The history of the startup Questli: the global market from Siberia

There is an opinion that if you have a quality product, then there will be an investor for it yourself. But I would like to add that in the case when you are from Siberia and you also need a bit of luck in order to be at the right time in the right place and simply do not step.

Today I will tell a story about a hero from the city of Novosibirsk, whose name is Danila Kozyatnikov. He is the founder of the project Questli.com - crowdsourcing web platform, where you can earn money when completing quests (quests).

Danila is an enterprising young man, in 2010 he received a gift of fate in the form of a free ticket to Le Web 2010 (this was the last ticket in the drawing of that year). And that's all. That was the end of luck, and everyday work began. Because it was thanks to the homework done by Danil and his team were able to achieve such amazing results, get the Audience Choice Award at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 and become speakers at Le Web 2011 in Paris .
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What did Daniel do to properly and properly use the gift of fate?

- Together with the team for 10 days, he created a prototype of a product that he had been thinking about for a long time - Questli .
- Further I studied the base of venture capitalists and the business of angels who will come to Le Web. I contacted each of them in advance thanks to the Presdo communication system available at the event.
- I went to intensive English courses to be able to talk about your product in a coherent way.
- Prepared a list of answers for curious investors about the business model, about possible sales channels and, most importantly, why it is worth investing.
- Together with the team they came up with a bright meme - a T-shirt with the inscription "There is a working prototype, we are looking for an investor!"
- He showed activity on the discussion panels of the Le Web conference, asking questions to the speakers , which aroused great interest on the part of the organizer and moderator - Loic le Mer.
- Used all available options to communicate with potential investors in order to get a complete picture of them and conduct a comprehensive analysis of potential partners. (He even broke into Zurich on the third day in order to speak with one venture capitalist who left Paris early with Le Web).
- Was flexible in communication and listened to the advice of investors. As a result, I received: and finances from Redalpine Venture Partners, and a bunch of tips on the development of the service.

For me, the iron logic and creativity of the protagonist plays an important role in this story, and only in the background is his luck, which led Danilo to Le Web. Of course, I could not resist and asked Nicholas Berg (Redalpine Venture Partners), who invested in QUESTLI.com , what was the main motivation for him in this deal? How could he entrust his financial means to an unknown guy from Siberia?



And afterwards I spoke with Danila Koziatnikov himself in order to understand what this “Siberian nut” was made of? What drives a young entrepreneur and, most importantly, what is the secret of this luck, in his own opinion?



For my part, I am glad that such stories exist in Russia. And young people lack first of all technical knowledge, perseverance and sociable skills to achieve results. In place of Danila, each of you can be, most importantly, to understand that the whole thing is not in good circumstances, but in faith and hard work. After all, the main achievements of Questli are still ahead: now we need to build a global business from the idea and check the monetization model of the project in action.