The story of how Ivan Ivanovich Ivan Ivaniforovich investment sought
It's no secret that the current IT community has long been headlong into the fever of startups (which the crisis doesn’t particularly hinder), I personally don’t know a single person from my circle of web-oriented professionals who wouldn’t have his brilliant idea . Someone has already started and, with burning eyes, spends nights behind programming, some are sluggishly digging into what they started a year or two ago. I don’t want to judge whether this is good or bad and talk about where someone is heading, I would just like to tell one story from the life of startups, from which I propose to draw conclusions.
Actually, I want to tell you about how a group of comrades almost received an investment, which, by all indications, it couldn’t get, in any way, by breaking up the company. I will not name names, names and dates, so as not to discredit the participants, well, I would just like to tell this story in an impersonal form (although participants in the events will, of course, recognize themselves). The story will be long, get ready.
It happened to me to work in one small company with three small web projects that brought stable profits. The company was managed by an ambitious, at that time successful, but director who did not understand anything about web technologies. In fact, the main profit came from a single project, which was almost the first in its niche, had good traffic and excellent makings for the leader of the direction. But as already mentioned, the director of the company was far from the realities of the market and was permanently in dreams of a multiple increase in profits by stamping projects on the pattern of his first and successful flagship.
I came to the company just at that moment when the people who made the first project broke up with the director and the company arrived in deep depressions - money seems to be falling, but the projects are standing still - that the programmers, that the managers were left to themselves, sat without fear on classmates and without reproach were cut into casual flash games.
')
My initial task was to spread the chicken coop of the technical department, to adjust its work and to start developing projects in the right direction. The task was interesting, and I started it with the utmost enthusiasm. At the end of 6 months of work, I was completely satisfied with the results, the prospects were the most optimistic, even though the company's director’s very specific approach to work - he could fire a person in one day, changed plans several times a week (sometimes in one day he could change), well, in general, most of the day did not know what to do.
And at that moment he picked up a start-up fever - he was excited about the idea of ​​getting investments, and he had no idea about any project or how.
My director got acquainted with one comrade, and he met a very original way - playing online chess (see. Did not know what to do). Let's call him Comrade S. I don’t know how, but they talked about business and investment. It turned out that Comrade S. has some experience in investor circles and he himself has something to do with them. They spent the next month in delightful journeys over each other’s ears and made such plans that when I heard, I didn’t know what to do - to quit or laugh.
I passed a dozen of the most urgent ideas and business plans, our joint work resembled a non-existent film with Charlie Chaplin about firefighters and pyromaniacs - two comrades ran under funny music and kindled fire of crazy ideas, and I ran after them in funny fire uniform and put out their. At first it was fun, then it was a pity to waste time. Most of all, I waited for this theater of the absurd to end and I can return to my main tasks. Everything ended, oddly enough, a pretty good idea of ​​the service, which, due to its peculiarities, was supposed to compete with Yandex.Market. Immediately, a helpless and completely irrelevant business plan was written. The figures in it were taken from the ceiling, the data were so monstrous that only a person very far from the web could believe them, it remained only to hope that investors would not die laughing.
For many, this may come as a surprise, but the search for investments is a rather expensive process. Trips, meetings with people (meetings with the right people are not free), services of auditors and lawyers, Comrade S. himself worked not only for the future share, but also for the monthly salary. At that time, my department consisted of three programmers and several remote employees. In order to save and redistribute resources for new goals, it was decided to fire everyone, I was paid a salary, working projects moved exclusively to life support, my task was technical advice, writing technical specifications and other documentation, meetings with technical specialists from potential investors. The work of several months was buried, the team created with great difficulty was disbanded. In the company I was kept only by the heating pocket of a rather big salary and a keen desire to witness the outcome of this somewhat absurd, somewhat merry story. Well, I confess, even I had a ghostly hope that something could come of it.
Then there were months of preparatory work, funny conversations of the deaf with the blind, several trips to Western investors and a final fun trip to one of the largest European venture capital investors in the field of Internet projects.
To be continued. If, of course, it will be interesting to the habr community.
The story of how Ivan Ivanovich Ivan Ivaniforovich looking for investment. Part 2.
Actually, I want to tell you about how a group of comrades almost received an investment, which, by all indications, it couldn’t get, in any way, by breaking up the company. I will not name names, names and dates, so as not to discredit the participants, well, I would just like to tell this story in an impersonal form (although participants in the events will, of course, recognize themselves). The story will be long, get ready.
Prehistory
It happened to me to work in one small company with three small web projects that brought stable profits. The company was managed by an ambitious, at that time successful, but director who did not understand anything about web technologies. In fact, the main profit came from a single project, which was almost the first in its niche, had good traffic and excellent makings for the leader of the direction. But as already mentioned, the director of the company was far from the realities of the market and was permanently in dreams of a multiple increase in profits by stamping projects on the pattern of his first and successful flagship.
I came to the company just at that moment when the people who made the first project broke up with the director and the company arrived in deep depressions - money seems to be falling, but the projects are standing still - that the programmers, that the managers were left to themselves, sat without fear on classmates and without reproach were cut into casual flash games.
')
My initial task was to spread the chicken coop of the technical department, to adjust its work and to start developing projects in the right direction. The task was interesting, and I started it with the utmost enthusiasm. At the end of 6 months of work, I was completely satisfied with the results, the prospects were the most optimistic, even though the company's director’s very specific approach to work - he could fire a person in one day, changed plans several times a week (sometimes in one day he could change), well, in general, most of the day did not know what to do.
And at that moment he picked up a start-up fever - he was excited about the idea of ​​getting investments, and he had no idea about any project or how.
The coming of the prophet
My director got acquainted with one comrade, and he met a very original way - playing online chess (see. Did not know what to do). Let's call him Comrade S. I don’t know how, but they talked about business and investment. It turned out that Comrade S. has some experience in investor circles and he himself has something to do with them. They spent the next month in delightful journeys over each other’s ears and made such plans that when I heard, I didn’t know what to do - to quit or laugh.
I passed a dozen of the most urgent ideas and business plans, our joint work resembled a non-existent film with Charlie Chaplin about firefighters and pyromaniacs - two comrades ran under funny music and kindled fire of crazy ideas, and I ran after them in funny fire uniform and put out their. At first it was fun, then it was a pity to waste time. Most of all, I waited for this theater of the absurd to end and I can return to my main tasks. Everything ended, oddly enough, a pretty good idea of ​​the service, which, due to its peculiarities, was supposed to compete with Yandex.Market. Immediately, a helpless and completely irrelevant business plan was written. The figures in it were taken from the ceiling, the data were so monstrous that only a person very far from the web could believe them, it remained only to hope that investors would not die laughing.
All to the front
For many, this may come as a surprise, but the search for investments is a rather expensive process. Trips, meetings with people (meetings with the right people are not free), services of auditors and lawyers, Comrade S. himself worked not only for the future share, but also for the monthly salary. At that time, my department consisted of three programmers and several remote employees. In order to save and redistribute resources for new goals, it was decided to fire everyone, I was paid a salary, working projects moved exclusively to life support, my task was technical advice, writing technical specifications and other documentation, meetings with technical specialists from potential investors. The work of several months was buried, the team created with great difficulty was disbanded. In the company I was kept only by the heating pocket of a rather big salary and a keen desire to witness the outcome of this somewhat absurd, somewhat merry story. Well, I confess, even I had a ghostly hope that something could come of it.
Then there were months of preparatory work, funny conversations of the deaf with the blind, several trips to Western investors and a final fun trip to one of the largest European venture capital investors in the field of Internet projects.
To be continued. If, of course, it will be interesting to the habr community.
The story of how Ivan Ivanovich Ivan Ivaniforovich looking for investment. Part 2.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/60577/
All Articles