Why service for tourists Airbnb bought the developers of the acclaimed breathalyzer Lapka

The Russian startup Lapka made a lot of noise in the West by releasing a set of miniature sensors for the iPhone. The sensors have an elegant appearance, and they can determine the level of radiation, humidity, the amount of nitrates in products and the strength of the electromagnetic field. Today it became known that the small team that created Lapka bought Airbnb , the world's largest travel accommodation search service.

Lapka company was founded by Vadik Marmeladov. In addition to Marmeladov, Lapka’s team includes engineer Sergey Filippov and three-dimensional graphics artist Ilya Kolganov.

Marmeladov told Slon Magazine about a deal with Airbnb, about the target audience of the project, about moving to the USA and much more.
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"Megamind" selected the most interesting statements from the interview .

About why Airbnb bought the project Lapka

Two of the three founders of Airbnb, Joe Gabbia and Brian Chesky, are industrial designers who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. As users, they are interested in Lapka from the day of release, Gabbia was the first to pre-order with us. All this time we have been in touch, met periodically. Actually, Gabbia at one point offered to buy a company and work on new projects inside Airbnb.

Airbnb does not need sensors, we will make new products. Airbnb is about everything related to housing, travel culture and the home ecosystem. What do Lapka and Airbnb have in common? The desire to build off not on a specific product, but on user experience — not on “interfaces” and “design,” but on what is called user experience.

Lapka as an art project

We pushed off the idea of ​​creating comfortable and beautiful sensors that, in terms of combining style and technology, would be no worse than Apple. The technologies themselves are not so important - the radiometer, nitratomer and other sensors are made on the basis of long-known methods. And we managed to make products that do not exist for the sake of a particular goal (something has stopped), but show how far the capabilities of modern interfaces and gadgets have gone. We began to think about business later. At first, we didn’t even get into the details of the production - we just went to China, made sure that everything was done according to our sketches and drawings. Only with our second gadget, the Lapka BAM breathalyzer, we thought about how to reduce costs.

We were free from investors, from partners, we ourselves did not need to earn money. We were able to work boldly, striving for the ideal in everything - in materials, in proportions. If we did Lapka again and with a focus on business, invested in promotion, thought about the growth of downloads and sales, we would probably have failed.

About investments in the project

Only your time and energy. It so happened that the three of us can do anything. Honestly, we tried to hire people, but we did not manage to get such a quality that we gave ourselves.

How to evaluate such investments? In Russia, this is generally a problem. For example, our promotion has done a lot of noise, where Lapka sensors are in the hands of different people, with imprints on wood and plastic. Such a survey could cost $ 20 thousand, and could also $ 50 thousand, but it did not cost us anything - we have friends and we ourselves know how to make an advertising shooting. The same thing with the video breathalyzer for the site breathalyzer for the site. We can say that we ourselves have spent, say, $ 100 on it, but this is wrong - because in fact such a site could cost $ 100,000 to order.

About the audience of the Lapka project

We measured success not by the number of users or sales, but by the number of measurements. In March 2015, we passed the mark of 50 thousand measurements using our sensors. Now 4–5 thousand measurements are carried out every month, a little more than 30% of them are measurements of the level of nitrates in products, the measurements of radiation, humidity, electromagnetic field are about the same - 22–23% each. About 56% of users are from Russia, 34% from the USA; the rest are from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Canada, South Korea.

At first, we saw that Lapka began to be bought by young mothers - they are afraid for the lives of newborns, they are worried for any reason, so Lapka helps them get rid of this paranoia a little. Then came the "supergears" who were used to walking around Moscow with Geiger counters or measuring the electromagnetic field, for example, in the subway. For them, we made a PRO-version of the application, which shows only graphs and numbers. One needs a beautiful picture - and this is enough to trust the measurements of the device, others want to dig deeper and do not believe just the drawings. We made a map, where the measurements from our sensors are loaded in real time - it shows that 22% of all measurements come from the PRO application.

About sales channels for Lapka devices

We did not have a budget for promotion at all, but we ourselves actively communicated with the press abroad, told about the product. Most distributors, even Russian ones, found out about us at the CES 2014 conference. We have more than 300 points of sale.
For half a year we were present only at completely unexpected points for gadgets - like boutiques with sneakers - and then distributors began to come to us. As a result, we hit re: Store . After that, distributors began offering to subscribe to lots of 30-50 thousand sets, but we did not want to.

About why at the start the project left Russia

From the point of view of entrepreneurial culture, Russia is hundreds of years from the West. You need to be honest: if you make Lapka, do not say that you will be a new Apple. You make an application for the Russian audience - no need to talk about the second Instagram. In this sense, I like some Russian companies - LavkaLavka, DoubleBi, which say: yes, we are doing a start-up in Russia and for Russia, and if everything goes well, we will try to go abroad. They do not lie to people around or to themselves, and I respect the creators of these startups.

What prevents to do cool projects in Russia

Before Lapka, I spoke a lot in the media and was famous in the get-together, and with the new project we went into silence for two years. When we started, we only sent materials to the American press. And I was surprised: 3-4 months after being published in the Western media, I began to write friends from Russia - congratulations on the release. Then I realized that although in Russia, in comparison with other countries, the Internet is cheap and the borders seem to have been open a long time ago, the iron curtain and the “scoop” still exist in their heads.

Because any person in Russia has everything to make a cool project: you can go to Silicon Valley, be an intern in a company in Europe, make a trial batch of a product in China - you just buy tickets and fly to negotiate. But nobody does that. Probably because everyone lacks not only the willingness to take risks, but also professionalism. I, to put it mildly, am not a professional. This is what I learned from doing Lapka, and I’ll continue this inside Airbnb. And where, how and from whom to study in Russia, pulling oneself up is not clear.