From a simple product to a competitive market

One of the most important things for a business is a well-chosen market niche. But to find a truly empty field today is almost impossible. Even the audience of very exotic projects has to be shared with competitors. What to say about the "standard" tools, like CRM?
However, the history of WireCRM service shows that CRM CRM is different. Despite the abundance of functionality in the products of leading players, there are still customers in this market with unmet needs. And you can get them without inventing a “bicycle with square wheels”, but by learning how to listen to your client and correctly transform the received recommendations into a development strategy.
About how the WireCRM service managed not only to make itself known on the market, but also to firmly establish itself on it, despite the fact that most of the competitors started a lot earlier, said Dmitry Popov, the founder and project manager .

Beginning startups are concerned with the question: will their idea “shoot”? Have you encountered similar doubts? How did you start to evaluate the prospects of your idea and the market as a whole? What factors allowed to understand that the path is chosen correctly?
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Dmitry Popov: Of course, before the launch there were experiences. But when the first users appeared and brought down a flurry of proposals for completions of our solution, it became clear that the point of reference was chosen correctly. Moreover, it is clear in which direction we should move. More than a year has passed since then. We are actively working and growing; normal flight.
We did not formally assess the market size, but it is felt when you communicate with another client personally and you understand that you cannot fully satisfy his needs.

Do you focus on competitors, planning innovations?

Dmitry Popov: In developing the service, we chose our own strategy - the creation of the simplest and fastest tool. This is what makes us different from our competitors; accordingly, we simply don’t make sense to write off our development strategy.
But from afar we are watching Bitrix24 and Amo (Hi, Sergey Ryzhikov and Mikhail Tokovinin).

How do you assess now whether it was possible at the start to choose the optimal strategy for the development of the service? Or did the original course change later?

Dmitry Popov: At the very beginning we did not have the knowledge that we have now, respectively, and the strategy at that time was not formulated. I consider it a good coincidence that at the very beginning we have chosen a more or less correct direction of work. Due to this, we subsequently changed the core of the project a little, but actively developed modules installed by users on request (for such modules we have an application store, where a year ago there were only 2 modules, and now there are about 40 and their number is constantly increasing).

How much did the first public version differ from how the service looks now?

Dmitry Popov: In my opinion, the first version did not have the minimum necessary functionality for work, but it already allowed to maintain the client base and transactions. Nevertheless, this was enough for a certain number of first customers. They appreciated this simplicity.

How was the testing of the solution organized at the start? Testers of the public version were the customers themselves?

Dmitry Popov: Our clients were the first testers of the system, we gave some of them free access to the system. They still remain our loyal users and help make the product better. To some users, we made bonuses in the form of charges on the internal account. With it, they could pay for access to the service and buy applications.
Now we are trying to cover the code with automatic tests on CasperJS.

I have heard stories about the fact that the first clients helped to put the accents right and then firmly stand up. Has your project developed in the same way?

Dmitry Popov: We can say that the way the system looks now is the direct merit of our users. Work with client offers is generally a separate topic. Only after personal communication you understand what really bothers users. Therefore, I still personally try to respond to feedback and suggestions, although I have assistants. This helps me to understand where to go next, what suggestions to kick into implementation.

Have you encountered any technical difficulties at the beginning of the project development?

Dmitry Popov: Yes, it was not without difficulties. At the start, it was not possible to quickly solve at first glance such a simple problem as importing data from Excel, CSV and other systems. For quite a long period, this functionality did not really work, although, as I understand it now, it is a critical functionality for such systems.

Did the currency jump adjust your plans and prices? Do you have to regret that you entered the market in such a difficult time?

Dmitry Popov: On the contrary. Considering the current state of affairs, I can say that we have launched very successfully and have chosen the right pricing policy. In the face of currency rates rising, former clients of major foreign and even some Russian services are switching to us, trying to save on IT business support. Prices, by the way, are still at the same level. In addition, we introduced discounts (up to 30%) when paying for access to the service for a longer period.
We were surprised, but we have an increasing number of clients from Ukraine and Belarus, despite economic factors.

Looking back, what advice would you give yourself at the start of the project?

Dmitry Popov: We have lost a lot of time on some not very necessary things. Now I would refuse to implement them and could save a lot of time. Otherwise, the right direction was chosen, and I would advise myself not to worry about some questions :)

Brief information about the service:
WireCRM is a simple CRM tool that appeared on the market in late 2013 - early 2014 and focused on small businesses.
When connected to the service, the user gets the minimum basic functionality that can be expanded by activating additional modules from the app store (based on the design principle). The toolkit is available both via a web browser on both desktop systems and mobile devices.