Chronicle of a startup life - 5 months after launch
I want to share my experience, how our startup lives and develops in the first months after launch. After all, most startups are in one of 2 stages: either they are still doing nothing (but they are going to do it), or they are creating a startup, which is still under development. And most of them think, at least from the experience of those with whom I spoke (hehe, yes, I myself thought so to some extent) that now we will add the code and fame, the money will come very quickly. I'll tell you how it was with us.
First, I will write in brief about the startup , which would be clearer. LiveExpert.ru is a community of experts in various fields: jurisprudence, medicine, psychology, business, and more. You see experts in each category and can start chatting with any of them in the video chat. If the expert is not on the site now, he will immediately see your message in the consultant’s agent. After talking with an expert for a while, you understand that he is competent in your question, click on the “Hire an Expert” button, and from that moment you begin to pay him for every minute of communication. More details can be found here .
We started writing the code in January 2008 . Until this month, 2 hatched the idea. Planned to start somewhere in half a year. In June 2008 (almost half a year) in some form the site was ready. I sent a link to the site to all my friends on classmates (only 50), 10 responded and about 8 of them said that the site sucks, first of all design and usability. That was a shock. We closed the site on the same day, but made the right conclusion - the design should not be made by the programmer, but by the designer (which we found through weblancer.net), and decided on usability to make a non-mega-revolutionary super-user-friendly site that has no analogues in world, but to do everything simply and classically, what people are used to. And now, before we do the design of the first page, which the designer drew in Photoshop, they were sent to these 10 users and all 10 liked it. It took 4 months to rework (now, however, we worked a little slower) and in November 2008 we quietly launched the site in beta testing mode. That is, so apart from our few dozens of friends, almost no one was on the site. Month 2, we corrected the errors found by these acquaintances and ourselves, and in January 2009 (exactly one year after the start of work) we decided that the site was more or less ready, we can allow it and not only our acquaintances.
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In January 2009, we wrote press releases, several blogs about the site (including on the website) and, most importantly, spoke at a startup point , where we even got into the top 5 startups. We were noticed, and articles about our project appeared on the Internet. Moreover, even a newspaper was printed about us and a program about us was shot (I don’t know if it came out). I’ll say right away that the newspaper and TV practically didn’t give anything, except for moral satisfaction, and the mailing of Nelly Fedosenko helped me most of all, for which she thanks a lot. And we didn’t do anything to get on this newsletter and, in general, never paid anyone for PR. It is difficult to say how many users the newsletter brought to us, since then we didn’t even have time to deliver the meter, but in the first 4 months of the site’s operation it fell only once - on the day the newsletter was released. Fortunately, we immediately noticed it, overloaded the server, and after that it did not fall for a very long time. And we didn’t take any more serious steps to promote the first 4 months after the launch of the site. But they actively communicated with users and tried to improve the functionality and add the missing. In May 2009, we decided that now the site is already mature enough to give it into the hands of not hundreds, but thousands of users. Now we are actively working on this and with each week more and more users. True last week, the site could not stand it and collapsed. A day of analysis and experiments, changing 10 lines of code and adding one index completely fixed the problem.
All startups good luck in your endeavors. Remember that the first launch of the site can be compared with the birth of a child. Parents think that now we will give birth and will end with visits to doctors, swelling, experiences, a quiet, peaceful and happy life will come. May she be happy, but she will never be quiet and peaceful !!!
First, I will write in brief about the startup , which would be clearer. LiveExpert.ru is a community of experts in various fields: jurisprudence, medicine, psychology, business, and more. You see experts in each category and can start chatting with any of them in the video chat. If the expert is not on the site now, he will immediately see your message in the consultant’s agent. After talking with an expert for a while, you understand that he is competent in your question, click on the “Hire an Expert” button, and from that moment you begin to pay him for every minute of communication. More details can be found here .
We started writing the code in January 2008 . Until this month, 2 hatched the idea. Planned to start somewhere in half a year. In June 2008 (almost half a year) in some form the site was ready. I sent a link to the site to all my friends on classmates (only 50), 10 responded and about 8 of them said that the site sucks, first of all design and usability. That was a shock. We closed the site on the same day, but made the right conclusion - the design should not be made by the programmer, but by the designer (which we found through weblancer.net), and decided on usability to make a non-mega-revolutionary super-user-friendly site that has no analogues in world, but to do everything simply and classically, what people are used to. And now, before we do the design of the first page, which the designer drew in Photoshop, they were sent to these 10 users and all 10 liked it. It took 4 months to rework (now, however, we worked a little slower) and in November 2008 we quietly launched the site in beta testing mode. That is, so apart from our few dozens of friends, almost no one was on the site. Month 2, we corrected the errors found by these acquaintances and ourselves, and in January 2009 (exactly one year after the start of work) we decided that the site was more or less ready, we can allow it and not only our acquaintances.
')
In January 2009, we wrote press releases, several blogs about the site (including on the website) and, most importantly, spoke at a startup point , where we even got into the top 5 startups. We were noticed, and articles about our project appeared on the Internet. Moreover, even a newspaper was printed about us and a program about us was shot (I don’t know if it came out). I’ll say right away that the newspaper and TV practically didn’t give anything, except for moral satisfaction, and the mailing of Nelly Fedosenko helped me most of all, for which she thanks a lot. And we didn’t do anything to get on this newsletter and, in general, never paid anyone for PR. It is difficult to say how many users the newsletter brought to us, since then we didn’t even have time to deliver the meter, but in the first 4 months of the site’s operation it fell only once - on the day the newsletter was released. Fortunately, we immediately noticed it, overloaded the server, and after that it did not fall for a very long time. And we didn’t take any more serious steps to promote the first 4 months after the launch of the site. But they actively communicated with users and tried to improve the functionality and add the missing. In May 2009, we decided that now the site is already mature enough to give it into the hands of not hundreds, but thousands of users. Now we are actively working on this and with each week more and more users. True last week, the site could not stand it and collapsed. A day of analysis and experiments, changing 10 lines of code and adding one index completely fixed the problem.
All startups good luck in your endeavors. Remember that the first launch of the site can be compared with the birth of a child. Parents think that now we will give birth and will end with visits to doctors, swelling, experiences, a quiet, peaceful and happy life will come. May she be happy, but she will never be quiet and peaceful !!!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/62182/
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