Ecwid's case: how Ruslan Fazliev double-crossed Rubicon e-commerce

Every time when we meet our compatriot in the West, who owns a company or develops a service, whose main distribution market is for countries outside of Russia or the former USSR, we begin to ask a lot of questions that are united into one simple one: “How did they do it?”

In order to learn firsthand about the success of Ecwid , created by the Russian team from Ulyanovsk, but developing in the US and Europe, we asked the entire array of questions that interest us Ruslan Fazlyev - the company's founder and its managing director. This is how one more case was born, which we gladly tell readers of Megamind.
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- Ruslan, the first classic question: at what point did the idea of ​​creating such a business come to you? In your case, this question is doubly relevant, since now you are at the helm of the second company operating in the same market.

In fact, Ecwid was born as a product, not as a company. That is, there were no plans to create a company - just the product turned out to be so good that over time it was separated into a structure that grew independently of the parent company, and I became its CEO. Letting go of the reins of the company I created first was a big step for me.

You can answer differently to the question: “Why was Ecwid born?”. Because the future is cloud technology.
XCart is the “downloadable” e-commerce platform, that is, at the time of creating XCart, our task was to make the process of creating a full-fledged online store easy for all programmers. Because at that time, without an Internet programmer, creating an online store was simply impossible, and when starting work on XCart (2001) they were written from scratch, each line of code each wrote as wanted or considered necessary. It was impossible to take the box and put the store out of it.

In our presentation, XCart was just the same box that we gave the programmer, he finishes it to the needs of a particular client. This approach has advantages: absolute flexibility, access to the code; There are also disadvantages: the cost of ownership in the first place, security problems. Working on a small scale, companies, as a rule, cannot afford to seriously engage in information security, while picking their own code. They have the illusion of security and the illusion of control, but in fact they are not protected.

Whereas you pay for the “cloud” in the rental mode, but not buy it. It is also much safer, surprisingly, most people do not understand this at all. Probably, these are the same people that they are afraid to fly an airplane, because they cannot do anything on the passenger seat - the pilot does everything for them: “What if?”. At the same time, any statistics directly indicate that passenger air travel is an order of magnitude safer than other types of transport, and certainly safer than the situation in which you are at the helm. Although a sense of control and higher.

It was clear that behind the cloud is the future. But I myself did not go into this very cloud, because I was confused by one thing: most people have some sites that they built, having invested their own souls in it. Business has the same sites. And when you start in the cloud, you realize that the existing site cannot be simply transferred there. It was somehow developed - it would be necessary to redo it on a new platform, and we always wanted people to be simple, and we asked ourselves: “How to make it so that it is not necessary to redo it?”.

Just at that moment, the technologies of “widgets” began to develop, which allowed adding to any site, any platform, with the help of Javascript, so that all further changes were generated using a line of code. Then I thought: “This is what we need!”, As it solved the problems of people having websites and contacting us with a question about opening an online store on it. Only at that moment (2008-2009) did it become possible to do this without involving third-party developers / programmers in the process.

- Ruslan, here I will interrupt you and ask a clarifying question - do I understand correctly that the idea of ​​creating a SaaS-e-commerce platform was not originally there, but it took shape at a time when a combination of factors allowed it?

Yes exactly. Moreover, I believe that not a single person has the idea of ​​just “creating a business”. Some things that you start to do, products that you bring to the market - this is the "business creation". I have never seen the success of a business created as follows: “We need a business. What will it be like? ”Or“ We need to bring the product to the market. What will this product be? ” This simply can not be, it is a complete garbage in any approximation.

In my opinion, a good business is born because the universe dictates the conditions for their emergence, the world “asks” for their creation by itself.

- It was 2010, things were going well for you. You won the Next Web Accelerator program, attracted attention, raised a round from Runa Capital. At the same time, your market (e-commerce SaaS solutions) reminds me of a piranha pond, despite this, you very quickly achieved good (objective) results. What is the recipe for success? Or the essence of the recipe is to take the maximum of available opportunities at a certain point in time?

For the compliment - thanks, really, the market is very highly competitive, which has its pros and cons. The advantages are that if you get something in this market, then you earn money. The downsides are that many people want to succeed, and this entails certain difficulties.

On Facebook, we have long been the first provider, by the number of users using our platform in this social network.

- At the same time, you were the first Russian eBay partners, right?

Yes, we were the first to manage to provide our own eBay service for Russian sellers. Many, by the way, used Ecwid as a way to present their own product range on eBay, a way to get there for the first time.

How does this happen? Yes, everything is simple - it's 15 years of experience. Because the Ecwid team “started” with the XCart team, many experienced people moved after me - so we transferred all our own experience from XCart to a new team and a new company. Now we were ready to look at the problem from a new angle, to offer its solutions at a new level.

All this, of course, helped a lot. But, going back, at the time of creating XCart, we did not have such an understanding, but it turned out all the same. Therefore, all that is required is perseverance and naivety. Naivety helps persistence, less naive people, seeing the scale of the problem, lose their motivation.

- You are developing a serious, global platform. As far as I understand, the Russian market is not the main one for you, you live for some time in the Valley. Is it easier to develop products from the Valley? Is it harder to do this in Russia?

I grew up in a certain environment and really love Russia, with all facets.
From the point of view of ease of development, in Russia it is simpler, much simpler. Silicon Valley is strangled with money and, very often, the following turns out: 0.01% of the most successful companies have become like this through effective methods of raising capital, have attracted billions of users, at this point their internal costs (development / value creation) become zero (multiplied by the number of users ) and it becomes unimportant how much a programmer costs. They are ready to receive the best, paying for it any money. They are no longer worried about the difference in pay between different locations. Therefore, the labor market explodes, the salary level becomes so high that it becomes impossible to afford the best people.

Therefore, our code is easier.

Plus, in Russia (and certainly in Ulyanovsk, where I come from) there is some kind of “nepotism” of business - people have been together for a long time, learning to work together. My team is ready to eat anyone who tries to break it.

- Do you, as a company, feel this for yourself? Are you also pumped up with funds or are you not involved in this process (raising third-party funding)?

Money is a very dangerous drug, so we try to stay a little apart. There are companies created to live in the framework of investment rounds: from the previous to the next and that's it.

We, too, are increasing our own capitalization, like other companies, but when we do this, I want to be sure that at the click of my fingers, at any moment, the company can become profitable. Never will I expect that the market will fill up the company with money, even just in the form of hopes for the future. The same XCart has been profitable from day one.

We developed Ecwid with some orientation on the venture model, but we initially set ourselves the task of achieving profitability, several times we stepped “through zero”, and we do not exist at a great loss. We try to grow as fast as possible using external and internal resources.

Another difference between California and Russia is that, in addition to slightly more affordable programmers, there is one more thing - in Russia it is much more difficult to hire mature people. I mean that it is difficult to find a person who can immediately get a high product role or position of the main interface designer.

- We are talking about hiring motivated people or high-level people?

Motivation is a separate issue, you need to work on it for a long time, as a rule, it is not born instantly. The point is that when you hire a designer in Russia, as a rule, he developed (painted) websites and rarely could he take part in creating really good interfaces for web pages and applications. Very often such a person does not live immersed in an environment of convenience, but on the contrary - he is immersed in an environment of inconvenience when there are housing offices, traffic police, and so on, and it all works slowly, developing the "habit of inefficiency."

Therefore, the overall inefficiency is not so callous eyes. Therefore, a person, when developing an interface or something else, is not so quick, in comparison with the States, understands where he was wrong, he is ready for a compromise. In California, it's a little different.

Nevertheless, we still manage to find such people in Russia and involve them in the work on their own product.

- What do you have now, by the way, with the team? Where are you at? How many people?

We have a distributed team, and this is what happened evolutionarily. The development office was originally one and it remained the only one. Our points of presence today: the oldest, head office in Ulyanovsk, where we work for a hundred people.

We have a California office that deals mainly with business logic and marketing. We have a "new" office in Ulyanovsk, which is engaged in technical support. We have an additional office in Samara, engaged in mobile development, and we did not have the goal to create it - it took shape on its own thanks to talented people and a human personality. And we have separate people: in Kazan, Moscow, New York, who independently fulfill common goals, but in general we do not like it and try not to hire them for remote work.

- And a little about the future: what are your plans? You are in good positions, you have a lot of clients in many countries. Where will you develop further - what is the immediate goal?

I earned myself - give money to others.

Now most of our initiatives are tied up in order to give an opportunity to earn web studios, web consultants, programmers. We open our own application market for third-party developers, which means that if someone does something for the only Ecwid client, they can sell it to all users of the platform. Moreover, it is important that we take on the task of billing - a person does not need to run and collect money. Customers buy these extensions in one click, we collect the money and give it to the developer. Collecting a pretty penny from a huge audience - this is what big companies do, small developers do not know how - no audience. And we can, and we have an audience, so we give this opportunity to anyone who wants it.

The second is that the market is fragmented, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of solutions. And for us it is very important that there be much more of them. We give developers the opportunity to have their own solution - on Ecwid you can make a full private label and sell it in this form. Not a line on Bitrix, but an own product within the framework of the Ecwid platform. That is, if there is a web studio, suppose Dali, then it can offer Dali Commerce to its own clients, thus increasing the lock-in on these clients. Because the client, getting a solution from a particular studio, becomes attached to it.

- What do you call it? Do I understand correctly that this is some kind of “SaaS co-branding”?

About. We call this thing Jump Start . In fact, all such initiatives, that is, the application market and its own solutions, run by small studios, are a program that we are actively developing now, and we want as many people as possible to use it.

- The penultimate question: what advice would you give to your own hypothetical son, following in your footsteps, by trial and error trying to understand how and where to go

The first thing I will say is that it never happens the first time. It is necessary to try, this is the real answer, I say this to my son. My real son is picking on the code, and he has a strange set of languages ​​- this is Shell and Javascript, I had Basic and something else. He regularly gets into trouble with his code, comes in, we discuss. As a rule, I ask him a question so that he can find the answer himself. You must make mistakes yourself. At one time, I was very inspired by an article stating that “persistence is more important than talent” - the authors of the study compared different groups of people who were praised for their talent or for their persistence. It turned out that those who are praised for perseverance are successful in the long term. Such people study for a long time and find the answer. Talent can not solve the problem, because you start to think that its solution requires even more talent. Perseverance, perseverance and perseverance, talent will follow.

- And the last question - do a lot of people want to repeat your success, what would you advise people who are at your tail?

If a person does not yet have a business and does not have experience in managing a business, my advice is not to begin in any case. There is no back thought. The argument is simple - the one who should start, now my advice “not to start” will not listen. But the rest of the truth does not need to start, because the creation of a business is a complex process. I saw a lot of people trying to do this: one loss, one loss, and finally one another — a defeat. I know from my own experience, from the first time it did not work out, although from the height of experience it seems to you that way, you forget about failure. Easier not to start. Well, then: "I will not work for my uncle." I am shocked when I hear this, in my opinion, this is nonsense and not because I am an uncle. The question and statement itself is incorrect. I desperately wanted to work for my uncle, and my uncle did not want to take me. At that moment, when he gave me the opportunity, I happily grabbed her because it was the only chance to learn something. The reason why I built my own is that there was no uncle who would offer me such a job.