Hackerkast (1) from Silicon Valley. Alexey Fedoseev - former director of product development at Motorola in the United States, from which he left to start a startup 1World Online

Good afternoon, habravchane!

We are glad to present you our next podcast - Hackerkast RusValley.com (the collective blog of the inhabitants of Silicon Valley), where we invite entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley to the studio and discuss the latest IT news.

Today our guest is Alexey Fedoseev - a serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley. Alexey successfully sold his previous business 4HomeMedia to Motorola, in which he worked as director of product development and where he hatched the idea of ​​his new startup. At the moment, Alexey has already attracted 1.5 million investments for his project 1 World Online.
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1 World Online is a social research service. It helps to find out what people really think about current topics, and gives all the information in a convenient, logically understandable, structured form. For this, polls and expert opinions are used.

The service is a “smart crowdsourcing”, self-regulating with the help of feedback from the participants.

Leading:
Pavel Kholyavkin - the creator of the social network "Goals".
Ivan Tsybaev
Alexander Protsyuk - blogger and Internet entrepreneur

In this issue we discussed:
Entrepreneurship - a disease or an inevitable stage in the life of any man?
The difference of work in a large company and their work.
What to do after a successful sale of Google.
How was the idea of ​​1 World Online.
Health monitoring systems.
What tools for the remote command.
How often to make a release.
Features of national engineering or how to adapt the team to the English language.
How to find suitable partners.
About the program Global Entrepreneurs and Smart Camp.
Fakapy - this is the adjustment of our lives.
How to hire the right people, where to find them.
How to conduct IT business in Russia now: about the withdrawal of Durov, Yandex and Cheburashka.
Recommended books for entrepreneurs.
Recommended habit - use your product every day.
How to divide time between business and family.
A man without a goal is a felt boot.

Listen to Hacker

Interview text:
- Hello! You are listening to another Hacker Caste from Silicon Valley podcast. And with you lead me, Pavel Kholyavkin. And with me in the studio Ivan Tsybaev and Alexander Protsyuk.
- Hello!
- Hello!

- Hello! Our guest today is a very interesting guest. Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, formerly Motorolla's product development director, who recently, as you know, bought Google, and the founder of 1 World Online, Alexey Fedoseev. Alexey, hello!
- Good day! Hi Pash!
- All right said on your list about you?

- Well, last yes! The situation of life is such that I left Motorola and began to create 1 World. But the word serial, it is, a little ambiguous. Seriality is different. Well, let me be serial. The main thing is not a serial killer, but an entrepreneur, please!
- Yes, it has a double meaning! Serial, but we use it in our positive context.
- Good!
- By the way, yes! In Russian, the phrase "serial entrepreneur" has not yet taken hold. On Habré, when we mention, a question arises among people, jokes about serial killers, a serial entrepreneur. The analogy, just differently, probably, you will not tell!
- Yes! You know, there is a good word, Russian is a chronic entrepreneur. I like it very much!
- Wow! It is like a diagnosis.

- Well yes! In fact, it turns out that entrepreneurship, it is different. Yes? That is, starting a company is one example. But entrepreneurship may be such that a person wrote a book, suppose. Or decided to climb the mountain alone! That is, it takes very different forms, so chronic, I think, yes! Sounds good! According to the symptoms - this is due to the disease. This form of the disease, but at the same time, however, there is nothing negative here, that a person is chronically ... there, a chronicle is not only a chronology. That is, in a sense, chronology, as a sequence of time. Therefore, there is another meaning, which is more positive. This is a chronology. This is what happens to us throughout life. You repeat some things, some begin, and go through these cycles. So, I see it so!

- That is, Alexey, do you recognize that entrepreneurship is a certain disease?
- Well yes! Because in fact, you know how it happens when people cannot sit, work in a big company, some people have it for some mercantile reasons, that is, they want, for example, to come somewhere else. Earn more! Or some benefit there, it does not matter. In terms of how to work, or how much to receive, or with whom to work. And business, it is a little bit different. A person cannot sit in one place, because, not that he gets bored, he understands that the work in which he is engaged is more relaxed, profitable. Even interesting! It does not correspond to the essence of his character. Therefore, a person begins to move somewhere further. Sometimes, even, at first glance, rather stupid, throws bread place.

When I left Motorola, some friends told me a few, but some said: “Why are you leaving? There is such a conversion division. Bought Google. There surely will be a bunch of interesting things happening. There you can sit for several years and become vice president. People think that they are in a big company - this is already some kind of giant quentinge, that is, an advantage. What have you got there on some shelf, some cell, and from there you think to crawl to the next one. And this, in fact, against the principles, in a certain way. I do not want to sit there and do just that. Not because you leave, and you will be more profitable or better, but it's just not yours.

- Alexey, you talked about the principles that staying in a big company, this is somehow according to the principles, maybe not very, to someone comfortable. I wonder what you mean by "principles."
- Yes, I will explain. In fact, this is not just my observation. Many other colleagues said the same thing in Motorola! Well, in tights! I have only been to big companies twice. Motorola Google, and, before that, in Tricot, in the 90s. Here! In Motorola it was very visible. That is, at some point a dilemma arises, either you are working on a product and continue to produce real values ​​there, writing cats, or moving forward with some clients. There, create new features and so on. Or you start to engage in politics. That is, you are not doing what is good for the product, but what is good for your manager, or the manager of your manager, to look right in this political environment.

Inevitably, unfortunately, in large companies, there is a moment when you need to spend a lot of time on it. That is, the question arises, either you do the work, or you settle into politics. And this is a very unpleasant alternative, when you realize that you had the right relationship with the right people, but for that you spend a lot of time. Some meaningless accomplishments - sitting at rallies, building relationships. Somewhere to go, in Chicago or San Diego, to meet with some people with some circumstances. Otherwise you will not advance, and your project will not advance either.

Here is such a sad thing in large companies. She is not that dominant, but she is present. And even this presence is enough to want to leave it. So I saw it!

- Interesting, Alexey. Please tell about yourself, about your company. Because we represent one thing, but it’s interesting from your lips to hear your story.
- Well, usually, when a good exit occurs, this is how it happened in 2010, I, as it were, immediately felt that we won’t be sitting there for a long time, in Motorola, or Motorola Mobility, as it became known after separation. . And right away, with our main colleagues, with whom we have already worked for several companies in a row, we began to think about what to do next. Especially, my second person is French. I told him beforehand that when we sell, then we will start something of our own. Here, already quite his, from the idea to the embodiment!

And we thought, chose. Of the 4 ideas chosen this one. That is, to understand what people think for any reason, that is, to create a combination of technology and content. Good quality questions, correctly asked in the right places, and with good analytics to solve the problem. So that you can quickly and efficiently find out people's opinions on almost any issue. Moreover, it is all online, quickly, efficiently, and then have some kind of business model associated with this.

So, actually, the idea was born. We chose from complex and very complex ideas. It is, as it were, simple in appearance, but very complex in embodiment. Because it is clear that so many different companies collect different data, and they do everything in completely different ways, in order to stand out between them and get their place in the sun, you need to do a lot of the right things.

Therefore, we started, actually, being in Motorola, to make this product. The prototype, of course, first. But such a system that connects issues with expert opinions. Allows you to set them on different interfaces, in different places. Distributed in time, and from which benefit people who answer these questions. They find something interesting for themselves, see, learn. As well as businesses that, in fact, with the collected data get a very interesting analytics, if they subscribe to them.
Here is a system!

- So you mentioned now that you worked with your partner in the company Slov Home Media, which was bought by Motorola. Then, while in Motorola, you started to do prototyping, well, naturally, you went over some ideas before that?
Can you say what other ideas were there, if not a secret?
- Yes of course! In fact, a couple of them, they are quite lively. The remaining three were such - the first was a universal login. It seemed to us that it was extremely inconvenient to log in today, a lot of aplications, and services, to constantly gain our accounts and passwords there. But, although the browser, of course, remembers, but still there is some disorganization of this whole economy. It seemed to us that it was convenient to make such a portal with a uniform login using a password that connects you to all other places automatically.
It seems to me that many have already begun to do this.

- Both Facebook and Google, they have already taken it, a niche.
- Yes Yes! And, with it, all other stories are pasted there both by identification and by signs. That is this idea, then it was interesting. But now, I think that has already been taken.
The second was the continuation of our smart home, which we sold to Motorola, and before that we launched it with Reisen. That is, the idea was to make an online planner. That is, it is not easy for a person to go to the store, buy some smart devices, there, sensors, cameras, door locks, smart ones that can be opened. Well, this whole ecosystem. But he also had such a planner, to whom he could simply enter some parameters about his house, and get advice, and what he actually needed to put, and where, and how. What devices? From which manufacturers? So that they work together! Here is such an online convenient system, that is, the creation of a smart home.

As far as I know, nobody has done it yet. There is a big question, how to do it for a specific manufacturer, for a particular provider, or a general, global system. This is a big question! It could be done. That's what I believe that, not that a giant, but a good startup could be deployed on this. Especially when there are as many connections as we had at that time.

And third, it was Home Health. That is a system for monitoring health. But, with it, not only sick people, but also people who are relatively healthy, but pay great attention to their well-being and so on. Now there are too many such systems, but they are not all fragmented. That is, FitBit does one thing, the same Motorola makes bracelets of a different kind. That is a lot of devices in the technology market. There are a lot of protocols. But there is no such layer, so let's say, which connects it together so that you can watch yourself. Some kind of receive signals on time.
By the way, monitoring older people is also quite interesting. Here, somehow in this area! Now this is a giant topic, by the way. As you know, a lot of people retire, and they are extremely expensive to put in nursing homes, so many companies are moving in this direction. Such non obtrusively monitoring is unobtrusive observation.

- Now in America, as far as I know, here, just the generation of baby boomers, after the war - 46-49 years. They just retire, so there is a large demand for products for pensioners.
- Absolutely. That is, yes! This topic is divided into two - monitoring for retirees, and monitoring healthy people for themselves. And, by the way, the third topic is when people live far from civilization, and they do not have the opportunity to go to the doctors, and if necessary, I want to somehow be checked remotely. So, this is, I think, a giant market. There is a lot going on there.

Even here, the other day this week introduced one entrepreneur who wants to leave a large company for the same reason as I, and is starting to do something in this area. I introduced him to a familiar doctor. She is from Leningrad, is engaged in cancer patients, and in general, serious ware projects. That is, it is necessary sometimes, so, you know, to acquaint businessmen with experts from a specific area, so that they also move in this direction.
- So that they do not come off life.
- Well yes! They, just, will discuss a similar subject. Maybe even some kind of startup they succeed over time. That is, we need and technologists, we need people who understand in the subject area. Well, when this comes together.

- Interesting! Alexey, and we spoke in the past interview, and you said that you have 2 development teams. One is in Sevastopol, the second, I understand, here in Silicon Valley?
- Yes!
- Could you tell us what tools you use for organizing collaboration and what you do for communication, for setting tasks. Perhaps for some other purposes.
- To make releases on time!
- Yes, to make releases on time.
- Yes, but now it is probably not only us. This many companies work. If engineering companies are deleted. We have, with it, remote people became more than in an office in California, so the team was raised. At first there were 4 of us, and now already 10, a year later. I am very pleased with them. The guys are intelligent, disciplined. So when we did this at first, we had a Google Hangout connection. We just walked a big team. There were 4 of us. Suppose there were 2 of us. We discussed all current tasks. Conducted priority planning. But the control they have changed several times. We changed the system. Now on git work. She, of course, the total, just people do checkin / checkout from different places. For Project Management, we tried, by the way, several options. We had a pivotal tracker at some point, and now we’ve switched to Redmine. If you know, it is such a fairly simple system.
- Know used.
- Well yes! There you can do bug tracking and sprint planning. She suits me perfectly. There are a few more plugins. So I made them at some point put such a plugin, which allows the roadmap to see quality. That is what is being done is planned. Some estimate, scope of work. That is, Redmine, of course, is our main one.
In terms of logistics, as is happening now, our Frenchman has moved full time. This is in September. I already passed it all on him. He communicates with them. You have to, if you want to, you don't want to speak English, which is, in principle, good! And they now get in touch at least twice a week. But one such planned rally, in which everything is solved, the whole work plan.
Releases are every week, usually on Thursday. And, of course, such an operational always happens, meeting, coordination. How is it that develops.

- That is, you have a regular release of your proposal every Thursday.
- I with this thought broke, in a sense, our release system. I have many people from Imbed Systems. We were engaged in routers. And, the update was a great event and was done, God forbid, once a month. Sometimes and less. And now this is the web, pure water. Basically, the software is a web interface, admin dashboard. On mobiles too, but we are not so often abgreydim now, so that they are no longer so often more stable.

And, as it were, a philosophy such that we do at least once a week. It happens that such patches, subfixes we call them, occur more often. And when they resisted with me, I found a video of Quora. Very good, there will be time, look. 5 minutes there it goes. They are about the structure of the company, about their practice. In particular, they say how often they have patches. In particular, they say that when there is a bug, and it is fixed, and appears in the production version - 5 minutes does not even pass.

- An ambitious statement!
- They, of course, everything is automated. Very good. You know, through a bunch of autotests, it's all driven out. I know that Amazon does a very similar procedure. They have a lot of automated tests rolling across the development, staging, production server. Same there, phenomenal auto check there. Therefore, of course, there is a question of risk and speed, because there are such bugs that there is no time for angeezing, you just have to close it, and as soon as possible. And if something comes out, then repair as follow-up
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