CDNvideo - 3 years!
Dear Habraludi!
Three years ago, we quit our homes and started our own company, the CDNvideo content delivery network. Then we worked together, we had one room, several servers and not very large, by the standards of current startups, the amount in the account received from friends-investors. Today, through our CDN, video and statics of 6000 sites are distributed, we have about 100 servers spread across different countries and continents, 30 people in the staff, an office in the center of Moscow and a representative office in Kiev. Perhaps this is what is called success, although I do not like this word. And, despite the modesty, we still want to share the experience of creating our own business, and at the same time boast a little of our achievements :)
I remember well our first day of work: I received the keys to the room, 3 computers and furniture from the administration of the Strogino Technopark. I connected the Internet and telephony at the local telecom operator. And only then I clearly felt that we no longer have bosses and organizations above us - now we are our own masters, and we will have to rely only on our own strength. And that we definitely need to start a working business before we spend all the investor money. In order not to forget that everything must necessarily turn out, I printed it from the Internet and hung this photo on the wall:
')
Although, of course, there were doubts about the success of the enterprise - especially since I had never had my own business before. As a person who has worked in large companies for most of his life, I have heard about administrative obstacles and other difficulties in doing business in Russia. In actual fact, everything turned out to be much better - at least we still have not noticed any particular administrative barriers. On the contrary, once in the Technopark "Strogino" under the Government of Moscow, to their surprise, they felt real support from the state. structures - they immediately gave us everything necessary for work (premises, communications, computers, furniture), six months later they gave us a subsidy for business development, and even taught them free of charge at various useful lectures, we even managed to look at Gleb Arkhangelsky there.
In our experience, in order to make your own business, in addition to the belief that everything will work out and the lack of doubt, we need 3 more things:
1. Gather the right people in the team.
2. Make a good product.
3. Find customers.
All these things are extremely important, and at different stages of business development they alternately overtake each other in importance. Strangely enough, one should start from the end of the list - that is, at the very beginning of the business, one must first of all find clients or those who could potentially become them. They will tell you about their problems and needs, knowing that you can already begin to make your product, discussing its functions with potential customers.
The product must be quite innovative, otherwise you will be lost among the sea of competitors, but it is already in demand in the market, otherwise you risk ahead of your time. Your customers will be judged by your customers that you do not know personally. Therefore, to have a good product is extremely important at the stage of entering a wide market.
But to make a product is half the trouble, much more important for any business, at least in IT, is to support and develop your product. And here already on the first role comes the team . If the technical part of the team cannot quickly fix problems in the product and release its updates, neither a product with excellent properties, fame in the market, nor good relations with customers will save you. In turn, if the commercial part of the team is not able to promote and sell the product, the titanic efforts of the techies will remain without remuneration.
All of the above are the fruits of our real experience. When we started , we first began to communicate with potential customers , and this helped us a lot - for example, without talking to customers during the launch preparations, we would not understand the importance of broadcasting video to mobile devices. We started at about the same time as the first iPad appeared, and it turned out that we were the first in Russia to turn mobile video broadcasting into a product , and for some time were the only ones on the market who provided this service. Subsequently, thanks to the active listening of our clients, we launched a number of services on cloud video broadcasting . And, of course, without our wonderful team of system administrators, programmers, vendors, marketers and accountants, without their clear, well-coordinated and, sometimes, dedicated work, we would not be able to become a really working, fast-growing business.
Three years ago, we quit our homes and started our own company, the CDNvideo content delivery network. Then we worked together, we had one room, several servers and not very large, by the standards of current startups, the amount in the account received from friends-investors. Today, through our CDN, video and statics of 6000 sites are distributed, we have about 100 servers spread across different countries and continents, 30 people in the staff, an office in the center of Moscow and a representative office in Kiev. Perhaps this is what is called success, although I do not like this word. And, despite the modesty, we still want to share the experience of creating our own business, and at the same time boast a little of our achievements :)
I remember well our first day of work: I received the keys to the room, 3 computers and furniture from the administration of the Strogino Technopark. I connected the Internet and telephony at the local telecom operator. And only then I clearly felt that we no longer have bosses and organizations above us - now we are our own masters, and we will have to rely only on our own strength. And that we definitely need to start a working business before we spend all the investor money. In order not to forget that everything must necessarily turn out, I printed it from the Internet and hung this photo on the wall:
')
Although, of course, there were doubts about the success of the enterprise - especially since I had never had my own business before. As a person who has worked in large companies for most of his life, I have heard about administrative obstacles and other difficulties in doing business in Russia. In actual fact, everything turned out to be much better - at least we still have not noticed any particular administrative barriers. On the contrary, once in the Technopark "Strogino" under the Government of Moscow, to their surprise, they felt real support from the state. structures - they immediately gave us everything necessary for work (premises, communications, computers, furniture), six months later they gave us a subsidy for business development, and even taught them free of charge at various useful lectures, we even managed to look at Gleb Arkhangelsky there.
In our experience, in order to make your own business, in addition to the belief that everything will work out and the lack of doubt, we need 3 more things:
1. Gather the right people in the team.
2. Make a good product.
3. Find customers.
All these things are extremely important, and at different stages of business development they alternately overtake each other in importance. Strangely enough, one should start from the end of the list - that is, at the very beginning of the business, one must first of all find clients or those who could potentially become them. They will tell you about their problems and needs, knowing that you can already begin to make your product, discussing its functions with potential customers.
The product must be quite innovative, otherwise you will be lost among the sea of competitors, but it is already in demand in the market, otherwise you risk ahead of your time. Your customers will be judged by your customers that you do not know personally. Therefore, to have a good product is extremely important at the stage of entering a wide market.
But to make a product is half the trouble, much more important for any business, at least in IT, is to support and develop your product. And here already on the first role comes the team . If the technical part of the team cannot quickly fix problems in the product and release its updates, neither a product with excellent properties, fame in the market, nor good relations with customers will save you. In turn, if the commercial part of the team is not able to promote and sell the product, the titanic efforts of the techies will remain without remuneration.
All of the above are the fruits of our real experience. When we started , we first began to communicate with potential customers , and this helped us a lot - for example, without talking to customers during the launch preparations, we would not understand the importance of broadcasting video to mobile devices. We started at about the same time as the first iPad appeared, and it turned out that we were the first in Russia to turn mobile video broadcasting into a product , and for some time were the only ones on the market who provided this service. Subsequently, thanks to the active listening of our clients, we launched a number of services on cloud video broadcasting . And, of course, without our wonderful team of system administrators, programmers, vendors, marketers and accountants, without their clear, well-coordinated and, sometimes, dedicated work, we would not be able to become a really working, fast-growing business.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/175041/
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