Encounter: the experience of creating a startup

Hello!

In this post I want to tell about the experience and understanding that have accumulated during the development of their own business over the past 1.5 years. Namely: this is the “Meeting” project, the beta version of which was released at the end of February-March - 5 months ago, and now it is steadily bringing us money to support a team of 5 people + freelancers and gives us opportunities to develop further.

Briefly describe the chronology of events, it looks like this:
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January 3, 2008 - the birth of the idea, January 11: exit from the operating activities of my previous business - IL “Ksan” , in order to focus on the Meeting .

July 2008 - we managed to assemble a strong team with diverse experience and the passion to make something new and ours.

From that moment on, the development of a prototype began: work on nights and weekends. Design, development. At the same time, everyone worked full-time somewhere, including me (yes, I got a well-paid job again). In the development we invested our own money, earned by “day”.

At the same time, we were searching for an investor. There was a plan with a prototype to take money - and even then turn around! And this was the first key turn: communicating with investors, we realized that we need to release the product to the market ourselves. Because investors do not really take risks.

Part of the team on this fell off, but the rest began to create a beta version. Work nights, the weekend continued.

February 2009 - release of the beta version, first users, stories on TV , feedback, constantly fixes many bugs, replies to emails. Round-the-clock work continued :)

With the product launched, we started a second attempt to attract an investor. Negotiations have gone easier. By May, there were practically no investors left (from those who actually invested money at this stage), with whom we had not met. But by this time the economic situation has become such that projects that don’t make money, in principle, investors look, but they don’t really want to invest in them.

And this was the second turning point: we realized that with the finished product nothing prevents us from earning money ourselves. It was necessary only to change our own idea about the development of a startup from “product-investor-money-product development-monetization -...” to “product-monetization-development-monetization-development ...”.

Then, in turn, we began to quit our jobs and work through the monetization areas, one of which eventually worked. It was one of the directions that we presented to investors as “other opportunities”! But this is another story, about which I will definitely write later.

10 conclusions that we made on our own experience:

1. Looking for investment is helpful. You will see strong and weak points, learn a lot of new things about the market, which, as you assumed, knew thoroughly, correct something in positioning and strategy, somewhere you will find partners. Some investors, instead of money, start to really help with advice, connections, “iron”, recommend you to each other. Speak at events, make appointments in person, be sure to communicate with foreign investors.
2. Investments are not needed. As Yury Fedoseyev wrote remarkably: if you are given money, this is a good sign that you don’t need it anymore. He also perfectly covered the topic “investors do not take risks” - this absolutely coincides with our experience. Now, until you earn money, they will not give money anyway, and if you earn money, why do you need it? :)
3. Open up! At an early stage, it is useful to reveal your ideas and pronounce them a lot and with different people. Some of this will be adopted by competitors - so be it: if you don’t slow down, it won’t hurt you.
4. Don't worry, be crappy Guy Kawasaki . Our service is still crappy. Do we not know about this! Almost all we want to redo. But! First of all, users do not know how it should ideally be and use what they have, rejoicing at constant improvements. Secondly, so far it does not interfere with making money. If you look around, you will see that many successful companies after 10-20-100 years of their existence still have crappy-products. One Sberbank is worth :)
5. Bootstrapping is about you. The main thing you need to achieve is the ability to live on the cash you earn. This includes a number of principles and tricks of “bootstrapping”: minimally spending, negotiating, much to be done for free or for a percentage of sales, giving priority to areas that bring money right away, delaying payments, etc. More about bootstraping - in the same Guy Kawasaki in the book The Art Of The Start and in Wikipedia .
6. Speed ​​is the most important thing. The further you go, the more opportunities you have. The main thing is not to slow down and step into the unknown in time, and try-try-try. Speed ​​is the most important because the amount in your bank account is finite.
7. The vision of business and product inevitably changes. Checked :) And we know that it will change radically more than once. Here, again, it is important to quickly make a decision to act in accordance with the new vision, without becoming immersed in snot and “maybe not necessary” discussions. It is important to quickly convey it to the team and quickly rebuild all this activity.
8. Do first, then tell. At later stages, when you understand the market and your capabilities even better, you need to stop telling everything to everyone and move on to the “did-told” model instead of “told-did”.
9. First tell, then do. You need to continue to discuss ideas with loyal investors and business angels, in which you are sincere towards you sincerely (after passing point 1), with loyal customers, partners, and just friends from the business world. This opens up unexpected possibilities and sharpens the vision.
10. There are always people who will pay you. The market consists of players. Players in different situations. Need to see their situations. It is important not to be afraid of big / small competitors, because in spite of their presence there are always people who need YOUR decision and who are willing to pay YOU.

So it goes. We continue the flight.

I will periodically write about the new experience, and constant communication: @sergeden and the “Meeting” blog.