Acceleration for a startup on the example of FlowWow
Accelerators I'm afraid even to count how many of them have already been created in the world, and in Russia there are more and more of them. But our team managed to visit the very first and, in my opinion, the most famous accelerators in the Russian Federation now.
The first is our dear and very beloved “pioneer camp” of the first set of Yandex.Start (our issue is higher in the photo). It so happened that as many as 3 members of the FlowWow team went through this school. Moreover , exactly there we (Vitalik, Artem and I, Makeev Andrey) and met.
')
We are not in vain nicknamed him pioneer camp. Each of us went to Moscow that summer to learn new things, join a cool team or create our own, and make startups. What we did. It all came together as if by itself, we all got an incredible boost of energy and motivation to work productively, united into excellent teams, created the first MVP products and made the first sales. All this was new to us and very pleased.
True, from that set (there were about seven teams in total) I know only two projects that are still alive. At the same time, one of them has already made a pivot, and the second has continued to work hard on its product for two years already.
It would seem that this is not the best result. But more importantly, thanks to Yandex, teams have appeared. This is much more important than the appearance of projects in themselves.
Teams with startup experience start up again, test hypotheses, make new products, and after a while some of them fire. The Flowwow team gathered just from the members of the teams of other projects, although it is difficult for me to say whether our project has fired or not.
Yandex.Start is a place where a person changes very much, becomes smarter, gains experience in the field of startup startups, understands how to start an IT project, how to test a hypothesis in 1 day and much more. Every camp participant knows what it is. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who makes Tolstoy Startup Camp , the level of organization is very high. If you want to get started-up startup experience, don’t even think whether to go there or not. Just need to go!
Accelerator FRIA
I will say straight away that I am amazed by people who say that 7% of the business that IIDF takes for investments and an acceleration program are a lot. Often, the projects that submit applications to IIDF have only MVP in their hands, and thus 0 sales.
The FRIA Accelerator is a very strong team that only gets better with each accelerator. This is a really cool community and a good IT business ecosystem that really helps each other in the Acceleration process. And this is a moral kick in the ass, which many entrepreneurs lack so much.
We came to the Accelerator of IIDF with the first sales, at that time we were making about 100 thousand per month revenue. Now our turnover is already several million per month. What was there inside the Accelerator, and what did we get from FRIA? The fund gave us some money, taking a small stake in the company. Accelerator, on the other hand, gave us, first of all, knowledge that was already deeper than earlier at the camp, and specialized - which we needed in the floral IT direction of ecommerce. In addition, in IIDF, we received connections, networking, cool PR (thanks to Masha Lapuk). We got a kick in the ass from Artem Azevich and Dima Kalaev, knowledge about the pitfalls of the venture capital market and investments from Maxim Steigerwald, in-depth knowledge of the metrics from Ilya Krasinsky, external view of our project from the mentor Ilya Kurylev, well, and excellent feedback on the project from all the guys who were in the 3rd Accelerator, and it really worked very cool.
But this is if we talk about internal sensations. If we evaluate the results, we can distinguish several things.
We raised revenue 4 times. However, if we talk about absolute numbers, then initially we had only 100 thousand rubles of revenue per month, and after Accelerator it became 400 thousand. Very little.
We refused to work with SEO on the advice of Accelerator experts. The reason for this was that it takes time to work with SEO, the result of this work will not be immediately. In Accelerator, they try to focus on those channels that can be quickly tested. He formulated a hypothesis, set a task, realized, checked the result, made conclusions, went further. This is a simplified version of the HADI cycle. In Accelerator, this works fine, but the decision to postpone working with SEO backfired us a little. If we then began to do it, now it would be much more comfortable. We started working with SEO only from December 2014. It is important that you should always blame yourself, the founder of the business, because whatever program we participate in, we ourselves decide to listen to the opinions of others or not. Because this is our business, and we are responsible for it, so it was my mistake.
What we have been able to accomplish over the acceleration period is to increase the conversion, and to adjust the business performance so that it can potentially take off. That is, in the Accelerator of IIDF, we prepared a platform for scaling, and we started to do it. Now we have entered the markets of Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Armenia. The product at the time of acceleration, we also had a raw, our phone was torn from calls from representatives of stores that could not deal with the interface, or customers. Now everything is different, it is very cool to work and do routine work, while orders arrive, and the phone is silent. This suggests that we have created a really convenient product: customers can easily order on their own, without calls, which of course pleases me, because I am just the wildest supporter of maximally automating everything that is possible to save resources and customer convenience. Unfortunately, not everyone in the flower market is such supporters of automation and ease of service, so we teach our partners these things and provide them with ready-made solutions for our mutual customers.
At the traction rallies in Accelerator, when we discussed the results of the week and plans for the next week with the trackers and other teams, we gradually
found out that the flower market is very difficult for an IT startup. We faced a lot of problems, for example, we had to force flower shops to change the pattern of behavior. Previously, all orders shops received by e-mail, and to cooperate with us, they had to learn to enter the personal account and check orders there. It was also very difficult for shops to get used to the idea that it was they who had to pay us for attracting customers, and not customers - to overpay for goods. In fact, we are very proud to create. In this market, so many little things that need to be considered. If suddenly you think that you can easily create a clone of Flowwow, simply by reducing the commission, and he will fly, then it is better to think more. Now on the IT market there are a lot of free niches, and in my opinion, they are much simpler in all respects, we took up a very difficult direction. However, since we have really immersed ourselves in it and have done a lot for its development, we cannot retreat. We will carry this cross and develop the market until we achieve the desired effect.
Regarding acceleration, you can tell a bunch of stories, and first of all stories about the community come to my mind: how people help each other, are friends after, meet each other, try to encourage each other, help somehow in business development to each other. Not all of them have a cool result at the end, but in the Accelerator you are given an impulse that can work afterwards. My main thinking process began after Acceleration, when all time limits had disappeared. For us, freedom of action and community are important, so the main value of acceleration for me is people, the ecosystem, and the competitive effect. When you see that someone nearby earns more than you, you want to “make it”. This is a matter of environment: it must be correct.
The conclusions are as follows:
1. If in doubt, go to the camp or not, do not even think: if you do not have a good team, go and do not think, then thank you. :)
2. FRII and 7% - is it a lot for you? Well, then keep cutting the product and wait for someone else to just repeat your idea and conquer the market.
3. If you go to the Accelerator FRIA: everything that Krasinsky says or someone else from the FRIA team can be right and useful. But before you follow someone's advice, think carefully, weigh all the pros and cons, listen to your intuition, think again and only then make a decision.
4. Set yourself a goal: what does it mean to “fly up” for you? Is it a million dollars or a million rubles revenue? What is success for your team? Write on a piece of paper in front of you a common goal and make it so that this figure materializes, or even better - write a list with all your needs, for example, someone will have a new car or apartment. And these needs should come together with a request for money.
In the next issue, I will ask the second co-founder of Flowwow Glory to write an article about metrics: what matters to us, what we think and what not, what metrics should be considered for business development, and especially in ecommerce.
The first is our dear and very beloved “pioneer camp” of the first set of Yandex.Start (our issue is higher in the photo). It so happened that as many as 3 members of the FlowWow team went through this school. Moreover , exactly there we (Vitalik, Artem and I, Makeev Andrey) and met.
')
We are not in vain nicknamed him pioneer camp. Each of us went to Moscow that summer to learn new things, join a cool team or create our own, and make startups. What we did. It all came together as if by itself, we all got an incredible boost of energy and motivation to work productively, united into excellent teams, created the first MVP products and made the first sales. All this was new to us and very pleased.
True, from that set (there were about seven teams in total) I know only two projects that are still alive. At the same time, one of them has already made a pivot, and the second has continued to work hard on its product for two years already.
It would seem that this is not the best result. But more importantly, thanks to Yandex, teams have appeared. This is much more important than the appearance of projects in themselves.
Teams with startup experience start up again, test hypotheses, make new products, and after a while some of them fire. The Flowwow team gathered just from the members of the teams of other projects, although it is difficult for me to say whether our project has fired or not.
Yandex.Start is a place where a person changes very much, becomes smarter, gains experience in the field of startup startups, understands how to start an IT project, how to test a hypothesis in 1 day and much more. Every camp participant knows what it is. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who makes Tolstoy Startup Camp , the level of organization is very high. If you want to get started-up startup experience, don’t even think whether to go there or not. Just need to go!
Accelerator FRIA
I will say straight away that I am amazed by people who say that 7% of the business that IIDF takes for investments and an acceleration program are a lot. Often, the projects that submit applications to IIDF have only MVP in their hands, and thus 0 sales.
The FRIA Accelerator is a very strong team that only gets better with each accelerator. This is a really cool community and a good IT business ecosystem that really helps each other in the Acceleration process. And this is a moral kick in the ass, which many entrepreneurs lack so much.
We came to the Accelerator of IIDF with the first sales, at that time we were making about 100 thousand per month revenue. Now our turnover is already several million per month. What was there inside the Accelerator, and what did we get from FRIA? The fund gave us some money, taking a small stake in the company. Accelerator, on the other hand, gave us, first of all, knowledge that was already deeper than earlier at the camp, and specialized - which we needed in the floral IT direction of ecommerce. In addition, in IIDF, we received connections, networking, cool PR (thanks to Masha Lapuk). We got a kick in the ass from Artem Azevich and Dima Kalaev, knowledge about the pitfalls of the venture capital market and investments from Maxim Steigerwald, in-depth knowledge of the metrics from Ilya Krasinsky, external view of our project from the mentor Ilya Kurylev, well, and excellent feedback on the project from all the guys who were in the 3rd Accelerator, and it really worked very cool.
But this is if we talk about internal sensations. If we evaluate the results, we can distinguish several things.
We raised revenue 4 times. However, if we talk about absolute numbers, then initially we had only 100 thousand rubles of revenue per month, and after Accelerator it became 400 thousand. Very little.
We refused to work with SEO on the advice of Accelerator experts. The reason for this was that it takes time to work with SEO, the result of this work will not be immediately. In Accelerator, they try to focus on those channels that can be quickly tested. He formulated a hypothesis, set a task, realized, checked the result, made conclusions, went further. This is a simplified version of the HADI cycle. In Accelerator, this works fine, but the decision to postpone working with SEO backfired us a little. If we then began to do it, now it would be much more comfortable. We started working with SEO only from December 2014. It is important that you should always blame yourself, the founder of the business, because whatever program we participate in, we ourselves decide to listen to the opinions of others or not. Because this is our business, and we are responsible for it, so it was my mistake.
What we have been able to accomplish over the acceleration period is to increase the conversion, and to adjust the business performance so that it can potentially take off. That is, in the Accelerator of IIDF, we prepared a platform for scaling, and we started to do it. Now we have entered the markets of Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Armenia. The product at the time of acceleration, we also had a raw, our phone was torn from calls from representatives of stores that could not deal with the interface, or customers. Now everything is different, it is very cool to work and do routine work, while orders arrive, and the phone is silent. This suggests that we have created a really convenient product: customers can easily order on their own, without calls, which of course pleases me, because I am just the wildest supporter of maximally automating everything that is possible to save resources and customer convenience. Unfortunately, not everyone in the flower market is such supporters of automation and ease of service, so we teach our partners these things and provide them with ready-made solutions for our mutual customers.
At the traction rallies in Accelerator, when we discussed the results of the week and plans for the next week with the trackers and other teams, we gradually
found out that the flower market is very difficult for an IT startup. We faced a lot of problems, for example, we had to force flower shops to change the pattern of behavior. Previously, all orders shops received by e-mail, and to cooperate with us, they had to learn to enter the personal account and check orders there. It was also very difficult for shops to get used to the idea that it was they who had to pay us for attracting customers, and not customers - to overpay for goods. In fact, we are very proud to create. In this market, so many little things that need to be considered. If suddenly you think that you can easily create a clone of Flowwow, simply by reducing the commission, and he will fly, then it is better to think more. Now on the IT market there are a lot of free niches, and in my opinion, they are much simpler in all respects, we took up a very difficult direction. However, since we have really immersed ourselves in it and have done a lot for its development, we cannot retreat. We will carry this cross and develop the market until we achieve the desired effect.
Regarding acceleration, you can tell a bunch of stories, and first of all stories about the community come to my mind: how people help each other, are friends after, meet each other, try to encourage each other, help somehow in business development to each other. Not all of them have a cool result at the end, but in the Accelerator you are given an impulse that can work afterwards. My main thinking process began after Acceleration, when all time limits had disappeared. For us, freedom of action and community are important, so the main value of acceleration for me is people, the ecosystem, and the competitive effect. When you see that someone nearby earns more than you, you want to “make it”. This is a matter of environment: it must be correct.
The conclusions are as follows:
1. If in doubt, go to the camp or not, do not even think: if you do not have a good team, go and do not think, then thank you. :)
2. FRII and 7% - is it a lot for you? Well, then keep cutting the product and wait for someone else to just repeat your idea and conquer the market.
3. If you go to the Accelerator FRIA: everything that Krasinsky says or someone else from the FRIA team can be right and useful. But before you follow someone's advice, think carefully, weigh all the pros and cons, listen to your intuition, think again and only then make a decision.
4. Set yourself a goal: what does it mean to “fly up” for you? Is it a million dollars or a million rubles revenue? What is success for your team? Write on a piece of paper in front of you a common goal and make it so that this figure materializes, or even better - write a list with all your needs, for example, someone will have a new car or apartment. And these needs should come together with a request for money.
In the next issue, I will ask the second co-founder of Flowwow Glory to write an article about metrics: what matters to us, what we think and what not, what metrics should be considered for business development, and especially in ecommerce.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/291492/
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