The story of a startup

A bad programmer is who does not dream of his own startup. So I dreamed. Over time, he switched from words to deeds. In three years I managed to raise my own startup and go into profit, start selling a product in Russia and abroad. However, it was not easy. I was fortunate enough to face many issues: solving personal problems, finding an investor and attracting first investments, building a team and launching first sales. My project was nearly ruined by eminent experts with their opinions and advice. A couple of times I even had to “jump without a parachute”. In general, first things first.

12 years of slavery

The idea of ​​my own startup originated in my university or even at school. But as often happens, the idea did not go further. Something always bothered me, I put it off, did not dare. I waited for the right moment. But as practice shows, there is never a suitable moment in life, but you need to do everything at once and now, without hesitation and without waiting. I put off the idea of ​​my own startup for 12 years. I always found excuses for myself: sometimes there was no money, then health, then tired, then married, then born, and so on. And now, when there were no more excuses left, then I decided. Quit hiring and completely immersed himself in his own startup.

How it all began

So, distant 2017. I sat down in the kitchen late at night and started writing code. A popular proverb says: "From word to deed, a hundred miles." This time it happened. I walked for a long time, pondered, relished the idea of ​​my brainchild, however, I did not take real action. There was internal resistance, a certain threshold, which was difficult to cross. Something always got in my way. So, after a year of thought and reflection, I began to implement my plan.



After three months of hard work, I had the first prototype that could already be shown to clients. However, that was not the case. I got carried away with the actual development, and treats the issues of implementation, sales, promotion with disdain. I think most programmers will understand me. For a programmer, the main thing is the creative process, self-realization, pumping of their skills. This is the main thing. And everything else just gets in the way. All these salespeople, marketers, users, bureaucracy - all this distracts the programmer from his main purpose, from the creative process of creation. Hence the hostile attitude towards everyone who interferes with coding and interferes with enjoying the creative process.



My prototype was ready. It was already possible to show it, try it, start promoting and selling it. But I did not dare to do this. For 12 years of working as a programmer, I focused on the development process, and all other processes and thoughts only distracted me. But a startup is a startup. And the main feature of a startup is that no one will do anything except you. You’ll have to roll up your sleeves and, like it or not, you’ll have to go over to the side of all those whom you had previously avoided. So, in my case, the realization came that a startup would perish if you do not engage in promotion and investment attraction. There is a prototype - good. But what about sales and investments?

Transformation of consciousness

Here one must be reborn. Transform from a programmer into an entrepreneur. To overshadow the issues of development, architecture of the solution and come to grips with the issues of promotion: start looking for customers, clients, negotiate, attract investments, look for investors, sell, sell, sell.



Metamorphosis, I must say, is not easy. For 12 years of work as a programmer, a certain worldview is formed, ossification and it is not always easy to change oneself. There is a strong breakdown of character, a rebirth occurs. An entrepreneur is born from a programmer. Actually, this is the main difficult moment on the path of starting a startup - personal problems. All other issues can be resolved.



It's good when there are initially two founders in a startup, and their roles are distributed - one developer, the second entrepreneur. But in my case, I had to combine these two roles within one personality. Difficult, but possible. In the morning I worked on the development of the release, and after lunch I went to the customer to sell the product.

Like-minded people

But fate did not leave me alone in my problems. Over time, I was lucky enough to interest one of my acquaintances. I knew Roman for a long time, and it was he who first came to my mind when I realized that I could not cope. Roma already had his own successful startup behind him and gladly agreed to take part in a new one. Sales took up more and more time and I needed someone on the team to whom I could entrust the actual product development. Romane's contribution is invaluable. He removed a huge part of the development tasks from me, and I successfully invested the freed up time in promotion. Over time, more like-minded people joined the project. The team became stronger, we went more confidently.

Where is the money, Zin? (c) V. Vysotsky

We managed to attract funding in the form of a grant from one of the State Foundations. We entered the three-year project support program. A grant is a kind of funding that does not require a return on investment, it is targeted funding, provided that it is spent on creating a product.



The process of filing an application, approval and protection of a project in the Fund deserves a separate article on Habré. Here I will only say that in order to get into the program it took me a lot of effort and the application did not go through the first time. We were patient, and after 14 months we were in for success! My knowledge and experience helped two familiar strata who also successfully applied for funding to the Fund.



The funds raised allowed us to refine the prototype on a regular basis, and we made significant progress in creating a ready-made, complete solution.

About experts

Here I deliberately did not go into the jungle of scientific approaches when analyzing the effectiveness of startups. There are experts for this. Experts give estimates, calculate unit economics and give a verdict whether the project will take off or not. Of course, I also turned to all kinds of experts, received their estimates, calculated the indicators myself. However, if I had listened to their advice, my startup would have failed. All the experts twisted their fingers to their temples and unanimously said that the project is not alive, that it will not take off and it is not worth wasting time on it. Such an assessment, of course, introduced me to a very depressive state, demotivated and discouraged me from completing what I had begun to the end. But life has shown that experts are people too, and that they are also wrong. Apparently in life there is a difference between an expert and a person who actually does something.

"The one who knows how, the one who does not know how, he teaches others" (c) George Bernard Shaw

Probably, if my startup hadn't taken off, then most likely I would have become an expert too.



For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that when developing a project, I was driven to a greater extent by internal motivation for a result, motivation for creating a demanded product, and I left all the issues of unit economics without proper critical thinking. Perhaps this helped me, in the end, to resist the attacks and negative assessments of experts. It is also worth noting the role of intuition, which never deceived and from somewhere knew how to do the right thing.

Intuition or jumping without a parachute

It would be more correct to write a separate article or even a book about intuition. Here I will only say that you should trust your intuition. And if intuition tacitly advises you to jump out of the plane without a parachute, then this is exactly what you need to do, without hesitation and without listening to advice. As it turns out later, life will reward for this kind of courage, from nowhere will provide a parachute and even wings. But not everyone can jump into the abyss without a parachute. And we must not be afraid to do it when required. In my memory, I made two such jumps and both times I was lucky. Luck was with me. Once I really drifted, which I later regretted, very much.

About buckwheat and water

Does a startup need money? Yes, we do. Of course we do. But the question is the effectiveness of this money. How efficiently the money will be used. A start-up is a person who is ready to work for an idea, for free, 24/7, while a hired person sits out his assigned "ass hours" and demands payment for the time spent. When a firm is large, it can afford to hire people for routine. When you have a startup, the employee is less interested in the success of the project, and more in getting an official salary. Such people in a startup do not stay long and leave on their own.

This is just the beginning

It is supposed to write a conclusion here, but this is only the beginning! The beginning of our project, our idea, which lives on and is confirmed by hundreds of our satisfied users around the world. Over the three years of the project, we managed to create a product, attract investment, reach self-sufficiency, open sales around the world, and gain invaluable experience. But this is not the main thing in a startup. The main thing is the people who joined and helped with their participation. All of them, in fact, are the project team. A team that made it possible to carry out our plans and bring the idea to life. People are the main value, and sales and success are a consequence.



We named the project SLONBOOK