How to come to a successful business model, abandoning most of their ideas. Experience creators RSS2email
Artem Kashekhlebov and Oleg Basha, leaders of Olevarty , talk about their projects Kanban , RSS2email , Seku . About how they saw the development direction from the beginning, and how reality corrected their vision.
Recently, there are enough startups in RuNet that differ in the use of any technology. But this difference often does not become a competitive advantage.
The creators of such startups (as well as those who make such a difference in their head) will be useful to familiarize themselves with the experience of the company, all of whose projects are based on RSS technology.
Difficult way of complex product
- From the interviews you have already given, it is known that you previously owned a web studio, then you saw the potential in the RSS technology and decided to create your own products based on it, and everything started with Kanban.
AK: Yes, that's right. The project is already 3 years old, initially it included all the same functions that are now distributed across different projects. It was very difficult for the audience. Then we began to isolate the functions, so RSS2email appeared - perhaps the most popular reader in RuNet. I don’t know what Yandex.Lends have, they don’t publish data, but we feel like that.
OB: The fact that everything is collected in one place turned out to be very difficult for the user. Therefore, we gradually divided the project into parts, and there are ideas that can be done yet. Initially, we wanted to do something similar to pusk.ru or Netvibes . Experience shows: what is difficult to configure - does not work.
. .: Pusk will ever get its audience, but it will not be massive ... If we consider the example of products from the mass market, we first unite simple products: for example, the camera combines both a camera and a player. But then it will probably again become very difficult, and then it will break back into simple products ... Such waviness.
OB: so about 2 years ago we began to narrow the functions of the service, highlighting them into separate projects. So, by the summer of that year, seku appeared. And Kanban became what we originally intended, until we started adding a lot of features to the project - a directory of blogs and news feeds.
And some things, like a subscription to comments on posts in RSS feeds, were generally deleted. For six months, we have accumulated 8 subscriptions to comments.
- (I write this fact separately in a notebook)
OB: Will this be the title of our interview? :)
AK: The initial idea failed, but it is even good, because it turned us to face a mass audience.
OB: Although for Kanban we received the award " Internit " in 2005, under the heading "Internet Pro". Our development seemed so complicated that no one understood it, and they decided to give us an award :)
AK: It was nice when we made a special rubric in the Yandex catalog, and we were there first.
OB: Rather, probably, because of Yandex. Tapes.
AK: Maybe so, but over time it did not appear there.
- What was the total cost for Kanban as a result?
How hard was it to maintain the development of such a project, or was there still a profit from somewhere?
. .: It was a 100% startup. To say that this project was expensive is not entirely correct. We had development experience, and we were able to quickly implement this project.
- What is the most attractive channel for attracting consumers?
AK: The main goal was to attract a new segment of the Internet community - bloggers. Kanban.ru is primarily the first catalog of RSS, blogs and news feeds and the first Russian online RSS aggregator. We didn’t wait for the profits from this project.
- So you did it in parallel with the main activity, without closing the web studio?
. .: Yes, at that moment profit brought us custom commercial projects. After we selected RSS2email.ru and seku.ru from a large portal into independent projects, we concentrated exclusively on them and continue to engage in their monetization and development.
- And how did it happen that Kanban is placed in the list of applications for subscribing to tapes in Firefox?
AK: We ourselves left Mozilla when creating the second version of Firefox, and we naturally did not refuse. As for the Feedburner counter, here we took the initiative ourselves, and as a result of 3 Russian projects, counted from the counter, 2 - ours (Kanban and RSS2email), the third - Yandex. Lenta.
OB: True, we get quite a bit of traffic from a link in Firefox.
About simplicity and complexity
OB: RSS continues to be a complex technology, the term RSS itself knows 2-3% of users, and this figure will not increase over time. This is a technical term, unnecessary mass user detail. Focusing purely on RSS limited us.
- Is it right that with the direct use of technology RSS service will cease to be relevant, because it is an intermediary, not always necessary?
OB: Here we must understand what kind of user we are talking about. People who have more than 100 tapes in a subscription - less than a percent, while the remaining 99% have only a few of them.
. .: Another example - Newsgator , the world leader in the field of RSS aggregation, calls the main product the module that allows you to read RSS feeds in Outlook.
That is, RSS2email is not an intermediary, but an RSS-reader, where the interface is your favorite email program.
OB: And besides, I have just over 100 subscriptions, but it’s convenient for me to use this service :)
AK: Of course, there will be people who will want to use other services, online readers, reader programs ... But most users will choose simplicity, and will read the same place as their email.
OB: It is better to focus on a mass audience, and not on the geeks who are demanding and capricious. And as soon as a new, more technological product appears, they will leave for it.
The same Netvibes is geek-oriented, and probably gathered all such an audience, but this is not the way for a project in RuNet.
. .: Will not be of commercial interest.
And further. The word RSS itself is complex. Recently, I had an example: I called one businessman a start-up, so he was simply offended: “Who-who am I, as you called me ?!” :)
OB: We are sitting inside this process and do not see what is happening outside, and there people do not even know the word “blog”. Although at the same time can lead your LJ and have a hundred friends.
AK: If we take an example from the book “Blog Marketing. A new revolutionary way to increase sales ”, even the translator could not correctly convey the term RSS: it appeared in the text as Fast Simple Merging.
- And why do you think that with the penetration of the Internet and the general technological education will not change?
OB: That's why people say web pages, not HTML pages. RSS is an extra word, and you can do without it.
"We are working on the fact that the fastest growing"
. .: The main gain of users of the RSS2email service is not due to the fact that users recognize the technology, but from the forms established on the sites using our service. They do not even know what is behind our service.
- So, this is a customer-oriented subscription service?
OB: Yes, very similar to what Subscribe does, but more focused on the blogosphere.
Moreover, if the classical mailing companies are in recession now, because the blogosphere is developing, then we have a good growth, last year it was 600%.
Example: a simpler service, RSS2email, has scored as many audiences as Kanban has, for half a month of its work. Through the primary announcement.
And now we are positioning ourselves as media with 30,000 readers daily and 20,000 news feeds. More than a million emails are already being sent a month, about the same as clicking on links to updated sources.
OB: Among those advertised under the heading " What to subscribe for ?" Were those who increased the number of subscribers per thousand in 2-3 days. Of course, there were not very successful examples (+ 20-30 readers), but on average, with such advertising, the project gets 100-200 subscribers.
. .: We are working on the sale of these services with the company SMOPro Ilya Rabchenka, we plan to launch the full-fledged service in March. Now we tested a new advertising product. This time, blog owners will be able to advertise not only their entire blog, but each entry individually.
OB: Moreover, the advertising in our letters is double benefit. On the one hand, we deliver the regular subscriber to the service advertised by us, on the other hand, we are increasing the number of letters sent by our system, because most likely the user will read the new subscription via RSS2Email.
The main focus of the work is to increase the volume of the base.
- Probably, work with donor sites is actively going on?
. .: Naturally, we try to work most actively with sites. Our forms are already on hundreds of blogs - for us this is the main way to interact with subscribers. Now we are preparing unique opportunities for blog owners - you will see soon :)
Our old rivals like Subscribe declare a huge subscriber base, but they have very irregular contact with them, and many users are inactive. We have the same contact with each occurs in 2-3 days, so that this is the blogosphere, where there is a lot of activity. Only 55 000 users, and the daily audience - 30 000, more than half of all!
The main thing - the growth of service, and the money will certainly come
. .: We are not looking for investments especially actively. However, we are open to communication with potential strategic partners. Yes, we have certain plans for which we want to attract investor money, but on the other hand: the later we sell, the more we will be worth it, given our growth.
- And how much do you estimate the value of your company?
. .: You can calculate the cost of a company in two ways: at the cost of a visitor (registered user) and based on the amount of income.
For various projects in RuNet, the price is now from 1 to 10 dollars for a registered user, if we take an average estimate of 5 dollars, then our RSS2Email will cost approximately 250,000 dollars. If you take income ... it turns out about the same. If you take income for 2 years (as they usually think), then we have a potential income for a month - about 10-12 thousand dollars. This is if we estimate the 100% fullness of the planned advertising spaces in our letters, taking into account the average market price for advertising space.
- Has the vision of where people should come from has changed after a bad kanban experience?
. .: It is impossible to call the experience of Kanban.ru unsuccessful. He is quite successful in his niche. Sure - and will remain so.
As for the sources of visitors, now they are not only bloggers (who want to advertise for the target audience), but also ordinary Internet users, whom the service provides the easiest way to read and keep track of updates on blogs.
- And what is the main expense item in RSS2email now?
. .: Technical support and the work of programmers.
- How to evaluate the prospects of Western competitors (service from Feedburner, the same Newsgator) in RuNet and your prospects in this regard?
. .: Western competitors certainly have their own development strategies and their competitive advantages. Our common task is to build relationships so that everyone is comfortable in the market and we have turned from competitors to partners. I am convinced that such options exist and we will be able to find them.
About work points
- Are there any conflicts when making decisions when they have to be coordinated with each other?
. .: We work quite peacefully, because we understand each other from a half-word: childhood friends grew up in the same yard. And if some misunderstandings still cannot be solved, then the choice of a decision in favor of the one who is stronger in defending his idea and is ready to spend more energy on its implementation.
(having talked a little, one should not doubt the justice of these words. It is enough just to see how Artyom and Oleg manage to complement each other in conversation, despite the fact that everyone takes him a little to his plane. At one point, the pause between questions was 20 minutes, because the interlocutors continued to speak, but did not want to interrupt the flow of considerations.)
- What are the main aspects of working with a team?
OB: - We have not been working in the office for a long time, because after the termination of client projects there is no particular need for it. All performers are in freelance, and the most important parts are still made by us. There are advantages in working without an office: saving time on the road, the opportunity to work 12 hours a day. And with the motivation to work at home there are no problems. And, in the end, the office does not leave additional costs.
. .: By the way, the publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber works completely without an office. And this is a whole publishing house that produces printed materials! Collaborate with the Stockholm School of Economics.
- You are doing business in the blogosphere. Do you own blogs?
OB: I used to have my LJ, but it took so much time that I had to kill him. I have quite a hard time management in this regard.
AK: And I recently started a blog Funky Marketing in connection with my side activities on teaching marketing disciplines at MIEMP.
We can sum up the following: having made a complex product, the company shifted to a mass audience, and this step was decisive in the increasing popularity of its main service. "Keep it simple - and people will reach out to you." Those people who do not understand the technical details, but every day more and more are faced with new technologies.
Audio recording
See also: How to release financially successful startups. The look of the creators of Moykrug and MirTesen. Part 1
Prepared by Pavel Nosikov
Recently, there are enough startups in RuNet that differ in the use of any technology. But this difference often does not become a competitive advantage.
The creators of such startups (as well as those who make such a difference in their head) will be useful to familiarize themselves with the experience of the company, all of whose projects are based on RSS technology.
Difficult way of complex product
- From the interviews you have already given, it is known that you previously owned a web studio, then you saw the potential in the RSS technology and decided to create your own products based on it, and everything started with Kanban.
AK: Yes, that's right. The project is already 3 years old, initially it included all the same functions that are now distributed across different projects. It was very difficult for the audience. Then we began to isolate the functions, so RSS2email appeared - perhaps the most popular reader in RuNet. I don’t know what Yandex.Lends have, they don’t publish data, but we feel like that.
OB: The fact that everything is collected in one place turned out to be very difficult for the user. Therefore, we gradually divided the project into parts, and there are ideas that can be done yet. Initially, we wanted to do something similar to pusk.ru or Netvibes . Experience shows: what is difficult to configure - does not work.
. .: Pusk will ever get its audience, but it will not be massive ... If we consider the example of products from the mass market, we first unite simple products: for example, the camera combines both a camera and a player. But then it will probably again become very difficult, and then it will break back into simple products ... Such waviness.
OB: so about 2 years ago we began to narrow the functions of the service, highlighting them into separate projects. So, by the summer of that year, seku appeared. And Kanban became what we originally intended, until we started adding a lot of features to the project - a directory of blogs and news feeds.
And some things, like a subscription to comments on posts in RSS feeds, were generally deleted. For six months, we have accumulated 8 subscriptions to comments.
- (I write this fact separately in a notebook)
OB: Will this be the title of our interview? :)
AK: The initial idea failed, but it is even good, because it turned us to face a mass audience.
OB: Although for Kanban we received the award " Internit " in 2005, under the heading "Internet Pro". Our development seemed so complicated that no one understood it, and they decided to give us an award :)
AK: It was nice when we made a special rubric in the Yandex catalog, and we were there first.
OB: Rather, probably, because of Yandex. Tapes.
AK: Maybe so, but over time it did not appear there.
- What was the total cost for Kanban as a result?
How hard was it to maintain the development of such a project, or was there still a profit from somewhere?
. .: It was a 100% startup. To say that this project was expensive is not entirely correct. We had development experience, and we were able to quickly implement this project.
- What is the most attractive channel for attracting consumers?
AK: The main goal was to attract a new segment of the Internet community - bloggers. Kanban.ru is primarily the first catalog of RSS, blogs and news feeds and the first Russian online RSS aggregator. We didn’t wait for the profits from this project.
- So you did it in parallel with the main activity, without closing the web studio?
. .: Yes, at that moment profit brought us custom commercial projects. After we selected RSS2email.ru and seku.ru from a large portal into independent projects, we concentrated exclusively on them and continue to engage in their monetization and development.
- And how did it happen that Kanban is placed in the list of applications for subscribing to tapes in Firefox?
AK: We ourselves left Mozilla when creating the second version of Firefox, and we naturally did not refuse. As for the Feedburner counter, here we took the initiative ourselves, and as a result of 3 Russian projects, counted from the counter, 2 - ours (Kanban and RSS2email), the third - Yandex. Lenta.
OB: True, we get quite a bit of traffic from a link in Firefox.
About simplicity and complexity
OB: RSS continues to be a complex technology, the term RSS itself knows 2-3% of users, and this figure will not increase over time. This is a technical term, unnecessary mass user detail. Focusing purely on RSS limited us.
- Is it right that with the direct use of technology RSS service will cease to be relevant, because it is an intermediary, not always necessary?
OB: Here we must understand what kind of user we are talking about. People who have more than 100 tapes in a subscription - less than a percent, while the remaining 99% have only a few of them.
. .: Another example - Newsgator , the world leader in the field of RSS aggregation, calls the main product the module that allows you to read RSS feeds in Outlook.
That is, RSS2email is not an intermediary, but an RSS-reader, where the interface is your favorite email program.
OB: And besides, I have just over 100 subscriptions, but it’s convenient for me to use this service :)
AK: Of course, there will be people who will want to use other services, online readers, reader programs ... But most users will choose simplicity, and will read the same place as their email.
OB: It is better to focus on a mass audience, and not on the geeks who are demanding and capricious. And as soon as a new, more technological product appears, they will leave for it.
The same Netvibes is geek-oriented, and probably gathered all such an audience, but this is not the way for a project in RuNet.
. .: Will not be of commercial interest.
And further. The word RSS itself is complex. Recently, I had an example: I called one businessman a start-up, so he was simply offended: “Who-who am I, as you called me ?!” :)
OB: We are sitting inside this process and do not see what is happening outside, and there people do not even know the word “blog”. Although at the same time can lead your LJ and have a hundred friends.
AK: If we take an example from the book “Blog Marketing. A new revolutionary way to increase sales ”, even the translator could not correctly convey the term RSS: it appeared in the text as Fast Simple Merging.
- And why do you think that with the penetration of the Internet and the general technological education will not change?
OB: That's why people say web pages, not HTML pages. RSS is an extra word, and you can do without it.
"We are working on the fact that the fastest growing"
. .: The main gain of users of the RSS2email service is not due to the fact that users recognize the technology, but from the forms established on the sites using our service. They do not even know what is behind our service.
- So, this is a customer-oriented subscription service?
OB: Yes, very similar to what Subscribe does, but more focused on the blogosphere.
Moreover, if the classical mailing companies are in recession now, because the blogosphere is developing, then we have a good growth, last year it was 600%.
Example: a simpler service, RSS2email, has scored as many audiences as Kanban has, for half a month of its work. Through the primary announcement.
And now we are positioning ourselves as media with 30,000 readers daily and 20,000 news feeds. More than a million emails are already being sent a month, about the same as clicking on links to updated sources.
OB: Among those advertised under the heading " What to subscribe for ?" Were those who increased the number of subscribers per thousand in 2-3 days. Of course, there were not very successful examples (+ 20-30 readers), but on average, with such advertising, the project gets 100-200 subscribers.
. .: We are working on the sale of these services with the company SMOPro Ilya Rabchenka, we plan to launch the full-fledged service in March. Now we tested a new advertising product. This time, blog owners will be able to advertise not only their entire blog, but each entry individually.
OB: Moreover, the advertising in our letters is double benefit. On the one hand, we deliver the regular subscriber to the service advertised by us, on the other hand, we are increasing the number of letters sent by our system, because most likely the user will read the new subscription via RSS2Email.
The main focus of the work is to increase the volume of the base.
- Probably, work with donor sites is actively going on?
. .: Naturally, we try to work most actively with sites. Our forms are already on hundreds of blogs - for us this is the main way to interact with subscribers. Now we are preparing unique opportunities for blog owners - you will see soon :)
Our old rivals like Subscribe declare a huge subscriber base, but they have very irregular contact with them, and many users are inactive. We have the same contact with each occurs in 2-3 days, so that this is the blogosphere, where there is a lot of activity. Only 55 000 users, and the daily audience - 30 000, more than half of all!
The main thing - the growth of service, and the money will certainly come
. .: We are not looking for investments especially actively. However, we are open to communication with potential strategic partners. Yes, we have certain plans for which we want to attract investor money, but on the other hand: the later we sell, the more we will be worth it, given our growth.
- And how much do you estimate the value of your company?
. .: You can calculate the cost of a company in two ways: at the cost of a visitor (registered user) and based on the amount of income.
For various projects in RuNet, the price is now from 1 to 10 dollars for a registered user, if we take an average estimate of 5 dollars, then our RSS2Email will cost approximately 250,000 dollars. If you take income ... it turns out about the same. If you take income for 2 years (as they usually think), then we have a potential income for a month - about 10-12 thousand dollars. This is if we estimate the 100% fullness of the planned advertising spaces in our letters, taking into account the average market price for advertising space.
- Has the vision of where people should come from has changed after a bad kanban experience?
. .: It is impossible to call the experience of Kanban.ru unsuccessful. He is quite successful in his niche. Sure - and will remain so.
As for the sources of visitors, now they are not only bloggers (who want to advertise for the target audience), but also ordinary Internet users, whom the service provides the easiest way to read and keep track of updates on blogs.
- And what is the main expense item in RSS2email now?
. .: Technical support and the work of programmers.
- How to evaluate the prospects of Western competitors (service from Feedburner, the same Newsgator) in RuNet and your prospects in this regard?
. .: Western competitors certainly have their own development strategies and their competitive advantages. Our common task is to build relationships so that everyone is comfortable in the market and we have turned from competitors to partners. I am convinced that such options exist and we will be able to find them.
About work points
- Are there any conflicts when making decisions when they have to be coordinated with each other?
. .: We work quite peacefully, because we understand each other from a half-word: childhood friends grew up in the same yard. And if some misunderstandings still cannot be solved, then the choice of a decision in favor of the one who is stronger in defending his idea and is ready to spend more energy on its implementation.
(having talked a little, one should not doubt the justice of these words. It is enough just to see how Artyom and Oleg manage to complement each other in conversation, despite the fact that everyone takes him a little to his plane. At one point, the pause between questions was 20 minutes, because the interlocutors continued to speak, but did not want to interrupt the flow of considerations.)
- What are the main aspects of working with a team?
OB: - We have not been working in the office for a long time, because after the termination of client projects there is no particular need for it. All performers are in freelance, and the most important parts are still made by us. There are advantages in working without an office: saving time on the road, the opportunity to work 12 hours a day. And with the motivation to work at home there are no problems. And, in the end, the office does not leave additional costs.
. .: By the way, the publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber works completely without an office. And this is a whole publishing house that produces printed materials! Collaborate with the Stockholm School of Economics.
- You are doing business in the blogosphere. Do you own blogs?
OB: I used to have my LJ, but it took so much time that I had to kill him. I have quite a hard time management in this regard.
AK: And I recently started a blog Funky Marketing in connection with my side activities on teaching marketing disciplines at MIEMP.
We can sum up the following: having made a complex product, the company shifted to a mass audience, and this step was decisive in the increasing popularity of its main service. "Keep it simple - and people will reach out to you." Those people who do not understand the technical details, but every day more and more are faced with new technologies.
Audio recording
See also: How to release financially successful startups. The look of the creators of Moykrug and MirTesen. Part 1
Prepared by Pavel Nosikov
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/20739/
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