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As we were in Canadian accelerators filed and interviews were held

Brief prehistory

Some of you remember the launch of the first online store with random prices in September - post on Habré .

First-hand information will be useful to all those interested in applying for acceleration in foreign incubators and those who are waiting for an interview in the near future.

5 months have passed since the opening

Results and prerequisites for incubation that we had:

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Why acceleration and why canada

Already our first client brought income, we have a working business model, the ability to redirect a certain amount of funds from a previous business to a new project. Surely, we could do without incubation. But, the e-commerce market is very fast, and the idea of ​​random prices and monetization of the trading platform through advertising, although new, is quite subject to cloning. In the US, trading platforms collect a very large commission for their services, and in our country this market is already badly collapsed, although very young. Transferring business to Canada would open up the North American market for us. Moreover, me and my newly-made partner, Kolya, have long thought about moving to Canada. In the spring of last year, the Startup Visa Program was launched there, and in the fall, changes were made to transfer their business to Canada by joining one of 6 incubators. We looked at all the available options and stopped at two:



Filing process

We thought about filing in early December. We had 2 deadlines - January 7 at Hyperdrive and January 14 at GrowLab. We want more in Vancouver, in GrowLab. We understood that the project was still raw, that we would be able to move to the autumn set with vivid results, and prepare better for the move. But, it was interesting to test my strength and hear feedback from both accelerators, even in the event of failure. Very many accelerators accept applications for filing through the «for success» portal - f6s.com . By the way, maybe someone will be useful, angelic associations and venture capital funds are more often used to review applications recently updated gust.com . First of all, I would recommend contacting one of the mentors or managers of the incubators you are interested in and chatting with them personally - this is how 80% of all teams go there. There are a lot of fields in the application through f6s. A small exclusive for habrazhiteli - laid out our answers in the form of screenshots here .

The questions from GrowLab seemed much more professional and important, in both forms there are fields for the link to the video and the information about your team that was filled in earlier is automatically uploaded. Confused by the lack of a field for presentation - one of the most important things for investors.

In a matter of urgency, I translated the entire site into English and added a couple of Canadian products from those that sell to GrowLab graduates. Yes, petty cheek, but I hope that it will be easier for them to grasp the meaning. Then Kohl, with whom we met on a dou and worked closely together, raised Landing. Olivier, whom I found on linkedin among hundreds of other Canadian designers and could still be interested, wondered my old presentation. Our smarty Sonya voiced a screencast and we all, except Olivier, gathered in Chernihiv to record a video about the team. The screencast was recorded and cut by myself on my hakintosh from the HP 4340s, the team's video was written on the Nikon D600, and the processing and effects were ordered in freelance. At the same time, we transferred our sites to Digital Ocean, attached SSL certificates for Ulogin to work correctly, set up Google Analytics and inserted contextual advertising. Our future innovations were emulated on the English-language website, although they did not work in reality. In both the incubator, we leaned on the last day and waited for the results.

A couple more moments

I communicated with one of the managers of GrowLab, Boris Wertz even in the summer, rereading my letters today, I clearly understand why I couldn’t interest him. Also, before submitting through f6s, I boldly wrote to one of the Ukrainian startups who had already got to them, asked a few questions, received some tips and Stas even asked their co-founder to look at our project. Viewers from Canada at the time we have not registered, probably, it was not up to us. Already after the submission, I wrote to Boris once again myself, spoke about our progress, but received the same answer as in the summer:
Thank you for contacting Vlad. Try to focus on solving some kind of problem that everyone understands, not sure if it is related to Luckyprice.net (what problem do you solve and for whom?)

I wrote him a detailed answer, but I never received a response from him. I will try to "pinganut" two more.

Selection for an interview

January 24th we received a message from Hyperdrive:
Congratulations! You were selected for an interview with our jury in the second round of our selection process! The interview will be scheduled for January 28-29 and will last 10 minutes. 1 minute - pitch, 9 minutes question and answer session. In the case of an interview via Skype, 15 minutes before you will be contacted by a manager who will tell you the further procedure.

It was cool! We became one of 35 teams of more than 100 participants who went to the second round. In total, Hyperdrive takes 10-15 teams, so the chances seem pretty high. I was very happy and at the same time concerned about the silence of GrowLab.

Preparing for the interview

I looked through hundreds of pages about interview preparation, possible questions, and the rules for the correct 1-minute pitch. It was very difficult to explain the essence of the project in a nutshell, we still do not have a bitcoin-ATM or facebook for cats. I worked for about 8 hours in a row, wrote, read, memorized and looked at the stopwatch of my old Samsung Focus. Even made minor edits at the very last moment.

It turned out something like this:
Hello, everyone! I am at the gamified marketplace.

Every store needs a competitive advantage! They say, can be the trick! But it's easier said then done! Kill profits!

And after finishing the course. So, it’s a discount. Because of the need for ad-driven monetization! And random prices is viral!

It has become very popular. In December, I was glad to become my co-founders. In 1 month we’ve built a new website and a strong team that has been pivoted to become a marketplace.

We look forward to your business.


For questions and answers I was ready, all the information about the project bounced off the teeth. I tried to relax, took my son from English, had dinner, and returned to the office at about 22:00. The interview was scheduled for 10:40 pm, and the manager should have contacted me in 15 minutes. I managed to say a pitch on Skype in front of Kolya and Sonya, accepted the wishes of good luck, opened the Google Docs cheat sheet against the background and waited.

Interview

At 22:15 the bell rang, it was their manager, a little tired and sometimes yawning girl whose name I don’t know, or didn’t remember, it was written in Skype that this was their greenroom.

  1. We greeted her, she asked if I was worried. I replied that yes, and I was a little nervous, but for the interview I will try to relax.
  2. She asked to introduce and tell about herself and the project. I decided to try my pitch. I just started and then my spouse wrote to me and the green duck Adium produced a window in the middle of the screen “So, did it start?”. Of course, I lost my way and closed the window, continued the speech, issued a couple of sentences, just in case I looked at the Google Docs window and read to myself “You are logged out”. The label covered the text that I already knew, but it made me stumble again. I tried to smile calmly, said that I told you that I was nervous and gave out the rest of the pitch, adding a little more.
  3. She asked how long I have been doing the project. I replied that since the beginning of summer I myself have developed the core and outsourced some pieces, since the fall I hired two developers, and since December I have been working with Nikolay and Olivier.
  4. She asked how we met with the co-founders? I told and at the end summed up “on the internet”, smiled brightly and made her wake up a little. Got a smile and “that's great” in response.
  5. She asked how I found out about Hyperdrive. I said that I have been following the startup ecosystem of Canada for a long time, and now they also have a startup visa. With Hyperdrive with GrowLab were selected among the 6 participating incubators of the program, as the most promising.
  6. She asked about the country where we are. I replied that we work in Ukraine, now it’s a bit difficult to do business here, but we still have decent results. Said that we are planning to form a company in Canada anyway. Fortunately, there is a Canadian co-founder. In any case, we will transfer our business to them, but we understand that it will be easier to do this through their help, we hope so.
  7. She wrote a message in the chat and said that this is the phone number and password that you need to enter by calling it, then hang up, they will call me back and start the interview.


The phone number was +1, I realized that I should call the USA and prudently asked if I needed to dial it from Skype or my mobile, since I did not need to replenish the Skype account. She said that the number is free-to-call and call is from a mobile.

I heard goodluck and the call was completed.

I updated the page with Google Docs and opened the pitch text and completed Adium. I dialed the number, listened to the robot's greeting, hammered in the password, and after the beep I called my name, as it was said by the robot. Heard a male voice at the other end.

  1. We greeted me and instructed me again about the structure of the interview that the pitch could be slightly longer than 60 seconds. I asked if I could start and heard them "yes."
  2. I blurted out the pitch perfectly, it was already possible to read freely, but it was not necessary.
  3. I was immediately asked, so you started in September? What traction? I called the numbers mentioned here above, spoke about the lack of marketing and a small amount of goods, said that the idea came out pretty viral and people tell each other about such a project.
  4. I was asked if we have 150 clients, I replied that yes, that some of them are returning and made more than one purchase, and that it is necessary to take into account the assortment of only 100 not the most popular products and the absence of any paid marketing.
  5. Someone else asked if we have a marketplace or PaaS, politely chewing to me that this is Platform as a Service. I replied that this is a marketplace, that our content managers add all the goods and necessary information on their own. But, we will now launch the partner's control panel, where you can do everything yourself and this can be called PaaS, especially if we are talking about offline stores.
  6. I was asked about the countries and markets that we focus on. I gave the answer the same as the girl. I did not have time to finish it and the conversation ended.


On the call timer, the phone showed 7:00 minutes. I tried to call back, I ran out of money in the account. I did not hang up! Your mother, they started talking to me, they started asking me questions, what should I do? What is the 90s with a conference call via mobile!?

  1. I was confused, another Hyperdrive girl, Chelsea, asked on Skype, would I call you back? I answered “1sec” and replenished the account via internet banking. While I was doing this, the first girl dialed me and asked what had happened. I told everything as it was, that as I said, I am from Ukraine and that number could hardly be free for me. Along with communicating with her, I dialed the number again, entered the password, called the name, but nobody picked up the phone. Our time is over.
  2. The girl asked me if it would be convenient for me to continue on Skype or email. I said that of course, yes. Both wrote that I would be contacted by one or the other, and we would get the rest of the questions by email and we said goodbye.


I thawed for 5-10 minutes, called Kolya and shared the news. In general, I told everything very beautifully, my English was at its best that day, I gave a good pitch and answered the questions beautifully. Those that had time.

findings



Good luck to all!

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/210762/

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