Remart: how I created my business

Part I. Idea and investors

It all started with furniture . Leafing through one popular magazine, I noticed an article describing an interesting business. There the American company produced and installed hidden passages. This is something like what can be seen in the movie about the adventures of Batman. Before this incident, I had seen something similar only in the films, they say, you place chess pieces on the field with electronics inside, and if you arrange them correctly, the door will open. An amazing thing, so I remember this article.
After a couple of months, life circumstances were such that I faced the question of how to organize my own business.


There was no concrete idea, but there was a lot of desire. Quite by chance I remembered that very article, found a magazine and, through the company's website, contacted the American director of the company. There was a fairly simple small one, he was an engineer himself (apparently the company was small), but, it should be noted, a number of fairly large media outlets already reported about them. From a light shoulder, this pleasant Mr. gave me a region of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine for sale. I didn’t have a lot of money, and besides, starting such a business without experience in this area was a little exciting, but I decided to try. Since the matter did not fully work in the end, I will not describe the search for the installers team, the solution of service problems and the like, the main thing is that after some preparation we “rushed into battle”. Let's face it, I acted modestly and potentially the result would be somewhat different if I had more money at my disposal and it was not the crisis years outside, but this was not the main problem. I printed brochures and went to interior designers: everyone sighed and gasped, how wonderful it all was, but then gasped and gasped even louder when they found out their price. The simplest door in quality performance was about 10k dollars. In short, we did not sell anything significant, which, however, did not deprive me of motivation.
Just at the moment of special spiritual torment, an unusual sample of furniture came into my field of vision - a transformer from Italy. It seemed like it was not too expensive, but still not cheap. Having learned from bitter experience, I first presented how this furniture could be better sold. The image of a large store was spinning around in my head, with huge monitors showing a beautiful video with furniture, a demonstration of transformation mechanisms and other beautiful things. Now to do such shops without huge capital behind us is absolutely unrealizable, but, thank God, information technology is our everything. Thus, I came to the conclusion that you cannot do without a website. Then I thought about the upsale, about the supply and the possibility of creating not a store, but a service that could offer furniture according to the given parameters and arrange it. The client enters the site, enters the cost, color, type of room, its dimensions and a couple more parameters, the program processes and issues an interior solution automatically. Great! Dear Customer, if you are expensive - move the slider to get a more satisfying solution, do not like the color - ask another and buy. So I liked this idea that I could not even sleep properly. Then he called his friend, a programmer, and at dinner he dedicated it to his idea, and he gladly joined my team. Only then did he admit that at that time he did not know how to technically implement this, and looking ahead, it turned out to be a rather difficult task. Fortunately, I did not know it then, and boldly went in search of designers to the team. I also found them quickly among my acquaintances: the designer, who was doing repairs at my house, agreed to participate in the project and attract her husband. While everything went rosy, it remains to find the money.
The team and I roughly estimated the size of the necessary investments, and the amount was more or less adequate. However, from rough estimates to the investment proposal was still very far away. Inspired by the potential of the idea, I rushed to look for an investor, thinking that literally the first person I tell you about immediately gives me an investment . Then the general algorithm of actions seemed to me as follows:

• Find a team.
• We tell investors about the idea, we get money for implementation.
• Quickly sculpt service.
• We start selling.

As it turned out, in general, everything was conceived correctly, but the complexity of some items was underestimated. The search for an investor began with familiar businessmen. Nobody refused immediately, they took time to think and thought for a long time. Naturally, I assured everyone that the implementation would be fairly simple, relying heavily on the development team. As a result, all refused, justifying it not by the profile of such a business for them and the lack of knowledge about this market. Then I moved into the community of business angels, very quickly went through all their selections and they all refused me. However, I am a stubborn fellow: I contacted several of their officially announced business angels from this sphere. All three agreed to listen to me, didn’t like the idea of ​​just one, he was an IT person, and apparently he imagined how difficult it was to implement it as it was. The two met with me and suggested that I study this issue in more detail and then return to the topic of financing. I will not give the names of these people, but on a regional scale they are rich people with a business in the construction industry. I received a consultant for a financier, and we started working on creating a business plan for the project. In the process of work, meetings with potential investors, their managers and founders, in the process of participation in startup weekends, the concept of business has changed. Now we create ready-made interior solutions for standard apartments. We sell everything in the picture. The goal that we set for ourselves is roughly formalized in the mission of our company:
“We turn the repair into a simple, fascinating and enjoyable process. We want to make people's apartments beautiful, cozy, so that people would like to come home with pleasure and spend time with their families. ”
We give people time for themselves so that people do not worry and do not spend time choosing and buying goods for repair, but relying on us. ”
The process of rethinking was long, no less than 6 months. It was connected with the fact that we all worked on the main jobs, our consultants were engaged in us on a residual basis, etc. However, we still created a good investment project with very good performance, based on very real numbers (although our expectations were even more optimistic). The amount that we need has already become several times larger and is close to real. This amount provided us to reach self-sufficiency, according to our calculations.
The amount is small for our potential investors and their employees said that the likelihood that it would be allocated was very high. However, the crisis has made adjustments. Some investors offered to return to this issue in half a year. The second investor said that he could start allocating the amount 5 times less, and offered us to think about what we can do for the money to try, and then decide on further financing. I refused. In the next topic, I hope to tell you why :)
I am not ideally versed in the structure of Habr, therefore, if there is a more suitable Hub, I will be glad to advice