We say no to investments
We do not need investor money. We do not need money from a small business support program. A rather strange statement for a person opening his IT project, but there is a logic in it and here's why:
When opening your project, you need to remember and keep in mind two simple things:
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1) What will be the benefit of the project?
2) How to get money for your product / service
It is not a secret for anyone that the infusion of money can harm the values of the project, reduce your motivation, and most importantly direct your activities in a completely different and sometimes unnecessary direction.
Let's get down to business. Having developed the concept of our project, we began to move in terms of determining the size of the project to start our activities. And then there were several options:
1) Own funds allowed to start the project, and spending his time on it, it was possible to avoid large monthly expenses. That is, we would create a low-cost final product.
2) After talking with several consultants in venture funds, our idea was not accepted. More precisely, the monetization model was highly dependent on factors that could not be taken into account. Consequently, they did not agree to invest large sums in our project. But we could find a couple of offers with the amount of investment in the amount of $ 15-20t. However, we already had these funds.
We decided to launch our project with our own money, and said “No” to small investment proposals. In the course of providing a prototype, we still interested investors, but found their proposals inappropriate.
1) Having a small project, we could reduce costs, and most importantly it gives free time to direct the development of the project in the right direction. Time is money.
2) A small amount of funding actually gives nothing either from the utility side or from the way the project is monetized. Yes, in fact, this money is useless and they are not needed.
3) For big funding, we found ourselves not hungry enough to accept all the money and digest it. We refuse money, as the future development needs to be planned, having received a response to the project.
Thus, we came to the conclusion that it is not always getting investments that help the development of the project. It is necessary to soberly assess your strengths, evaluate possible ways of expansion, and it is also important to preserve your concept of utility for people. While the whole project belongs only to you, you are extremely flexible and can better cope with errors.
Since we live in the Far East, we have a program to support small and medium businesses. By visiting the local economic development department, we learned the following:
1) There is an opportunity to receive a grant in the amount of up to 200t rubles, provided that you open your business and register it in the territory of your city.
2) You need to spend all the money on the development of their business.
3) Unfortunately, it’s impossible to spend money on creating a website and buying equipment as a server. It is necessary to open either production or office providing services.
We had the opportunity to open an office for our IT project for free. However, we have weighed all the pros and cons - answered "No". The difference in time with Moscow in any case makes it work at night, and since the project is mainly aimed at the whole of Russia, the usefulness of the office tends to zero. We decided to abandon the additional monthly rental costs and unnecessary stagnation in the office all day.
Developing a project in the field of psychology, we noticed a tendency to level the gap. There are many low-budget sites of low quality and only a few large portals that conduct such activities. As such, the middle layer does not exist. We decided to occupy this level, keeping our costs minimal, and abandoning the unnecessary struggle with large companies. In this size, there are many advantages.
Of course, each company should strive for development and expansion, but as our experience has shown, it is possible to easily refuse financing and at the same time get more benefits. All you need to do this: a clear understanding of what you want and the ability to say "No."
Now our project is at the testing stage, so soon you will be able to contemplate our press release, but for now we will say: “No”.
When opening your project, you need to remember and keep in mind two simple things:
')
1) What will be the benefit of the project?
2) How to get money for your product / service
It is not a secret for anyone that the infusion of money can harm the values of the project, reduce your motivation, and most importantly direct your activities in a completely different and sometimes unnecessary direction.
Let's get down to business. Having developed the concept of our project, we began to move in terms of determining the size of the project to start our activities. And then there were several options:
1) Own funds allowed to start the project, and spending his time on it, it was possible to avoid large monthly expenses. That is, we would create a low-cost final product.
2) After talking with several consultants in venture funds, our idea was not accepted. More precisely, the monetization model was highly dependent on factors that could not be taken into account. Consequently, they did not agree to invest large sums in our project. But we could find a couple of offers with the amount of investment in the amount of $ 15-20t. However, we already had these funds.
We decided to launch our project with our own money, and said “No” to small investment proposals. In the course of providing a prototype, we still interested investors, but found their proposals inappropriate.
1) Having a small project, we could reduce costs, and most importantly it gives free time to direct the development of the project in the right direction. Time is money.
2) A small amount of funding actually gives nothing either from the utility side or from the way the project is monetized. Yes, in fact, this money is useless and they are not needed.
3) For big funding, we found ourselves not hungry enough to accept all the money and digest it. We refuse money, as the future development needs to be planned, having received a response to the project.
Thus, we came to the conclusion that it is not always getting investments that help the development of the project. It is necessary to soberly assess your strengths, evaluate possible ways of expansion, and it is also important to preserve your concept of utility for people. While the whole project belongs only to you, you are extremely flexible and can better cope with errors.
Since we live in the Far East, we have a program to support small and medium businesses. By visiting the local economic development department, we learned the following:
1) There is an opportunity to receive a grant in the amount of up to 200t rubles, provided that you open your business and register it in the territory of your city.
2) You need to spend all the money on the development of their business.
3) Unfortunately, it’s impossible to spend money on creating a website and buying equipment as a server. It is necessary to open either production or office providing services.
We had the opportunity to open an office for our IT project for free. However, we have weighed all the pros and cons - answered "No". The difference in time with Moscow in any case makes it work at night, and since the project is mainly aimed at the whole of Russia, the usefulness of the office tends to zero. We decided to abandon the additional monthly rental costs and unnecessary stagnation in the office all day.
Developing a project in the field of psychology, we noticed a tendency to level the gap. There are many low-budget sites of low quality and only a few large portals that conduct such activities. As such, the middle layer does not exist. We decided to occupy this level, keeping our costs minimal, and abandoning the unnecessary struggle with large companies. In this size, there are many advantages.
Of course, each company should strive for development and expansion, but as our experience has shown, it is possible to easily refuse financing and at the same time get more benefits. All you need to do this: a clear understanding of what you want and the ability to say "No."
Now our project is at the testing stage, so soon you will be able to contemplate our press release, but for now we will say: “No”.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/147144/
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