We ourselves can. But the result was monsters that were impossible
enjoy. ” Now all mobile application development is outsourced. The AlterGeo team remains the core of the project and the web service, which, by the way, is based on Amazon WS .

Today, AlterGeo has more than 300,000 users, and the daily audience reaches 15,000 people. Due to such indicators, the project is interesting not only for users, but also for partners, the first of which was the Rosinter restaurant chain. Representatives of the network themselves contacted, began to give free drinks to the mayors of restaurants, and also helped to improve the partner interface, which was “difficult to do blindly”.

According to the calculations of Denis, the social network is about to reach the level of self-sufficiency, and the technology partnership is already making a profit. This allowed AlterGeo to get through the second round of funding. The new investor was the fund Kite Ventures .

The guys claim that in three years the role of entrepreneurs themselves has not changed much. But you can see that, by technical education, they now use expressions like “solutions like rebranding” or “idea dominates, and then only technology”.

AlterGeo has new heights ahead. The project team is not afraid of rivalry with giants such as Facebook, because "everyone can find their niche in the market." They are full of optimism: "In the next couple of years we will be leaders in our segment."

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We thank the editorial bureau " According to the rules " for help in preparing the article.