About startups - the harsh truth
I do not know how much what I write will be perceived / claimed by habra people, but I will try.
Now on Habré (as far as I can tell), and in general, the word “startup” has become popular.
I will not paint my negative to this word, but I can definitely say one thing - guys, but what, the word “project” has already been forgotten?
')
But this is so, a prelude. Since life somehow tied me to management and finance, I can try to consider what modern start-ups look like from this point of view.
1. Finance
The first thing to understand in the field of startups is the difference between the Russian mentality and any other. In Russia, whatever one may say, there is still a period of primary accumulation of capital. And it will not end for quite a long time, because a sign of the transition from accumulation to effective investment is the fall of the refinancing rate and the retention of inflation (dear reader, if you are already tired of these terms, go to the paragraphs below) at a certain level, which Russia has not is observed.
In other words, the investor starts looking at risky investments only when the usual (non-risky) investments are all selected, the markets are divided, and so on. And in Russia it is still far from this state.
Therefore, if you come to a standard investor (I give an example in my city with a population of 130 thousand people) with a “start-up”, then, in most cases, it will either not give money at all, or send it away right away. Not that scale. If on cement today you can safely achieve a profitability of 100% and above, why risk it?
2. And let's count
So, now let's calculate what a standard startup will cost me if I have an idea. Suppose (only suppose) that I want to make a catalog of enterprises in my region, of course, all specifically “Webdvanol”, so that everything is XHTML, so that nothing is loaded in vain, with comments, feedback, RSS and other things.
First I need a server. There are 11 thousand enterprises in my area, a not-so-cool server will be needed, so I’ll just put FreeBSD 6.2 (personal choice) on it, bring up Apache 2.0, put PHP5 and, of course, MySQL. Classic LAMP. The car will cost me cheap, about 7 thousand rubles.
Then I will think about hosting. I will take this system unit, which I will prepare at home (2-3 hours, not more), to the provider and he will keep it at home, I will pay 3,000 rubles for placing it there, plus I will pay for traffic (for a start, I will not to take a tariff with a large amount of included traffic, but I will simply pay for the “cumulated” amount monthly). I do not suppose the crowd at once, at the first stage, so I don’t think about the M9 :)
Then I will sit down and will long and painfully write TK. In it, I will paint what I would like, tell you what my computer is and what and how I want. It will take me about 10 hours in total, since I also used to count my time.
Now it's time to find someone who will implement this in PHP. There are two options: Moscow is only 80 km away; I can find a person from there, or search for “locals”. As a result, it turns out that developing a normal directory will cost me from $ 1,000 to 7-8 thousand, in the first case, it will be a “start-up” team, in the second case it will be a team of maniacs.
And here comes the main question. How will the money paid for the development come back to me? Most will have a standard answer - “Advertising!” (With a different number of exclamation marks). But this is only half the trouble! I will need an employee who will adequately deal with the base of enterprises, etc. At the same time, I need to somehow look for these enterprises and invite them to come to my catalog, right? Of course, I will develop a wise pricing policy, they say, if you only have basic information about the company, you do not pay anything for what you are in the catalog, you want more information, the price list and pictures are not a question, pay.
Well, all sorts of little things, such as office, telephone, Internet in the office, etc.
Let's now try to calculate what happens?
Payable once:
Server - 7000 rubles.
Colocation - 3000 rub.
Software development - 100,000 rubles.
Working time - 3900 rubles.
Total: 113900 rub.
Payable every month:
Traffic (server) - 300 rubles.
Employee - 5000 rub. (taxes included)
Telephone - 200 rubles.
Office (rent) - 4500 rub.
Internet to the office - 1000 rubles.
Total: 11,000 rubles.
As a result, 114 thousand at the start, 11 thousand each month.
If you count further, building on the number of clients that I need to attract, you get a rather considerable amount of “sales”. And this is simply unattainable at first, and advertising will not bring immediately and much.
But now it will be even more fun. Let's get to the point of view of the investor. Well-dressed young people come to me and offer to spend 114 thousand at once, and another 11 thousand later, at the same time, how much do you think it will return the money spent on yourself? That's the point.
3. What about Google? (insert the name of your favorite startup here)
Now we will carefully look at the list of costs and find that if I already have one “startup”, then the second one will be cheaper, but not much, since the development of both the cost and the cost will be expensive.
And if we talk about the same Google, then no one really knows how much was invested at the beginning of this event, and how it went. Moreover, as a student, and especially abroad, and not in Russia, it is much easier to get sufficiently substantial support from the university where you study. So it turns out that in Russia (for the time being) a “startup” is quite expensive.
Therefore, believe that “startups” are possible in two cases:
1. There is an investor who simply has nowhere to spend money.
2. It is possible to reduce the cost of development - do it yourself.
Point 2 we see much more often.
4. Conclusions
So, to all novice “startups” I want to say that any “startup” in RuNet is not as profitable as any business not connected with the Internet. And as long as it does, no one can see tasty “venture” investments.
And do not look back at the United States, translate articles and rejoice: it does not work in Russia yet. That's when it works, then there will be a normal startup boom.
If I missed something, I will be happy to answer in the comments.
Now on Habré (as far as I can tell), and in general, the word “startup” has become popular.
I will not paint my negative to this word, but I can definitely say one thing - guys, but what, the word “project” has already been forgotten?
')
But this is so, a prelude. Since life somehow tied me to management and finance, I can try to consider what modern start-ups look like from this point of view.
1. Finance
The first thing to understand in the field of startups is the difference between the Russian mentality and any other. In Russia, whatever one may say, there is still a period of primary accumulation of capital. And it will not end for quite a long time, because a sign of the transition from accumulation to effective investment is the fall of the refinancing rate and the retention of inflation (dear reader, if you are already tired of these terms, go to the paragraphs below) at a certain level, which Russia has not is observed.
In other words, the investor starts looking at risky investments only when the usual (non-risky) investments are all selected, the markets are divided, and so on. And in Russia it is still far from this state.
Therefore, if you come to a standard investor (I give an example in my city with a population of 130 thousand people) with a “start-up”, then, in most cases, it will either not give money at all, or send it away right away. Not that scale. If on cement today you can safely achieve a profitability of 100% and above, why risk it?
2. And let's count
So, now let's calculate what a standard startup will cost me if I have an idea. Suppose (only suppose) that I want to make a catalog of enterprises in my region, of course, all specifically “Webdvanol”, so that everything is XHTML, so that nothing is loaded in vain, with comments, feedback, RSS and other things.
First I need a server. There are 11 thousand enterprises in my area, a not-so-cool server will be needed, so I’ll just put FreeBSD 6.2 (personal choice) on it, bring up Apache 2.0, put PHP5 and, of course, MySQL. Classic LAMP. The car will cost me cheap, about 7 thousand rubles.
Then I will think about hosting. I will take this system unit, which I will prepare at home (2-3 hours, not more), to the provider and he will keep it at home, I will pay 3,000 rubles for placing it there, plus I will pay for traffic (for a start, I will not to take a tariff with a large amount of included traffic, but I will simply pay for the “cumulated” amount monthly). I do not suppose the crowd at once, at the first stage, so I don’t think about the M9 :)
Then I will sit down and will long and painfully write TK. In it, I will paint what I would like, tell you what my computer is and what and how I want. It will take me about 10 hours in total, since I also used to count my time.
Now it's time to find someone who will implement this in PHP. There are two options: Moscow is only 80 km away; I can find a person from there, or search for “locals”. As a result, it turns out that developing a normal directory will cost me from $ 1,000 to 7-8 thousand, in the first case, it will be a “start-up” team, in the second case it will be a team of maniacs.
And here comes the main question. How will the money paid for the development come back to me? Most will have a standard answer - “Advertising!” (With a different number of exclamation marks). But this is only half the trouble! I will need an employee who will adequately deal with the base of enterprises, etc. At the same time, I need to somehow look for these enterprises and invite them to come to my catalog, right? Of course, I will develop a wise pricing policy, they say, if you only have basic information about the company, you do not pay anything for what you are in the catalog, you want more information, the price list and pictures are not a question, pay.
Well, all sorts of little things, such as office, telephone, Internet in the office, etc.
Let's now try to calculate what happens?
Payable once:
Server - 7000 rubles.
Colocation - 3000 rub.
Software development - 100,000 rubles.
Working time - 3900 rubles.
Total: 113900 rub.
Payable every month:
Traffic (server) - 300 rubles.
Employee - 5000 rub. (taxes included)
Telephone - 200 rubles.
Office (rent) - 4500 rub.
Internet to the office - 1000 rubles.
Total: 11,000 rubles.
As a result, 114 thousand at the start, 11 thousand each month.
If you count further, building on the number of clients that I need to attract, you get a rather considerable amount of “sales”. And this is simply unattainable at first, and advertising will not bring immediately and much.
But now it will be even more fun. Let's get to the point of view of the investor. Well-dressed young people come to me and offer to spend 114 thousand at once, and another 11 thousand later, at the same time, how much do you think it will return the money spent on yourself? That's the point.
3. What about Google? (insert the name of your favorite startup here)
Now we will carefully look at the list of costs and find that if I already have one “startup”, then the second one will be cheaper, but not much, since the development of both the cost and the cost will be expensive.
And if we talk about the same Google, then no one really knows how much was invested at the beginning of this event, and how it went. Moreover, as a student, and especially abroad, and not in Russia, it is much easier to get sufficiently substantial support from the university where you study. So it turns out that in Russia (for the time being) a “startup” is quite expensive.
Therefore, believe that “startups” are possible in two cases:
1. There is an investor who simply has nowhere to spend money.
2. It is possible to reduce the cost of development - do it yourself.
Point 2 we see much more often.
4. Conclusions
So, to all novice “startups” I want to say that any “startup” in RuNet is not as profitable as any business not connected with the Internet. And as long as it does, no one can see tasty “venture” investments.
And do not look back at the United States, translate articles and rejoice: it does not work in Russia yet. That's when it works, then there will be a normal startup boom.
If I missed something, I will be happy to answer in the comments.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/16886/
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