What does the crowd of startups have to do with the Overgrounds Zerg

The other day we asked those who are sitting at our place, which they did not work at home. And very surprised. We waited for the standard rational arguments and theses from Wikipedia.

But Gena took it and explained why our kitchen is the best advertising platform for his project, and how he spoiled the oil industry man; Olya - how to learn from everyone after Harvard; Cyril explained in general what he thought about the club of anonymous alcoholics; and Mitya came not to nag a startup, but to rethink his idea.
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In short, we again realized that we know nothing. But we decided for sure that we are no longer coworking, but something else. For example, the collective mind of zerg. Or, perhaps, Kirill is right, the club of anonymous developers.

Come inside, I will show in faces how life is in the Russian “Kronevoy Valley”. It is kromnevoy, we have here cave technology in comparison with the United States.

Gena

Gene resigned in May. I mean, absolutely. This decision was fully realized. For three years he thought about his project, ran across ideas, presented all this in his head - but did not find time for implementation.

And in May he took and quit. Gena is a very good PM, team leader. Therefore, he had no problems finding people: the developers were found right away. The technical issue was resolved immediately and for a long time, but with PR and other strange things it was a bit difficult. We needed financiers, salespeople and other strange people for him.

But Gena is also cunning. Therefore, he realized that communication must be sought exactly in coworking. And even looked at five different places, comparing with us. He liked our coffee, events in the conference room and auditoriums every day - too. Actually, all other things being equal (for him), he chose the place by passenger traffic. And we have it turned out to be the biggest.

Gene is big. In a sense, very large. Therefore, he lives in the kitchen and often uses his head as intended. Part of the time he eats into it, and part of it thinks from within. The kitchen turned out to be the perfect advertising platform and place to meet. Even the coworking guests come into the kitchen: they say that it was Gena who ate the ABBYY vice president's sandwich when he turned away.
Residents as well as experts (including those from the neighboring IIDF accelerator) come to the kitchen as if they were drinking water. And Gene prosharenny: he hung A4 with two proposals about the project (automated logistics system for courier services, shops and trading companies) on a magnetic board. And then with the patience of this hunter began to wait at the watering.

Very soon, he was first found by a representative of a large logistics company, then by the owner of an online store. Both came to our #poSEEDelki - this is such a series of meetings where people from different areas (development, management, marketing, legal and other matters) share their experience and answer questions for free. They wrapped tea in the kitchen for a drink, and both became Gena's customers. I'm telling you, he's flushed.

Then he grew up, and they began to take him as an expert at events. He, for example, met on our Harvest with the future financial director of his project. And concurrently, the former auditor of one such small oil company.

His second life hack is also about dating. Openspace is somehow flows and routes that are easily predicted. And although Gena has an unsecured place, he is an old-timer and a kind-hearted person who is somehow uncomfortable for anyone to drive off the table where he is sitting.

He chose the table wisely: near the respite, and for many - along the way from or to the kitchen. One way or another you will pass by - and when it has already passed once-third-fifth, it is somehow inconvenient not to say hello. He said hello - you can talk in the elevator, on the way to lunch or in the same kitchen. And there and contact will be useful.

So, Gena found a partner who helps him superfastly integrate his system with online stores, then he met one contractor, and in the end he “shunted” a sales specialist who came to work in coworking. Because Gena is very shy.

Now his goal is to bring the team to ten people, and then move out of #tceh. Because we will not give him an office chill-out with ottomans, although he really wanted to. By the way, he was very sad when we took these ottomans to the Open Innovations and Moscow Startup Day. He says great help to relax and concentrate for the next breakthrough.

Now Gene has opened DinVIO: today it is the largest Russian delivery network - with 40 thousand cities available for delivery worldwide, 4500 postomatami and blackjack.

Olya

Olya is a typical student. MGIMO, working at McKinsey, and his project, conceived during the MBA at Harvard. Olya loves to learn and learn new things and try to sell different segments for diversification.

This coincidence of interests led her to #tceh: by the summer she, along with her project Elementaree, already had one product (ingredients for home-made restaurant-quality dinners), and thought to launch a new one - a tasty diet, where they give a ready-made set and a healthy nutrition program on Each day of the week. It was here that Olya decided to take advantage of the expertise we had promised in the area of ​​launching and testing new services.

That is, normal people come to coworking to sit and work, and Olya came for the "intellectual stuffing." Then it turned out that almost everyone is doing it.

While there was no regular work with experts, Olya was not afraid to hit the mail, the messenger, or go up in person and say: “Give me a specialist from this area”. And then, when we entered office hours - this is when experts and investors come to us twice a week and give us 4-8 personal consultations on projects, after the internal mailing, you couldn’t say - the first person to sign up would be Olya.

She signed up for a meeting with Runa Capital, in the process they found out that the audience of the two portfolio companies of the fund overlap with its audience - this is the point of growth. This is all because Olya can coolly negotiate: at the institute she skimped on almost all the lectures for the sake of work, but everyone loved her, allowed to take all the exams - and she passed them perfectly well.

The elementaries are the “veterans” of our office hours, almost no consultation during these months has passed without them. Olya took some of the meetings with experts on herself, sent others from the team to the others, depending on the topic. But I always booked time with an expert in my name, and then delegated. Noticing that this is not an accident, but a trend, we asked “why so”.

It turned out that she was pumping the team in this way, and at the same time keeping everything under control: “We don’t have to go to the office hours - got up, got to the meeting room, then sat down to work further. And when we actively test new ideas and channels, it turns out to be priceless. The invited expert has more experience and contacts in some area, and we, in fact, take his brains to rent for half an hour. ”

This is how her project grows, both in the number of people in a team, and in the number of clients (a couple hundred new ones every month), in turnover, and in recognition.

Olya knows how to serve herself - and the evidence of that is not only her 16 pairs of “workers” shoes in our common wardrobe, but also the fact that some of our experts then come to coworking specifically for her project, and some even beta-test their product.

By the way, Ole herself also needs a diet - (no, she is not fat) only as a project leader about “a healthy lifestyle is simple” in order to stick to it even better. She is generally a fan of healthy lifestyles.

One Sunday she made a traditional run for work, went to a local shower and found that there were no towels, and behind the door - 20 programmers from the hackathon for all the good and against all the bad. In order not to jeopardize the final of Hack4good, she decided to establish how much the body dries itself, and at the same time she had successful negotiations right out of the shower. I say, she knows how cool to negotiate.

But we fell in love with her before this story - she and her guys really know how to work. When the co-working was just beginning, it was empty, and we stayed up at night and on weekends, there was always someone motivating to plow. This was her team.

Especially for their sake, we even added the item “do not beat a punching bag until the late evening comes” to “The Co-worker’s Codex” - their table is closest to the chill-out, where Geno's favorite ottomans, horizontal bar and punching bag. Quite, by the way, loud.

Speaking of pear.

Kirill

He created the application, which “Poster” included in the number of the best releases of last year - along with applications from Codeacademy, Coursera and Coub. But then somehow did not go. It was not possible to monetize, as it was supposed, and with partners they postponed everything until better times. Until someone appears who will help solve the problem in a complex.

A month ago, on the advice of our resident and co-founder of his project - Max, who is responsible for the freelance Dizkon, Cyril came to us for the “magic Pendel”, found a punching bag, which he dreamed so much, but could not hang at home, well, he got it in full - like Once in this time we have introduced another approach to working with projects, traction meetings.

These are weekly meetings where teams are helped to set goals, find ways to achieve them and focus. Partly like the “club of anonymous somebody” - several teams attend the meeting, each sharing its plans and problems; what has been done has not been done and is planned to be done; all this is subject to collective discussion.

And since you took the floor in front of others, it is already psychologically difficult to jump off the tasks that you have planned. Say, finish testing this module, call 100 potential customers or something else. Well, in fact - you get a mentor, just do not need to give a share. Here it is called “tracker” - this is our CTO, which studied the technique through training on the two previous sets of the IIDF accelerator.

His task is not to think for you, but to make you think. Plus run the “collective mind” of leaders of other projects. Because if several intelligent people gathered in a room, everyone has some experience, then why not use it. Accordingly, a lot of ideas and hypotheses are snapped up here, which you can then try to implement “under the deadline”. This is exactly what Cyril needed.

He began to test with might and main those ideas that I would like to implement in the application, but somehow it was lazy and my hands did not reach. In the process of communication I found among the residents guys who are ready to help him with sales. On the tracker's advice, I went to catch Fyodor Skuratov, who now saws his project with us, and also knows a lot about promotion in social networks (because the topic of alcohol freebies seems to be done there).

And since Kirill himself was no longer a techie (although he had once studied in a physicotechnical school and finished the VMK), he was left to manage the developers, we also gave him training to Grisha Sitnin, who ate python with the management of it-commands .

So Cyril is doing everything to launch the new Alkoscaner. Finally, the next version of the application has found a normal TK.

Mitya

Mitya is a special case. He took the tariff for 7 days any month and only appeared on those 7 days.

The guy had an offline business about retail, but he got bored. And he came up with the idea of ​​becoming such a mediator and arbiter for those who bring business online: make sure that contractors do not chemize with metrics and analytics in advertising, to remove the headache in all that concerns promotion. And all this for a tough result.

He came to us with the ideas of such a project, for which a couple of clients have already voted for the ruble. Says: “I want to scale.”

What finally blew his head. We thought that co-working is when you need to sit down and figure over your height, and he has a lot of weak points there: you have to learn to strictly control and take into account something to scale something. In short, it is very tough to regulate from all sides.

Now Mitya is a regular participant in office hours and traction rallies, and the project is being built right before our eyes. It turns out marketing service (audit, analytics, consulting) for small and medium businesses.

The most remarkable thing is that the experts in personal consultations, and the guys on the trains, work with Mitya with no less interest than with those who already have something more ready.

He also gave us the practice of a kind of small home Founder Institute. This is the kind of program that the old Elon Musk named Adeo Ressi is doing in America. They take money from good people, and then they help to find and entrust an idea that would have potential in the market, and to launch a project.

Mitya still did little, but we cheer for him. Recently, he brought a colleague and they sat down to us on a permanent basis.

Overmind

Returning to the zerg collective mind. We have a piece of Y Combinator, a piece of General Assembly (this is an educational program), a piece of FI and many other projects that inspire us. We have our own approaches - first of all, to building a community, into which disparate teams and specialists turn here. Over each project, in fact, works not only his team, but also hundreds of people from all sides - both from #tceh and FRIA, and just guests, who can be approached in the kitchen and ask a couple of questions.

In this environment there is no impracticable or incomprehensible. There is just a job to take and do. And working in coworking is convenient and fast. Well laze does not work. That's how we live.