12 lessons from project management and startup startups
I have developed about a hundred projects, including startups. Many of them reached their peak and died, some still work. Did both B2C and B2B.
Recently, there has been a flow of questions from acquaintances and friends who make the same mistakes. I would like to talk about my experience in the post of theses. And if he is successful - continue the series.
If you are too lazy to read - the video expressing the main spirit and main meaning is at the bottom. The video will cause admiration - great, go do the next release. The video will cause rejection - read the post before the other reaction as much as you like :)
')
One of the first startups in my life did not take place because of the four friends who decided to do, no one really wanted to make a project. If you are not able to think about the project during each day of the month and take real steps, you probably should not do the project.
I do not know how the others with this case. Unless colleagues and masters read the same thing. But the idea is simple - in order to say about the solved problem, there is the phrase “this is the result”. In order to say about <100% result, everything else exists. The problem is that bringing to the end always takes more effort, time and labor (sometimes by orders of magnitude), and it is unknown where the border is.
We have repeatedly taken on certain deadlines to make a project, not taking into account that a project is always uncertainty. And I didn’t launch many projects simply because I was disappointed after the deadlines. Conclusion: get ready to plow to the victorious at first, until the evidence of the result is clear to all.
When I was 14 years old, looking at the then successful yellow pages, I first studied Perl, then the first ASP, which appeared then, and ran search directories. But they did not take off, despite the fact that I really liked my code, and how it worked.
Without knowing anything about traffic, conversions, market capacity, and so on, I failed to fail.
And it will be with most of those who never dare to study experienced businessmen and their actions on the road to success. Very well, in my opinion, and the first volume of knowledge is fully covered in “Startup without a budget” - take it and do it. Unlike motivating books from 37signals, which are unlikely to help a newbie with an idea.
Most people suffer from so-called cognitive distortions (google and read - the first step, do it). Just recently there was an article about Lucy at Megaplan, very cool. The essence is simple - the effect of Dunning-Kruger, as the plan of Dulles - does not exist, but it works.
As long as you firmly perceive either your beliefs about the ability to make a startup, confidence in success, as well as unconditionally believe in any books - you are doomed to failure. As I was doomed to failure, I believe that motivation and unfounded self-confidence provide a guarantee of results. Making the city portal on a samopin engine with a partner, I was very confident of success and did not question anything for a minute. The project is still alive and feeds partner with Google and in other ways, but this is not a success story.
My favorite example is hygiene. How many people know about the dangers of smoking and smoke. How much - you need to wash your hands before and after the toilet, and do not wash. And so on. I thought that the “Perfect Code”, “Refactoring” books read would make my code brilliant - but it wasn’t like that without hours of sorting out someone else’s code and working on my own. I also thought that “Getting real”, conditionally, would help to learn how to make successful projects - no, it does not work. Successfully launched a couple of startups in the rare niches scored 500-3000 daily visits to the target audience and became indispensable in a number of large firms, but they were also quickly buried by my inability to develop projects further and experienced competitors.
Some shift occurred after 2 years of work, 12 hours, 6 days a week under the guidance of an experienced project manager, a qualitative shift. Only then the projects that I did and implemented, became for me the work, and not poking a finger at the sky. Therefore, until you do yourself or with the leadership of a dozen or two mentor projects, most likely you will not learn anything in practice. And geniuses like Zuckerberg study on their own and quickly - Mozart also composed operas at 11 years old. Do not look at them, if you are not already a millionaire - go along the normal path of developing standard skills.
I had a moment when we came up with a cool idea, as it seemed to us. We tried to make niche sites, for a start - for beauty salons. I was glad and in every possible way counted the prices. Well, we thought with our partners to really try to sell and made sure that beauty salons have completely different needs. A couple of months theme flew without a single sale.
There was also a great idea of ​​an outdoor advertising aggregator, and I made a lot of strength, prototypes and promotion for it. But in reality, it turned out that advertising agencies all need individual solutions, the problem is in fact in the current database with prices. And the operators themselves (the owners of the planes) do not meet at all, they already have a train of people ready to buy for many months in advance. Plus it turned out to be one very cool competitor who niped me in the bud and a number of the same guys in the relevant forums and in the audience. The competitor himself owns the planes. In the end, I sold several sites with engines for outdoor advertising and scored on it. Although after a couple of years, a former client came up with a proposal to become partners - I am IT, and he is working with clients, I did not develop this cooperation, because I made a strategic choice in another niche and project. Especially on the background of the fact that the potential of outdoor advertising in the Russian Federation was falling and falling - after six months everything went even worse in outdoor advertising, and I felt the loyalty of choice.
Therefore, the conclusion is simple - any idea should be checked against the reality, the market and niche, customers and competitors.
A lot of friends come to me with B2C ideas. They think how to do it right away and cool, but we will look at it further. I will give you a simple alignment, why I had some ideas after the implementation of the money (the same outdoor advertising, special directories, engines and admin highly specialized), and people still tinker with TK or prototypes. I don’t take money from friends, but when startups come to audit, I sometimes take consultations. But poorly helps - see above about the skills and the lack of awareness of wrong.
The meaning is simple. Let's analyze this idea - a person chooses interests, and he is given quests. After that, he runs quests according to his interests, performing actions, and the source of the quests are companies paying money. This is a plane with 8 decks (which were built and it glitters and shines, and on the first take-off the pilot says, “And now with all this mui-ney we will try to take off).
We take and limit niche. Suppose we have a selection of contractors for the organization of holidays. Immediately it becomes clear - on the one hand, we have those who organize holidays (Event-agencies, people with good incomes at home, corporate secretaries on their own), on the other - a very finite set of contractors. Already you can go find competitors. Talk with those and others, find out their problems and solvency. Calculate the market capacity, multiply by the average bill and get the expected income. Also calculate the required rate of growth of income, and expenses to serve the client. And the cost of launching the first real version to test the theory of practice.
This is how it should be with any "super-general" ideas. A specific example is the Eruditor group. They made and tested the scheme on tutors, then they started running doctors, stars, and so on. Do not be afraid to make a niche idea - if you succeed in it, scalability in neighboring and Lard stories will be a matter of mechanics.
Actually, when I ran all-encompassing admin engines, it wasn’t for sale. And when the admin for specific types began to sell (inventory in a company with custom fields à la Zoho, a form with contract generation for automation of a network of stores selling business mobiles, etc.), the money went.
Communication with customers and observation of competitors - this is where everything should start and end. Everything else, as a rule, should be attached to these processes. Clients - a survey, sales, feedback, ideas and so on.
As one smart guy wrote, find 10 people even before the launch of the project, who will give you money for it right now. And another 100 people after launch
At a slightly later level of professionalism, another phrase of one author will steer - in order to manage a project, it is enough to manage its risks. But this is a completely different story.
This is perhaps the biggest and the cornerstone in launching and developing. My project on superadminka for all "turnkey" did not take place until now (framework for programmer + SaaS for business, customizable MS Access online, in fact). At first I began to make a super cool solution. Then he abandoned, because there was no end in sight. Then there were Zoho. And then the guys I found after a couple of years of my failed idea, who wrote to me on Habré and asked how are you.
Everyone attacked this stone, they will and will. The point is that you need to constantly strive to make a simple step and as quickly as possible. Get feedback and move on.
This contradicts something very deep in us - the programmer tries to write perfectly, the designer draws, and the project manager immediately makes an eight-deck plane. The problem is that it works and is needed in the construction of buildings. And in Internet projects it is prohibited.
The point is simple - if you have the thought to do "immediately and well" - put off the project. Until you strive to release every day at least one button (ideally with a minimum of resources - “Startup without a budget” is actually called “Toilet Paper Businessman”, look for why), and collect feedback for evolution, there’s no point in doing a project.
This kills 90% of my friends' startups. While my projects are already up and running, they are still writing TK in Villabaggio.
I do not know the arguments that would overcome this most harmful belief. Only own bumps.
In the early stages, I was pleased with the feedback from non-professionals about the projects. But to manage a positive, or a negative without numbers is impossible.
Measure everything that is possible and what is impossible - go through the delusion and figure out how to measure it.
Typical example of what is at stake, in addition to the obvious statistics of attendance. You can hear “bad design”, “need beautiful”, “let's redraw” as much as you like. This - garbage on vegetable oil. First, the project must earn the right to itself for a good design. Secondly, it only matters how the specific elements (or lack thereof) affect the solution of your client’s tasks. If you accurately, for example, identified a client problem, made a solution, then register a user story. And optimize it by minimizing the number of clicks and mouse movements (A / B testing, etc.) and maximizing the rate you need (applications, sales, registration).
Everything. Only the input-output numbers, the adjustment of the project and the functionality of the numbers, and no emotions.
When my former client offered to become a partner and do a joint project on outdoor advertising, I figured and understood two things. The first is that I will take it and do not physically draw out two projects. And the second - making a project with an unclear future and not very much to the soul (see below), I miss opportunities for the project to which I aspire and which is close to me.
By doing one, you are not doing the other. This is a fundamental principle, a couple of examples of its application. Making a beautiful design, you spend time and money, while you could buy a domain, a template for 10 bucks from wrapbootstrap and pay money to the one who really animates the project - the programmer. By making a large and complex prototype, you spend money and time and do not receive feedback from customers (with whom you could communicate), while the virtual competitor has already launched on Livestreet and plug-ins, has traveled 10 offices, has thrown everything and already does I received money from firms. Sapienti sat.
Most of the things I did not finish. Bringing to the end is a difficult thing, look for a lecture on process and productive people from a cool person and a businessman whom I respect, Sergey Kotyrev.
When you take on some task - to increase the number of registrations, or there are views per person - then set a goal and go to it until you succeed. Of course, you need to revise - sometimes the goal may be unattainable. But in general, this is similar to the state of flow in programming - you have to focus as much as possible and think all the time about it, do it, think it, do it until the result comes. For throwing even 99% of the way, you will lose time later, everything will roll back and you will have to start over.
Once we wrote an aggregator of special offers (lead generator from the site for shares and discounts on the services of a group of companies), I wrote this case here. The first few weeks we focused, tuned application forms, content, traffic delivery channels, worked on conversion. And after a steady trend of traffic and applications, the project still fed for almost a year, boiling down to updating the content and regular marketing activities.
I want to end with the promise that really, you need to do what nature is about. In the long run, if you don’t really crush the project, you will lose to those who will compete and whom they will push.
I did not do outdoor advertising partly on this. I didn’t have experience in outdoor advertising, I didn’t want to do it, and after the acquisition, despite clear money, the soul didn’t feel like that. But I like to do projects that automate processes and improve people's lives. As well as communicate with customers and make them satisfied and happy, solve problems. I think this decision has become one of the most important for me in recent years.
Find in yourself talents or features, and a project for them. Do the project, if after six months or a year you feel that there is no light on it in your eyes and is not restored in any way - change it to another, or after projects - look for a different vocation. Keep in mind the achievable opportunities and the fact that we have only one life.
I could write many more points and do this if the article receives successful responses. Not everyone wants to read marc and practice, but it was precisely this that was lacking for me and I had to catch gold grains of sand, washing dozens of tons of sand with books and lectures, advice and criticism.
For example, I left undisclosed examples of successful and unsuccessful struggle with competitors, the choice of a scalable niche, the issue of partnership, attracting users, working with clients and much more.
I want to wish all those who make projects, start-ups or work as a project manager, success in knowing themselves and the world, and achievements with failures, for achievements are pleasing, and failures are taught.
And I bring the promised video, which perfectly illustrates what I call the philosophy of a successful startup.
Recently, there has been a flow of questions from acquaintances and friends who make the same mistakes. I would like to talk about my experience in the post of theses. And if he is successful - continue the series.
If you are too lazy to read - the video expressing the main spirit and main meaning is at the bottom. The video will cause admiration - great, go do the next release. The video will cause rejection - read the post before the other reaction as much as you like :)
')
1. Most importantly - desire
One of the first startups in my life did not take place because of the four friends who decided to do, no one really wanted to make a project. If you are not able to think about the project during each day of the month and take real steps, you probably should not do the project.
2. Bringing to the end is measured by result, not time
I do not know how the others with this case. Unless colleagues and masters read the same thing. But the idea is simple - in order to say about the solved problem, there is the phrase “this is the result”. In order to say about <100% result, everything else exists. The problem is that bringing to the end always takes more effort, time and labor (sometimes by orders of magnitude), and it is unknown where the border is.
We have repeatedly taken on certain deadlines to make a project, not taking into account that a project is always uncertainty. And I didn’t launch many projects simply because I was disappointed after the deadlines. Conclusion: get ready to plow to the victorious at first, until the evidence of the result is clear to all.
3. Without knowledge, you are doomed to failure.
When I was 14 years old, looking at the then successful yellow pages, I first studied Perl, then the first ASP, which appeared then, and ran search directories. But they did not take off, despite the fact that I really liked my code, and how it worked.
Without knowing anything about traffic, conversions, market capacity, and so on, I failed to fail.
And it will be with most of those who never dare to study experienced businessmen and their actions on the road to success. Very well, in my opinion, and the first volume of knowledge is fully covered in “Startup without a budget” - take it and do it. Unlike motivating books from 37signals, which are unlikely to help a newbie with an idea.
4. Understanding your wrong is the first step to success.
Most people suffer from so-called cognitive distortions (google and read - the first step, do it). Just recently there was an article about Lucy at Megaplan, very cool. The essence is simple - the effect of Dunning-Kruger, as the plan of Dulles - does not exist, but it works.
As long as you firmly perceive either your beliefs about the ability to make a startup, confidence in success, as well as unconditionally believe in any books - you are doomed to failure. As I was doomed to failure, I believe that motivation and unfounded self-confidence provide a guarantee of results. Making the city portal on a samopin engine with a partner, I was very confident of success and did not question anything for a minute. The project is still alive and feeds partner with Google and in other ways, but this is not a success story.
4. Without knowledge skills, nothing costs.
My favorite example is hygiene. How many people know about the dangers of smoking and smoke. How much - you need to wash your hands before and after the toilet, and do not wash. And so on. I thought that the “Perfect Code”, “Refactoring” books read would make my code brilliant - but it wasn’t like that without hours of sorting out someone else’s code and working on my own. I also thought that “Getting real”, conditionally, would help to learn how to make successful projects - no, it does not work. Successfully launched a couple of startups in the rare niches scored 500-3000 daily visits to the target audience and became indispensable in a number of large firms, but they were also quickly buried by my inability to develop projects further and experienced competitors.
Some shift occurred after 2 years of work, 12 hours, 6 days a week under the guidance of an experienced project manager, a qualitative shift. Only then the projects that I did and implemented, became for me the work, and not poking a finger at the sky. Therefore, until you do yourself or with the leadership of a dozen or two mentor projects, most likely you will not learn anything in practice. And geniuses like Zuckerberg study on their own and quickly - Mozart also composed operas at 11 years old. Do not look at them, if you are not already a millionaire - go along the normal path of developing standard skills.
5. The idea is not worth anything
I had a moment when we came up with a cool idea, as it seemed to us. We tried to make niche sites, for a start - for beauty salons. I was glad and in every possible way counted the prices. Well, we thought with our partners to really try to sell and made sure that beauty salons have completely different needs. A couple of months theme flew without a single sale.
There was also a great idea of ​​an outdoor advertising aggregator, and I made a lot of strength, prototypes and promotion for it. But in reality, it turned out that advertising agencies all need individual solutions, the problem is in fact in the current database with prices. And the operators themselves (the owners of the planes) do not meet at all, they already have a train of people ready to buy for many months in advance. Plus it turned out to be one very cool competitor who niped me in the bud and a number of the same guys in the relevant forums and in the audience. The competitor himself owns the planes. In the end, I sold several sites with engines for outdoor advertising and scored on it. Although after a couple of years, a former client came up with a proposal to become partners - I am IT, and he is working with clients, I did not develop this cooperation, because I made a strategic choice in another niche and project. Especially on the background of the fact that the potential of outdoor advertising in the Russian Federation was falling and falling - after six months everything went even worse in outdoor advertising, and I felt the loyalty of choice.
Therefore, the conclusion is simple - any idea should be checked against the reality, the market and niche, customers and competitors.
6. Niche is all
A lot of friends come to me with B2C ideas. They think how to do it right away and cool, but we will look at it further. I will give you a simple alignment, why I had some ideas after the implementation of the money (the same outdoor advertising, special directories, engines and admin highly specialized), and people still tinker with TK or prototypes. I don’t take money from friends, but when startups come to audit, I sometimes take consultations. But poorly helps - see above about the skills and the lack of awareness of wrong.
The meaning is simple. Let's analyze this idea - a person chooses interests, and he is given quests. After that, he runs quests according to his interests, performing actions, and the source of the quests are companies paying money. This is a plane with 8 decks (which were built and it glitters and shines, and on the first take-off the pilot says, “And now with all this mui-ney we will try to take off).
We take and limit niche. Suppose we have a selection of contractors for the organization of holidays. Immediately it becomes clear - on the one hand, we have those who organize holidays (Event-agencies, people with good incomes at home, corporate secretaries on their own), on the other - a very finite set of contractors. Already you can go find competitors. Talk with those and others, find out their problems and solvency. Calculate the market capacity, multiply by the average bill and get the expected income. Also calculate the required rate of growth of income, and expenses to serve the client. And the cost of launching the first real version to test the theory of practice.
This is how it should be with any "super-general" ideas. A specific example is the Eruditor group. They made and tested the scheme on tutors, then they started running doctors, stars, and so on. Do not be afraid to make a niche idea - if you succeed in it, scalability in neighboring and Lard stories will be a matter of mechanics.
Actually, when I ran all-encompassing admin engines, it wasn’t for sale. And when the admin for specific types began to sell (inventory in a company with custom fields à la Zoho, a form with contract generation for automation of a network of stores selling business mobiles, etc.), the money went.
7. Remember customers and competitors
Communication with customers and observation of competitors - this is where everything should start and end. Everything else, as a rule, should be attached to these processes. Clients - a survey, sales, feedback, ideas and so on.
As one smart guy wrote, find 10 people even before the launch of the project, who will give you money for it right now. And another 100 people after launch
At a slightly later level of professionalism, another phrase of one author will steer - in order to manage a project, it is enough to manage its risks. But this is a completely different story.
8. RERO in everything
This is perhaps the biggest and the cornerstone in launching and developing. My project on superadminka for all "turnkey" did not take place until now (framework for programmer + SaaS for business, customizable MS Access online, in fact). At first I began to make a super cool solution. Then he abandoned, because there was no end in sight. Then there were Zoho. And then the guys I found after a couple of years of my failed idea, who wrote to me on Habré and asked how are you.
Everyone attacked this stone, they will and will. The point is that you need to constantly strive to make a simple step and as quickly as possible. Get feedback and move on.
This contradicts something very deep in us - the programmer tries to write perfectly, the designer draws, and the project manager immediately makes an eight-deck plane. The problem is that it works and is needed in the construction of buildings. And in Internet projects it is prohibited.
The point is simple - if you have the thought to do "immediately and well" - put off the project. Until you strive to release every day at least one button (ideally with a minimum of resources - “Startup without a budget” is actually called “Toilet Paper Businessman”, look for why), and collect feedback for evolution, there’s no point in doing a project.
This kills 90% of my friends' startups. While my projects are already up and running, they are still writing TK in Villabaggio.
I do not know the arguments that would overcome this most harmful belief. Only own bumps.
9. Only numbers
In the early stages, I was pleased with the feedback from non-professionals about the projects. But to manage a positive, or a negative without numbers is impossible.
Measure everything that is possible and what is impossible - go through the delusion and figure out how to measure it.
Typical example of what is at stake, in addition to the obvious statistics of attendance. You can hear “bad design”, “need beautiful”, “let's redraw” as much as you like. This - garbage on vegetable oil. First, the project must earn the right to itself for a good design. Secondly, it only matters how the specific elements (or lack thereof) affect the solution of your client’s tasks. If you accurately, for example, identified a client problem, made a solution, then register a user story. And optimize it by minimizing the number of clicks and mouse movements (A / B testing, etc.) and maximizing the rate you need (applications, sales, registration).
Everything. Only the input-output numbers, the adjustment of the project and the functionality of the numbers, and no emotions.
10. Remember the missed opportunity
When my former client offered to become a partner and do a joint project on outdoor advertising, I figured and understood two things. The first is that I will take it and do not physically draw out two projects. And the second - making a project with an unclear future and not very much to the soul (see below), I miss opportunities for the project to which I aspire and which is close to me.
By doing one, you are not doing the other. This is a fundamental principle, a couple of examples of its application. Making a beautiful design, you spend time and money, while you could buy a domain, a template for 10 bucks from wrapbootstrap and pay money to the one who really animates the project - the programmer. By making a large and complex prototype, you spend money and time and do not receive feedback from customers (with whom you could communicate), while the virtual competitor has already launched on Livestreet and plug-ins, has traveled 10 offices, has thrown everything and already does I received money from firms. Sapienti sat.
11. Get a steady trend.
Most of the things I did not finish. Bringing to the end is a difficult thing, look for a lecture on process and productive people from a cool person and a businessman whom I respect, Sergey Kotyrev.
When you take on some task - to increase the number of registrations, or there are views per person - then set a goal and go to it until you succeed. Of course, you need to revise - sometimes the goal may be unattainable. But in general, this is similar to the state of flow in programming - you have to focus as much as possible and think all the time about it, do it, think it, do it until the result comes. For throwing even 99% of the way, you will lose time later, everything will roll back and you will have to start over.
Once we wrote an aggregator of special offers (lead generator from the site for shares and discounts on the services of a group of companies), I wrote this case here. The first few weeks we focused, tuned application forms, content, traffic delivery channels, worked on conversion. And after a steady trend of traffic and applications, the project still fed for almost a year, boiling down to updating the content and regular marketing activities.
12. Do only what your soul is for.
I want to end with the promise that really, you need to do what nature is about. In the long run, if you don’t really crush the project, you will lose to those who will compete and whom they will push.
I did not do outdoor advertising partly on this. I didn’t have experience in outdoor advertising, I didn’t want to do it, and after the acquisition, despite clear money, the soul didn’t feel like that. But I like to do projects that automate processes and improve people's lives. As well as communicate with customers and make them satisfied and happy, solve problems. I think this decision has become one of the most important for me in recent years.
Find in yourself talents or features, and a project for them. Do the project, if after six months or a year you feel that there is no light on it in your eyes and is not restored in any way - change it to another, or after projects - look for a different vocation. Keep in mind the achievable opportunities and the fact that we have only one life.
Conclusion
I could write many more points and do this if the article receives successful responses. Not everyone wants to read marc and practice, but it was precisely this that was lacking for me and I had to catch gold grains of sand, washing dozens of tons of sand with books and lectures, advice and criticism.
For example, I left undisclosed examples of successful and unsuccessful struggle with competitors, the choice of a scalable niche, the issue of partnership, attracting users, working with clients and much more.
I want to wish all those who make projects, start-ups or work as a project manager, success in knowing themselves and the world, and achievements with failures, for achievements are pleasing, and failures are taught.
And I bring the promised video, which perfectly illustrates what I call the philosophy of a successful startup.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/222281/
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