After an interview with twenty-year-old Dima Dolgopolov , who passed Y Combinator and attracted $ 3.4 million to my startup, I decided to look for young talents in Russia who can a) communicate b) build things. I wrote to several dozen schoolchildren-startups who appeared in the media, only one could answer. (If you have smart schoolchildren who have done something , write to me .)
Dmitry Bystrov makes a startup Dr-Who , which deals with telemedicine for the living.
At first, the team worked on a medical marketplace, but after a few months they switched to providing veterinary services through instant messengers. Dr-Who users can get a 20-minute consultation from an experienced veterinarian at any time. The cost of such a consultation is several times cheaper than a physical visit to the clinic. The service works around the clock due to the fact that specialists from all over the country cooperate with it.
Dmitry has already signed 28 contracts with veterinarians, who conducted fifty online consultations.
- How did you start programming?
Dmitry: I started programming at the age of 12 after watching the movie "A Robot Called Chappy".
Then I was infected with the idea that through programming, you can perpetuate the human mind and make him immortal. I started programming in the PascalABC program under the "mentorship" of my 16 year old friend, who studied at the lyceum, where computer science was taught by a teacher who worked at Yandex.
The first program I created was called Chappy's Assistant. It was launched from the command line and could conduct a simple dialogue with the user.
- Tell us, how did you manage to do startups?
Dmitry: Quite simply, frankly. From the age of 8, I knew that I would become an entrepreneur like my brother and father, but I did not know in what area I would have my business. Closer to the age of 12, I learned that building and developing my own technology business is easier and, as it seemed to me even then, much more interesting than the traditional one. He launched his first startup at the age of 14, when he learned that there are analogues of Lego constructors in China, which are several times cheaper than the original. I attracted a friend 2 years older than me and two friends from a parallel class to this idea.
With a friend, they chipped in on several sets of constructors, wrote a website on Wordpress and created a mini call center through Zadarma, and my friends kept instagram and answered customer calls from the site.
The site made it possible to find a high-quality and cheap analogue of existing Lego sets and order it with home delivery.
(Delivery to the house extended only to the city in which we lived - to Penza).
If this is considered my first startup, then 2 things convinced me to do this:
- Desire to help parents who cannot afford original construction sets for their children.
- The opportunity to earn your first money.
- Well, it's not really a "startup", rather an online store :) But exactly a startup in the definition of "a project with a high IT component that solves an urgent problem and has the potential to scale 1,000-1,000,000 times"?
Dmitry: Before Dr-Who, I was engaged in business, made money on online stores, reselling electronics, and so on, but Dr-Who is my first serious startup.
- Why Dr. Hu? How did the idea come about?
Dmitry: Not surprisingly, Dr. Hu's team was formed before the very idea of telemedicine in veterinary medicine appeared.
The team was formed back in 2019, when I met Dima Anikushin, the current CIO, thanks to the SberZ accelerator.
Then the faces of our team changed, over time Arseny and Anna came, a strong friendship was formed between everyone and a pleasant working atmosphere.
Initially, we worked on the creation of an application for the early diagnosis of certain human diseases, and then a site for directly human telemedicine - we wanted that, thanks to passing a survey and entering some test indicators, a person could find out which doctors he should contact and what to treat.
After 5 months of project development, we realized that we could not provide a competitive product in the Russian market due to powerful competitors like DocDoc and legislation in the field of telemedicine.
For a couple of weeks, we spent daily brainstorms and, according to Arseny's idea, made a pivot for telemedicine for animals, as we noticed the demand, did not see strong competitors and legislative restrictions.
- Tell us about SberZ. How did you find out about them? What it is? What was the use for you? What did you learn / understand / rethink?
Dmitry: SberZ is a free accelerator for schoolchildren from Sberbank (grades 8-11).
I learned about SberZ from school, our educational institution (Pokrovsky Quarter) was chosen one of four schools in Moscow, whose students will be given the opportunity to participate in a free acceleration team.
2020, winter. Assembly hall of the school Pokrovsky Kvartal. One of the lessons of the SberZ School Accelerator.
In general, participation in the accelerator helped to improve soft skills, significantly expanded the business circle of acquaintances and taught how to solve problems without the right solution in a short time.
It was amazing how, thanks to the Sberbank and GVA network, it became easy to get expertise on your startup from professionals and mastodons in their field.
In addition, by the way, it was during the accelerator time that I learned how to make beautiful PowerPoint presentations.
However, the most important benefit from SberZ is meeting like-minded people with similar values and mentors.
- How did you implement the MVP?
Dmitriy:First, we put hypotheses like “Will the owners of cats and dogs be interested in our services”, then we conducted Customer Development, finding out the point pains of pet owners and confirmed the hypothesis with interest in our potential product.
After that, we made a simple version of the site on WIX, began a long way to attract qualified veterinarians to work with us and find out the optimal price of services for clients and salaries for veterinarians.
At that time, specialists with at least 3 years of experience and a small number of reviews were posted on our website.
Now we have reached the point where we place veterinarians with over 15 years of experience, our own mini-base of clients and an accumulated positive reputation.
After hiring veterinarians, we posted their profiles on the site and began to collect applications.
The client on the site chose a veterinarian from the list and the time available for consultation.
After that, the veterinarian received a message from the Telegram bot, in the messages from him they saw all the important data that the client entered on the site, including his Skype username.
Geography of users
Then, for each doctor, we created accounts and consultations took place only through Skype, because there is a call record there and most of our target audience have it.
With the permission of the clients, the veterinarians would record the conversation, and then I would go over each consultation and identify any deficiencies.
For example, some veterinarians might call a client from the car, not turn on their camera, consult while on the street, or talk to their grandson at the same time.
We were sympathetic to such cases, because we realized that for many it was the first experience of providing remote services, but we developed a general set of rules: how to be dressed, against the background of which to consult with a client, how to greet and say goodbye to him, that in general, it is possible to do, and what is categorically impossible. Later, the requirements for the quality of webcams, microphones and Internet connections were introduced. Not a single doctor then offered resistance, most only contributed to positive changes.
We have never applied fines and any sanctions to veterinarians as unnecessary.
Our one of the secrets of creating a product at the MVP stage is warm and trusting relationships with employees.
After the clients completed the service, we called and arranged mini-interviews with them in order to find out what else they would like to see on our website.
After such interviews, we made a new version of the site, taking into account the needs of our clients.
This process, it seems to me, is eternal, so we still conduct customer surveys every few weeks and roll out new versions. We improve from time to time not only the quality of the service itself, but sometimes even the size of the icons, for example, or the scale of the picture on the background of the site. We strive to satisfy the client in such a way that he would advise us even to those who do not have pets, and those who do not have them brought them in to undergo consultations with us.
At the moment, I cannot say that we already have a fully-fledged product, as there is still not enough money to conduct marketing campaigns and write a scalable website with the necessary functionality.
We are now on our way to finding the coveted Product Market Fit and increasing sales.
If any of the readers have the opportunity / desire to help with this, we will be very happy.
- How did you attract the first users and how are you attracting now?
Dmitry: We started with advertising in VK, then managed to test advertising through Yandex search, targeted on Facebook and Instagram, in thematic groups and on forums of cat and dog owners.
Now we are testing YAN Yandex and Google's KMS again, and most of our clients come from Google Search and Instagram.
In the near future we are planning to conduct a number of advertising campaigns with veterinarians, dog handlers and ambassadors.
After many advertising campaigns, we come to the conclusion that in our business it is important to attract early followers and satisfy them with the service as much as possible.
Given that most cat and dog owners do not know that veterinary consultations can be done online, we spend a lot of money to get to know about us.
- Imagine that you are an investor and you have 3 investments of $ 120,000 each. What specific early stage startups would you invest in? Why?
Dmitry: If I were a venture investor, I would invest in startups based on their idea, traction and team.
An idea may sympathize with me in itself, but no matter how much I like it, any product is created by a team that, in addition to solidarity and professionalism, should show good growth.
Based on this, my informal investment top is
- TrolleyX
- Third opinion
- Doctor Who
The first startup is developing an app for food allergy sufferers. By the barcode of the product, the application helps to determine whether the product is available for you, and also offers alternatives that are in the store.
I would invest in this startup, because, like millions of people around the world, I have food allergies, and I cannot find a suitable solution on the market. In addition, I saw their traction and the rapid development of the project with almost no financial investment in it.
I personally know the founders of this project and met them just at SberZ.
Their names are Sonya and Katya, both are in grade 9 and have incredible working capacity, in society such people are usually called geniuses, so I call them immodestly)
As an investor, I would not only invest $ 120k in TrolleyX, but also provide them with access to intangible resources, for example, contacts of experts, desired mentors, etc., because I believe that money for startups in the early stages is just one of the growth tools.
The second startup is developing AI to recognize pathologies in medical images. I was also fortunate enough to be familiar with the CEO of this company, Anna Meshcheryakova. An incredibly professional team is working on the startup, they are the finalists of the Sberbank-500 startups accelerator and are constantly growing.
In addition to these important factors, the telemedicine market is one of the fastest growing in the world, and projects for the early diagnosis of diseases, in my opinion, are among the most attractive for investments at the moment.
The third project is a platform for online veterinary consultations. The project, in my opinion, is attractive for investment, as it operates in a market with a high cagr and many small competitors. The market in which they work is actively developing, and the quality of the services they provide to their clients satisfies them so much that they usually bring several friends after receiving advice.
It so happened that in addition to the idea, I am familiar with their traction, team, operational indicators, financial plan, marketing strategy and customer reviews of the service.
Absolutely random knowledge of these indicators gives me the desire to invest my potential $ 120k, including in them. The guys are growing fast, now they need ux / ui-designers, back-programmers and real $ 11k.
If someone can help these guys above, or mentorship in the field of building telemedicine services / referral to a person who is ready to become a mentor, they will be very grateful.
- Did you fill out an application at Y Combinator (if yes, then why, if not, then why)?
Dmitriy:No, I didn’t fill it. I think we are not yet ready for Y Combinator and entering the international market.
- What three articles or videos about startups turned out to be the most capacious and valuable for you?
Dmitriy:
- Paul Graham: Airbnb Pricing - From Wacky Startup to $ 100 Billion
- Y Combinator: Things to Do Before Explosive Growth
- Three career paths in high technology: founder, administrator, or employee (Michael Sable)
- Do you blog / twitter? Why?
Dmitry: I can't say that I have a full-fledged blog, but I have a VKontakte group , where I share news of what is happening in our startup.
I am not leading the group on an ongoing basis, posting posts only when, in my opinion, there really is something to say. This is usually every couple of weeks.
Blogging helps me stay focused and focused. In addition, by recording not only your results, but also your plans in the blog, you give a kind of obligation to fulfill them not only to the investor, but also to the readers.
- Which of the more experienced startup founders do you look up to? and why?
Dmitry:I can't say who I look up to because looking at the stories of successful startups, like most other successful stories, can be a survivor's mistake.
Each story has its own unique factors that led to their success. However, I have a collective image of a startup who will definitely not be able to change the world - toxic, not accepting new things, not able to solve complex problems with a small amount of input data, not able to manage his time and desires, not wanting to understand and be able to work with people who are smarter / more professional than he himself, who does not know how to assemble and manage a team, and most importantly, who does not know how to inspire and who does not know how not to give up (within reason).
I do not try to be like someone else, I try more to be different from the one I described above.
- What are the three most important conclusions you found for yourself in the article "The youngest startup from Russia raised $ 3.4 million after passing Y Combinator" ?
Dmitry:
- For a greater understanding of complex processes, it is worth creating new neural connections through the study of new languages and cultures. The more “cultural baggage” a person has, the more understanding the values of people from different parts of the world => The higher the likelihood of finding common problems => The higher the likelihood of creating a product that solves the pain of the majority, creating a truly global product.
- Kesava Kirupa is good at collecting the Rubik's Cube.
- Despite the "startup spirit", Dmitry is pragmatic and inclined to compare risks. By his example, he reminded me of the saying “Pessimism of reason and optimism of will”. Sound rationalism is one of the success factors for startups.
- Do you have answers to all these questions ? :))
Typical Y Combinator Interview Questions
So what are you working on?
Have you raised funding?
What makes new users try you?
What competition do you fear most?
What’s the worst thing that has happened?
Will you reincorporate as a US company?
What’s an impressive thing you have done?
Where is the rocket science here?
Why did you pick this idea to work on?
Why do the reluctant users hold back?
Who would you hire or how would you add to your team?
What problems/hurdles are you anticipating?
Who is “the boss”?
What is the next step with the product evolution?
What obstacles will you face and how will you overcome them?
Who needs what you’re making?
How does your product work in more detail?
What are you going to do next?
What do you understand that others don’t?
Where do new users come from?
How big an opportunity is there?
Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?
What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you?
Tell us something surprising you have done?
Who are your competitors?
What’s new about what you make?
How many users do you have?
Why isn’t someone already doing this?
What are the top things users want?
What is your burn rate?
How do you know customers need what you’re making?
What domain expertise do you have?
What, exactly, makes you different from existing options?
What’s the conversion rate?
What systems have you hacked?
Who would use your product?
How will customers and/or users find out about you?
Why did your team get together?
In what ways are you resourceful?
What is your distribution strategy?
What has surprised you about user behaviour?
What part of your project are you going to build first?
What resistance will they have to trying you and how will you overcome it?
How are you understanding customer needs?
What’s the biggest mistake you have made?
Who might become competitors?
What do you understand about your users?
What is your user growth rate?
What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?
Who is going to be your first paying customer?
If your startup succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?
Who would be your next hire?
How do you know people want this?
Would you relocate to Silicon Valley?
What do you know about this space/product others don’t know?
How much money could you make per year?
How long can you go before funding?
How will you make money?
Will your team stick at this?
How much does customer acquisition cost?
How did your team meet?
Who in your team does what?
How are you meeting customers?
How many users are paying?
How is your product different?
Are you open to changing your idea?
How do we know your team will stick together?
What is your growth like?
Have you raised funding?
What makes new users try you?
What competition do you fear most?
What’s the worst thing that has happened?
Will you reincorporate as a US company?
What’s an impressive thing you have done?
Where is the rocket science here?
Why did you pick this idea to work on?
Why do the reluctant users hold back?
Who would you hire or how would you add to your team?
What problems/hurdles are you anticipating?
Who is “the boss”?
What is the next step with the product evolution?
What obstacles will you face and how will you overcome them?
Who needs what you’re making?
How does your product work in more detail?
What are you going to do next?
What do you understand that others don’t?
Where do new users come from?
How big an opportunity is there?
Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?
What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you?
Tell us something surprising you have done?
Who are your competitors?
What’s new about what you make?
How many users do you have?
Why isn’t someone already doing this?
What are the top things users want?
What is your burn rate?
How do you know customers need what you’re making?
What domain expertise do you have?
What, exactly, makes you different from existing options?
What’s the conversion rate?
What systems have you hacked?
Who would use your product?
How will customers and/or users find out about you?
Why did your team get together?
In what ways are you resourceful?
What is your distribution strategy?
What has surprised you about user behaviour?
What part of your project are you going to build first?
What resistance will they have to trying you and how will you overcome it?
How are you understanding customer needs?
What’s the biggest mistake you have made?
Who might become competitors?
What do you understand about your users?
What is your user growth rate?
What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?
Who is going to be your first paying customer?
If your startup succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?
Who would be your next hire?
How do you know people want this?
Would you relocate to Silicon Valley?
What do you know about this space/product others don’t know?
How much money could you make per year?
How long can you go before funding?
How will you make money?
Will your team stick at this?
How much does customer acquisition cost?
How did your team meet?
Who in your team does what?
How are you meeting customers?
How many users are paying?
How is your product different?
Are you open to changing your idea?
How do we know your team will stick together?
What is your growth like?
Dmitry: Yes, there is)
They appeared during the Sberbank acceleration program, thanks to experienced mentors - the winners of 500 Startups and advisers who came to the team.
If you have any interesting questions to Dmitry (Bystrov01 ), write in the comments, he promised to answer.
Useful materials
- YC Startup Library in Russian
- A selection of 143 translations of Paul Graham's essays (from 184)
- 75 lectures in Russian from Y Combinator (out of 172)
- Y Combinator: Russian-speaking founders
- What startups Y Combinator is looking for in 2020
- Chat Y Combinator in Russian
- Public on Facebook YCombinator in Russian