Bootstrapping or how we ran an IT project without funding and programmers

In this article, I will not discover America for hardened startups, but only share my experience with start-up entrepreneurs like me. Not for the first year in Russia, the trend of “start-ups” has been felt - this has become fashionable. At some point, I hated that word - any hipster with his idea, sitting at a laptop in a coffee house, became known as a startup. I believe that this word has discredited itself. But it is necessary, because it describes the situation in business quite clearly: as a result, only a few% of projects live to the stage of generating cash flows. Now start-ups are becoming smarter - they learn from the west not only the shell of the idea of ​​start-ups, but also the skills to develop a product that is needed by the target audience (CA) and to build business processes. I want to share with you a small story of my project, which is only a few months old, but which would have been impossible without the background of endless files. We had an idea: to make a system of children's motivation on the platform of the site, where children and their parents could interact. The scheme of work is quite simple: parents set tasks for children and assign rewards, children complete tasks, accumulate points, and then can get the real thing for them. I will tell my story in the form of 7 theses.

1. You only need 1 thousand rubles to create and launch a project.

“Where are my grandmothers, man ?!” is a cool, exaggerated phrase that many investors hear when another start-up kicks the door out of their office, but which rather accurately reflects the current style. If I started doing this 3 years ago, then the first thing I would do is create a business plan for the upcoming campaign: we need programmers (preferably one front-end and two back-end developers, we have what functionality we should have!) , you need a designer, you need a secretary, preferably a pretty one, you need an office for the secretary, you need a phone, you need to run a tax office and arrange an LLC. Total needed a tidy sum to run. And the higher this figure, the bigger and more promising the project would seem. Now I understand that in order to make a prototype on which to test an idea, you do not need a lot of money.

2. Do not be afraid to take on something new or how we did the beta version

So, we realized that our pocket is empty. We needed programmers. It’s not an option to seek an investor, because no sober investor will buy a stake in what is called an idea. We have been dragging everything for a very long time, and within a month the project has not moved from the idea stage. As a result, we decided to take a desperate step: buy a PHP book and turn from economists into programmers. For a month and a half, we made a website with a fairly simple functionality, but which allows us to test the idea. For about 2 months, we corrected all the bugs and errors that we made due to inexperience. We now have a working beta version with first users. And as we have already said, we spent only 1000 rubles (for the host and the domain) for everything about everything. (Result below)
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3. Scream at the top of your head.

Tell everyone about your project. This will allow you to get excellent feedback from people who may be your target audience or who have access to it. In addition, it will allow you to structure thoughts: when you are telling someone, you must hear and understand what you are saying; when you are asked questions about your project, it allows you to make sure once again, or, conversely, to doubt something. But do not forget that everything in your head regarding the project (I mean your thoughts and arguments a la this functionality and this one is interesting to the user) are all your arguments and hypotheses. And all the hypotheses, even the most obvious, must be tested. And check on your target audience. What if you spend an exorbitant amount and create a product on the basis of your picture of worlds that no one will use? Most likely, your consumers think differently about what they need and what they are willing to pay for. So communicate with your future customers, find out as much as possible about their problems and how they solve them (surely, if there is a problem, then they somehow solve it). Now we are testing beta versions and we already see the fallacy of our hypotheses about the target audience: families spend several times less on toys than we thought; Our clients and our users are different people, because clients pay, but users don’t. As a result, parents are customers and children are users. And you need to position the product not as a system for motivating children (positioning for the parent), but as an opportunity to earn yourself a toy (positioning for children).
Do not forget the table of A.Osterwalder (see below). The whole business model is described in these 9 squares; I will not dwell on this in detail.

4. You cannot predict the consequences of your actions.

Just do it. Do not sit at home, lying on the couch. Do it. Create. Communicate. A chemical reaction will not occur if the substances do not interact with each other. Any event can cause a whole chain of events in the future. We never know how everything goes. In 2011, I entered the Higher School of Economics, dreaming of a career as a financier or investment banker. As a result, now I am studying at the 3rd year, I work in the university's laboratory, I teach economics for schoolchildren and I am a co-founder of the project, which has become a resident of the HSE business incubator .

5. Feil teach better than success.

During the institute, I had about 4 failed projects, 2 of them were on the Internet, and 2 were offline. Three of them did not bring me a penny, and one brought quite a good profit by the standards of the student. Despite all these Fails, I am very glad that they were. Reading the book of Bob Dorf , you can imagine what he is talking about. But not aware. When you fall through, then in your own skin you understand what this or that one wrote about. Success passes quickly and is not remembered. But some reckless failure so crashes into you and into your brain, that you remember it for a very long time. And this is good.

6. You are everything, even when you are alone

It's simple. A start-up should have many competencies: at the initial stage, he and the investor (invests time), marketer, accountant, web programmer, designer, lawyer, courier, etc. A start-up is an inspector gadget or swiss knife. This is because the budget is limited. But there is a huge plus in this - trying yourself in all roles, you understand about how these or other specialists should work and it will be easier for you when you begin to delegate authority by hiring staff.
But if you have already begun to assemble a team, then it is worth considering that your Jedi have at least two skills, for example, a blogger-illustrator or an accountant-lawyer. It is clear that this will not be at the highest level, but they will cope with minimal tasks. So it is better to overpay a little while alone than to keep two.

7. Find people working for the idea - really!

Bootstrapping, as you know, means business development for a minimal budget. Therefore, the obvious fact is that you need ideological people in the project. With this item, everything is quite difficult. If your partner is ready to work for the “future” share, then the rest of the team members should have some minimum income and prospects in the project. The employee’s profit from working in a company consists of both material benefits (salary) and non-material benefits (experience, prospects). As a manager, your task is to convince them that participation in your project will be of great benefit to them. The stronger your arguments, the lower their material requirements, and their total benefit stays at the same level. Try not to spread out as shares in the project: you may still need them when raising additional capital. Now we have a partner 50/50. In addition to the investor, we are ready to allocate a share in the project only to the CTO, and then not immediately, but after some time.

These were the main 7 theses that I formulated for myself during my active work. Everything that you read in the books does not cost anything until you come across this in reality.

I wish you all successful projects!