How to invent and run a startup? Personal experience with the project BabbleLABEL
In August of the outgoing year, having arrived at the training of Moscow State University + Intel + Rosnano in Dubna, we still did not suspect that it would bring us not only important knowledge, but also the idea of ​​a new project. It all started with the Design thinking module, which was conducted by Irina Kutenyova, Elena Khromkova and their team from Lumiknows. The task was this ...
The task of our team was to develop a product that would improve the customer experience . We had to conduct interviews with colleagues, delineate a portrait of the consumer, identify hidden needs, brainstorm to address the identified needs, make and submit a prototype. Of the 50 ideas that emerged, we decided to develop a mobile application that, when hovering over a product barcode, would give information on it. Thus, the buyer could without the seller and without surfing on different sites from the small screen of the phone instantly get a description, specifications, recipes, etc. Then we won among the other teams and got books from Intel.
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Upon returning home began to think about the idea. It turned out that there are a lot of analogues in the world. Reflecting further, they decided to leave the principle, but to change the idea, “socializing” it: to do something like Twitter, but tied to every thing that has a bar code. The barcode in this case can be compared with a hash tag. That is, the user scans the barcode and sees not only the description of the product, but can also leave it with a short comment, photo, video, record voice comment.
The idea seemed very unusual to us, because then every thing seems to be starting to live its own digital life , becoming “social”! As it turned out, we were not the first to think of this. In the states there is a very strong project www.stickybits.com , which was recently invested. But such a discovery did not upset us, but on the contrary pleased us. We chose this strategy: quickly do something simple, throw it into the market, run around potential partners, customers, users. And then decide whether to bother with it.
Further active work began. We set ourselves a hard deadline, it was the St. Petersburg International Innovation Forum. Intentionally told everyone that we will present the first release of such a service on it . Agreed with Megaphone, which provided us with prizes for a small quest based on bar codes. Then there was nowhere to go and had to do. Of course, it could not have done without leaving the office at 2 am and later, but we did. It was a good lesson. Put deadlines and burn bridges!
At the forum we collected a large amount of positive feedback. Over the following autumn months, they were able to light up on IT2Days, Russian Internet Week, AdBreaker, Marketing Mix and other events. Communicating with people, we received several offers to invest in the project. But our most important victory for this short period was reaching the final, perhaps the largest competition of IT projects in the Russian Federation - Web Ready . We are among the top 211 entries in this nomination. And again, we received investment offers.
Probably, some people have a question - how can you earn money on this? The business model , as we now see it for ourselves, consists in subscribing barcode owners to the possibility of placing extended information on their product. Plus, there is some kind of payment for promotional messages, highlighted in color and fixed in the first position in the comments feed. For example, scanning goods in store A, you see the first line “In store B, this product costs 999r.” Probably the next question - how can we catch up with so many users that it would be interesting for manufacturers?
This technology is a fairly universal platform on the basis of which other scenarios can be implemented. For example, the book reviews in cafes, shops, museums. Imagine if you had an instant opportunity to express your opinion on the subject of art and see what others think. Or, if sitting in a cafe, you could immediately write about the fact that you liked the cute waitress or make some comment? Or while standing in line at the cashier, tell the retailer that you have not found your favorite juice? This is probably only tomorrow in terms of the actual need of such organizations to communicate with their clients. And maybe tomorrow has come. These scripts are implemented for free, you only need to generate and print the required number of bar codes on our website (while this function works in manual mode on request by email).
Surely, many of you, having read this far, have already involuntarily come up with 2-3 other scenarios. We will be very grateful if you share! However, the idea goes even further, everything described here is more of a preparatory stage. But more about that later.
Of course, we heard in our address and a lot of skepticism: they say, nothing original, why do it, since it already exists in the states? people have too few smartphones, nobody needs it! Yes, it is no different from Yandex.Market!
Last comment - we wanted to make and test not so much a search system for information on the product, how much social fun, a way to breathe digital life into the surrounding things . Well, if you have a desire to potestit project, then welcome to www.BabbleLABEL.com ! We will be very happy to hear good feedback and, perhaps, ideas-recommendations.
The task of our team was to develop a product that would improve the customer experience . We had to conduct interviews with colleagues, delineate a portrait of the consumer, identify hidden needs, brainstorm to address the identified needs, make and submit a prototype. Of the 50 ideas that emerged, we decided to develop a mobile application that, when hovering over a product barcode, would give information on it. Thus, the buyer could without the seller and without surfing on different sites from the small screen of the phone instantly get a description, specifications, recipes, etc. Then we won among the other teams and got books from Intel.
')
Upon returning home began to think about the idea. It turned out that there are a lot of analogues in the world. Reflecting further, they decided to leave the principle, but to change the idea, “socializing” it: to do something like Twitter, but tied to every thing that has a bar code. The barcode in this case can be compared with a hash tag. That is, the user scans the barcode and sees not only the description of the product, but can also leave it with a short comment, photo, video, record voice comment.
The idea seemed very unusual to us, because then every thing seems to be starting to live its own digital life , becoming “social”! As it turned out, we were not the first to think of this. In the states there is a very strong project www.stickybits.com , which was recently invested. But such a discovery did not upset us, but on the contrary pleased us. We chose this strategy: quickly do something simple, throw it into the market, run around potential partners, customers, users. And then decide whether to bother with it.
Further active work began. We set ourselves a hard deadline, it was the St. Petersburg International Innovation Forum. Intentionally told everyone that we will present the first release of such a service on it . Agreed with Megaphone, which provided us with prizes for a small quest based on bar codes. Then there was nowhere to go and had to do. Of course, it could not have done without leaving the office at 2 am and later, but we did. It was a good lesson. Put deadlines and burn bridges!
At the forum we collected a large amount of positive feedback. Over the following autumn months, they were able to light up on IT2Days, Russian Internet Week, AdBreaker, Marketing Mix and other events. Communicating with people, we received several offers to invest in the project. But our most important victory for this short period was reaching the final, perhaps the largest competition of IT projects in the Russian Federation - Web Ready . We are among the top 211 entries in this nomination. And again, we received investment offers.
Probably, some people have a question - how can you earn money on this? The business model , as we now see it for ourselves, consists in subscribing barcode owners to the possibility of placing extended information on their product. Plus, there is some kind of payment for promotional messages, highlighted in color and fixed in the first position in the comments feed. For example, scanning goods in store A, you see the first line “In store B, this product costs 999r.” Probably the next question - how can we catch up with so many users that it would be interesting for manufacturers?
This technology is a fairly universal platform on the basis of which other scenarios can be implemented. For example, the book reviews in cafes, shops, museums. Imagine if you had an instant opportunity to express your opinion on the subject of art and see what others think. Or, if sitting in a cafe, you could immediately write about the fact that you liked the cute waitress or make some comment? Or while standing in line at the cashier, tell the retailer that you have not found your favorite juice? This is probably only tomorrow in terms of the actual need of such organizations to communicate with their clients. And maybe tomorrow has come. These scripts are implemented for free, you only need to generate and print the required number of bar codes on our website (while this function works in manual mode on request by email).
Surely, many of you, having read this far, have already involuntarily come up with 2-3 other scenarios. We will be very grateful if you share! However, the idea goes even further, everything described here is more of a preparatory stage. But more about that later.
Of course, we heard in our address and a lot of skepticism: they say, nothing original, why do it, since it already exists in the states? people have too few smartphones, nobody needs it! Yes, it is no different from Yandex.Market!
Last comment - we wanted to make and test not so much a search system for information on the product, how much social fun, a way to breathe digital life into the surrounding things . Well, if you have a desire to potestit project, then welcome to www.BabbleLABEL.com ! We will be very happy to hear good feedback and, perhaps, ideas-recommendations.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/109992/
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