How I did my photo sharing with geolocation and blackjack

Yacht racing and addiction to drugs in the long run are cheaper than the uncontrolled creation of software. (Alan Cooper).

Hi, Habr!
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I want to tell a story about how a start-up bit me and I also started spending money with unpredictable consequences. The blame for this, of course, is the reading of Habr, H & F, Zuckerberg and other techno-sites stirring the imagination. Damn it, while I sit in the office and estimate the cost of some insane plant in Samara, a dynamic life passes by - interesting web technologies, mobility, billions of dollars worth of transactions - burning the eyes was a matter of time.

About a year ago, I have accumulated a little money, which a decent person would have spent on a trip, repairing a kitchen or a mistress, but my inner desire for entrepreneurship knocked my fist on the table and said that it would spend the money. The question between the fruit stall and the mobile app was literally a split second.

In spite of economic education and books I read, there was little logic in choosing an idea that I would embody. For about a month I walked the streets, staring at one point and combining different situations, images and problems in my head. At the same time, reading ReWork and being inspired by the ideas of the guys from 37signals about simplicity, minimum of functions, as a competitive advantage and reality of the problem being solved.

One day, while listening to the story of another acquaintance who was looking for a rental apartment, I formulate a problem for myself - there are too many lies in the rental ads, including an attractive price tag and abstract beautiful photos. So, what if posting ads only from the phone, comparing the geolocation of the photo location and the address specified in the ad? And in case of coincidence, mark such an announcement as fair. Instagram about renting apartments. Yes, it's brilliant! ( Error number 1 is just a feature, not a business ).

I continue to dig - what is already on the market? ( Error number 2 - do not go to a market that you don’t know. I must admit, I have never rented or rented an apartment, but the imagination perfectly replaces market research, right? ).

So, the great and terrible CIAN - gives the impression of a cumbersome engine, an overloaded interface (even before the redesign), tens of thousands of ads, probably a hotbed of cunning realtors.

Hipster The locals - a very nice site, a little less than a hundred ads, shooting realtors on distant approaches. The main ideas from the founder’s interview: we have a very cool service with an attendance of 5–8 thousand unikis a day, there is an investor, but you won’t make much money on it, so I got bored and I opened a hairdresser.

Some nonsense. Then why do I climb there? The gray mass of the rest of the rental sites is either parsing TsIANA or endless ad aggregators covering every town in Russia.

Well, okay, we continue to rely on our male intuition. What if we take the weaknesses of each of the players and turn them inside out? Restrict yourself to Moscow, place a bet on a photo, draw a concise interface with a minimum of functions, leave only the most basic parameters of the apartment - the number of rooms, the metro station, the distance from the station and the monthly fee. And yes, let the realtors! As it turned out, all these sites "Without intermediaries" live only thanks to them. Well, to control the stream of consciousness that they will post on my site ( Error number 3 - and where did you get it, what will they post at all? ). Monitor, automatically highlighting honest ads. Again, the smaller the parameters in the questionnaire, the less opportunity to lie. In the end, let them talk up faster and find out the details alive.

Well, the most insidious - separate positioning. For realtors - Flatmania is a working tool to quickly and easily, right from your mobile. And where you can stand out if you follow the rules of the game. For tenants - Flatmania is a site where the percentage of real ads is slightly higher than everywhere else. As they say, less is more. A haven for those who are tired of calling around dummy ads. ( By the way, here is the error number 4 - a hundred times discuss the idea with critical realists who will tell you why all this will not work. But why waste time, you have to jump, jump! ).

Something like this, my imagination convinced me that it was the right thing to do and should be thrown headlong into the development. And all sorts of little things like earning options can be drawn on the go.

Interesting? Further about searches of the designer and programmer, and attempts to force to go a cart which pull in different directions.