How to start doing a startup, experience FlowWow
Hi, my name is Andrey Makeev, I am the co-founder of Flowwow.com . This is an aggregator of flower shops.
In my first publications, I decided to go back to September 2013, when FlowWow was just an idea, and then talk about the lessons and experiences that I would like to share.
Journalists often ask: “How did the idea to make FlowWow come about?”. Honestly, I do not like to lie and tell these loud stories that I was sitting at home and wanted to send flowers, but everything is so bad. Not! Everything is much more prosaic: I just returned from Moscow after the Camp of Yandex ( Tolstoy Startup Camp ), where I received an unreal charge of energy and knowledge. I met with my friend and colleague Slava, with whom we have been engaged in various projects since our student years. We bought Chinese noodles in boxes and came to the park to the lake. I took out my notebook, which I always carry with me, and we just began to list ideas, write them down and criticize them.
As I remember, there was excellent weather, it was a day off and families with children and couples in love walked around. And then we thought about the flowers.
')
Flowers are a huge, completely unstructured market, wild and completely opaque. There is no large player on the market who would be associated with the order of colors, worked very clearly and could affect the standards in this area. Online ordering of flowers is more expensive than buying offline; there are many intermediary websites that charge a margin of 200-300% minimum.
There is no Yandex.Taxi or Booking.com on the flower market .
The idea seemed interesting to us, it remains to understand whether we can attract orders, and whether flower shops need orders at all.
I remembered the lectures on the camp about hypothesis testing, and we decided to make a proposal page for the stores. It was necessary to check whether it was interesting for stores to share their profits in exchange for sales.
Where to get stores? It's simple. I went to 2GIS , manually copied emails and uploaded them to emailsimp. Then he wrote the text, the title and did the newsletter. Our landing page was supposed to collect phone numbers of flower shops that are interested in receiving additional sales. Then we had to call and meet with them in order to understand the market, how it works, what margin, competition, etc.
The newsletter worked very well, 30% of stores responded to the call. I repeat - 30%! Those who send such spam will appreciate. I painted a meeting plan and started shopping. I had about a week, every day 5 meetings. It was very interesting. Someone criticized the idea and said that nothing would work out with us, and someone was ready to start cooperating immediately! I received all the necessary information, it was very useful to “enter” the essence of the business in 7 days. Free consultations from the first mouth.
“Okay,” I thought, “now I know what they need.”
It's time to check whether we can attract flower buyers cheaply. I found on the Internet a nice online store template on Wordpress and poured in merchandise there (several bouquets). It took one evening. Then he asked Slava to make an advertising campaign in Yandex.Direct. The development and launch of the campaign took another day. The test budget was 1000 rubles.
In total, we spent 250 rubles to attract 1 client. In general, this is a good result, you can do.
I very carefully checked whether there are similar projects in Russia and the world. In September 2013, I did not find anything similar. And I realized - you need to do.
Here is a story. Some useful conclusions we made for ourselves:
1. Criticize your ideas, discuss, transfer yourself to the place of the client. In disputes, truth is born.
2. Do not spend big money on hypothesis testing, do everything as quickly and simply as possible. If you do not shoot, then save time and money.
3. No need to cut the product. I am not a developer, but I know for sure that a landing site can be made independently and for free in 1 hour - that’s a fact. If you are a developer, then you need to discard your perfectionism and do everything simply and quickly.
4. You need to learn very quickly. Before the first meeting with flower shops, I did not understand anything at all in flowers and only once in my life I bought flowers via the Internet. But for a week of meetings with professionals from the industry, I felt like a real florist.
The story I wrote above is purely Customer development, about which there is a lot of information on the Internet. If you do not know what it is, then read .
In the next issue: How to assemble a dream team without money.
In my first publications, I decided to go back to September 2013, when FlowWow was just an idea, and then talk about the lessons and experiences that I would like to share.
Journalists often ask: “How did the idea to make FlowWow come about?”. Honestly, I do not like to lie and tell these loud stories that I was sitting at home and wanted to send flowers, but everything is so bad. Not! Everything is much more prosaic: I just returned from Moscow after the Camp of Yandex ( Tolstoy Startup Camp ), where I received an unreal charge of energy and knowledge. I met with my friend and colleague Slava, with whom we have been engaged in various projects since our student years. We bought Chinese noodles in boxes and came to the park to the lake. I took out my notebook, which I always carry with me, and we just began to list ideas, write them down and criticize them.
As I remember, there was excellent weather, it was a day off and families with children and couples in love walked around. And then we thought about the flowers.
')
Flowers are a huge, completely unstructured market, wild and completely opaque. There is no large player on the market who would be associated with the order of colors, worked very clearly and could affect the standards in this area. Online ordering of flowers is more expensive than buying offline; there are many intermediary websites that charge a margin of 200-300% minimum.
There is no Yandex.Taxi or Booking.com on the flower market .
The idea seemed interesting to us, it remains to understand whether we can attract orders, and whether flower shops need orders at all.
I remembered the lectures on the camp about hypothesis testing, and we decided to make a proposal page for the stores. It was necessary to check whether it was interesting for stores to share their profits in exchange for sales.
Where to get stores? It's simple. I went to 2GIS , manually copied emails and uploaded them to emailsimp. Then he wrote the text, the title and did the newsletter. Our landing page was supposed to collect phone numbers of flower shops that are interested in receiving additional sales. Then we had to call and meet with them in order to understand the market, how it works, what margin, competition, etc.
The newsletter worked very well, 30% of stores responded to the call. I repeat - 30%! Those who send such spam will appreciate. I painted a meeting plan and started shopping. I had about a week, every day 5 meetings. It was very interesting. Someone criticized the idea and said that nothing would work out with us, and someone was ready to start cooperating immediately! I received all the necessary information, it was very useful to “enter” the essence of the business in 7 days. Free consultations from the first mouth.
“Okay,” I thought, “now I know what they need.”
It's time to check whether we can attract flower buyers cheaply. I found on the Internet a nice online store template on Wordpress and poured in merchandise there (several bouquets). It took one evening. Then he asked Slava to make an advertising campaign in Yandex.Direct. The development and launch of the campaign took another day. The test budget was 1000 rubles.
In total, we spent 250 rubles to attract 1 client. In general, this is a good result, you can do.
I very carefully checked whether there are similar projects in Russia and the world. In September 2013, I did not find anything similar. And I realized - you need to do.
Here is a story. Some useful conclusions we made for ourselves:
1. Criticize your ideas, discuss, transfer yourself to the place of the client. In disputes, truth is born.
2. Do not spend big money on hypothesis testing, do everything as quickly and simply as possible. If you do not shoot, then save time and money.
3. No need to cut the product. I am not a developer, but I know for sure that a landing site can be made independently and for free in 1 hour - that’s a fact. If you are a developer, then you need to discard your perfectionism and do everything simply and quickly.
4. You need to learn very quickly. Before the first meeting with flower shops, I did not understand anything at all in flowers and only once in my life I bought flowers via the Internet. But for a week of meetings with professionals from the industry, I felt like a real florist.
The story I wrote above is purely Customer development, about which there is a lot of information on the Internet. If you do not know what it is, then read .
In the next issue: How to assemble a dream team without money.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/290054/
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