Service exchange of ideas Eurecable.com: the history of the creation of a "startup"

In August last year, I sat, it appears, and counted on various niches so that in the most successful of them they start their own business - one of us who does not dream of a large passive income, let him be the first to throw a stone at me.

Why was my attention focused on the concept of “niche”? Because a lot of trainings like “create your business in 1 day and 100 rubles” are built on exactly this marketing approach to entering the market as “niche” and it really is one of the most accessible ways to start your own business, which I, being at that moment an MBA student (and now an appropriate diploma holder *), knew from a marketing course.
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I myself am by my profession a “weakness worker”, that is, I was engaged in various qualities (from operation and the engineer of technical supervision to the installation workman) to various security systems, such as fire alarm systems, video surveillance systems, as well as automation systems such as AIIS KUE, etc. Therefore, one of the niches to be calculated was the provision of services in this area.

Another area of ​​my interest is the two-wheeled vehicle. Not bicycles, as some might think, although this is certainly a healthy, environmentally friendly transport that interests me, but motorcycles. Judging by the above analysis, the sale of motorcycles through the Internet is a rather sensible and promising idea : with a profitability of 30%, 60 sales per month with an average check of 200,000 rubles can provide a profit of 4 million per month. Considering that this is a seasonal business, about 23 million are received annually!

The third developed idea was the sale of the book-encyclopedia on bilruda written by me more than 8 years ago, since From that time I didn’t actually sell it, entrusting it to the co-author of the book and the author of the technology of making billiard tables. Here it should be noted that the actual production of billiard tables is a much more profitable business than the sale of a technology book describing this process.

Finally, let's go to the fragment, which is highlighted by a red rectangle. This is actually the "sale of ideas . " As you can see, the idea of ​​“selling ideas” turned out to be financially very promising, especially I ask you to draw your attention to the number of requests in Yandex for the keyword “idea”.

Three hundred and sixty kilorubley is still better than weaving a fair salary - I thought, and decided to try. I painted the concept ( here you can read the full text of the original concept), found the “programmer” - and the work began to boil.

It is worth noting that although I myself am an IT pro by education and have relevant work experience, but at the moment my knowledge and skills are still not enough for writing code or high-quality web design and layout, so I preferred this part of the work delegate for a reasonable fee.

A month later, it turned out that fifty thousand (payment for a month of labor by a Ruby developer with a huge discount) is a bit small and I had to invest more money. Frankly, it seemed to me that I literally threw “hundreds of oil” into the furnace of a high-tech IT business, and besides, I decided to immediately make a beautiful design and hired a designer (never do that).

The designer drew in 2 months and 12.5 kilorubbles like this:



which of course is slightly prettier than my mocap , but not the level of Lebedev either.

As often happens, while the designer drew the design, the concept has changed twice. Therefore, having paid for the work of the designer, I had to throw out his “sketches” and draw such a mind map:



But, by the end of the year, a more or less working version of the engine had been formed, a normal typesetter was found, and already two people, not counting me, continued to prepare the “Über-twitter” for a deafening launch. Meanwhile, the project budget has already exceeded 200k of personal money.

I met the end of February with a project with functionality that is presented on the site at the time of publication of the article. I sketched the text of the landing page, the locale, and we implemented it all in a couple of weeks. Now the project has already exceeded 300 kilo rubles in value, but it also has the potential:
- advanced system of categorization and evaluation of ideas ("2 in 1"),
- content distribution system, which stimulates its creation (to read an idea, you need to earn energy by publishing your idea),
- a fresh idea, the absence of tough competitors (kickstarter works in another sector - financing of ideas).

At the moment, a new, more agile (and, more importantly, more attractive) designer has already developed a logo, color scheme, is engaged in the welcome-page illustration, and the layout designer is preparing to impose it. What is now a project, you can read on the main, and the best way to try it yourself, you can log in to the system through social networks.



Now the project has the following tasks:
- creation of initial content (ideas, users),
- promotion (this article is one of the methods of "partisan marketing"),
- revision of the project (approximately another 2-3 months of pure time: personal messages, search, categories for problems, normal localization, subscriptions and notifications, tape),
- access to the international level.

If anyone has any advice or any other form of feedback (constructive is welcome) - I will be glad to hear. Also I will be glad to answer your questions. And if someone like the project - great! Become one of the pioneers, the project is now very necessary users.

* - at the moment it hasn’t affected my personal income, but it raises self-esteem significantly.

Upd (05/02/2016). Updated landing page \ welcome-page . Now a lot should be clear.