Founder's advice. Vladimir Kanin, founder of Pay-Me mobile acquiring service

“Founder’s Councils” is back in the ranks, with a person who has already answered our questions about working habits under the heading “How Professionals Work” - Vladimir Kanin.

Vladimir graduated from Omsk State University in 1997, receiving a diploma in the specialty “Artificial Intelligence Systems”, and after that he worked at the Research Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics of the SB RAS. In 2001, he received an MBA degree at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, and two years later, in 2003, he joined the board of the Agrico investment corporation. Until 2012, when Pay-Me was founded, Vladimir gained valuable experience in the development of large innovative projects by creating his own companies AeroSolutions, Optiflame Solutions and TeleChip.

The history of Pay-Me is also rich: in 2012, the company launched a project in Russia in partnership with Visa, Alfa-Bank and Beeline and conducted the first transaction with a magnetic reader. In 2013, she received PCI DSS and Visa Ready certificates, having 1,100 clients and an annual turnover of 25 million rubles. In 2014, the company entered the market with a Chip & Sign reader in Kazakhstan and a Chip & Pin reader in Russia. Pay-Me is included in the MasterCard mPOS provider list and became a finalist at the Marchant Payments Ecosystem Conference 2014. Microsoft's technology partner with already 7,000 customers and 300 million rubles of annual turnover.
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In the current, 2015, Pay-Me has 9000 clients, 600 million rubles in turnover and partners in the face of Intel and M.Video. The staff consists of 50 employees, the company's revenue is $ 1.5 million.

Where to begin?

I often hear: "Oh, I have no money" or "I do not have rich parents", this is all nonsense. There are colossal examples in the IT business, I’m not even talking about facebook, and so on. I’m talking about Russian people who, with hard work and a little bit of luck, you know, “water wears away a stone,” and investors find you, don’t you run after them day after day, but they come and say: “And take my money, and let us we invest. " There are a million such examples. Although the past few years, the opposite story: a million projects, invented from the ceiling, it seems to me that I will now do Vkontakte 33.0, and everything will be fine. Many are very fictional, but they quickly bend themselves, and it is scary that they appear.

Just do it

Do not be afraid! If you decide to start a project, take it and do it. Only your own experience will teach you and give you much more knowledge than a hundred books read and advice heard. I have a 10-year entrepreneurial experience, but, like the first launch of my project, I sometimes continue to make mistakes. The main thing is to draw conclusions from the experience gained, to constantly learn and continue to go towards your goal.

Try, try, try!

All successful startups that I know of were never made by teenagers, but made by people who worked in large companies, looked at how corporations are spinning, and with the pluses and minuses of these corporations, and worked in small companies, and even startups hired workers, and then left and did their own. And therefore, as my professor said, you need to twitch, move and move, that is, "there is no water flowing under a lying stone."

Create the right environment

In a startup, it is very important to create a prototype of a product in a short time, then a product, then the best product. Your task is to assemble the involved and compact team, clearly define the directions of the efforts and not interfere. 4-5 strong and motivated developers in the same room can make a competitive product in a very short time.

Set priorities

When you work on your project, you have a lot of ideas, you want to implement them all, but you need to choose. Of course, this does not cancel experiments, but always remember about the costs of them and do not deviate from the main line.

And most importantly - learn to make decisions and take responsibility!

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