The essence of the trend concept of "start-up"
Good day,% username%!
Today I want to tell you about such a concept as "start-up". Only I will not paint life in pink. However, do not expect gray shades. Unlike most inhabitants of "Habr" I have a professional economic education. And I know what “start-up” is from my own experience. And behind the shoulders is not only a negative or positive experience. There are victories and failures. Not only mine, but also my clients (he worked for himself for some time, but now he closed the company - with my limited finances, I have not yet been able to do my job at the proper level). That is what I want to tell. However, this article is, among other things, an “analysis” of events over the past two years from the point of view of a person who understands a little in economics. Let's start ...
"Start-up" as a trend
It's no secret that the “start-up” is today a trend, a fashion trend. What amazes me, no one tries to analyze why it happened. If you,% usename%, are going to work for “yourself” and create a “project of your dreams”, then you will think who gave you this idea. Books Jobs, Gates and other bigwigs business? Then you are most likely a dreamer who believes in pink ponies and rainbow shores. People who, in truth, have been working for a long time within an industry have come there not as accidentally as it seems. Any successful project has prerequisites. Whether it is a brilliant engineer, a great programmer or serious capital - this is necessary. Understand, spending a minimum of money and power you will not become a legend. And if you yourself are not a genius (and this is most likely, since you are reading this work and / or have not yet “fired”), and you have the same friends - it is worth considering where to get the money. The best option if you have a dad / mom / aunt / uncle / etc. have the means and you can ask them for them. There is nothing wrong with that. Many started like that. Business is not for those who want to stay clean and constantly rejects help. It is for those who can adapt as quickly as possible. Remember one thing, once and for all! It follows from the very idea of ​​capitalism: everything within the framework of the law is fair and dignified . Everything else is not important and does not matter. The ideal entrepreneur does not suffer from the activation of conscience or other nonsense, because if not you earn from this, then someone else.
Who else could have provoked you to “do your own thing”? Articles, "sucess the story of the same ordinary people." And now think about it. They contain only what was “good.” But no one writes that they had to work without sleep and how they felt. What had to go to get every extra penny of profit. Surely many people would like to live only at the expense of "their business" and not to work "for an uncle." And now think about why the “uncle” who organizes his business gets so much, and you are given only what is owed to you for the work. He works unlike you 24 hours a day, his job is to be available for business at any time of his life. By and large, for the first three years you will generally forget such concepts as a healthy sleep, personal life or a weekend. The price of success is giving up on yourself for a period of three to ten years. And maybe for life.
')
And now think about it - who cultivates this trend and, most importantly, why. The answer is simple - the economists themselves. The concept of "start-up" is very beneficial for Russia. Our small business is not developed (in fact, it is not), and without its development, according to Russian economists, it is impossible to create a healthy economy. In fact, the main role of small enterprises in the same "states" is to serve the orders of large enterprises or to create products that satisfy a very small market (it is simply not profitable for large companies to work on it). But speaking of small business, many forget that the goal of any small business is to become a monopolist. And let them say that monopolization is bad, that you cannot create a healthy and efficient economy with it. It is not true. Monopolization is a natural state of the market due to a variety of factors. Anyone wants to become the “king of the mountain”, isn't it? .. The constant appearance of “start-ups” provides profit to other market players (after all, the project is not entirely “free”). By and large, at the expense of them, economists create additional capital injections into firms larger than project creators. In other words, simple Vanka, who decided to become the new king of “these your internet sites” at the expense of his “cool project”, is by and large a “cash cow”. Only big players win in the market. And Vanya is weak, he has no support and money. By the way, according to the same system, Forex works on which only those who have a turnover with a sum of six zeros win the normal amounts. Surely you have already started to distrust my position. Well, give an example.
One of the first projects that my company implemented was the resource of the WebMoney ATM for one person. That year and a half has been engaged in issuing micro-loans and decided to automate the process of issuing. Naturally, like any normal “lender”, he wanted to conduct analytics of his activities. I will omit all the technical details of the project (although there were a lot of problems working with WM, both in terms of documentation and abominable support service, which was not able to answer very specific questions from the lead programmer), I can only say that “start -ap "customer a year failed miserably. The reason is simply the lack of funds. Now the project is closed, the domain name is sold to another. Naturally, we were approached with “complaints”, since the “expected effect” could not be achieved. After some simple analysis (I looked through the “activities” of this project, including advertising, PR and marketing strategy), it turned out that the customer was not engaged in project promotion - there was not enough money. He had a feeling that the project would start making a profit and after some time he would be able to pay for advertising and order promotion in a search engine (we did not deal with this type of activity - our specialization was exclusively technical implementation). What is interesting - the potential of the project was quite high. Our product was made at a higher level than most of the "competitors" of the customer. Sources even offered to buy for a sum several times larger people with a normal financial base (later they refused - they found a more attractive segment for investment). Maybe many will say: “What is new here ?! This idea was initially flawed ”, - or:“ A fool himself - it doesn't make sense to stick in without money ”. On the one hand, you will be right, but on the other - 99% of “start-ups” satisfy the needs of many existing products. And normal financing is rather a rarity (after all, we are not talking about projects like Habra or VKontakte, but about Vani’s home project, which created an analogue of the American dream in my head). In such cases, the market simply redistributes money from those who are "more stupid / naive" to those who are ready to take a reward for fulfilling the desire of this "naive". I note that when a person refused to immediately order a project promotion in another organization (we advised, they would give him a 30% discount on acquaintance), and decided to postpone it for a couple of months after the withdrawal of the project - I realized that the product “would not shoot”. Say it was immoral and immoral to take money for it? By no means. He got a lesson (and very good, the work was not very cheap), and we - the money. If we didn’t do it, someone else would do it.
Choice of ideas
Let's put aside the conversation about financing (you can grovel about it for hours), but let's talk better about ideas and Ideas. In fact, it is impossible to come up with something fundamentally new in the framework of existing technologies. It is also not possible to create a market without a new need or large capital to create this need (hello, apple company! You are the best in this business!). Therefore, let's answer honestly the question: "Can I think of something worthwhile." Most often the answer will be a categorical "no." Only those projects that not only the creator and a hundred more people can use succeed. The projects that are really used become the “guests” of the majority of users (how many people work with the same Evernote). Therefore, an audience of 100 people will not bring real profits. Of course, this is not the case if your clients are different TNCs and you are developing a super-complex system without which they cannot work. But you probably won't be able to do that, let's be realistic. Then what to do? Think of how to satisfy the need of better quality competitor. For example, the same Windows is objectively easier to use with the standard “hamster” than Linux; earlier Macs were objectively easier to use than IBM PCs with MS-DOS. Man is by nature lazy and wants to be entertained and made life easier. Play it. Did half the ideas go away right away? This is normal. Large companies have entire departments involved in the "generation of ideas." Therefore, even a couple of "very bright" minds are not capable of "on the mountain" to give an idea-masterpiece.
To do the same “just a similar project” and “to produce entities”, to put it mildly, does not make sense. You will not do better than a company with high turnover. Even with good funding creating a complete copy of something you can only bask in the remnants of the rays from a competitor. Do you know a lot of Ubuntu-based distributions? If there are a dozen - this is very good. But there are hundreds of thousands of them. Their creators get something (fan, experience, donat), but they never fall into this ten. Similarly, your project - if it is not used by thousands, it simply will not pay for the effort invested in them.
Probably you think: “Yes, what can it pay for? Is that the hosting / work of the artist / etc. ". Unfortunately, I want to upset - even if you placed the site on a freebie (well, let a friend give it to you) hosting, and did the implementation yourself - you still have to bear the costs! You spent the time you could spend on something more rewarding. The cost of this time is never taken into account by the majority of Russian entrepreneurs and start-ups. The notion of “opportunity costs” is simply thrown out by the majority with the words: “What else could I have done more useful?” In truth, a lot of things. You can make a list for yourself. And remember - sometimes the value of time is higher than the value of money (any real businessman who works from dawn to dawn will easily prove this to you). And this is not relevant for you now, soon you will realize it.
But back to the choice of ideas. Most of the failures of ideas can be separated very simply - tell me honestly, could you use it every day not only because you did it yourself. Let us say that you are unlikely to use the Notebook analogue that has been draped on your knee instead of the cozy Vim. Or the success of the new “thematic forum, only with whores and blackjack”, which even without your project over 9000, is unlikely. Ask yourself more often the question of why Clojure, NGNIX, Evernote, JetBrains, Facebook were shot and why Google is slowly developing ( my personal IMHO), the 4th "Heroes" did not become a cake, sluggish sold Apple Lisa and Jobs's monstrous NeXT ... There are a lot of examples to pick. The main desire to dig, analyze. Suppose everything is completely crazy you threw away. Now the most difficult thing is to understand what a normal, reasonably reasonable person might need. In other words, do not try on the “interestingness” of an idea only for yourself. If you are able to realize your project, invent it, develop it - you are already higher in the knowledge of the majority. Therefore, we must clearly realize for whom you work - if your target audience is narrow specialists, then there will be no particular problems with mastering complex software / service / service / device, of course, if it will bring real benefits in work. But if your target audience is “the majority of average users” (or, God forbid, schoolchildren), then be prepared for the fact that “customers” will not understand a complex idea. There is such a notion as applied to consumers “information resource” (a very rough translation from American literature, the “perception resource” will probably be closer), it means the ability to process and perceive information. In other words - not everyone is able to master the Linux build from source, but almost any housewife will be able to install Microsoft Windows (we will not be cunning, there are practically no problems with installing the same 7-ki). Or look at the wild popularity of the Farm Frenzy. But its development was spent much less than the same The Temple of Elemetnal Evil (from Troika Games), although the profitability of the first game (purely casual) is many times higher.
Suppose you could even select an idea. Now it is necessary to bring it to incarnation and not abandon it halfway. To do this, we must not just fanatically “create”, but carefully and efficiently work through every little thing. It is boring at first glance, the work will bring the greatest return. It’s not as interesting to lick the interface of a new program as it is to write a functional, but it may be the decisive factor in your favor, even if the functionality is still "slack". In order to pay attention to the project, it is necessary to make a “nice candy” out of it, to endow it with exactly those features that most potential consumers from the target audience will definitely like. After all, you probably also, like most, do not use Tkabber, because "it is terrible, like all Tk!".
What else can be said about ideas? Probably only that the selection of ideas must be learned from the best. The question is: “How?” Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to it. I myself do not have sufficient knowledge in this area. But I want to note that if the start-up is based solely on the desire to make a profit through the creation of the next dating, you should not waste time. I emphasize once again - any successful project to some extent satisfies the need that was not previously affected, is satisfied. That is why the same "Macs" - PCs for the "underdeveloped public" competed with IBM-PC, Linux still exists, and HaikuOS going against it ( edit five months after starting work on the article: haiku can and will be Win! I just didn’t understand the goals of this project; I changed my opinion after sitting on a subject for four months) and ReactOS cannot get out of the “embryo” state ( note: the opinion on the “reactance” has become even worse - it seems that the goals are not understandable to the creators).
The end?!...
But this is not the end. Work on the article has just begun. The presented text is only the beginning of a great work. What it will pour out is difficult to say. But, to be continued.
Today I want to tell you about such a concept as "start-up". Only I will not paint life in pink. However, do not expect gray shades. Unlike most inhabitants of "Habr" I have a professional economic education. And I know what “start-up” is from my own experience. And behind the shoulders is not only a negative or positive experience. There are victories and failures. Not only mine, but also my clients (he worked for himself for some time, but now he closed the company - with my limited finances, I have not yet been able to do my job at the proper level). That is what I want to tell. However, this article is, among other things, an “analysis” of events over the past two years from the point of view of a person who understands a little in economics. Let's start ...
"Start-up" as a trend
It's no secret that the “start-up” is today a trend, a fashion trend. What amazes me, no one tries to analyze why it happened. If you,% usename%, are going to work for “yourself” and create a “project of your dreams”, then you will think who gave you this idea. Books Jobs, Gates and other bigwigs business? Then you are most likely a dreamer who believes in pink ponies and rainbow shores. People who, in truth, have been working for a long time within an industry have come there not as accidentally as it seems. Any successful project has prerequisites. Whether it is a brilliant engineer, a great programmer or serious capital - this is necessary. Understand, spending a minimum of money and power you will not become a legend. And if you yourself are not a genius (and this is most likely, since you are reading this work and / or have not yet “fired”), and you have the same friends - it is worth considering where to get the money. The best option if you have a dad / mom / aunt / uncle / etc. have the means and you can ask them for them. There is nothing wrong with that. Many started like that. Business is not for those who want to stay clean and constantly rejects help. It is for those who can adapt as quickly as possible. Remember one thing, once and for all! It follows from the very idea of ​​capitalism: everything within the framework of the law is fair and dignified . Everything else is not important and does not matter. The ideal entrepreneur does not suffer from the activation of conscience or other nonsense, because if not you earn from this, then someone else.
Who else could have provoked you to “do your own thing”? Articles, "sucess the story of the same ordinary people." And now think about it. They contain only what was “good.” But no one writes that they had to work without sleep and how they felt. What had to go to get every extra penny of profit. Surely many people would like to live only at the expense of "their business" and not to work "for an uncle." And now think about why the “uncle” who organizes his business gets so much, and you are given only what is owed to you for the work. He works unlike you 24 hours a day, his job is to be available for business at any time of his life. By and large, for the first three years you will generally forget such concepts as a healthy sleep, personal life or a weekend. The price of success is giving up on yourself for a period of three to ten years. And maybe for life.
')
And now think about it - who cultivates this trend and, most importantly, why. The answer is simple - the economists themselves. The concept of "start-up" is very beneficial for Russia. Our small business is not developed (in fact, it is not), and without its development, according to Russian economists, it is impossible to create a healthy economy. In fact, the main role of small enterprises in the same "states" is to serve the orders of large enterprises or to create products that satisfy a very small market (it is simply not profitable for large companies to work on it). But speaking of small business, many forget that the goal of any small business is to become a monopolist. And let them say that monopolization is bad, that you cannot create a healthy and efficient economy with it. It is not true. Monopolization is a natural state of the market due to a variety of factors. Anyone wants to become the “king of the mountain”, isn't it? .. The constant appearance of “start-ups” provides profit to other market players (after all, the project is not entirely “free”). By and large, at the expense of them, economists create additional capital injections into firms larger than project creators. In other words, simple Vanka, who decided to become the new king of “these your internet sites” at the expense of his “cool project”, is by and large a “cash cow”. Only big players win in the market. And Vanya is weak, he has no support and money. By the way, according to the same system, Forex works on which only those who have a turnover with a sum of six zeros win the normal amounts. Surely you have already started to distrust my position. Well, give an example.
One of the first projects that my company implemented was the resource of the WebMoney ATM for one person. That year and a half has been engaged in issuing micro-loans and decided to automate the process of issuing. Naturally, like any normal “lender”, he wanted to conduct analytics of his activities. I will omit all the technical details of the project (although there were a lot of problems working with WM, both in terms of documentation and abominable support service, which was not able to answer very specific questions from the lead programmer), I can only say that “start -ap "customer a year failed miserably. The reason is simply the lack of funds. Now the project is closed, the domain name is sold to another. Naturally, we were approached with “complaints”, since the “expected effect” could not be achieved. After some simple analysis (I looked through the “activities” of this project, including advertising, PR and marketing strategy), it turned out that the customer was not engaged in project promotion - there was not enough money. He had a feeling that the project would start making a profit and after some time he would be able to pay for advertising and order promotion in a search engine (we did not deal with this type of activity - our specialization was exclusively technical implementation). What is interesting - the potential of the project was quite high. Our product was made at a higher level than most of the "competitors" of the customer. Sources even offered to buy for a sum several times larger people with a normal financial base (later they refused - they found a more attractive segment for investment). Maybe many will say: “What is new here ?! This idea was initially flawed ”, - or:“ A fool himself - it doesn't make sense to stick in without money ”. On the one hand, you will be right, but on the other - 99% of “start-ups” satisfy the needs of many existing products. And normal financing is rather a rarity (after all, we are not talking about projects like Habra or VKontakte, but about Vani’s home project, which created an analogue of the American dream in my head). In such cases, the market simply redistributes money from those who are "more stupid / naive" to those who are ready to take a reward for fulfilling the desire of this "naive". I note that when a person refused to immediately order a project promotion in another organization (we advised, they would give him a 30% discount on acquaintance), and decided to postpone it for a couple of months after the withdrawal of the project - I realized that the product “would not shoot”. Say it was immoral and immoral to take money for it? By no means. He got a lesson (and very good, the work was not very cheap), and we - the money. If we didn’t do it, someone else would do it.
Choice of ideas
Let's put aside the conversation about financing (you can grovel about it for hours), but let's talk better about ideas and Ideas. In fact, it is impossible to come up with something fundamentally new in the framework of existing technologies. It is also not possible to create a market without a new need or large capital to create this need (hello, apple company! You are the best in this business!). Therefore, let's answer honestly the question: "Can I think of something worthwhile." Most often the answer will be a categorical "no." Only those projects that not only the creator and a hundred more people can use succeed. The projects that are really used become the “guests” of the majority of users (how many people work with the same Evernote). Therefore, an audience of 100 people will not bring real profits. Of course, this is not the case if your clients are different TNCs and you are developing a super-complex system without which they cannot work. But you probably won't be able to do that, let's be realistic. Then what to do? Think of how to satisfy the need of better quality competitor. For example, the same Windows is objectively easier to use with the standard “hamster” than Linux; earlier Macs were objectively easier to use than IBM PCs with MS-DOS. Man is by nature lazy and wants to be entertained and made life easier. Play it. Did half the ideas go away right away? This is normal. Large companies have entire departments involved in the "generation of ideas." Therefore, even a couple of "very bright" minds are not capable of "on the mountain" to give an idea-masterpiece.
To do the same “just a similar project” and “to produce entities”, to put it mildly, does not make sense. You will not do better than a company with high turnover. Even with good funding creating a complete copy of something you can only bask in the remnants of the rays from a competitor. Do you know a lot of Ubuntu-based distributions? If there are a dozen - this is very good. But there are hundreds of thousands of them. Their creators get something (fan, experience, donat), but they never fall into this ten. Similarly, your project - if it is not used by thousands, it simply will not pay for the effort invested in them.
Probably you think: “Yes, what can it pay for? Is that the hosting / work of the artist / etc. ". Unfortunately, I want to upset - even if you placed the site on a freebie (well, let a friend give it to you) hosting, and did the implementation yourself - you still have to bear the costs! You spent the time you could spend on something more rewarding. The cost of this time is never taken into account by the majority of Russian entrepreneurs and start-ups. The notion of “opportunity costs” is simply thrown out by the majority with the words: “What else could I have done more useful?” In truth, a lot of things. You can make a list for yourself. And remember - sometimes the value of time is higher than the value of money (any real businessman who works from dawn to dawn will easily prove this to you). And this is not relevant for you now, soon you will realize it.
But back to the choice of ideas. Most of the failures of ideas can be separated very simply - tell me honestly, could you use it every day not only because you did it yourself. Let us say that you are unlikely to use the Notebook analogue that has been draped on your knee instead of the cozy Vim. Or the success of the new “thematic forum, only with whores and blackjack”, which even without your project over 9000, is unlikely. Ask yourself more often the question of why Clojure, NGNIX, Evernote, JetBrains, Facebook were shot and why Google is slowly developing ( my personal IMHO), the 4th "Heroes" did not become a cake, sluggish sold Apple Lisa and Jobs's monstrous NeXT ... There are a lot of examples to pick. The main desire to dig, analyze. Suppose everything is completely crazy you threw away. Now the most difficult thing is to understand what a normal, reasonably reasonable person might need. In other words, do not try on the “interestingness” of an idea only for yourself. If you are able to realize your project, invent it, develop it - you are already higher in the knowledge of the majority. Therefore, we must clearly realize for whom you work - if your target audience is narrow specialists, then there will be no particular problems with mastering complex software / service / service / device, of course, if it will bring real benefits in work. But if your target audience is “the majority of average users” (or, God forbid, schoolchildren), then be prepared for the fact that “customers” will not understand a complex idea. There is such a notion as applied to consumers “information resource” (a very rough translation from American literature, the “perception resource” will probably be closer), it means the ability to process and perceive information. In other words - not everyone is able to master the Linux build from source, but almost any housewife will be able to install Microsoft Windows (we will not be cunning, there are practically no problems with installing the same 7-ki). Or look at the wild popularity of the Farm Frenzy. But its development was spent much less than the same The Temple of Elemetnal Evil (from Troika Games), although the profitability of the first game (purely casual) is many times higher.
Suppose you could even select an idea. Now it is necessary to bring it to incarnation and not abandon it halfway. To do this, we must not just fanatically “create”, but carefully and efficiently work through every little thing. It is boring at first glance, the work will bring the greatest return. It’s not as interesting to lick the interface of a new program as it is to write a functional, but it may be the decisive factor in your favor, even if the functionality is still "slack". In order to pay attention to the project, it is necessary to make a “nice candy” out of it, to endow it with exactly those features that most potential consumers from the target audience will definitely like. After all, you probably also, like most, do not use Tkabber, because "it is terrible, like all Tk!".
What else can be said about ideas? Probably only that the selection of ideas must be learned from the best. The question is: “How?” Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to it. I myself do not have sufficient knowledge in this area. But I want to note that if the start-up is based solely on the desire to make a profit through the creation of the next dating, you should not waste time. I emphasize once again - any successful project to some extent satisfies the need that was not previously affected, is satisfied. That is why the same "Macs" - PCs for the "underdeveloped public" competed with IBM-PC, Linux still exists, and HaikuOS going against it ( edit five months after starting work on the article: haiku can and will be Win! I just didn’t understand the goals of this project; I changed my opinion after sitting on a subject for four months) and ReactOS cannot get out of the “embryo” state ( note: the opinion on the “reactance” has become even worse - it seems that the goals are not understandable to the creators).
The end?!...
But this is not the end. Work on the article has just begun. The presented text is only the beginning of a great work. What it will pour out is difficult to say. But, to be continued.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/146045/
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