From idea to release. Manifest

For 6 months from the PDF presentation turned out the product. With the attraction of sowing investments, the drive of teamwork, the journey to New York, the study of English law, difficulties, discoveries, disappointments and inspirations. This is how Manifest was created.


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WHO WE ARE, WHAT WE ARE AND WHY

For a start I will introduce myself. My name is Max Voloshin, I will be a partner in the small private venture capital fund PALEBLUEDOT and co-founder of the excellent company REDMADROBOT . Six months ago, we began negotiations with Igor Zelenov and Vitaly Smorodin from Legendary Madé regarding the realization of their idea - a mobile photo-social network project focused on the world market, using the intellectual resources of the two companies and financing the fund. We agreed about $ 100K on the seed stage and started developing right on New Year's holidays.

The idea of ​​the service is that with its help you can express your opinion on any occasion through a simple action - photographing a situation, a subject, a person, anything. And to express quite categorically: “this is cool”, “and this is stupid”. Geolocation allows you to watch streams and trends in different cities and countries. For example, what is cool now in London or around the world in general.

The service has all the usual social network mechanics: posting, browsing feeds, frendaning, commenting, liking and push notifications. And, of course, there is the possibility of sharing content on Facebook and Twitter. A more detailed overview of the service is in the presentation below.



We passed the first stage - we launched the product to the market. It was very interesting, we have learned a lot and want to share this experience with the community, as we are confident that our experience will be useful (and, of course, the feedback will make the product - business even better). Probably one of the key knowledge that we have gained over the past six months: errors, difficulties and criticism are very cool, they can and should be used to upgrade the service and the team.

When analyzing a project, there will be several structural units: organizational and administrative, development and marketing. In the course of implementing Manifest, we faced difficulties, found solutions and made conclusions. There were also all sorts of discoveries; they hit Fun Facts at the end of each block. Here we go.

BUSINESS — PART

The experience of running our own business was very useful to us, but he didn’t save from problems - in the new project we stumbled over several pitfalls. Most of the difficulties concerned the formalization of relations within the new company and the organization of the working climate in the startup team.

How it all happened

At the end of 2011, negotiations began on the implementation of the project. As a result, an agreement was reached on $ 100K of seed investment for product development and its initial market launch. REDMADROBOT acted as a general contractor for the development of the service itself. Design and promotion remained for Legendary Made.

As a result, we have formed a team of 6 people to launch the first stage: the designer, designer, iOS developer, server developer, team leader and curator from the foundation. Half of the team also had additional functions related to the operational management of the company and the promotion of the service.

The controlling stake in the new company remained with the authors of the Manifest project, but with fairly clear KPIs tied to the audience of the service and the timeframe for achieving this volume after publication, reflected in the shareholder agreement.

We perfectly understood that when attracting investments of the next round we need to make the company not in the Russian Federation and necessarily in the jurisdiction of English law. We looked in the direction of Europe, since it is nevertheless closer and the laws work there. Of all the countries in the Eurozone, oddly enough, Cyprus was the best with its 10% tax rate and registration transparency.

To consolidate all the agreements was developed shareholder agreement. This is probably the most important document for regulating the relations of the parties in the company. It is like a detailed algorithm that takes into account everything: what to do, if the business goes or, conversely, does not go, how to evaluate it, how the parties should behave when there is a lack of funding or if the KPI indicators are not achieved, what happens if one of the parties exits, what to do if a new investor comes, etc. For any developments, such a document gives instructions.

Underwater rocks

Shareholder agreement. The main difficulty lies in the fact that there are not so many people and companies that have experience developing such documents on the territory of the Russian Federation, and their services, as it turned out, are considerable (relative to the total project budget) of money. Professionally written shareholder agreement in English will cost $ 20,000, and this is the average price.

An additional complication is that it is necessary to take into account the IT-specificity and interests of all parties in various kinds of trifles, which means that close work with a lawyer is necessary and this takes time. Our shareholder agreement required 6 editions and several hours-long meetings of all project participants. The necessary legal partner was obtained by networking through familiar lawyers from large firms.

Team building (relationships within a team). All people are different and no matter how adequate they are, conflicts are inevitable, especially when it comes to creating a complex software product. The main difficulties were at the first stage, when everyone sat in different places and met offline only a few times a week. There was a synchronization problem, people did not fully understand who was doing what.

The problem was solved by the general office space, when everything is near and you do not need to write a letter to clarify a trifle, you can simply ask, not discuss the shortcomings of the new interface in a huge branch, but just drink coffee and draw with a colleague on the board.



And here it is very important that all team members, whether hired or not, burn with a project, so that they like the unregulated working day and the drive that is associated with it. This is a kind of psycho - people who get high from this kind of work; from 10 to 19 is not about them, there shouldn't be such people in the project at all.

findings

1. Shareholder agreement is the most important document, it is a business algorithm and a set of answers to all questions. Despite the difficulties associated with its creation, it is necessary.
2. Correct selection of the team determines the success of the business. For example, authors may not have an MBA degree, but they must know what the product should be and have the appropriate competencies to implement this knowledge. And design is one of the most important competencies.
3. At the startup stage, close personal interaction in a common space really saves time and unites the team.

Fun facts

- In addition to Cyprus, there are still real offshore zones where there are no taxes at all, for example, BVI, but investors from the US and Europe do not like them, for them they are analogs of our “garbage dumps”;

- A good coffee machine in the office improves mood and removes many communication problems.

SERVICE DEVELOPMENT

Development took more time than we originally expected. The service has undergone many changes, and it is very cool.

TZ - cool, TZ - stupid, sprints

Designing the service was done before the New Year and on holidays began working on the server part. Actually, all the main load was carried out to the server in order to facilitate the client application as much as possible.

Before the first stable beta, they moved along the TK. The first week of beta testing began to change TK. In addition to the usual bugs and jambs in the layout, there appeared an understanding of the need to implement new, rather serious functional blocks responsible for socialization: commenting and the notification system. And, of course, the removal of most of the functions on the server gave a whole set of cases for working with the application in offline mode. Began a series of "sprints."

As soon as comments and notifications were earned, the real life began in the appendix, and this life also gave a whole set of necessary interface interventions.

By the time of publication, we had a nice wish list and a plan for the next updates. One of the updates is being tested in the AppStore.

Balance search

Increased development time. Here we, of course, got caught. Too optimistic was the forecast for the testing phase. I really wanted to start the service faster. A startup is still an unusual project and differs in severity in developing projects for clients. Much can change, and this is perfectly normal, as the result is more important than the process. And maybe the only solution is to stop in time, not too early, so as not to produce a raw product, but not too late, so that the relevance of the product does not become questionable or active competitors do not appear. Balance is important. I think we managed to find it.

When the set of improvements was determined, the promotion went in short iterations, “sprints”, and this allowed us to reach the release.

It is possible to improve a product infinitely, but it is better to do it, having already brought it to the market and getting feedback from a large audience, and not from a group of testers.

Well, 2-3 months is a deliberately unrealistic period for launching a mobile service of this level of complexity to the market. Half a year is a very real time.

findings

1. A functional prototype should appear as early as possible, even if it is with a technical design.
2. Selection in the planning of a separate unit for major refinement and processing. They will definitely be and this is normal.

Fun facts

- During the month of beta testing, the 20 most active users made almost 1,500 posts, clicked “yeah!” 3000 times and wrote 700 comments, and not test content, but real, from daily life and even some local holivars appeared.

- Many people do not remember their passwords from Facebook and Twitter, so registration via social networks is better done by calling these applications from the background to get a token.

- Do not just troll AppStore Review Team. The password from the test account (for example, 123654789) cannot be entered correctly the first time (try it yourself). This trifle resulted in an extra three days on the review.

MARKETING

From the very beginning we had two blocks of work: before the publication of the product and after. The first unit included the development of a "gentleman's recruitment", the preparation and establishment of contacts with world opinion leaders. That is, the formation of a loyal audience to exit the service.

Preparation for publication

We started with the creation of a "gentleman's set", which includes a promotional website, a promotional video, a PDF presentation, registration and maintenance of accounts in social networks. It became our communication tools and baskets at the same time to collect a loyal audience. An example of how it all looks can be seen on the service website .



While we were actively working on the alpha version and preparing for the shooting of the promotional video, we decided to experiment with drawing attention to the future service. They printed sets of LikeHate labels (at first, the service was called this, but more on that later) and promised to send them to the first thousand who left their mail on the site. The next day, in the morning, we had more than 12,000 applications (the link hit the well-known freestuff portal), they continued to arrive, and we closed the order form. So we got a big DB of addresses of dubious quality, but at the same time, some of them, apparently really interested in the service, were converted to FB-friends and followers on Twitter.



Another experiment was associated with targeted advertising in the FB, our potential target audience was selected by age and location. For $ 600, we got 90 likes of the page and stopped the experiment.

A few weeks later we changed the name of the service from LikeHate to Manifest, redesigned the site, the presentation, got the first beta version and flew to New York to shoot a video.



It turned out that making a promotional video in New York is not a problem, all that is needed is a visa and a head. Of course, networking also worked here - good acquaintances from Columbia University of the Arts directed video, picked up models, took pictures and helped with post-production. And it also allowed to test the application in this environment. We met with ordinary people in the cafe and on the street, asked them to use the application and express their opinion. Here is a bonus that can not be obtained in Moscow.

As soon as the press kit was formed and a stable beta version appeared, we started knocking to the opinion leaders with a proposal to get acquainted with the service in advance, before the release.

Not so simple

No one cares about you. Before the access to the product, cool bloggers and publications don't really want to communicate and write something. There are several reasons for this: our uncertainty and uncertainty - it’s impossible to write about something that may not appear on the market at all, it’s not uncommon among startups.

We decided a few weeks before the launch with the press kit to send an invitation to participate in a closed beta test. Someone became interested and even started using the service - for example, people from Techcrunch, Apple, TheNextWeb, etc.

Name change. Initially, the project was called LikeHate, and everyone liked it incredibly. All Russian. After talking with the English-language netivom, we found out that the word hate is too aggressive, not suitable for politically correct America. For example, if you put a hate to some famous African American, you can get a scandal. And this is a narrowing of the potential audience.

They invented a new, more universal name, not connected with buttons-opinions. I had to change the promo site and deal with accounts on social networks so that the accumulated audience did not disappear (at this point, the LikeHate promo site collected more than a thousand likes, the Facebook page is about 600). It is worth noting that the merging of pages on Facebook, unlike Twitter, did not succeed.

Now we have a team in the outsourced team that all textual information passes through. Well, and English lessons several times a week.

findings

1. As long as you are unknown or you do not have a product, most likely no one will write about you, even if the idea of ​​the project is interesting. But beautiful and thoughtful promotional materials and the possibility of closed beta testing can help you.
2. The search for non-standard solutions, and indeed the inclusion of the head, can not only save the budget, but also give an unexpected result. The most important thing is not afraid to try and communicate more with people.
3. If the service is focused on the global market, it is necessary to pay attention to how the native speakers will understand your product. Such a test drive is required as soon as possible.
4. At the stage, while there is no product, design is most important. This is content. And if it is also beautiful content, it will be in demand.

Fun facts

- Make a good movie with models in New York for a few thousand dollars. You can, of course, withdraw for the same money in Moscow, but why?

- You can call Robert Scoble, a techno-blogger and a twitter audience of 250,000 people on your mobile and tell about your project by inviting beta testers. He picks up the phone.

- Literally two weeks before the service was published, the Editorial Team itself came out of the Apple AppStore and made an appointment for us. They are also ready to communicate.

TOTAL

1. The product is primary. His appearance and work. If the product is bad, no promotion will help.
2. The team should be formed from competent start-up samurai, who get a buzz from irregular working hours and overcoming difficulties.
3. You must be ready for battle. You must have a set of weapons - promotional materials and a loyal audience.
4. Shareholder agreement is your most important business document.

Stay cool!

PS The application itself can be downloaded here .