If you are thinking about your startup, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the master class of Arkady Moreynis, which he spent at the Technopark. Here he shares his view on startups as such, talks about the most different aspects of their creation and important points that need to be addressed. Lecture notes, as always, under the cut.

Scope: what is a startup?

There is an opinion that the creators of startups receive overnight millions, hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. That a startup is something like a game, a quest: you do unnecessary nonsense to anyone, and some dupe pays you an inordinate amount of money for it. In principle, such a model has the right to exist. But there are nuances.

In general, the concept of "startup" and the associated hysteria came to us from America. By and large, we can say that there is some American way of the emergence and development of startups, which, unfortunately, for understandable financial and economic reasons, is not realized anywhere else in the world. What is the American startup model? One or several founders create a certain product and begin to develop it. This is due to investment money. And for all the time of the startup, no money is earned and is not attracted. In general, this is not necessary, because the main goal is that at some point a larger company will buy your startup. This magic moment is called “exit”. A coveted “way out” for founders and investors who, roughly speaking, only at that moment receive money for a pocket.
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In principle, there are still legends about IPO (Initial Public Offering), that is, the first exit of the company to the exchange, but here is the same story. A startup simply takes a part of its shares and sells them on the stock exchange, but not to one large company, but to a bunch of private owners. Moreover, in the fields, we note that in the total volume of exit issues, 90% are purchases by larger companies, and only 10% are IPOs. These "exit" is the classic American model. What happens in the process, whether people earn money does not matter. The most important thing is whether this company will be needed by another big company.

Why in America there is such a model? For two main reasons. Reason number one: the pressure of money in the market. In all kinds of funds accumulated a huge amount of money. They can not put them on deposit and receive their legal interest. They are obliged to invest them in order for this money to work in the economy. As a result, there is the pressure of investment money - the flow of money that needs to be invested somewhere. If there is such a need, then there will be a market for companies that are ready to take this money. Reason number two: the exchange that works. After entering the stock exchange - after the company became public - the company has securities that receive a separate customer value. Consumer value is very conditionally related to the dividends received by the owners of this share. There is such a ratio P / E - price-earnings ratio - the ratio of the price of shares to the annual dividend per share. For well-traded companies, this ratio may be, for example, 200 (or maybe more ). That is, I can sell a share for a price equivalent to 200 years of receiving dividends for this share. At the same time, the company may have a profit, or it may not be - it is of another concern: can I make money by reselling these shares.

Here are two reasons why a mysterious economy arises, in which the real performance of the company and the money that can be earned at this company in one way or another are two separate phenomena. From this arises a series of consequences. Everything is being done to show that the company is growing and developing to make its shares worth more. Many tried to sell this model in other national markets, but it does not work anywhere. Large companies do not want to buy small ones, because they do not see economic sense in this, as a result there is no buyer market. If we in Russia want to sell, for example, an e-commerce company, then its cost is likely to be 0.5-1 annual profit, or, in other words, the valuation multiplier will be 0.5-1. And no one understands why buying a startup for more money.

It is from here that the very “dark side” arose, about which I mentioned in the title - “What if this doesn't work?”. Unfortunately, there remains only one option - to try to make money. The sad, cruel truth, but this is the path that can and should be taken, because everything else is fortune telling on the coffee grounds, a tape measure. With the same success, you can go and put all the money in the casino at zero. I am not saying that there are no exceptions. Sometimes someone buys someone. I also had this: Price.ru, which I did and managed 10 years, was bought by Rambler, one of the startups I invested in two years ago, was bought by a European company. It was a service Podorozhniki.com - search for travel companions. In January, BlaBlaCar bought and opened its Russian representative office on its base. But you can not count on it systematically. It is possible and necessary to rely only on the fact that we came up with the idea of ​​a new business, started to do it and make money from it. Everything. Point. Welcome to the dark side! Forget about all sorts of good investors, blue helicopters, free investments.

Why start a new business?

If you have this question, then do not need to do this. Because 99% of new businesses will die. “I have already done enough work for my uncle, now I want to work for myself. I want to do some business ”- this is almost a dead end approach. Because, I repeat once again, 99% of these attempts will be doomed to failure. Severe, brutal statistics. The period of time during which the company will die is a painful and difficult process. These are nightmares, these are horrors: “How will I pay my salary tomorrow?”. It is the responsibility of those people who believed in you and started working on you. And even if successful, this process of either survival or dying - which is called the “valley of death” - is 3-5 years of the company's work. You do not know what will happen. You know one thing: with a 99 percent chance you won't crawl to the end of this valley. And therefore, I repeat once again, this can and should be done only if you cannot not do this for some reason. For example, inside you there is an iron rod that makes you do something. Or you are hit on the whole head, and for some reason you want to change the world.

Leo Tolstoy once said: “Write only if you cannot help but write” (well, or something like that). Doing business is exactly from the same field. That is, they can and should be engaged only when you can no longer do this, and when you are ready for all the problems arising from this. Elon Musk once said: “To open a new business is the same as to face death. If you are ready for this, you can go ahead. "

When we start a new project, we need to understand that business consists of three levels. The first is the ambitions of the founders. What makes them or him do this business. The second level is the level of the company. That is, you are doing a company that has (disgusting word) "mission". There is such an English expression - the company must have “mission” and “vision”. In general, in the corporate world of late, both of these words are used with contempt intonation. Because most often “mission” and “vision” are some pieces of paper on which “We want peace in the whole world, so that all may be well, bring well-being to all our shareholders, happiness to our employees, joy from the lives of our customers”. And other nonsense from the same series. By and large, the company really has a certain mission, a field of activity, a general principle according to which it works and operates. At the third level, there are specific products, goods or services that the company sells. And here, on the third level, the most important thing is to earn money. For the company to live, for the company's “mission” to be fulfilled, for the founder’s ambitions to be fulfilled. This level should be very well thought out, calculated, because none of your consumers will bite your ambitions and “missions” without specific products. Imagine: you are the founder of a startup with ambitions, you went outside and said: "I want money for a new apartment, throw off as much as you can." How much will you get? Therefore, you must disguise your ambitions, turn them into “mission” and “vision”, and then into specific products in the eyes of those who will pay the money.

Where does the money go?

And now we will try to understand where this money comes from and where it disappears. Any company has four sides. The first, the most important side, is the customers who bring you money. The second side is conditional suppliers of goods that you sell to the buyer. As you understand, almost any model can be brought under the "buy-sell" scheme.

When we talk about the buy-sell model, the first association is an old paradigm that really has been living for a long time: you had to find a cheaper product, buy it, bring it and find buyers for it to sell more. But this paradigm is already slowly ceasing to work, and because of the Internet. On the Internet, the path between the buyer and virtually any seller is minimal. You can find almost everything you need. And offline it is becoming increasingly difficult to find buyers for previously purchased goods. Therefore, I defend a completely different paradigm: now the main value of any business is your clients, your target audience, that is, those people who already trust you. Buyers who buy something from you. Your task is to understand what they need, then to find it somewhere or to do it - and sell it. That is, the situation is the opposite of the buy-sell model: “find what to sell to your customers.” An excellent example is Apple. There are people who buy Apple computers - let's make an iPod and sell to Apple buyers, then let's make an iPhone and sell computers and an iPod to buyers, and so on. This is a good classic story that very clearly shows that your customers are your loyal loyal customers. As soon as you found them, your task is to understand how to please them now. The third side is infrastructure. In order for the business to work, we need employees, an office, a warehouse, a server, and production. The fourth side is taxes. On which money too leaves.

As a result, money comes from one side, and comes from three. But here, in fact, two more arrows are missing. First, advertising. In order for us to have buyers, we must spend money to attract customers. In good, you need to spend money on attracting suppliers. To buy from them at the best prices, under normal conditions, you have to care for them, carry them over expensive taverns, drink expensive brandy, and convince them. That is, the money goes to as many as five sides, but still comes from one side.

Counting money

I would prefer to forget about investments at all. For several reasons. The first is that as soon as people start planning investments, they involuntarily begin to think that the main goal of their business is to get the very investments. This is a dead end road. Ideally, one should strive to earn money, not receive. Therefore, money is rather another infrastructural resource. That is, you can get an investment, but you can take a loan from a bank, mortgage an apartment. Or, if you need a square, someone can give you room instead of money. That is, money is the same resource. We get money and still pay for their use: interest on the loan, shares in the company or something else.

The whole problem of opening a new business is not really in investment, but in attracting customers. Where to get them, how much will you have to spend on it? Hiring people, oddly enough, is not a problem, but a task. If the problem can be solved with money, it is not a problem, it is an expense. These are understandable, predictable processes that, if there is demand and money, any competent, sensible person can decide.

Warning for the nerds

When I use the word "bot", it is not out of malice. I myself graduated from the faculty of the Moscow State University with a red diploma, so I am also an honored nerd with experience. So a warning to nerds: a product is not what we do, it is what we sell. The product is not software, not a site, not an application that you have made. A product is a set of properties that you sell to a potential buyer. A few examples to illustrate.

Example number one. A letter comes from the programmer - he is developing a trading platform where sellers can post their goods: “I am a programmer, my project is almost ready, I have already made a website, only two trifles remain - tell me how to find buyers and sellers. Everything else has already been done. The project is 95% ready. ” This is just a common mistake. If you do not know where to get buyers and sellers, you do not have a product. You have anything on your hands, but not a product.

The second example. The same technology or technical component may be a different product, depending on how you submit it. For example, a blender and a meat grinder. We understand that from the point of view of the engineer it is the same thing. What's the difference? There is a shredder that rotates on an axis inside the container, horizontally or vertically, the crushed product can be squeezed out or remain inside the container. But still these are two completely different products. They are advertised in different ways, designed for different target audiences. The advantages are completely different properties. Therefore, what you program or do with your hands, and what you sell are just two completely different things. You can even sell what is not yet. And you need to start with this. Therefore, we smoothly proceed to the next topic, which is called ...

Iterate it

In order to start selling something, you first need to realize whether someone needs it. This is followed by two more questions: are people willing to pay for it and are people ready to pay you for it? Because there is a difference, whether this product offers IBM or Vasya Pupkin. These are the three most important questions that need to be answered as soon as possible. The question of whether we can program this is the fourth and much less important.

Most startups fail because they satisfy non-existent needs. They invented a certain need, then for some time they developed a product that supposedly satisfies this need. After 12 months, for example, they enter the market with this product. And they understand that there is no effect. Because they did not understand whether this product is needed at all by someone. So the most important rule - starting any business, you need to understand whether someone needs what you do and whether people are ready to pay for it. The sooner you answer this question, the better. You need to know what is the main feature of your product. What exactly are you trying to offer people? What kind of need are you trying to satisfy?

A very common situation is when beginning startups come and ask for money for product development. For example, they want to make an application for dating. Or dating site. “And why will people use it?” - “There are 28 reasons for this.” In fact, the reason is only one. The most important. If you cannot single out this cause, this is already a problem that stands before you. As soon as you have identified this main reason or the main feature of your product and started testing, in order to understand whether people need this “satisfactory”, an interactive cycle begins. We have to make the so-called MVP (minimum viable product), the minimum workable product, whose main task is on the knee, even if it is crooked, oblique, but to check the first, basic hypothesis. After that we start trying to sell. Try on this minimally workable product to attract customers. Next, we evaluate the results of this attraction. And according to their results, either we make changes to the main hypothesis, or we start testing further, adding more and more new properties, expanding the range of the offer.

Ideally, this process will look like a spiral from the course of the Marxist-Leninist dialectic: with each new iteration, we are more and more bringing the product to its ideal form. But the point is that in each new version, in each new release, we are trying to test a certain hypothesis that people need this thing, they are ready to pay for it. At the same time, I repeat, in a certain general case, MVP is not even a product in the full sense of the word, because the most important thing is to find out if people are ready to buy it. For example, one American company had the idea that they would sell people sets of ingredients and recipes immediately for cooking for a week. That is, people can order a certain menu once a week, get sliced ​​products with a courier, and prepare a week out of it. Why would an average dolt start in a startup? From simple: he would have programmed the site with the selection of recipes for the parameters. What did the authors of the idea do? They went to the nearest supermarket and began to catch aunts. That is, they literally approached aunts who went to buy in this supermarket and said: “We have a service - for 9.95 dollars a week we can bring you products and recipes for a whole week of cooking”. And pay attention - they did not ask: "But if we make this product, would you use it?". No need to ask at all. This is a very simple law. Why not ask? Yes, because all people lie. And most of the time. Someone from evil, someone not from evil.

Speaking of supermarkets, there was at one time such a psychological experiment: researchers stood at the entrance and asked people what they were going to buy. And then at the exit from the supermarket they checked these lists with the fact that the person is really in the basket. Matches less than 50%. Do not ask, because you can answer anything. Gallup once got interesting research results: for men interviewed by young girls, the average income was 25% higher than the average for the sample. Well, people lie, so what do you do now? Therefore, asking meaningless.

The second reason not to ask is that many people really do not know whether they want something or not. Do any of you remember Norton Commander? It was in its time a legend for each programmer, and just a DOS user. Its creator, Peter Norton, somehow came to Moscow in the early 1990s and told a story: “Imagine there is a regular DOS user (black screen, green letters, etc.). I come to him and ask: “And if I make such a program that closes DOS from you, and there will be two blue panels, and you can use the F5 button to copy files between these panels?”. It is clear that, at best, he would be answered: “The devil knows”, and at worst: “Why do we need this? We have a DOS. If this is something new, people cannot say whether they will use it or not. In addition, the details are very important. No need to ask. It should be as fast and easy to do.

Coming back to these two guys from the supermarket. They found the first aunt who agreed to pay them $ 9.95. After that, they again did not run to program. They began to pick up recipes, buy goods, cut them, put them in bags, and each week bring all this to my aunt and listen to all the feedback from her last week. And get your legitimate $ 9.95. In parallel, they pestered other aunts. They began to make of this some kind of service only at the moment when they stopped coping with the flow of aunts. They understood that they had groped the topic, and people need it. This is one of the examples when it is possible and necessary to begin without making a complete product.

Another simple implementation of this principle is the landing pages (landing pages), which are imposed on the teeth, which, however, are molded by everyone, anyone, on the case and without it. At the moment when you want to test whether people need it or not, you launch a simple advertisement that leads to one page with a description of the product and a button “Leave your email, we will notify you when the product starts.” If you are unable to gather people even there, then the product can not be done. In any story, you need to test, find out if there is a response — does anyone need your product?

So, the basic principle, the basic equation of business - the cost of attracting a buyer should be less than the earnings per buyer. If you spent a hundred rubles on advertising, one client came to you, and you earned 101 rubles on it, then this has a chance. Otherwise, why do we need such a business? By the way, another popular misconception of many startups: “There is a business, we do something and we sell, we need money” - “And for what money?” - “Well, we need money for advertising so that everyone will know about us”. If money is lost on every sale, it will be even worse if you learn everything about you. You’ll just lose more money, and that’s it.

Therefore, there is such a thing as “unit analysis” - analysis at the level of a single sale. What happens in a single transaction? How much on one transaction we earn, how much and on what do we lose money? If, at the level of a single transaction, there is no positive balance, then this means everything. For simplicity, the fixed costs (staff, office, etc.) I deducted. Because here is just a matter of scale. Even if you spend 100 rubles, earn 101, and spend 100 on an office, this means that you need to sell a hundred units of goods in order to only cover these fixed costs. And everyone who comes to me does not understand this simple formula. They have the whole story: - "We have no customers, give us money for advertising." - “Okay, how much does it cost to attract one client?” - “Oh, and we don't know” or “We did not count”. There is another good answer: “They come to us themselves”. When people come for themselves for some reason, it means that you cannot influence this process. And it is possible that in no way can you increase this flow. Take the very investment. They are needed exactly at the moment when you conducted a unit analysis. That is, you realized that you can spend 100 rubles and earn 101. At this moment you can really come to the investor and say: "Give me a million rubles, and as a result we will earn the appropriate amount of money."

This is the very first stage in the development of any startup: testing the hypothesis, during which you are trying to either change the product so that it becomes attractive to a person, or change the way the product’s value is conveyed. And for this unit-analysis a lot of money is not necessary. At the level of 10, 50, 100 buyers, it is already starting to work. If it does not work even at this level, it will not be better from the fact that more money is spent, only worse.

Changes in the properties of the product during the adaptation process vary over a very wide range. It should be based on observations of the reaction of users, and not just from the head. How did YouTube start? He was conceived as a dating service, in which people could simply upload their videos. As a result, suddenly it came to the realization that people do not get to know each other very actively, but they watch videos with great pleasure. Therefore, it was decided: to do video hosting.

Another example. At the beginning of the last century, an American company was selling cake mixes. It was enough to take the blank and put it in the oven. Nobody bought this mixture. Then they removed the eggs from this mixture and said: "You must buy this mixture, break the egg, and then the cake will be ready." And women began to buy it. Because they began to participate in the cooking process. That is, they could proudly say to her husband: “I prepared.”

Sometimes it is enough to change the distribution channel of your product. Again an American example: Life Savers lollipops. Nobody bought them (as legend says), then they agreed with small shops and began to lay out these Life Savers near the cash register. And then flooded, people began to buy them while standing in line or for delivery. That is, changes can be associated with so many things. This is exactly the stage at which you need to test the hypothesis. And you should not need external resources to test this idea.

The second problem is the team. Among you - founders, founders of the project - there should be people needed to conduct all these tests. You do not need to hire programmers or marketers. You should be able to do all this and be able to do it yourself. Because there is nothing worse than a situation: - “Here, I have an idea” - “Well, well, what do you need?” - “I need money” - “For what?” - “Well, how? I need to hire a programmer, a marketer, and a sales person. ” Then the question arises: “And who are you at all? What do you know, what is your value? ".

Competition

When you are trying to test an idea, it is very important to understand how people are now meeting this need. And at the same time it is important to look not only at those who do the same thing as you. And for those who satisfy the same need. A classic example from Kotler: a man comes to the store to buy a drill. What is the competitor of this drill? Not only other drills, but perforators, punches, “husbands for an hour” and any other means that can provide a hole in the wall. Because a person comes to the store to buy a hole in the wall, not a drill.

Now the question arises: what basic criteria should your idea meet in order to make it worth it at all to start? And here we come to a paradoxical thought. In order to articulate it clearly, let's look at the phenomenon of competition. We understand that we live under capitalism, competition is the basis of the foundations of the capitalist mode of reproduction. What is bad competition? As soon as we try to do the same as others, we enter into competition. As a result, if a mass product is already being sold, then at some point a person begins to choose by price. This is normal. Why buy something more expensive if you can buy cheaper? Therefore, for the user everything is fine and good. He gets goods and services all cheaper, cheaper and cheaper. All better, better and better. And sellers in the struggle for lower prices are forced to cut their margins, lower costs, that is, lower the quality of their work. All in pursuit of the buyer, for a decrease in margin. This means that if you came up with some idea in such a market, where a lot of people-sellers work, the question arises: “Did you go there at all? Do you understand what this will lead to? ”

In such markets, there is one paradox in the belief of venture investors - that you need to invest in companies that work in already established markets. That is, the need for a certain product has already been confirmed - it means that you can invest in some other company that operates in this market. This company has investment money, and it starts to work in the negative. They sell goods at a loss to themselves simply in order to gain some mythical market share, according to the principle “If we kill everyone else now, we will be the only ones, then we will start earning money.” But precisely because of that very competition, they will never be the only ones. More and more new and naive companies will come to the place of the dead, who will decide to work in competitive markets, more and more new investment money will come, people will spend more money to earn more than they earn. These companies have huge losses. Why? Because they are fighting for some market share. For the momentum, for the sake of growth. As a result, they have investment support, and they wash out other smaller businesses, normal people trying to make money.

So, any attempt to enter a competitive market is a clear understanding that sooner or later this will lead to a decrease in margin to a minimum. Either this is an attempt to follow the American investment model, because mergers and takeovers occur in this market. , . ( , — ). , . : ? . , ?

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It follows that we must first test our idea with the expectation of the future. It is necessary to think, to search inside what you are doing, a certain new property. And try to check whether people perceive this property? Can you saddle him and become the future of Apple, the future of Coca Cola, the future of Starbucks or someone else? You need to understand if you have enough resources for this, or you die.

Where to start and how to continue?

Most successful businesses are done by two or three founders. If you are alone, most likely you will fail. Here is the truth of life. There are almost no successful companies (although there are exceptions) who have one founder. Recently I came across a book by some American business popularizer, written sometime in 1900 - “The 13 Axioms of Successful Business.” Axiom number one - every business must be done by at least two people. Moreover, this statement is based on several facts. Fact number one is specialization or competency. It is usually considered, especially in technology-related companies, that there must be a hacker and a hustler. That is, a person who knows the technical side, and a person who knows how to sell. If they unite, it means they have a chance of success.

Some believe that these competencies should be three - hacker, hustler and designer. And the “designer” is not the one who draws, but the one who understands how this product will be visually, tactile, somehow, the user feels. In this sense, Dropbox is a good example. The founders ran at one time, looking for investments for two years. Because by this time there were already a lot of archival copying systems on the Internet. And then they made a certain MVP: they shot a video in which they showed what it would look like in reality. The main strength of Dropbox is seamless integration into the system. Lack of settings, simplicity and clarity. In one night, they received the same 45,000 registrations for the non-existing Dropbox.

Even if there is no technical component in business, for example, you open a store, one runs around the buyers, the other organizes work in the store. But in almost every business there are several competencies. And one person usually fails to be both a Swedish, a reaper, and a drummer. He simply does not have enough head, time, strength.

The second point is psychology. As I said, the story of any new business, the story of a startup is a story of disappointment. You have too many horrors and nightmares, you come to the idea more than once that everything is lost. Nothing happens, nothing will happen, success will never come, everything we do is not needed by anyone, etc. Winston Churchill once said: “What is success? Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without losing enthusiasm. ” And the two founders, no matter how ridiculous, can simply support each other in difficult times. When one believes that everything is bad, the second one says: “Yes, no, it’s still not entirely bad, it will be even worse.” After a while, they switch roles. This is a psychological shoulder, support.

There is a saying: “An adult dude in a suit stands behind any successful dude in jeans”. It was at one time and talked about Apple. They had the first angel investor, business angel Mike Markkula, and Jobs admitted that there would be no Mike - nothing would have happened. So let me take a digression and talk a little about the role of the business angel in the life of a starting business (this is what I have been doing for the last 4 years).

The main reason why start-up project founders come to a business angel is not money at all; come to help him test the hypothesis at the level of the minimum product. This is a stage that should require a minimum of money, just by definition. If it is not, then this is an incomplete team, or the guys are doing some kind of nonsense. Given that the founders also have to take risks (with their time, money, etc.), you can bring the idea to the point of absurdity and say that the ideal business angel is the one that will make the project achieve first success for their own money. That is, without investing anything at all. Therefore, very often, I can say to a business angel, they come for the third shoulder (if the first two shoulders are at the first two founders) - as a person who already has some experience, communication, able to look at the situation from above or from the side and what something to suggest.

I do not in any way want, will not and cannot replace the founders. I tried to do it. It turns out very easy to replace. Replace - in a moral sense. You start telling them what to do. At some point they agree with everything, they begin to listen to you and become complete impotent in the sense of business. Just go and do as they were told. And then they came back to you and said: “Okay, what to do next?” Or: “And we did not succeed. What to do next?". Therefore, a business angel is a third party, an angel or a devil, who shares experience, a look from above, connections and, possibly, money. But these are not classic investments (“give us more money”), but help at the stage of testing hypotheses.

It is very difficult to find a founder for a finished project, to infect him. Because infection happens somehow differently. Therefore, the process usually looks the other way around. First, there is a group of people interested in something similar, doing something together, inside one class, Technopark, special courses - anywhere. Then a certain idea crystallizes and a team arises that is ready to take risks and go on to iterate the process, try to understand whether it works or not.

Communication of people is crucial for the birth of ideas. If you think you can sit in an empty room, put your hand on your forehead and come up with an idea, you are mistaken. Either you come up with something obvious, or no one needs. There is a good book called “Where good ideas come from”. The author claims that the industrial revolution in England took place at the time when coffee shops appeared. Because before that public places were taverns. People came there, quickly got drunk, and all the talk flowed in different directions. In the coffee house, people began to drink coffee, as a result of communication, new ideas began to emerge, which led to an explosion of invention and everything else that led to the industrial revolution.

Another interesting story on the same subject: in one research institute, cameras were set up and for some time they recorded the actions and conversations of people. After some time, after analyzing, we were surprised to find that almost all new ideas appeared in the canteen. That is, where people talked, talked. The laboratory carried out only the verification of ideas. That's all. By the way, more about these coffee shops. I met with one of Moscow restaurateurs and somehow told him about the connection between coffee shops and the industrial revolution. He says: “For several years I have been thinking of writing a book about the role of coffee shops in general in the history of civilization. Damn it, with the industrial revolution, the French revolution also originated in coffee shops, and then splashed out onto the streets of Paris. ” There are many stories.

Somewhere in 1990, I started programming on a Macintosh. They were already supplied with microphones at that time. And I wrote a program that could transfer sound from a computer to a computer over a local network. This program somehow randomly on a disk with shareware got into an American company that developed a similar program, but they didn’t do it very well. As a result, they bought this program from me and began to sell instead of theirs. And at that time I got a crazy bunch of money that I invested in my first business. And the very idea of ​​this program originated from some random conversation in the smoking room of the MSU research and computing center, where I worked at that time.

The idea of ​​the same Price.ru, which I founded in 1997, arose from a very simple thing. Once sat with a friend - Boris Lozinsky, one of the founders of "Consultant Plus" - and he said: "Listen, but this is why there is no such convenient catalog on the Internet where you could compare prices quickly, efficiently, a lot?". At that time there was only the most important paper reference book “Mobile” and several small and inconvenient Internet services. I was hooked on this thought, and so Price.ru appeared.

How to start your business? Need to communicate. Rotate in the company of people with whom you feel comfortable and who share your interests. Learn something new, meet and discuss programming, non-programmer, any problems. Only the presence of these links can lead to the fact that there will be some kind of clue, and from real life. And already continuing to discuss with people who have expressed an important idea, you can form, grind the idea - and that will be the very same two or three founders.

Immediately warning. As soon as some idea came to your mind, first look on the Internet. And it comes to ridiculous. If people think that their ideas have no competitors, this means several things at once. First, they do no research. Secondly, they do not see competitors point-blank. Thirdly, they are just stupid. There are no unique ideas. And this means that if you came up with some idea, then either it has already been implemented, or has already died, because it turned out to be useless to no one. The last option is not a sentence, just every time has its own fruit. If this idea was not accepted some years ago, now it can already go, but in some new reading. The first commercial computer with handwritten input Apple made in 1993, it was called Newton, but did not go at that moment for a number of reasons. And in 2007 came the iPhone. Prototypes were made much earlier, but the idea was released to the market relatively recently. So if the idea died - it's not scary. But the main law - try to find out what already exists on this topic. And not forgetting about drills and holes in the wall. That is, it is absolutely not necessary to look for exactly what repeats what was invented by you. You need to look for something that satisfies the same need. And you have to understand how your product is different, or why it didn’t go wrong with your predecessors, and you’ll have it.

And the last. Learn! It puts the brains in order. Learn, communicate, search, think. And come to me if you have ideas or want to learn how to stop suffering and start trying to build a business. First, every Tuesday from 2 pm, I meet with new projects in the anti-cafe “Good Republic” at Myasnitskaya, Default City. Secondly, since in one meeting everything is all the same that I think, you cannot tell and you cannot, I began to run an online course on “anti-startups”, you can sign up and learn - all grown-up, with lessons, tasks and tests .

Thank. Good luck.