Three Nicholas, or how I came up with the service for Eycharov

Do not praise yourself, no one praises. Rather, it may praise, but not as it should. We were once again convinced of the immutability of this truth almost immediately after we decided to throw among our startups on VCStart the call to send us our Dev Story. For no one with more eagerness, love and diligence will tell about his brainchild than the one who gave birth to him. Throw something thrown, especially not planning waiting times. However, some of the most nimble start-up authors responded almost immediately, as if everyone had written a long time ago and was just waiting for an invitation from us to tell about ourselves. One of the first to be active was the project Record.com, with which we, perhaps, will begin. Here is the story of the author of this startup (the style and vocabulary saved):

Coming first

Everybody says that an idea comes when you pound your head in one and the same place for a long time, then horns grow at some point, and it becomes easier to butt with life with them. In my case, there was nothing like this. Just at one point, I suddenly felt the needs of the market.
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A couple of years ago, I earned my living and Starbucks duty mugs as freelancing - I made various high-powered PHP web projects (Yii framework) to order. Kopeyka, in general, was going - orders were slowly brought by a well-placed advertisement that turned out to be long-playing, and word of mouth began to help over time - a satisfied customer was in itself a good peddler of information. The work did not fail, but there was not much free time either - one project was handed over, another one immediately appeared.

Well, one day, a certain Nikolai called on the recommendation of another Nikolai, introduced himself as the chief of Eycharov of a large company, outlined the wishes of the project, and made an appointment.

Met Nikolai turned out to be a very combative and enterprising man, but at the same time he looked chronically tired. During the conversation, it turned out that the reason for this lay precisely in what was discussed. A few months ago, the company in which he headed the personnel service, quite suddenly entered a new stage of its development - it was lucky to absorb one of the important competitors. Investors, having seen the prospect, threw several million dollars under this case, the company opened a number of new branches and went to the undeveloped regions. At the same time, the HR service was expanded at first forgotten, and for some time it remained a small personnel department with three employees intimidated by overworking work and a boss blackened by chronic steaming. Then they added people and gave them a budget for optimization, which led Nikolay to me without delay.

The task was set to me nontrivial - to implement the functionality of the registration of candidates and records for interviews. In general, TK was drafted with him for me, he gave an advance payment, discussed the size of the bonus for urgency, and I immediately took it.

Take 2

Three weeks later, when the work was already done, and the money was paid, that Nicholas called (by the way, also an HR manager, but at another company), on the recommendation of which Nicholas II addressed. Apparently, they talked to each other, Nikolay (the First) liked the new feature, and he wanted the same for himself. In addition, he decided to go further and loaded me with the creation of a functional to get rid of the routine - coordinating the time of the interview, sending letters with the directions, transferring earlier scheduled meetings, etc.

Since the main code was already written, the work went faster, and a week later, one more call rang out from early morning: “Hello, my name is Nikolay, the company is such and such. Nikolai sent me to you. ”

Nikolai the Third

Since I took this info all in the remnants of sleep, the first thought was about insanity, the second - that it was time to rest, then when all three eychars were identified by the brain as separate people, panic came (Why are all the personnel officers - Nikolai ??! ).

But Nicholas the Third was courteous and friendly in the phone, I quickly pulled myself together, and was able to more or less adequately accept an order from him. As a result, he was lucky with the product most of all - the third version of the service for Nikolaev was the most advanced and smooth. I almost completely automated the process of recording interviews and wiped out the entire time consuming routine of it.

"Service named after three Nikolaev"

The time has passed, there were still calls - Nikolai praised their tools right and left and recommended me very well (though to people with more diverse names), but I was completely taken over by the idea of ​​creating a full-fledged service based on early practices, and I was completely busy with them. As a result, appeared Sign up. com is a service for staff, which can save up to 80% of working time or significantly reduce the costs of personnel departments for employers. It seems to me alone that in many companies they are unduly inflated?


The main thing about the project: using it, employers can:

Keep a register of their open vacancies;
Keep archive of previously closed vacancies;
Keep an archive of resumes and interview results;
Post your vacancies or links (to vacancies on job search sites);
And specify time intervals for interviews;

Invited candidates, in turn, choose convenient time and date (if they are free) and sign up for an interview, receive a location map and a reminder of the interview by e-mail, get the opportunity to keep records and comment on the results of their interviews. The essential point is that the whole process takes place right on the employer's site, which is very convenient for all parties. In addition, the employer can connect the service without using the work of programmers - adaptation of the user version of the service to the customer’s site does not require special knowledge and skills.



The service monetization model provides the following - the main functionality will be provided free of charge, but with some limitations. PRO functionality will be available at an additional cost.

If we talk about competitors, I did not see similar services, although, to be honest, I did not find any special studies of this market. However, among the employees of specialized services of companies I know, the majority expressed their readiness to use such a service and pay an acceptable monthly fee for it.

At present, a site is being prepared for release, which will be launched soon, a team is being created (by the way, I will be very happy if an advertising and marketing guru joins it), a monetization model is being developed.

According to my expectations, in 5-6 months after launch, the project should become self-sufficient, further its profits will grow and invest in advertising. Thus, in two years it is planned to increase the value of the shares of investors by 30-50 times. I would be happy to receive feedback from the staff of the personnel services - all requests will be taken into account in the further development of the service, and of course, investors!



About the author: Evgeniy Kofanov - CEO Sign up. Professional php (Yii) developer. Education: applied informatics in economics. Interests: traveling, motorcycles, sports, extreme, self-development, music, business, investment.

Buy a share (from $ 30) in a startup Sign up.com is possible on the VCStart collective investment platform.