Stepan Pachikov: “If you have an idea that you understand, you can develop it into a startup”
On May 13, Stepan Pachikov , a legendary IT aksakal, one of the most successful startups of the USSR and All Russia, delivered a lecture for students of the specialization “Management in the field of Internet technologies” of the State University of Management.
The chief architect of Evernote and the organizer of at least two successful software startups started with a half-laughable disclaimer: “I have never been a professional lecturer, and have not given any lectures for 25 years. Therefore, I am not liable for damage from the use of the knowledge obtained during the lecture. ” Well, after the warning I explained what exactly I was going to tell about: “I will tell you today what is important for a successful startup. At first I wanted to call my lecture “What you don’t need to do in order not to destroy the company”, but decided not to introduce negative in the name. Of course, I will also tell you about my current company Evernote: it’s a sin not to use the opportunity to advertise your company and your product for free. ”
')
In itself, the biography of Stepan Pachikov can be studied as a training course for beginning startups. True, at the lecture he only briefly told his live story, referring to the articles, his and others: “The World Wide Web of Samizdat” , “Silicon Fever” , “The Fate of“ Paragraph ”in America” - part 1 , part 2 , part 3 , “ Letters from afar "- part 1 and part 2 .
“I first studied at the Novosibirsk Physics and Mathematics School, then at Novosibirsk University, from which I was expelled after dissident actions in connection with the Prague events of August 1968. I had to transfer to the brotherly university, in Tbilisi, from which I was also almost expelled when information about the reason for my previous deduction. Then he continued his studies at Moscow State University, where he was one of the first to study the theory of blurry sets and blurred logic. After graduating from university as a senior researcher at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he worked on creating models of the world economy. He predicted, for example, how in the future the change in oil prices will affect the world economy. In the 80s, I organized the first children's computer club in the USSR with Garry Kasparov, and a little later, in 1988, I had an idea to organize my own company, something like the Soviet Bell Labs. To do this, my friends and I got together and wrote about 20 topics that we would be interested in doing and what we could offer. These were a variety of topics - for example, among them was the task of determining the sex of a chicken depending on the shape of the egg and the search for large oil fields. Behind these technologies, in particular, was a team of people I met at the seminar of Academician Gelfand. As a result, we stopped all the same on the task of handwriting recognition. They organized a company that later became ParaGraph, and already in early 1990, before the collapse of the USSR, they went to the States for the exhibition Comdex Spring, and a couple of weeks before the coup they became the first Soviet company to enter into a contract with Apple. January 15, 1993, at 10 o'clock in the evening I had the idea to make a time machine. It was explained simply - I had a son, and I wanted to send him to Syracuse from the time of Archimedes. Of course, in fact, it was a virtual time machine, a recreating model of the era in which I wanted to give my parents the role of guardian angels for time-traveling children. As a result, we began to create three-dimensional models, and it turned out that at that time we were leaders in the field of graphic 3D modeling languages. After that, several companies became interested in us, but eventually I bought Silicon Graphics, whose corporate vice president I worked for just over a year. Here, in brief, is my story in the last century. And after that, in the XXI century, I decided to start an Evernote company. ”
About Evernote, who recently spoke in Russian, its chief architect told separately. “The idea of the company was to solve the problem of the imperfections of human memory, to make the memory of any person even the same as that of Garry Kasparov, and preferably much better. I often say half-jokingly that a person is always in one of two states: either he is sitting in front of his computer, or not. At the moment when there is no computer, a person most often has a mobile phone in his pocket, which can be used as an external brain. Therefore, my initial vision was this - the mobile phone becomes a continuation, an extension of human memory. Now we say that we are expanding human memory, without specifying exactly how, because your memory is everywhere: in the computer, in the phone, in your head, on the Internet, in general, somewhere in the cloud. But it is always there, and it cannot be lost. Moreover, in contrast to the real biological memory, it is constantly improving.
This raises the question of what is a good memory. My understanding is this. Firstly, it is the ability to quickly and effortlessly remember what might someday come in handy. Secondly, the ability to always have access to this information, wherever you are. Finally, it is an opportunity to find information, even if you do not know exactly what you are looking for and cannot clearly describe it. ”
Stepan Pachikov could not help but share his experience in the field of creating and promoting startups: “From my own experience, I began to understand that if you are doing a job for which you don’t have a nose, you shouldn’t start it. I even wanted to translate today's lecture with an epigraph from Knish: “Do not put your contribution into your business.” If you have an idea that you understand, you can develop it into a startup.
The first thing you will encounter when trying to make your company is the need to be able to tell your idea in 30 seconds. This skill is key. For example, once, while boarding a United Airline at San Francisco airport, I met Alexander P., a partner of a well-known venture capital firm, who asked me to tell us what we were doing. While we were standing nearby, shoving baggage along the top shelves, I managed to tell him the essence of our project and immediately set the day for the official presentation at their company in New York, where we flew.
After you have an idea for a product, it is important to understand whether there is a large market for it or whether a large market will appear in the near future. In addition, having formulated the goals and objectives of a startup, you should be able to explain how you are going to realize your idea, what exactly you are going to do and how. Here you need to add that your market entry strategy is especially important for any investor, that is, you must explain why your product will crowd out all others or occupy a large niche in the market, and this is a very difficult task.
Then you need to build a strong team. One of the many mistakes that I noticed with my friends and acquaintances is reduced to the problem of teamwork and the problem of who to take into it. It is convenient to work with friends, you can ask more from friends, but there are some problems here - say, the risk of turning a company into such, I would say, patriarchal economy, in which personal relationships begin to dominate, and the company begins to build and function around them. All this is then very difficult and painful to break. But I recently understood the role of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard for the IT industry - I had to be both in the role of Ranevskaya and in the role of Lopakhin in relation to the companies of my friends. ParaGraph, which I sold in the last century, was a team of friends and like-minded people, which helped the company to rise quickly and almost ruined it. Now I understand that his success is 50 percent luck. Today, in the 21st century, the industrial, iron principle of the “right” construction of the “right” firm is more often effective. As one of my executive executives likes to say, “We will do it right”.
It is often asked how and where to look for money for a startup. Unfortunately, I did not have time to get acquainted with your curriculum and I can repeat trite, well-known truths. The following statement is not trivial: the biggest mistake you can make while collecting money is greed. It is much more important to get not the best possible estimate of the company, but to receive money on time from the right people. Money should not smell, because often the decision of the next investor or potential partner depends on who your investor is.
Another important point I would like to touch on here is the relationship with venture capitalists. Venture funds are just another kind of business. Usually, venture capitalists take money from private and non-private sources, sometimes make mistakes, and often lose money in firms that burn through. Therefore, as a rule, venture capitalists start talking when they see a result of $ 25 to one. The logic here is that only one of many firms will shoot, therefore it is very difficult to come to them and say: “Give me a million and you will get two next year”. If you have such modest plans, it’s better not to have affairs with venture funds. ”
There were a lot of questions during the lecture, and they were very different. Stepan Pachikov’s answers to the most interesting ones are given below.
- Tell me, can you talk about Evernote in 30 seconds?
- Evernote is a service that allows you to memorize various information at any time and makes it always available, wherever you are and whatever device you use. Evernote allows you to search for data on a variety of indirect signs - for example, to find a note made on a napkin in a cafe in Paris, written by hand in Russian. The business model is very simple - it is a basic-free service, earning on which is planned in several stages. First, we are going to offer those who exceed traffic to pay for this excess. We also plan to make targeted advertising as a source of profit.
- How do angels differ from venture capital funds and venture capitalists?
- Venture capitalists differ from venture funds in that they are simply employees of these funds (Laughs). Venture funds are money from various sources: private investors, organizations. Angels use their money. As a rule, if an angel gives you money, then he is waiting for them to return to him, and does not interfere in the process of building a company. In turn, the venture capitalist will closely monitor how the money is spent, what is happening in the company and when it is necessary to intervene in order to change the management of the company. These are such sometimes annoying assistants.
Another feature associated with some venture capital funds: if they feel that the smell of burned, they are trying to save their money, not you (Laughs).
- What kind of start-ups do you like, and how would you make a startup now if you didn’t have the means to implement it?
- My personal approach to organizing startups has changed with age, I would have developed ideas in different ways at different stages of my life. Here, suppose I have a good idea now. And suppose I am going to find money for it, giving some, perhaps most, for it, because if I don’t have time to realize the idea in a couple of years, someone else will implement it. In general, for me personally, the most difficult thing in creating a startup is to recruit a professional, non-trivial team. I have a lot of ideas, and I'm not afraid of the market.
- How to calculate the capitalization of a startup company in the sale?
- There is no universal way. Both the buyer and the seller have different views on it. For example, when we recently evaluated one company, we had to argue for a long time what to take into account: profit or income for several years. It should be noted that, as a rule, when calculating the capitalization of a company, its future predicted value is taken into account. In general, the calculation of capitalization is a serious thing. It is rather an art than a science.
- What ideas do you consider the most promising and popular for startups today?
- All of you today are reading the Internet and the press, listening to the news and you understand this as well as I do. In my opinion, this is all that concerns genetics, molecular biology. In the field of Internet technology is also a lot of things. Just watch what is happening today in the market, in the industry, in technology, what Google is doing today in the field of mobile phones, and pick up trends. I believe that the days of ordinary computers are numbered, and a person with a laptop in the near future will look like the person with a fax machine now looks.
The chief architect of Evernote and the organizer of at least two successful software startups started with a half-laughable disclaimer: “I have never been a professional lecturer, and have not given any lectures for 25 years. Therefore, I am not liable for damage from the use of the knowledge obtained during the lecture. ” Well, after the warning I explained what exactly I was going to tell about: “I will tell you today what is important for a successful startup. At first I wanted to call my lecture “What you don’t need to do in order not to destroy the company”, but decided not to introduce negative in the name. Of course, I will also tell you about my current company Evernote: it’s a sin not to use the opportunity to advertise your company and your product for free. ”
')
In itself, the biography of Stepan Pachikov can be studied as a training course for beginning startups. True, at the lecture he only briefly told his live story, referring to the articles, his and others: “The World Wide Web of Samizdat” , “Silicon Fever” , “The Fate of“ Paragraph ”in America” - part 1 , part 2 , part 3 , “ Letters from afar "- part 1 and part 2 .
“I first studied at the Novosibirsk Physics and Mathematics School, then at Novosibirsk University, from which I was expelled after dissident actions in connection with the Prague events of August 1968. I had to transfer to the brotherly university, in Tbilisi, from which I was also almost expelled when information about the reason for my previous deduction. Then he continued his studies at Moscow State University, where he was one of the first to study the theory of blurry sets and blurred logic. After graduating from university as a senior researcher at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he worked on creating models of the world economy. He predicted, for example, how in the future the change in oil prices will affect the world economy. In the 80s, I organized the first children's computer club in the USSR with Garry Kasparov, and a little later, in 1988, I had an idea to organize my own company, something like the Soviet Bell Labs. To do this, my friends and I got together and wrote about 20 topics that we would be interested in doing and what we could offer. These were a variety of topics - for example, among them was the task of determining the sex of a chicken depending on the shape of the egg and the search for large oil fields. Behind these technologies, in particular, was a team of people I met at the seminar of Academician Gelfand. As a result, we stopped all the same on the task of handwriting recognition. They organized a company that later became ParaGraph, and already in early 1990, before the collapse of the USSR, they went to the States for the exhibition Comdex Spring, and a couple of weeks before the coup they became the first Soviet company to enter into a contract with Apple. January 15, 1993, at 10 o'clock in the evening I had the idea to make a time machine. It was explained simply - I had a son, and I wanted to send him to Syracuse from the time of Archimedes. Of course, in fact, it was a virtual time machine, a recreating model of the era in which I wanted to give my parents the role of guardian angels for time-traveling children. As a result, we began to create three-dimensional models, and it turned out that at that time we were leaders in the field of graphic 3D modeling languages. After that, several companies became interested in us, but eventually I bought Silicon Graphics, whose corporate vice president I worked for just over a year. Here, in brief, is my story in the last century. And after that, in the XXI century, I decided to start an Evernote company. ”
About Evernote, who recently spoke in Russian, its chief architect told separately. “The idea of the company was to solve the problem of the imperfections of human memory, to make the memory of any person even the same as that of Garry Kasparov, and preferably much better. I often say half-jokingly that a person is always in one of two states: either he is sitting in front of his computer, or not. At the moment when there is no computer, a person most often has a mobile phone in his pocket, which can be used as an external brain. Therefore, my initial vision was this - the mobile phone becomes a continuation, an extension of human memory. Now we say that we are expanding human memory, without specifying exactly how, because your memory is everywhere: in the computer, in the phone, in your head, on the Internet, in general, somewhere in the cloud. But it is always there, and it cannot be lost. Moreover, in contrast to the real biological memory, it is constantly improving.
This raises the question of what is a good memory. My understanding is this. Firstly, it is the ability to quickly and effortlessly remember what might someday come in handy. Secondly, the ability to always have access to this information, wherever you are. Finally, it is an opportunity to find information, even if you do not know exactly what you are looking for and cannot clearly describe it. ”
Stepan Pachikov could not help but share his experience in the field of creating and promoting startups: “From my own experience, I began to understand that if you are doing a job for which you don’t have a nose, you shouldn’t start it. I even wanted to translate today's lecture with an epigraph from Knish: “Do not put your contribution into your business.” If you have an idea that you understand, you can develop it into a startup.
The first thing you will encounter when trying to make your company is the need to be able to tell your idea in 30 seconds. This skill is key. For example, once, while boarding a United Airline at San Francisco airport, I met Alexander P., a partner of a well-known venture capital firm, who asked me to tell us what we were doing. While we were standing nearby, shoving baggage along the top shelves, I managed to tell him the essence of our project and immediately set the day for the official presentation at their company in New York, where we flew.
After you have an idea for a product, it is important to understand whether there is a large market for it or whether a large market will appear in the near future. In addition, having formulated the goals and objectives of a startup, you should be able to explain how you are going to realize your idea, what exactly you are going to do and how. Here you need to add that your market entry strategy is especially important for any investor, that is, you must explain why your product will crowd out all others or occupy a large niche in the market, and this is a very difficult task.
Then you need to build a strong team. One of the many mistakes that I noticed with my friends and acquaintances is reduced to the problem of teamwork and the problem of who to take into it. It is convenient to work with friends, you can ask more from friends, but there are some problems here - say, the risk of turning a company into such, I would say, patriarchal economy, in which personal relationships begin to dominate, and the company begins to build and function around them. All this is then very difficult and painful to break. But I recently understood the role of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard for the IT industry - I had to be both in the role of Ranevskaya and in the role of Lopakhin in relation to the companies of my friends. ParaGraph, which I sold in the last century, was a team of friends and like-minded people, which helped the company to rise quickly and almost ruined it. Now I understand that his success is 50 percent luck. Today, in the 21st century, the industrial, iron principle of the “right” construction of the “right” firm is more often effective. As one of my executive executives likes to say, “We will do it right”.
It is often asked how and where to look for money for a startup. Unfortunately, I did not have time to get acquainted with your curriculum and I can repeat trite, well-known truths. The following statement is not trivial: the biggest mistake you can make while collecting money is greed. It is much more important to get not the best possible estimate of the company, but to receive money on time from the right people. Money should not smell, because often the decision of the next investor or potential partner depends on who your investor is.
Another important point I would like to touch on here is the relationship with venture capitalists. Venture funds are just another kind of business. Usually, venture capitalists take money from private and non-private sources, sometimes make mistakes, and often lose money in firms that burn through. Therefore, as a rule, venture capitalists start talking when they see a result of $ 25 to one. The logic here is that only one of many firms will shoot, therefore it is very difficult to come to them and say: “Give me a million and you will get two next year”. If you have such modest plans, it’s better not to have affairs with venture funds. ”
There were a lot of questions during the lecture, and they were very different. Stepan Pachikov’s answers to the most interesting ones are given below.
- Tell me, can you talk about Evernote in 30 seconds?
- Evernote is a service that allows you to memorize various information at any time and makes it always available, wherever you are and whatever device you use. Evernote allows you to search for data on a variety of indirect signs - for example, to find a note made on a napkin in a cafe in Paris, written by hand in Russian. The business model is very simple - it is a basic-free service, earning on which is planned in several stages. First, we are going to offer those who exceed traffic to pay for this excess. We also plan to make targeted advertising as a source of profit.
- How do angels differ from venture capital funds and venture capitalists?
- Venture capitalists differ from venture funds in that they are simply employees of these funds (Laughs). Venture funds are money from various sources: private investors, organizations. Angels use their money. As a rule, if an angel gives you money, then he is waiting for them to return to him, and does not interfere in the process of building a company. In turn, the venture capitalist will closely monitor how the money is spent, what is happening in the company and when it is necessary to intervene in order to change the management of the company. These are such sometimes annoying assistants.
Another feature associated with some venture capital funds: if they feel that the smell of burned, they are trying to save their money, not you (Laughs).
- What kind of start-ups do you like, and how would you make a startup now if you didn’t have the means to implement it?
- My personal approach to organizing startups has changed with age, I would have developed ideas in different ways at different stages of my life. Here, suppose I have a good idea now. And suppose I am going to find money for it, giving some, perhaps most, for it, because if I don’t have time to realize the idea in a couple of years, someone else will implement it. In general, for me personally, the most difficult thing in creating a startup is to recruit a professional, non-trivial team. I have a lot of ideas, and I'm not afraid of the market.
- How to calculate the capitalization of a startup company in the sale?
- There is no universal way. Both the buyer and the seller have different views on it. For example, when we recently evaluated one company, we had to argue for a long time what to take into account: profit or income for several years. It should be noted that, as a rule, when calculating the capitalization of a company, its future predicted value is taken into account. In general, the calculation of capitalization is a serious thing. It is rather an art than a science.
- What ideas do you consider the most promising and popular for startups today?
- All of you today are reading the Internet and the press, listening to the news and you understand this as well as I do. In my opinion, this is all that concerns genetics, molecular biology. In the field of Internet technology is also a lot of things. Just watch what is happening today in the market, in the industry, in technology, what Google is doing today in the field of mobile phones, and pick up trends. I believe that the days of ordinary computers are numbered, and a person with a laptop in the near future will look like the person with a fax machine now looks.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/59851/
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