As we were looking for an investor, "from scratch" created a company for developing mobile applications in St. Petersburg and ... mistakes that we made

This is our first article on Habré (and, I hope, not the last) and I want to tell you as honestly and openly as possible about our experience of starting a business in St. Petersburg developing mobile applications from scratch, what mistakes we made, what mistakes we continue to make (well, where of this) and how we are trying to build something really large-scale and “change this world” - namely, our mobile product aggregator tapki project (the name is funny, of course, was born as derived from the English word “tap”). Looking back at the article, after writing it, I see that quite a few text came out (about 18 pages in the word), but I hope that what has been said will be useful. Colleagues advised to break the document into parts, but it seems to me that a solid narrative, affecting a period of just over a year, will give a more complete picture of the company's development. In the article, the reader will find the economy (management balance), which "stretches" from the very beginning, with a breakdown by cost items. We didn’t add-off anything and give all the numbers “as is”.

I will tell you about starting a business from the very beginning: searching for premises, searching for investments, about the main (initial) idea of ​​business and how it changed throughout the year, about good luck and failure. Since we registered a legal entity in June 2013 (or rather May 29), we can be considered as 1 year old “with a tail” and some nuances can no longer be remembered, but the main milestones with photos have been preserved. It is important - if somewhere in the text I make a conclusion for myself (and readers) or give advice (directly or indirectly), I ask you to regard it solely as my personal opinion, which with a probability of 50% may be fundamentally wrong. And yet - some moments I can’t remember in detail, so there may be some minor inaccuracies in explaining certain figures - this is not an attempt to conceal information, but simply elementary forgetfulness, since I did not keep a diary (unfortunately I am correcting) and I am writing from memory.

')
I emphasize that this is by no means a guide from the series “10 mistakes of beginning businessmen” or, for example, “How to achieve success in business from scratch”. Success is a loose concept and we definitely have no right to write about it, because we have not yet achieved it, although we are trying in every possible way, implying, for ourselves, by “success” to achieve a stable profit in operations. Despite the fact that we are an investment project, our investors (and ourselves) set the goal not to capitalize the company (customers, contracts, payments), but to pay a monthly dividend policy (or, in other words, profit).

Immediately it should be noted - we are (so far) unprofitable project. I met businesses in IT that literally took 3-4 months to pay back and began to return investments (if they were) in the form of dividends. It is pleasant to read about such projects, feeling inside easy envy of the more talented guys (no irony), who could “jump” into the market. We could not; moreover, our initial concept in the part of mobile applications, under which attracted investment, was absolutely not vital. I enjoyed reading the history of running Amperca on Habré, but trying on the experience of the guys to myself, I conclude that retail and software development are fundamentally different projects, and in our case we reach the operating profit for a long time and painfully, because business transactions are very different in time (unless you have a very large client, under which you collect a team - but this was not our case).

The idea of ​​business and venture funds as a source of investment - what to expect?

So - our story. In the fall of 2013, inside the team, which by the way is rather old - I suppose that the average age is 35-37 years, there was a feeling that we could enter the market with the idea of ​​"Designer of mobile applications for online stores." Well, you know, this is when mobile applications are assembled from ready-made templates on html (5). By the way, there are such projects on the market - myapps.com, ibuildapp.com - of those that are “on the ear”. Assuming that our competitive difference lies in the coverage of all mobile platforms (ios, android, windows 8 and winphone) and native development (more precisely, we use products from Hamarin), we began to develop a business plan for investor search. And although, from the very beginning, I had a vague feeling that our venture funds, let's say, did not really want to see us and are focused on projects in a more mature state, the idea was precisely to send to the main funds a beautiful presentation.

Here I want to digress and tell a little about the team that initially formed the backbone (5 people - two developers .net, project manager, financier and merchant). We all come from e-commerce and conventional retail (consumer electronics mostly), which, as it happened, moved together in different projects. The accumulated experience in business suggested that there is power in the hands to make your project and there is a definite future in mobile applications. No, not even that - we did not see the future in ordinary web projects in the field of electronic commerce, i.e. in the Internet - shops. The market is very dense, advertising is becoming more expensive, etc. At the same time, there is a trend in the development of mobile applications and the guys had experience working with Hamarin. So the idea was born to make a designer of native mobile applications for online stores. Like, let’s sell shovels (online shops) to shovels (well, the well-known story about the fact that during the gold rush period the rich people were not so much the miners washing gold and sellers of jeans, shovels and carts). Did not work out.

Our venture funds ... A strange industry, probably due to the fact that it did not personally work in it, and it is impossible to understand it by intelligence and by the available bits of information. It took us about a month to present. In April 2013, I made a list of funds operating in Russia and began sending out with a cover letter. Looking back, I understand that the presentation was, to put it mildly, not very, because there were few beautiful graphs (exponential up!) and tables, and more text with a detailed description of the project. But we proceeded from the fact that in order to make a decision on investments, people, even at the first stage, should thoughtfully study what was written and only then, if they like it, invite them to the meeting. A total of about 15 letters were sent on the most famous foundations. Only one answered - he wrote that he would respond in 2 weeks. But apparently spun and forgot. Therefore, if you have a business at the stage of the zero stage itself, when there is a team, some achievements and a good (as it seems) idea - do not expect strong attention from the funds. They can be understood, because The highest risks are at the zero stage of launching a business, although here one can expect the highest return.

And one more remark - if the fund enters your business, then most often its task is to come out with a profit in 3-5 years, having sold its share more expensive than the investments made. Accordingly, the profit of a business can go into the background, because they will be asked to allow her to increase the size of the business itself — an increase in capitalization. If we talk about a private investor, then most likely he will not be interested in the company's capitalization, but in profit, distributed in the form of dividends.

To justice, it is worth noting that now the situation with the support of the early stages is changing and the pro-state fund of IIDF (Internet Initiatives Development Fund) has appeared. It is easy to find on the Internet, and I advise very young teams to consider it seriously enough. Looking ahead, I note that we were nominated in the very first set of the IIDF in 2013 (autumn) and were in the TOP 30 projects, among which, it seems, 750 applications. I will also tell you about our experience with IIDF and the reasons why we did not end up with (or we didn’t take - how to look) investments, but on the whole, the impressions about this organization are positive and I, frankly, because of my current knowledge of the venture industry, I see no alternatives for teams at the earliest stage of development in the Russian Federation.

Returning to the issue of investment. Our partner had access to investors in St. Petersburg, who believed in us and became interested in the ideas themselves, and after a series of meetings with them, it was decided to open investment to us. At the same time, the investor received a 51% share in the new business. It took us a little more than a month to complete this process (3-4 meetings, usually in one of the cafes) and we could celebrate the first days of May 2013 as Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War and the birth of our company. I note that we asked for investments under the original business plan, which, in addition to describing the business process, also contained financial calculations of expected incomes and expenses. Naturally, as work began, it turned out that the ideas and, accordingly, the expenses had nothing to do with reality and I advise you in this connection - make a reasonable reserve, unless your life and managerial experience allows you to give a detailed forecast. In relation to us, we laid the amount of 10 000 000 p., But the excess of this amount, according to our careful forecasts, will be about 6-7 000 000 p.

As far as I know, it is extremely rare for venture funds to ask for a 51% share in the business, but I suppose that this applies more often to a situation when there is already some kind of incoming cash flow, an interesting and proven business idea and a solid team. We definitely did not fall under this definition, because there was an idea, some developments from the developers from the old work places and a business plan. Everything. It seems to me that this is a completely normal “price” for a high risk of investments from the zero level, since otherwise (a smaller share in the authorized capital of the investor) may offer a parity investment.

From my experience I will allow myself to advise some more moments in communicating with investors. No need to assure success, paradoxically as it sounds. Investors are serious people and, of course, expecting a return on investment many times, understand that market conditions are not a greenhouse for growing cucumbers with fertilizers, but not a very friendly environment for beginners. Therefore, evaluating your chances try to be extremely honest to yourself and to people who are ready to invest. Doubts - this is completely normal, suppose that irrepressible optimism can just do harm.

Next, write down the terms of the dividend policy. At least talk them in words. It is clear that we all want to “change the world”, but ultimately the goal of the business is income and it is not bad to hear the investor’s position on his vision of dividing future dividends. Ask a question about a future co-investor and whether your investor will be ready to dilute his share. For example, we are currently conducting a series of co-investment negotiations, since As already mentioned, our expectations did not coincide with reality, and the new co-investor can continue to allow the business to grow, possibly returning the invested funds of your first investor to buy back part of its share (partially or completely).

How does it look in practice? In our case, the investor is ready (theoretically) to sell 25% of his 51% in the authorized capital, provided not just a buyout, but also the opening of an additional investment in the amount specified by the parties. And, by the way, such a model is quite convenient, because a co-investor is already entering a working business, showing some financial indicators, having a developed client base, etc. It is worth noting here that from the experience of communicating with venture capital funds, it is very rare to simply buy out a share of the founders (only if it is not a profitable, fast-growing business), but to receive a share in exchange for future investments. For example, recently held a dialogue with the German fund, which has outlined its position - 25% of the shares for opening an investment horizon of 40-50 000 000 r. for 3 years (namely, the opening of financing in exchange for shares).

Of course, the investor first of all wants to return the investment, stay with a certain package of shares (preferably blocking), do not invest further and expect dividends. At the same time, considering a company with a negative operating balance, a co-investor can resist buying out a share and here you can suggest a scheme in which a buy-out of a share does not occur, the new co-investor continues to invest funds in the company, but when you go to self-sufficiency and make first profits , the first investor receives dividends based on his initial share until he returns the investment made.

Separately, I note that we are extremely lucky with investors, because we are free to make any managerial decisions that, of course, are aimed at increasing income. Some may argue with such a statement, reasonably indicating that an investor who is involved in strategic management may somewhere “open up his eyes closed on” a number of important issues. But there is a fine line between delicate participation and the situation when an investor actually intervenes in the operational management, creating just a nervous situation in the team.

Organizational issues of starting a company - how it was

Coming back to the launch of our business. All May 2013 we went to organizational issues - registration of a legal entity, opening a bank account (we chose a rather conservative Nordea bank - Scandinavian roots, because there were familiar leaders, and the bank's "lineage" inspired confidence) and search the premises. I do not think that it is worthwhile to dwell on this, because processes are quite simple and are repeatedly described, including at Habré. Of the nuances, I categorically do not advise sharing the legal address with the actual address, since this is now pretty strictly watching our fiscal authorities and ... well, why do you also have these problems at launch? Upon registration, you can use the services of an intermediary or do it yourself.

We decided to name the company by the name of the domain name. And they began to search for the latter, keeping in mind the domain in the .com zone, since we after all did the designer, so the whole world should be subject to us! Not everything worked out for us, except buying a domain - notissimus.com; the word notissimus from Latin can be translated as "well-known", "recognizable." The main thing is that the domain was free and the search for trademarks in the USA also did not match (I searched on the site www.uspto.gov/trademarks , although logic dictates that when registering a trademark, I usually immediately register the domain name). It is pronounced as a note with an emphasis, sometimes we are called funny. When opening a bank account (legal entity we have the same name with the domain - NOTISSIMUS LLC), it turned out to be a funny story. An employee of the bank asked for the name of the legal entity, and then asked: “what does it mean?” When she heard the translation from Latin: what is this saying “it’s common knowledge”, she apologized and said she didn’t know, although the term seems to be widely known :) .

We were lucky to find a room in the city center, next to St. Isaac's Cathedral with a more than reasonable rate of 1,100 rubles. per m2. How were you looking? We used all the available free resources (no agents), plus personally traveled to the city center by car and searched for the intriguing inscription “rent” - this is quite an effective method. For us and the investor, it was important to find the office in the center, near the metro (this is convenient for both employees and customers whom we invite to visit, and it adds a little to the importance of a young company when you say that the office is near St. Isaac’s Cathedral). We are still working in this room, gradually expanding at the expense of adjacent rooms - a business center of class “C”, which should turn into plans in class “A” (with all the ensuing consequences, including the “leaking” us). Indoors (45 m2) they made redecoration to make it pleasant to the eye, spending about 45,000 r. together with materials (guests from the southern republics worked). We allowed ourselves to rent two parking spaces, as in the center of St. Petersburg near Isaac, there is no chance of finding a parking lot and they understood that this would be a permanently annoying factor at the beginning of the working day (5 000 rub. for one place - looking back clearly understand that it was definitely worth it).


The room after redecoration - looks decent, although the walls are crooked, because not aligned

In our business plan, we had pledged funds for a one-time purchase of fixed assets (OS) for the launch of the company. What is included here? Computer equipment, peripherals, tables, chairs, etc. All purchases made on the site ulmart.ru, along the way getting quite a few bonus points on the account - it is convenient, because surely you will forget something from the trifle, what kind of cable or extension cable there is. Everything was bought reasonably - simple - necessary (sometimes very simple, then I had to improve my PC - I bought more memory, so I advise you not to cheapen all the equipment for everyday work). Below is a fragment of our managerial p / l (income - expenses) for May 2013. Nobody else received a salary from the team, only rental costs (in part, I don’t remember why this amount), the purchase of fixed assets, opening an account, registration of legal entity etc. No income, only expenses in the amount of 517,000 p. (contribution of the founder to the company’s account as an investment loan).


Fragment of management reporting for May 2013 - no operational activity yet

In June 2013 we actually made repairs, arranged furniture, laid communications, etc. Nothing interesting in general, and on July 1 we started our activity in a new building. 3 people - your humble servant (responsibility - customers, meetings, advertising, website, etc.), Svetlana - our financial genius and the person, thanks to which we were able to find investments and Denis - technical director. Naturally, the task of finding additional developers immediately arose, since the plans were ambitious and it was necessary to “prepare for success” in advance. Here I can advise the hantim.ru resource - we all found the guys (and girls) at the very beginning with its help and in my opinion - this is the only resource useful and concentrated on IT specialists. No IT recruitment agents, although suggestions for such services are made regularly. We had to immediately find another .net developer and designer in the team. Coped. It is true to note that the last time we are looking for developers including through hh.ru - the placement of a vacancy costs 600 rubles for Peter. and this, by the way, is cheaper now than through hantim.ru.


The team, instead of making mobile apps, plays a board game. The furniture is the simplest, the tables could have been smaller ...

The first mistake - our business concept turned out to be ... slightly not vital.

Naturally, from the very first days of business, we tried to stick to our original business concept - the designer of mobile applications. And with the first major client - the company 2-Berega (sushi and pizza delivery), we faced a harsh reality. What did we plan to do? After reading in the media that there are about 30,000 online stores in Russia and inspired by this figure, they suggested that using our achievements, which we further called proudly “platform”, we can quickly launch native mobile apps made using some simple design templates. . Naturally, the number of templates (let's call it the product visualization grid) was supposed to increase over time. In the business plan, we laid down that in a month we will be able to connect 7 new Internet shops and take 7,000 rubles from each payment. per month for the support (rental) of all platforms. That's so linear and considered, do ... eccentrics. I don’t even want to give an Excel table here so as not to shame. The seasonal fluctuations in demand were not taken into account (at least the January holidays, the May holidays), although it would seem that so many years in business and so many different plans were made!

In fact, we made a rather serious mistake in planning when we decided that mobile applications can be done using templates, that we will linearly attract 7 new customers every month and that everyone really needs it. The basis of the error, as I said, was the erroneous opinion about the value of mobile designers in Russia and the feasibility of having mobile applications for a large number of online stores. By no means criticizing existing projects of application designers, we were convinced by experience that this simply does not suit a more or less serious (medium, large) business! And if you have a small online store, then you just do not really need applications. Or I will say this, probably, you can pay 500 p. per month and having created something typical to play with a set of installations, but it will be just a “game” and not a serious project with a long-term perspective. I want to note that I regularly see how companies are trying to enter this market under the name “designer of mobile applications for online stores” and invest money in advertising (I see it more often in facebook). I do not have the right to criticize this approach, I note that, in my opinion, our country is still “not ripe” for such projects and we need to focus on other countries. - facebook — , , , .. - (), . , — , , , , - : — , — , .

, ? , , - , , ! , — , , , . : 2-. — .

, , . . — .

, ? , 700. , , — web-, (, html5). , , b2c, «» , . 2013 — ( , ), 15 000 . . . , - b2c, (, , Instagram ..). ? , , .

? , , , . , , , : oodji, LOVE REPUBLIC, befree — ( ) , , . , , — .

( ) , — % ( ). , -, , , — . ( Apple iPad) , . — , , . , . , ( ). . «» . Why? -. , . , . , . , ( ) % , , , % , « ». , - , …

- 2013

p/l 2013 ( — , , , , , .). ( ). — . . . , — , , — «» . , . , . , .. , . , , (), . , -, . , , 1c-bitrix: . , — , , . , , , , . , . , . , -. .

2013 . , - , ( , , — , — , , push ..). , (, ) 3 : Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Google Android. , Windows 8 Windows Phone, . 15 000 . ( , .. ) .

, (Windows 8 Windows Phone), .. , , (40 , ). , , , , , .. : 18 000 . , - , , — 18 000 . . , - . — , . , - , . , .

, « », . — . , , — , , , , push — ( ) .. , back office (, , «»). ? , 70 — 90 000 . - (1-Bitrix, ) — . , : geofencing — push- , ( Apple Store ) ..

-

, . . : . (18 000 . ). , , , «» - , . , . , . , , «». But! , — ! , , , .. , , , , , . , .

? ( ) , .. ( , ). — . , , , 18 000 . , «» , , — . . , , — ( ) , — ( ). , geofencing. ? , , push — ( 500 .). push'? , … - . 45 000 ., , .. . , , ( ). , , .

, , , — . , , , . , , , , . QR — , , . , , , , ( ) , ( ). , — , , ( horeca, fashion ), 20 000 (fashion, , ) 600 000 . (, ) . 30 000 000 , , — , , -, « ».

— , — !

How are we looking for customers? Strange development for 0 rubles allows us to work well on cold calls. The first 6 months of the business life I did (it worked terribly, because I don’t know how, and I’m too shy), now we have a wonderful Yulia, who works on attracting customers by phone, and I go to meetings (Peter, Moscow). You can hear how she puts the last trump card - “this is how we develop 0 rubles, and there are clients from your business that have done so and can give recommendations.” The degree of interest of the client immediately increases slightly. Naturally, even such a model does not always lead to the conclusion of a contract, and this is not a matter of distrust of us (we offer the portfolio and recommendations), but of the company's unpreparedness for applications. Naturally, there are advanced companies that clearly recognize the value of applications for themselves, but more often they have to carry out explanatory work. We now have an average of 1-2 contracts per month, clients are mainly from St. Petersburg and Moscow, although regional interest began to appear. The average term from the first call to the conclusion of the contract is about 1.5 months, and about 2 more months for the development of applications. Not surprisingly, the sales scheme works well, in which we refer to the experience (case) of a similar business, and ideally a competitor. Not being able to disclose all the data, we simply give some general analytics, often impersonal.

I want to give advice that I myself would like to receive at the very beginning of our business - you need to immediately have a staff member who will systematically engage in cold sales, if your business is similar to ours. It is impossible to do this from time to time, distracting for other various tasks - he wrote a blog, talked with clients, talked to developers, hurried with payment, went to a meeting and started calling again. We now have a little less than 1000 companies in the CRM database with which there was at least one cold contact. And one cannot say that there is a queue of people who want to give us money. Call, letter, letter, call, etc. Work on the cycle with a gradual increase in customer base and this should be done by an individual employee. In the office. I am very sorry that we did not reach this immediately and only after 5-6 months of work, we realized the need for hiring, with the emphasis initially on production (developers, designer), and not on sales. I understand that this dispute is eternal, what comes first - the chicken or the egg, but I personally concluded that in the b2b segment sales are primary, and only then development (production). Even if you feel a certain “failure” in production facilities, keep in mind that the sales organization cycle is not immediate (in our case, of course) and it’s more important to have a client and a contract, with time reserves built in than a strong production without constant flow of customers. For CRM, we use the free version of bitrix24 (up to 12 employees is free) and this is more than enough. If you look at the statistics, then Julia makes about 50-60 calls on average on a working day (these are both new and repeated calls). In addition to the call, you need to record information in CRM.

I admit that we do not know how to sell our services over the phone, but you can estimate the conversion of cold calls to the concluded contracts. Something about 0.5-0.8% in a very good case. Keep in mind the seasonal factor - in the summer there is a period of calm, decision-makers go on vacation or simply don’t really want to engage in serious discussion of new projects. In general, it is not strange, if you think about it, then in Russia there is not much time when business activity is high, people are on the ground and are ready for new breakthroughs :). In addition, we observe that the recent rotation of staff has been high. I often hear how Julia is trying to understand who now in the marketing department can talk because the previous person quit. And you have to start all over again.

All this is of course great, but is there any benefit from mobile apps?

A little in return from mobile applications for business, and more precisely - retail trade. Almost every client asks for an estimate of the expected result, even taking into account the minimum investment. Here it is worthwhile to separate the different segments of the trading business, since comparing sales through consumer electronics applications and ready-made food products is simply inappropriate. Based on our experience, you can bring the following averages. The fashion segment is quite realistic to receive orders for up to 1,500,000 p. per month after 4-6 months of applications. If you have a business selling sushi, pizza, woks with home delivery, then with due diligence in promotion, you can collect orders up to 300,000 rubles per day (our customers' numbers range from 100,000 to 300,000 per day). Household appliances and electronics - up to 1,000,000 r. per month, exactly like the category "Baby Products". These figures are valid for companies with an online store (maybe a retail network). I emphasize that of course there are results that are much better and much worse. There is a very clear dependence of the number of orders on the number of application installations, which, in turn, depend on the desire to tell about them.


An example of the number of daily installations of fashion company applications

The graph shows an example of downloading applications on three platforms (iPhone / iPad / Android) for the online store of the fashion segment. The company has a retail network, but there is not a word about the presence of applications. Attendance of the site is at the level of 8,000 people per day and the company talks about the presence of applications only through its site (it’s an online store). Until mid-August, the total number of downloads was kept at 250 per day, then the iPad application came out in the TOP in its group (not sure what was holding up for a long time, judging by the incipient decline). These are the results without any effort on the so-called. ASO (Apple Store Optimization) - no financial investments in the promotion of applications and there was not.

Is it a lot or a little? Of course, it’s not for us to judge, but for the customer, but judging by the incessant stream of tasks for completion, the result is fine. If we take for granted the postulate that about 15% of the applications that installed it are then removed (we measured in due time, and in the press met similar conclusions), then it’s easy to calculate that with 500 installations per day, the company can gain a very impressive customer base from which it is possible to work further, for example, by means of push - notifications. After all, applications are not only a channel for receiving orders, but also interactive advertising of a company (interactive, because it allows not only to admire the brand icon on the device screen, but to launch, watch the assortment, news, etc.). I deliberately do not provide a schedule of installations for the segment “ready meals for home or office”, since This business segment is generally very “comfortable” for mobile applications, due to its specificity and regular demand. On the other hand, the fashion segment is, as a rule, a curious female audience and, probably, it is interesting to look at the numbers for a completely uneasy type of retail business - household appliances and electronics (extremely irregular demand, high average check, etc.). The customer is gradually reaching the level of 100 installations per day.


An example of the number of daily installations of applications for a TSE segment

Loss of customers ... yes, yes, this is also happening

Separately, I want to dwell on companies that refuse to further cooperation. At the beginning it was an unpleasant surprise for us - there are installations, orders go and ... how do you refuse? After a while, an understanding of the main motives came. Our monetization model (the minimum initial payment) has another significant disadvantage - companies that really do not really want applications, just try. No investment, well, why not try? Waiting immediately for a fantastic return, they face the reality of wasting their time on somehow promoting something done on their resources. It comes to absolute absurdity, which probably partly characterizes the thinking of some managers. A network of stores made applications - everyone is happy. After 4-5 months they write, they say, we want to refuse, because do not feel a return. Well, this is the client's right, but we try to keep and send analytics - guys, you are installing, screen views are growing, orders are coming! Yes, there may not be so many orders, so that you begin to consider mobile applications as a stable sales channel, but I'm sorry - the process is still in its infancy! You need to wait, accumulate an audience. We give examples of similar businesses. It does not work, we are determined. Well, we offer - let's leave the applications - let them work, we do not support them, but they will work. Everything is free. We are happy, left, but after a while they write again - we remove the applications altogether, because orders for goods began to come back from the application, but they forgot to update the unloading (xml) (the robot turned off apparently), so customers order goods with the wrong price. We are surprised by the powerful mind of managers, but we delete applications. We sigh and forget about the client, but he does not forget about us. Writes - customers who have managed to install applications earlier, continue (here bastards) to order goods at the old price. Do something, we are not happy with such orders and customers, and we don’t want to update xml, because we generally make a mobile site and there is no time for you. Um ... weird - but how to make those who installed uninstall applications? The client, worrying and glad that he has found a way to finish what he has done, offers - and let's send customers a push that everything, we will not work with you! Yes, the idea is sound, but support for push notifications has not yet been made, so we, laughing at the top of our voice, send an offer to the client - let us pay for the implementation of push support, we will do it, customers who have installed will update the applications, and then send that we do not want to work with you. In general, this whole story is over.

Regular advertising in Yandex.Direct, which we tried to give at the beginning of development, does not work very well. Bets on click on the request "development of mobile applications" reached up to 4 cu, there were clicks, but there was little use. Therefore, we focused on keeping our blog on the site where we write the main news, often in the “twitter” mode, because You can’t write a lot on simple things, and they completely removed the advertisement (although something remained on the Yandex balance sheet, it’s lazy, so sometimes, if rates allow, we appear in Yandex.Direct). This approach, albeit very slowly, is yielding its “fruits” and site traffic is growing and there are already incoming calls for application development. From experience I can recommend blogging - this is useful both in terms of search engine optimization and for site visitors.


Attendance of our site notissimus.com - no paid advertising, only direct visits and search traffic

Unfortunately, only about 10% of all incoming calls belong to the retail segment. I sometimes do not understand what people are counting on, asking to make a chat with photo sharing, Yandex.Taxi clone or others, it is doubtful that in the future there will be successful applications. We give such projects to different companies, but for all the time of our work (year) I have not heard that the project has even begun, and the prices start from 700,000 r. for the development. On average, we now receive about 3-4 "incoming" calls from the site per month (they write more often than they call) with the attendance of our site. Each time, giving the project to the implementation (even without the "exhaust") I am painfully offended, but really assessing the situation - to perform complex projects outside the scope of b2c / b2b now with the current load, we simply can not. In order to cut off just curious people, he began to ask the question - “are you ready to consider the project if the price is within 300,000 r. for one platform or not? "

There is an informal reward in the market in the amount of 10% from each transferred client (if the project starts, of course), but we did not receive anything, and we won’t get it. But analyzing the situation, you clearly begin to understand why mobile applications for each platform are worth their money when it comes to custom development and the fact that specialization only in a certain field of activity allows it to withstand a high rate of development. Not once, discussing the next appeal for, for example, an insurance company or carrier, within a team, I carefully raised the question saying “can we somehow fit in somehow ...?” But always the guys responsible for the production rationally paid attention to the current tasks, and I sent the application to a third-party studio. For it is said that “a flying arrow does not wag its tail” :) and although it sounds beautiful in a situation of constant replenishment with investment money ...

FRII and other sources of funding

Returning to our history, as I already mentioned, in the fall of 2013 we submitted our application to the IIDF accelerator and, miraculously, we got first in the TOP100 projects, and then in the list of those who were invited for acceleration to Moscow. The FRIA Foundation then had two types of participation - online acceleration (full-time) and offline (correspondence). We were offered exactly the full-time program and for it the fund asked for 7% of the business and gave money (something around 1,000,000 p., And part of it goes immediately for training). What is interesting is that we were generally chosen somewhere, because in fact, we were not very different from the usual studio, except that we developed our platform and concentrated on retail. I think that the reason is that the fund categorically lacked more or less “intelligible” projects showing at least some results. I will say straight away that I in no way criticize the foundation, quite the contrary, I believe that they are doing a great thing in Russia, because at the earliest stages, a young company doesn’t have many options where to go. And FRII is a good alternative. And their first set, in fact, was also a startup with all the ensuing consequences. Now they seem to have the fourth or fifth set, but I still have the feeling that the problem is not money, but strong teams with good ideas, which can then be really monetized.

In general, if you think about it, the requirements put forward by d-fonds are like a trap. Judge for yourself - the project should be scalable, clearly monetized, there should be a team (preferably 2-3 founders). It’s not very easy to imagine that 3 adults who need to feed themselves and their family get together and make a prototype for a while, so that they have little chance of getting an investment. And what do they eat in between? Moreover, if you look at the same IIDF, the units of the teams from all the sets received more or less serious investments.

We abandoned the full-time scheme, because they could not just quit their business and study in Moscow for 3 months and then talked to the mentor in absentia (videoconference on Skype once a week). Naturally, we had access to all the materials in the email. from the full-time program, but frankly speaking personally for them I did not see their value. As a result, we were invited to the demo day - the day of the presentation to investors, or rather to the rehearsal of this day. Considering that it was too luxurious for the sake of 10 minutes of rehearsal to go to Moscow, we were asked to come immediately to the demo day and ... we were no longer invited anywhere :). This is definitely our fault, because we from the very beginning did not feel, at that time, any kind of extreme need for additional. investments and were generally surprised that we were selected in the short list of participants. In any case, I wish the guys good luck, they were often criticized in the media, ridiculing supported companies, but the industry is young, there is no experience yet, and they are somewhere pioneers.

But there are programs in Russia that we would like to get into, but they don’t take us already. This is a Microsoft technology grant, a competition for which is held twice a year. Here I will make a small digression. We use all Microsoft products in our work, and in particular Azure cloud services. The client side is developed using Xamarin (formerly Mono) (recently received the status of a partner of this company) in C #. In May 2013, we submitted for participation in the Microsoft BizPark program and I really want to say a sincere "thank you" Microsoft for having the opportunity to completely legally use all the software we need, including Azure's paid cloud resources (there is a restriction, but we have not approached it yet - we optimize server calculations as much as possible).

In early 2014, we received the status of Microsoft Startup Accelerator, which gives more technological support and significantly expands the Microsoft-paid cloud resources ($ 60,000 per year). We have a curator and I must admit that it is very comfortable to work. Given our focus on Microsoft products, we very much hoped to receive a grant. I will not go deep about the grant itself, everything can be read on the website ms-start.ru. I can only say that we filed twice in 2013 and both times they refused us. The reasons for the refusal are not prescribed, but in fact they are on the surface - we have a certain hybrid of business model: neither is custom work and not an application designer. Semiautomatic This model is not scalable, it has significant drawbacks and just our drawbacks made us try new projects.

In May 2014, we again applied for a grant, but already to support our tapki project, which is a much more scalable business. — 2, .

?

— , ? 15 ( ), ~32 ( ) (). — ( ), , . «»: , , — , — ! , , . , — tapki ( , ). , . «» , ( ) . . , , « -» .

2013 ( ) 2014 . , , , , . , , - , , . — . Those. , , . , . . , 50% , 50% — , - . , — . — . . - , — . , , , . , , , , , «» . , 13 14 , , . , . , , . ( fashion), , — .. , .


2013 — 2014 — , …

() 99.9% . 10% , .. , 1% ( 14 — 7 460 . — 2013 ). 2014 ( ), .. ( , — ). . , , ( hh.ru, ), , .. .


— , … !

2014 — , — tapki. ( ) , . 2014 , — ( .). , , , . , , , . , , ( ) . , tapki — , .

. «» ( , , . , — - ) , .. , , , , , , .. - , .


2014

2014 , — , «» 900 000 ( .. , — , … , -, ). 2014 , , , , . , , .

( ) , ( 2013 2014 ). , notissimus, , , , 2014 . , .. , 100% ( ) , . , () . , , , , . , , , , .

— , , .. . 14 , , . ? , , .. ( , 19 000 000 . .), , : .




, , — , , (!) , . , , - . , , — (, ) . ( ). — , , , , , , .. , . , — . , , , 100% , .

tapki? , - , , . 2014 , , - - , . ( ) , , . , «» - , . , . , online offline ibeacon.

, - , , , , - . , , . tapki.ru tapki.com ( ) , , tapki.com , .com . 1875$. . escrow.com, - 100$ , , . — whois ( ). 77 000 . , , — . , Facebook tapki.com, fapki.com, .. . , 11.00, , fapki.com , , — , . tapki.ru — , .. whois .


tap'

, ...

… , , - - . , , «» tapki. , — , , . , tapki , , «» . , , tapki — . , (Microsoft Azure + Xamarin) , .. , «» «» .

«» twitter facebook .

, , , .. , , . , - . , — — , tapki kulgin.m@notissimus.com ( , , yandex.market xml ).

ps - « % », .. , .