How we were looking for investment in Buryatia
There is an opinion that if you want to saw a startup, then you must go either to Moscow or to St. Petersburg. It is desirable first - they say, there are investors, and personnel, and the media, and parties and in general. But in our case it was not possible to go to Moscow, if only because the flight time was more than 6 hours, and somehow we didn’t really want to leave everything and rush into the unknown. So we decided to seek investment in our Ulan-Ude.
Photo: © visitburyatia.ru
Briefly about us. Callback service Rocket Callback . Work began in the summer of 2014, entered the market in December. By March 2015, we have about 600 customers. The idea, of course, is not new - in the summer we saw callback widgets, tried it. I liked everything, except for the implementation. We thought and understood that we could improve everything, only we need money, but we did not have it.
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Although IT is developing in Buryatia, there are no accelerators or anything similar there. Where to look for an investor is unknown. The most popular business is to open a snack bar by the road and sell buouzes (the national dish of Buryatia). People with money are ready to give it, but no one wanted to listen about the feedback widget, increasing the conversion and so on.
Turned to the theory of six handshakes, in other words, searching through friends. We developed a business plan, took a laptop and went to offices.
At first, no one understood what it was about. We showed our website (primitive landing pages were sketched on our knees), showed the widget's work, said that we could do better and cheaper, and this is promising, but there were no more than polite wishes for success in our endeavors. Ulan-Ude is a small city, everyone knows each other more or less, and therefore it is easier to get to the directors.
Finally, after a month of walking, we still found an interested person who had a business in the production of sweatshirts, a friend of ours who had previously installed CallbackHunter and was familiar with the technology: “I pay $ 67 each if your widget has a similar result , but cheaper, I will give money and become the first client. ”
Naturally, we were delighted and ran to finish the widget. Then there were three of us. From personal savings, we were able to scrape money for an IP-telephony operator, the rest was done by ourselves, including a simple personal account. Algorithms and design were ready. The widget could only work on 1 site, and that was for the most part beta.
Buryatia as it is
Finally everything was adjusted (honestly, everything hung on a kind word), installed on the site. For a month, the widget caught 431 calls with a site attendance of +50 people per day. Hunter also caught up to 400 each. So we received our first 300,000 rubles and were able to start work.
When news flashes every day that a project has attracted millions of dollars, 300,000 rubles seem like a small amount, but at that time it was very important money for which we created a website, personal account, logo, brand, registered LLC, conducted a small advertising campaign in Ulan-Ude.
The first customers were, of course, our friends. There were no plans for speech then - the goal was “just not to screw it up”. Sales were hard, but still they were, and we continued to improve the widget. In general, these were minor works on the exterior design, on the layout, on the support.
After 2 months, we already had some kind of kernel - about 20 local sites that used the widget even after the end of the test period. A month later, the number of customers reached 50, and we noticed that there were not only Buryat companies, but also from neighboring regions. After talking with some of them, we understood that they tried different widgets and chose us, since we offer the same thing, only several times cheaper and plus additional settings. We counted on it. So we decided to expand, but it also required money.
We again turned to the same investor, who gave us 300,000 rubles. It was already harder to harass the second round, because our business angel thought it was too early to go to other regions, so he did not give us any money, but he introduced us to his Moscow friends.
We were in the know, so again offered to install ours. A few days before we started to put all the data (transitions, movements, requests, clicks, scrolls, etc.) into our Hadoop on Azure, run all of this in Machine Learning, write algorithms on R. Simply put, we have the widget pumped so that popped randomly. By that time, we’ve done so that you can hide the call button on the site and set up intrusiveness (5 levels - from very annoying to appearing just by clicking). A month later, when we were already in Ulan-Ude, we received a message that this businessman was ready to invest 4,000,000 rubles in us.
At the same time, we are interested in local media. Ulan-Ude is a small city, so news spreads quickly. One media first wrote about us, then another, then the third. Then we ended up in a zomboyaschik, in the release of the program "Vesti" on the TV channel "Russia Buryatia". A little later other media wrote about us. Read more here .
The number of clients continued to grow, and we realized that the time had come to move to Moscow. Now we had the money and had the product. In addition, it is difficult to start a startup in the outback for a number of reasons: there are few qualified personnel, few specialized sites, and we are very cold in Ulan-Ude - it is difficult to do something when outside the window is -30 (this is the norm throughout the winter ) and even freezing teeth.
Now we have moved to Moscow and we live on the 4,000,000 rubles that we raised in the second round. We continue to finish the widget, there are several ideas for dramatic improvement, we are going to enter the international market, and in particular, the USA. Technically, everything is ready with us - they transferred the widget, personal account, website, opened an account with PayPal, studied the market and even found the first potential American customers. We hope that there will be a third round of investment, but already in the USA. And finally, our little strange picture.
Rocket Callback, our partners Appatbox and our interns
Ps A few conclusions. You can find money for the project, even if you live on the periphery, but still have to move to Moscow. If only because if you expand, then finding good specialists is not so easy, and working on a remote is not an option. In addition, the same network, but at least the banal speed of the Internet. But if you go, then with the finished product.
Valeria Makarova, Head of Rocket Callback
We will tell about what we have improved and how we achieved it in a separate publication.
About how we enter the US market and how the first business will go there, we will also tell here, on the Megamind
Stay with us!
Do not forget to visit our site .
Photo: © visitburyatia.ru
Briefly about us. Callback service Rocket Callback . Work began in the summer of 2014, entered the market in December. By March 2015, we have about 600 customers. The idea, of course, is not new - in the summer we saw callback widgets, tried it. I liked everything, except for the implementation. We thought and understood that we could improve everything, only we need money, but we did not have it.
')
Although IT is developing in Buryatia, there are no accelerators or anything similar there. Where to look for an investor is unknown. The most popular business is to open a snack bar by the road and sell buouzes (the national dish of Buryatia). People with money are ready to give it, but no one wanted to listen about the feedback widget, increasing the conversion and so on.
Turned to the theory of six handshakes, in other words, searching through friends. We developed a business plan, took a laptop and went to offices.
At first, no one understood what it was about. We showed our website (primitive landing pages were sketched on our knees), showed the widget's work, said that we could do better and cheaper, and this is promising, but there were no more than polite wishes for success in our endeavors. Ulan-Ude is a small city, everyone knows each other more or less, and therefore it is easier to get to the directors.
Finally, after a month of walking, we still found an interested person who had a business in the production of sweatshirts, a friend of ours who had previously installed CallbackHunter and was familiar with the technology: “I pay $ 67 each if your widget has a similar result , but cheaper, I will give money and become the first client. ”
Naturally, we were delighted and ran to finish the widget. Then there were three of us. From personal savings, we were able to scrape money for an IP-telephony operator, the rest was done by ourselves, including a simple personal account. Algorithms and design were ready. The widget could only work on 1 site, and that was for the most part beta.
Buryatia as it is
Finally everything was adjusted (honestly, everything hung on a kind word), installed on the site. For a month, the widget caught 431 calls with a site attendance of +50 people per day. Hunter also caught up to 400 each. So we received our first 300,000 rubles and were able to start work.
When news flashes every day that a project has attracted millions of dollars, 300,000 rubles seem like a small amount, but at that time it was very important money for which we created a website, personal account, logo, brand, registered LLC, conducted a small advertising campaign in Ulan-Ude.
The first customers were, of course, our friends. There were no plans for speech then - the goal was “just not to screw it up”. Sales were hard, but still they were, and we continued to improve the widget. In general, these were minor works on the exterior design, on the layout, on the support.
After 2 months, we already had some kind of kernel - about 20 local sites that used the widget even after the end of the test period. A month later, the number of customers reached 50, and we noticed that there were not only Buryat companies, but also from neighboring regions. After talking with some of them, we understood that they tried different widgets and chose us, since we offer the same thing, only several times cheaper and plus additional settings. We counted on it. So we decided to expand, but it also required money.
We again turned to the same investor, who gave us 300,000 rubles. It was already harder to harass the second round, because our business angel thought it was too early to go to other regions, so he did not give us any money, but he introduced us to his Moscow friends.
So we came to Moscow. At these meetings, everything was different, and potential investors immediately asked: “You guys are not aware that there are so many callbacks here that they are already sick of them? What are you counting on? ”
We were in the know, so again offered to install ours. A few days before we started to put all the data (transitions, movements, requests, clicks, scrolls, etc.) into our Hadoop on Azure, run all of this in Machine Learning, write algorithms on R. Simply put, we have the widget pumped so that popped randomly. By that time, we’ve done so that you can hide the call button on the site and set up intrusiveness (5 levels - from very annoying to appearing just by clicking). A month later, when we were already in Ulan-Ude, we received a message that this businessman was ready to invest 4,000,000 rubles in us.
At the same time, we are interested in local media. Ulan-Ude is a small city, so news spreads quickly. One media first wrote about us, then another, then the third. Then we ended up in a zomboyaschik, in the release of the program "Vesti" on the TV channel "Russia Buryatia". A little later other media wrote about us. Read more here .
The number of clients continued to grow, and we realized that the time had come to move to Moscow. Now we had the money and had the product. In addition, it is difficult to start a startup in the outback for a number of reasons: there are few qualified personnel, few specialized sites, and we are very cold in Ulan-Ude - it is difficult to do something when outside the window is -30 (this is the norm throughout the winter ) and even freezing teeth.
Now we have moved to Moscow and we live on the 4,000,000 rubles that we raised in the second round. We continue to finish the widget, there are several ideas for dramatic improvement, we are going to enter the international market, and in particular, the USA. Technically, everything is ready with us - they transferred the widget, personal account, website, opened an account with PayPal, studied the market and even found the first potential American customers. We hope that there will be a third round of investment, but already in the USA. And finally, our little strange picture.
Rocket Callback, our partners Appatbox and our interns
Ps A few conclusions. You can find money for the project, even if you live on the periphery, but still have to move to Moscow. If only because if you expand, then finding good specialists is not so easy, and working on a remote is not an option. In addition, the same network, but at least the banal speed of the Internet. But if you go, then with the finished product.
Valeria Makarova, Head of Rocket Callback
We will tell about what we have improved and how we achieved it in a separate publication.
About how we enter the US market and how the first business will go there, we will also tell here, on the Megamind
Stay with us!
Do not forget to visit our site .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/289804/
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