Founder's advice. Oleg Gribanov, founder of Darenta.ru

The “Founder’s Councils” are back in service, and we remind you that with the help of this permanent column here, on the Megamind, we convey to all readers the subjective experience of the founders and co-founders of Internet projects and growing companies.

Today, under the spotlight - Oleg Gribanov. Since 2000, Oleg has worked as the head of various digital projects, which, he said, has implemented a good hundred. In 2011, he founded his own agency, FIRSTEP, which for three years in a row was one of the hundred best Russian agencies for the Tagline version. In May 2014, Oleg decided to do something new - and so the Darenta service came into being, allowing individuals to rent their personal cars for any period of time.

Today on Darenta there are more than 350 cars not only in Russia, but also in Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Spain, Crete, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates and so on. We hand over the word to the founder.

Look for an unoccupied niche

Many novice businessmen start their own business without calculating the demand and do not find out the number of competitors. Before you spend your own money on organizing your own business, you can evaluate the potential of an idea in numbers, that is, rely not on intuition, but on the number of potential customers, as well as on the absence of competitors or their weakness. To assess whether there is a demand for your future service or product, you can use Yandex WordStat or similar Google tool. Enter in the WordState those requests that will enter your future customers. If you see a significant number of requests that will generate more profit in the future, then you can proceed to the next step. But if you see small numbers in Wordstat, which indicate weak public interest, then it is better to look for another idea for your future business.
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In the case when there is a good demand that you measured in numbers, you can proceed to the second step of the niche analysis - just go to the main page of the search engine and enter the same queries that you entered in Wordstat earlier. If on the first three pages of search results there are no significant competitors, start to rejoice - you have found an unoccupied niche! If there are competitors, but they have bad websites that do not inspire confidence and do not motivate to purchase or order a service, then you can get involved in the competition and win.

Who to take to your team

Remember all the cool specialists you have ever worked with, invite them to your project for part-time, that is, for part-time work. Usually, big professionals rarely agree to enter full time in a startup without GP, etc. ... You can also make a post in your accounts in social networks. First, you will get good advice from friends about your project. And secondly, you can get strong specialists, which was your main goal at the time of publication in the blog.

While searching through social networks, you may come across an offer of the best professionals in the industry, having received a recommendation from other people. That is, it is not the applicants themselves who turn to you, but any third-party people recommending the necessary specialists for you. It is advisable to pay for such recommendations: if the recommended one has worked for you for 3 months, that is, the entire trial period, then the recommended person has to pay some amount as a token of gratitude. In this case, your friends will always seek to recommend a good employee. With this strategy, everyone wins. And at the end of my advice on team building, I dare to recommend another action - take a look at the team of competitors. Try to get someone out of there. Give the specialist some value that he could not get, but would like, for example, it could be a high position.

One way to work with a team

This method has different facets that need to be considered:

• The transfer of shares in its LLC;
• Conclusion of the contract;
• Immersion in the project;
• Proactivity;

What each of the points means, I will tell you briefly. In order to motivate new team members that you will always need in your business, give them some part in your LLC and in profit, that is, you will need to share a part of the company, and part of the money. In this case, your partners will be motivated to grow the company and generate profits. Realizing that everything depends on them, people can work more and more efficiently than if they worked for a salary.

Let me tell you why you need a contract and what you need to register there: your future or current partners can go out of business during some kind of quarrel and create a competing company, but if you had it stated that it was impossible to use the idea, trade secrets and specialists from your company, then you can protect yourself. Also in the contract it is necessary to prescribe the duties and rights so that in the future partners, colleagues and subordinates would not have offenses or any far-fetched fantasies. When you have a signed contract on your hands, you can train new project participants, immerse them in the project, explaining the strategic goal and the tactical role of the specialist in the business project. In this case, everyone will have a single vision.

How to manage your project

If you want to control your project and understand how where and for how much money you are moving, then you need to have 4 documents that must always be kept up to date:

• Prototypes;
• TK;
• Timing;
• Estimate;

You can create prototypes of your website and / or mobile application thanks to these services www.axure.com and balsamiq.com

You need to write the technical task yourself, because no one knows your idea better than you. You can ask each of the team members to detail the parts of the TK that relate to their work. When the document is ready, you can proceed to scheduling. Make a Gantt chart that will visually show anyone when you are planning to start developing a design, when the layouts will be approved, when you can begin to make-up and programming, and also write down the deadlines for the tasks related to promoting your project.

And the final document that needs to be done is a cost estimate. Thanks to this file you will be able to control your budget and be sure that you do not go beyond the amount you have.

Why not do the work yourself

In conclusion, let me tell you about the time management in a startup and the delegation of responsibilities. If you have timing, you can divide it into three types of tasks:

1. Long-term strategic;
2. Medium term;
3. Short term tactical;

A long-term goal can be, for example, “make a million.” You can mark such tasks in green. Medium-term tasks can be one month long. For example, this could be a site development. This type of task should be marked in yellow. Short-term tasks say exactly what and how it will be implemented. For example, the design of the main screen of a mobile application or layout of the internal page of the site. These tasks need to be marked in red. All tasks must have a responsible person, and the deadline must be specified opposite the task. All red tasks, except coordination and approval by you as the team leader, must be done by the rest of the team members.

If you try to do the tasks yourself, then eventually you will get bogged down in the routine. Delegate all possible tasks to your subordinates, then you will have time for strategy. In more detail about all the above things I can tell in Facebook if you add me as a friend and ask your questions on a specific project there. You need to understand that now I have written universal tips, and in your business you need immersion and some unique recommendations.

Editorial note: if you have a desire to participate in the “Founder’s Tips” section, write to us at editor (at) megamozg.ru