Founder's advice. Denis Germanenko, CEO CleverPumpkin

At the start, find a business angel or mentor

In the process of the company's existence, a lot of events occur in which the manager acquires the most valuable experience solving problems and overcoming obstacles. But often they are routine and standard. Actions associated with these events may distract from the main task of the fund-manager - business / company development.

That is why having a person with experience in a team (he doesn’t even have to be involved in operational activities) will help avoid small problems that others have already worked out in this business. You should feel that you can always seek advice in the event of a difficult situation to such a person. But do not transfer the responsibility for your decisions to it - you only receive information, but the decision will still be taken by you.

Do not avoid financial planning.

Financial plans for the year and quarter, cash flow forecasts, close monitoring of all business indicators, quarterly and annual reports, tracking of dynamics. Do not neglect these tools - their absence can destroy your company in a few months.

True? For many, yes. But due to cash shortages, some companies still die, no matter how cool or successful they are.

Until recently, resist outsourcing your basic services if you are a service company.

Outsourcing (using contractors) is a dangerous, risky and uncontrolled process. A contractor carries potential irresponsibility if you do not know him like your 5 fingers. The ideal contractor is your former employee, who for some reason will leave a regular place (went to another country, decided to do freelancing, etc.).

Imagine that you are developing mobile applications to order (and this is a service business). Your processes: documentation, design, design, programming, QA, support and development. This is your main customer service - a complete product creation cycle, which results in a mobile application. Taking any of the stages to an outsourcing bears serious risks - in the worst case, you will not be able to hand over the project to the customer, or he will not be satisfied with the result; at best, you will seriously trouble your nerves. Contractors are attractive - they are cheap, seemingly “at hand”, but all this is deceptive.

It is reasonable to outsource only when you know that you are not professionals in this and do not want to be (for example, accounting services). But this is not your main service for customers, because you are developing software, right?

Aim for a 100% resource load, because there is nothing worse than an idle specialist.

In the service business there are 2 ways to expand the team. The first way is to recruit dozens of specialists at once and then think how to take them (if you already have projects for them, then this is wonderful, but this is a rare case). The second way - we recruit specialists gradually as the number of projects that you plan to start and finish grows.

The normal indicator of the implementation of resources in the service business starts from 70%. This means that between projects a specialist is idle for some time and does not bring direct profits to the company. Obviously, during this period he can develop and study - this is also a profit for the company. However, the greatest profit is when projects go tight, one after another - and the sooner you release a specialist (not to the detriment of the current one, of course) - the sooner you take a new project. An employee’s idle month can seriously affect his motivation, which will then be difficult to recover. Therefore, the growth of the state just for upcoming projects is the best option, and not the way of spontaneous recruitment.

If a customer with a TZ comes to a company that is ready to take his order into development (design / code) today, then this should be alerted - and why are the resources of this company idle? Few orders, perhaps poor quality and poor results? If your company is interesting to the customer and he thinks that you can cope with his tasks best, he can wait 1-2 months. And during this period you will be able to jointly conduct the required preparatory stages: planning, documentation, coordination.

Rotate specialists between projects at least once every six months - you can also get tired of the project

In the software development market, there is a significant difference between a customized and a product model - from month to month, specialists work on the same project in product development, a specialist can take part in 2-5 projects in a custom development for a year. But there are also long-term custom projects - they also recommend the rotation of workers. On average, one developer can continuously work on a project for 6 months if his tasks are more or less varied. Then he wants something new and more complicated. And this is not his whim - this is a potential leak of motivation. If you have the opportunity to rotate people between projects - use it. It will do you good anyway.

Do what you really love - infect it and your team

If you create a product with a team and do not use it personally - you will not achieve success. If your team members have neutral feelings or negative (oh, horror) to what you create together - you will not succeed.

Your task, as a founder and leader, is to instill in people the joy and sense of pleasure from the things created. In the future, the team itself will be able to do it, but it will still need to be encouraged to do so. The team will always look at you - if you are skeptical about the products being created, then expect the same from your colleagues. Therefore, if you have the opportunity to select only certain projects, out of which all potential customers come to you, then you are very lucky - this means that you have no obstacles in the way of enjoying the results.

Tip - if you create products / projects to order, then fix your internal stop-list for certain ideas. These are the projects for which you will never undertake in the case of an order. For example, an Instagram clone, instant messenger or taxi service application, something aggressive or vulgar. Only here it is a pity - the big money that you can potentially pay for the work, can easily allow you to forget about the existence of this stop list. But here everything depends on you and your principles. True, if you compromise with the principles, then you can lose the trust of the team.