Startup of the day (May 2017)

Continuing the “Startup of the Day” series of digests, today I present the most interesting projects for May. If you want to get acquainted with the others, then please in my blog. Entries are available on Facebook , ICQ and Telegram .

1. WayUp

American variation on the topic of job search for Millennials - a startup WayUp. In principle, everything is as in the good old Headhunter: there are profiles of applicants, there are vacancy announcements, both sides can search for each other by filters, money is taken from employers, for candidates everything is free.

The first difference from the classics - specialization in students and graduates. Nobody has significant experience, which, of course, significantly limits the range of potential vacancies, but the selection according to formal criteria works better: suitable universities and the average score can be put in the filter, and there is nothing more in the resume, no field for the subjective I do not like". Yes, in many respects this is an advantage of the chosen category, and not of service, but who will understand - the percentage of suitable candidates among those proposed by WayUp is high, HR are satisfied, the startup boasts.

The second point is the hipster interface. There are standard filters, but they are hidden, the main element of the UI is the vacancies “specially for me” selected by smart algorithms, you don’t need to look for anything, you must click right away. This again reduces the percentage of failures, the algorithm is not as optimistic as the person, and chooses where more chances to get settled, and not where they are best paid.

WayUp takes money for a subscription, tried to take a candidate before, but eventually changed the model to a more familiar one. Investment project raised $ 27.5 million, of which 18.5 - the other day. It is curious that for the unknown part of the “old” nine he managed to buy a clone competitor.

2. MasterClass

Do you want to learn acting skills? Probably not. Do you want to learn acting skills through the Internet? Obviously not. And if through the Internet, but with Dustin Hoffman? And just $ 90? It seems that this sentence sounds much more interesting.

So MasterClass works. He finds the stars of the first magnitude in some not vital, but pleasantly interesting disciplines for almost any person: except Hoffman is Sirena Williams in tennis, Christina Aguilera in singing, Gordon Ramsay in cooking, and records with them a series of video lessons about secrets skill. Access to lessons is sold for those same $ 90 (some of them, of course, goes to the teacher), in addition to video, the student receives homework and cross-checks with other students. Yes, in the 2017th year, you can set and check homework even in tennis - you just need to record your movements on the video, and then upload to the system.

Some lucky ones are checked by a star, their mistakes are publicly reported for all students - this also increases the amount of content in the course, and creates some kind of lottery motivation when buying, “suddenly, even Sirena will look at me!”

Courses in the system are added slowly, now there are only fourteen, a year ago there were seven, two years ago - five. Based on the dynamics of previous investments, it turns out that the cost of producing commercials and a one-time star fee is about a million and a half dollars for the course, and the last round of $ 35 million is enough for another 25 new topics.

3. Tagged

Startup Tagged by itself is completely uninteresting. This is an old deyting service, something like our Damochka.ru from the beginning of zero (or the end of the nineties? ..). Mambopodobnaya mechanics combined with uncomplicated games, now something else like Tinder added beside, everything is hung, hung with advertising and paid functions, but their users are left and their money left, the project has been profitable for ten years. There are a lot of such people, acquaintances are an eternal topic, and the existence of a leader does not kill the possibility for outsiders to survive. However, everyone would be such an outsider - their revenue is about 50 million dollars a year, the topic is not only eternal, but also rich.

Interestingly, Tagged conducted an experiment that at least once any big company wanted to conduct. They argued simply: every few years, a student comes up with some awesome social thing and there is a new Facebook — not Facebook — but at least Foursquare, worth hundreds of millions, and bringing fame far more than our clone of a young lady.

We are smarter than any student, we have more resources, we have experience in attracting traffic, we have loyal users who can be polled or used for testing. Let's start doing new and interesting things, we will get better than students, and at least once we will guess, well, this time it will pay back any efforts.

And they really did it, only their own products with original mechanics (social network for neighbors and a messaging messenger) and another multimoderer bought at an early stage reached public use. Nothing took off, of course ... But you tried! All the rest stop that students try a million, it turns out at one, and they are not a million times smarter and more effective than each individual experimenter.

Now the fuse is over, the founders of the company have sold, then it will just bring money to the new owners, the world has not been turned upside down.

4. Upskill

In the mass consciousness, augmented reality is often something like cool stickers on ICQ or Snapchat. Startup Upskill uses technology in far more serious issues, it is trying to improve the efficiency of workers. There are not so many basic scenarios for its use, but each of them is obviously useful for entire industries:

• Online instructions: when you hover on any barcode Google Glasses or similar device can tell you what to do with it and how to be.
• Online consultations: if someone less experienced is away, he can stream the video to someone more competent, but sitting at that moment in a comfortable room.
• Online task manager: the next task can literally flicker before my eyes, and the place of its execution or the necessary details for it can somehow be highlighted.

Formally, all this can be done using a mobile phone, but, firstly, it does not look so stylish, and secondly, the workers often need both hands. Therefore - glasses, not necessarily Google, but any such. It is clear that the real requirements of any customer for such products are absolutely unique, Upskill did something like a framework that allows these requirements to be quickly implemented. And it works. Among the satisfied customers, for example, Boeing, whose glasses turned out to be implemented so well that he even invested in a startup in the last round. In general, the future is coming.

5. Carvana

And there is life in almost pure offline - a start-up Carvana has reached its billionth IPO. The result is not the loudest in world history, but in any case excellent for a company of four years.

To understand the reasons for this success, you need to start to go to a large salon to any major car dealer. It is almost always a huge glass palace, standing on some good ground, in a city or near the city, and standing approximately a fortune. Such storage is especially expensive for used cars: after all, they need to be kept there, it’s impossible, like with new ones, to show the same sample to dozens of customers, and to sell other identical copies from a distant warehouse.

The business model of Carvana is to compete with conventional dealers (in fact, to be a dealer), but to abandon the traditional giant salons and sell used cars via the Internet. At the same time, a part of the money saved is put in a pocket for future profits and investors' happiness, and a part of a startup is shared with users, providing additional benefits in return for the lost opportunity to wander among the cars sold.

It all starts with unlimited choices. Now the site has 7000 cars available to each resident of the delivery zone. This, of course, is not much compared to any bulletin board, but much more than a dealer can offer in his salon. In each car, you can climb inside using a beautiful 3D-model in Flash. 2017, start-up, Flash - the combination looks a bit strange, but there will never be such on any auto.ru.

When a car is chosen, it is time for convenient delivery, it should not be worse than that of a regular dealer. The most common, but effective option - the car can simply bring to the house. The second possibility is more exotic - Carvana pays a non-resident buyer a plane ticket for him to get to the warehouse, sit down and leave. And, finally, a business card of a startup - vending machines for issuing cars: the paid car is delivered to this tower, the new owner is sent a code, he arrives with a friend or by taxi, enters the code and leaves already behind the wheel of his new car.

There are only two such vending in the country, it is clearly not very significant in terms of delivery method - but how beautiful it is! And in the press, their photos are always applied, so I, too, could not resist.

A person chose a car via the Internet, received it, say, in vending, without having communicated with any living soul - naturally this is scary, suddenly the car was killed, although it was written that in perfect condition. So that was not scary, Carvana gives guarantees. First, the seven-day moneyback without any conditions, did not like it - you can return. Secondly, a one-day guarantee for some kind of flaws that pop up: if all of a sudden the engine itself has become humbug, this will be a problem for Carvana, and not for the buyer.

You can sell cars through the Internet, but prices will not be the best, and this is not a very popular opportunity. The main source of cars for Carvana is B2B dealer auctions and similar old school tools. The startup economy does not yet converge, he has already learned how to make a profit from every sold car, but this does not pay for the total expenses. However, the annual sales growth of about 300%, the effect of each sale also improves, another couple of years - and the company as a whole should become profitable. In 2016, about twenty thousand cars passed through Carvana, the startup capitalization is now $ 1.7 billion, and before the IPO they invested $ 300 million in investments.