“To wash or not to wash?” Or how we launch our mobile application
“There is nothing difficult in life. That we are complex.
Life is a simple thing, and in it what is simpler is the more correct. ”
Oscar Wilde
Most of the people around the world are committed to complicating things. Look at how our life goes - a multitude of things, most of which we don’t carry, piles of books that dust on the shelf and that we didn’t even read or didn’t use, extra food, expenses, relationships, thoughts, speech, weight ... We ourselves complicate and litter your life. And then we are surprised that we have such complicated problems with health, relationships, money ... And when they arise, we begin to look for new things, people, knowledge, etc., in order to solve some of our problems. And what happens when this happens:
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1) we lose time for the next search;
2) postpone the case;
3) litter and complicate life.
It turns out a vicious circle. Where is the exit? And the way out is simple. You just need to simplify the task, give extra things to the needy, limit yourself to expensive food and food in general, begin to understand people, thoughts, books ... there should be a constant process of simplification and start to act. And that's all. In the process of simple actions you will get the experience and knowledge you really need. Not trash, but real knowledge.
I confess, I have long wanted to write about simplicity. It seems to me that in the modern and complex world this is one of the most undervalued resources. Simplicity is a measure of the persuasiveness of any physical theory. Long before Galileo, who found out that the Earth revolves around the Sun, there was a very tangled theory describing the trajectory of the Sun in the sky. Galileo with his approach - simplified.
I believe that a lot of simple laws, according to which a business lives, are not yet open. As soon as this happens, the business itself and the world will become simpler and brighter.
We created many different projects on the Internet. And the simpler was the solution offered to users, the more resonance it caused.
Somehow, returning from a trip where we went to the next competition of start-up projects, I and my partner stopped stretching my bones with a couple of exercises, and at the same time wiping my Mitsubishi's “lobovuhu”. Denis, that is the name of my partner, suddenly asked me: “It's been sunny all week, and you are not washing your car, why?”
At that moment I answered on the machine: “What if it rains tomorrow!”, And I myself remember if I saw something from the weather forecast for the last couple of days. But in fact, at that moment I least wanted to think, much less analyze. Affected by a two-day trip. And I answered: “That would be such an application that answered me only one question: To wash my car or not to wash it? And so the answer was based on the weather forecast for the following days. ”
And we are so hooked by the simplicity of such an application that we immediately decided to gash it. Saw for themselves, because then we did not even think that we would let someone use it.
Further, events developed so rapidly that I did not have time to realize what had happened and it seemed to me that all this was happening not with me.
After consulting with a partner, we asked the first dozen people who came across to us: “What do they think about our idea?”. And then we realized that it was impossible to write down the application only for ourselves, because our idea was of interest to almost everyone, and even to those who did not have their cars.
During the night, I "gash" Landing. Made a presentation. Scattered her friends, hoping to get feedback. In general, we approached the project according to all the laws of Customer Development. Having received a huge number of people willing to use our application from the landing page, we decided to “cut”.
Having shared the idea with a familiar mobile application developer and offered him a stake in the project for his work, but at that time we didn’t even think about monetization and what our startup would grow into, we sat down to think about our algorithm for issuing tips based on the weather forecast for the following days, actually: "To wash or not to wash?". In parallel, we submitted an application for the TURN8 competition, which was conducted by the i360accelerator Dubai Accelerator and announced an assessment of the investment attractiveness of RussianStartupRating. We thought that it would not be bad to get some money for development, because we all need resources, by the way, this is also PR.
And so, the algorithm for the distribution of tips ...
At first we thought everything was simple. We get the weather from OpenWeatherMap for 5 days ahead, give each day the status of favorable or unfavorable conditions for bathing, start checking the status from day one to increasing and on which circle we rest on favorable conditions, accordingly we advise you to wash or postpone for the number of days equal to the number of checks plus unit. This algorithm, in principle, works to this day.
In summer, everything is simple, only rain affects adverse conditions. In winter, it is either when it is very cold, below -20 degrees and it doesn’t matter whether there is precipitation or not, or when it is snowing, but outside it is a temperature at which this snow melts, which is above -2 degrees. It turns out that adverse conditions in winter are influenced not only by precipitation, but also by temperature.
And here we stumbled upon another difficulty - it is the temperature drop. For example, if today it was snowing and the temperature was, say, -10 degrees, which is a favorable condition, and the next day there is no precipitation, but it is 5 degrees outside, which, separately, is also a favorable condition. But together such days, as practice shows, give the result slush and dirt on the road, which is not very favorable. Plus, reagents are sprinkled on roads in metropolitan areas, which affects the critical temperature of snow melting on the road and lowers it at least 5-7 degrees, which is about -7-10 degrees.
We partially managed to solve these problems, but it would be great if experienced people would share their thoughts on what the advice delivery algorithm should look like: wash or not wash, so that it is universal and works anywhere in the world?
It did not take long to think about the business model either, since the car washes themselves said what they are willing to pay for. The result is a business model like the Foursquare application, car wash pays for star highlighting, and motorists get free coffee for reviewing carwash. Plus a lot of additional web services of the Wannawash project for which the business is ready to pay.
The iOS application, which we called “Wash a car?”, Came out in the AppStore in a month. In the application database there are more than 10 thousand car washes in Russia, as well as car washes from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Italy and the Czech Republic. In perspective, Latin America and the United States. At the same time, we won the TURN8 competition, which made it possible to go through a 4-month acceleration in the Dubai accelerator, as well as a $ 30K seed investment. The expert commission from RussianStartupRating assigned us a rating of A (high investment attractiveness). To date, the application has about 3000 downloads per day. $ 135K of seed-investments was received from the founders of the Gravitsapa fund with the first in Russia hardware accelerator Navigator campus. Received a lot of proposals for cooperation with businesses in the field of car wash complex. A contract was signed with the “Association of Moscow car wash business and the region” for connecting 500 car washes in Moscow to the WannaWash paid service for the next 2 months with an average check of 2,000 rubles. A large network of car washes in Tyumen showed interest. Reached an agreement to attract investment round A, from $ 500K. Our team was able to gather people like Vasil Zakiev, Ramil Ibragimov, Denis Marganov and others. And all this happened in 2 months.
Legendary business leader Jack Welch described his recipe for business success in three words: simplicity, speed and self-confidence.
Simplicity is one of the keys to business success.
It is practically an art form with many definitions. “For an engineer, simplicity means a clear functional design with fewer components. For a production worker, simplicity means evaluating a process not by the level of its sophistication, but by the level of its intelligibility for those who will have to power it. In marketing, simplicity means clear language and suggestions to customers and industrial consumers. And most importantly, on the personal level of human communication, simplicity takes the form of frank and direct conversation. And honesty.
Author: Amin Shayakhmetov, resident Navigator campus and business incubator Chelny IT park.
Life is a simple thing, and in it what is simpler is the more correct. ”
Oscar Wilde
Most of the people around the world are committed to complicating things. Look at how our life goes - a multitude of things, most of which we don’t carry, piles of books that dust on the shelf and that we didn’t even read or didn’t use, extra food, expenses, relationships, thoughts, speech, weight ... We ourselves complicate and litter your life. And then we are surprised that we have such complicated problems with health, relationships, money ... And when they arise, we begin to look for new things, people, knowledge, etc., in order to solve some of our problems. And what happens when this happens:
')
1) we lose time for the next search;
2) postpone the case;
3) litter and complicate life.
It turns out a vicious circle. Where is the exit? And the way out is simple. You just need to simplify the task, give extra things to the needy, limit yourself to expensive food and food in general, begin to understand people, thoughts, books ... there should be a constant process of simplification and start to act. And that's all. In the process of simple actions you will get the experience and knowledge you really need. Not trash, but real knowledge.
I confess, I have long wanted to write about simplicity. It seems to me that in the modern and complex world this is one of the most undervalued resources. Simplicity is a measure of the persuasiveness of any physical theory. Long before Galileo, who found out that the Earth revolves around the Sun, there was a very tangled theory describing the trajectory of the Sun in the sky. Galileo with his approach - simplified.
I believe that a lot of simple laws, according to which a business lives, are not yet open. As soon as this happens, the business itself and the world will become simpler and brighter.
We created many different projects on the Internet. And the simpler was the solution offered to users, the more resonance it caused.
Somehow, returning from a trip where we went to the next competition of start-up projects, I and my partner stopped stretching my bones with a couple of exercises, and at the same time wiping my Mitsubishi's “lobovuhu”. Denis, that is the name of my partner, suddenly asked me: “It's been sunny all week, and you are not washing your car, why?”
At that moment I answered on the machine: “What if it rains tomorrow!”, And I myself remember if I saw something from the weather forecast for the last couple of days. But in fact, at that moment I least wanted to think, much less analyze. Affected by a two-day trip. And I answered: “That would be such an application that answered me only one question: To wash my car or not to wash it? And so the answer was based on the weather forecast for the following days. ”
And we are so hooked by the simplicity of such an application that we immediately decided to gash it. Saw for themselves, because then we did not even think that we would let someone use it.
Further, events developed so rapidly that I did not have time to realize what had happened and it seemed to me that all this was happening not with me.
After consulting with a partner, we asked the first dozen people who came across to us: “What do they think about our idea?”. And then we realized that it was impossible to write down the application only for ourselves, because our idea was of interest to almost everyone, and even to those who did not have their cars.
During the night, I "gash" Landing. Made a presentation. Scattered her friends, hoping to get feedback. In general, we approached the project according to all the laws of Customer Development. Having received a huge number of people willing to use our application from the landing page, we decided to “cut”.
Having shared the idea with a familiar mobile application developer and offered him a stake in the project for his work, but at that time we didn’t even think about monetization and what our startup would grow into, we sat down to think about our algorithm for issuing tips based on the weather forecast for the following days, actually: "To wash or not to wash?". In parallel, we submitted an application for the TURN8 competition, which was conducted by the i360accelerator Dubai Accelerator and announced an assessment of the investment attractiveness of RussianStartupRating. We thought that it would not be bad to get some money for development, because we all need resources, by the way, this is also PR.
And so, the algorithm for the distribution of tips ...
At first we thought everything was simple. We get the weather from OpenWeatherMap for 5 days ahead, give each day the status of favorable or unfavorable conditions for bathing, start checking the status from day one to increasing and on which circle we rest on favorable conditions, accordingly we advise you to wash or postpone for the number of days equal to the number of checks plus unit. This algorithm, in principle, works to this day.
In summer, everything is simple, only rain affects adverse conditions. In winter, it is either when it is very cold, below -20 degrees and it doesn’t matter whether there is precipitation or not, or when it is snowing, but outside it is a temperature at which this snow melts, which is above -2 degrees. It turns out that adverse conditions in winter are influenced not only by precipitation, but also by temperature.
And here we stumbled upon another difficulty - it is the temperature drop. For example, if today it was snowing and the temperature was, say, -10 degrees, which is a favorable condition, and the next day there is no precipitation, but it is 5 degrees outside, which, separately, is also a favorable condition. But together such days, as practice shows, give the result slush and dirt on the road, which is not very favorable. Plus, reagents are sprinkled on roads in metropolitan areas, which affects the critical temperature of snow melting on the road and lowers it at least 5-7 degrees, which is about -7-10 degrees.
We partially managed to solve these problems, but it would be great if experienced people would share their thoughts on what the advice delivery algorithm should look like: wash or not wash, so that it is universal and works anywhere in the world?
It did not take long to think about the business model either, since the car washes themselves said what they are willing to pay for. The result is a business model like the Foursquare application, car wash pays for star highlighting, and motorists get free coffee for reviewing carwash. Plus a lot of additional web services of the Wannawash project for which the business is ready to pay.
The iOS application, which we called “Wash a car?”, Came out in the AppStore in a month. In the application database there are more than 10 thousand car washes in Russia, as well as car washes from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Italy and the Czech Republic. In perspective, Latin America and the United States. At the same time, we won the TURN8 competition, which made it possible to go through a 4-month acceleration in the Dubai accelerator, as well as a $ 30K seed investment. The expert commission from RussianStartupRating assigned us a rating of A (high investment attractiveness). To date, the application has about 3000 downloads per day. $ 135K of seed-investments was received from the founders of the Gravitsapa fund with the first in Russia hardware accelerator Navigator campus. Received a lot of proposals for cooperation with businesses in the field of car wash complex. A contract was signed with the “Association of Moscow car wash business and the region” for connecting 500 car washes in Moscow to the WannaWash paid service for the next 2 months with an average check of 2,000 rubles. A large network of car washes in Tyumen showed interest. Reached an agreement to attract investment round A, from $ 500K. Our team was able to gather people like Vasil Zakiev, Ramil Ibragimov, Denis Marganov and others. And all this happened in 2 months.
Legendary business leader Jack Welch described his recipe for business success in three words: simplicity, speed and self-confidence.
Simplicity is one of the keys to business success.
It is practically an art form with many definitions. “For an engineer, simplicity means a clear functional design with fewer components. For a production worker, simplicity means evaluating a process not by the level of its sophistication, but by the level of its intelligibility for those who will have to power it. In marketing, simplicity means clear language and suggestions to customers and industrial consumers. And most importantly, on the personal level of human communication, simplicity takes the form of frank and direct conversation. And honesty.
Author: Amin Shayakhmetov, resident Navigator campus and business incubator Chelny IT park.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/214389/
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