Personal experience: how to launch a project in an area that does not yet exist in your country

Find a like-minded person and don't let go

My partner and I met when we were students. At that time, we both wanted to do something cool and make money on it. We realized that we have a similar view of many things, and even then there was mutual understanding and trust between us, which became stronger every year.

You can ask a good partner about something and forget, and when the deadline is on your nose and you remember in a panic about the task that has flown out of your head, it has already been done, and just as efficiently as if you worked on it yourself.

As the project develops and the team grows, you will still have time to burn yourself: some people pursue their goals and harm the company. This experience will make you stronger and more forward-thinking in choosing employees.

When assembling a team, evaluate the following parameters:

Responding to dead-end and extraordinary questions - to predict behavior in a critical situation, to test the creativity of thinking.
An experience. It is important to be aware of both a person's successes and failures - how he relates to them and what lessons he learns.
Competence. It should correspond to the level of the role played in the company.
A person's faith in his own strength and his ability to create truly advanced products.
The candidate must believe in the project, share its goals and mission.

As for the risks of working with people, we advise you to be guided by the same truth as old as the world: it is better to do and regret than not to do and regret it all your life.

Implement your business idea, even if resources are scarce

Even if you are not an expert in any of the areas of interest to you, the more interesting the process and the result can be. The prospect of being first in a niche will especially be inspiring.

Watch trends, explore new approaches, and experiment with technology. Non-trivial products at the intersection of industries often have the greatest response from the audience.

You can start with a variety of starting conditions. At first, we used the most affordable and free technologies, since there is no point in investing heavily in testing an idea. This is often enough to get the first feedback and collect reviews.

For example, a prototype of an interface design can be done in completely different ways:

Use the full paid version of Adobe Photoshop or Sketch on MacBook Pro (you have to spend over 200,000 rubles).
Use a trial version of Adobe Photoshop or Sketch on a cheap, hand-bought laptop.
Hire a professional designer.
Draw yourself in Paint.
Sketch on a napkin by hand.

The main thing is your idea and belief in yourself, ingenuity and ability to adapt.

Use crowdfunding, not investments

While filming the first interactive video, we asked our friends to invest 120 thousand rubles on very simple terms: if we sell - we will return tenfold, we will not sell - no offense, we tried.

Crowdfunding is often the only possible way to raise a project with minimal risks. As long as you have only an idea on a napkin, investors who respect their time and resources will not give money. However, the first experience of implementation will allow you to find investments in the future, since you will come to the right person already with an understanding of how the product is created and with a demo version that you can “feel”.

Initial pen attempts are best done with your own money and time. If there are no such resources, then it is necessary to attract people and finances with the expectation of the possible failure of the idea.

Provide the tool, don't do it yourself

Initially, we thought about creating interactive videos for our customers ourselves. But one day fate brought us to a future partner and investor. We offered to shoot an interactive video for his company and heard the following in response: “Guys, you can earn several million rubles in this way and buy yourself a Mercedes, but you will remain just content producers. This is the lowest stage. You need to build your platform with tools to create interactive video. Later, this person became our mentor.

When you are independently engaged in production, you can often rely only on customers in the form of large companies - these are the features of some niches. When you offer a platform with tools for creating a product (for example, interactive video, website, design, etc.), the audience automatically expands to small firms, agencies, regular bloggers, and even schoolchildren.

Analyze your resources and the possibility of concept change. If you create one big product, you work on it for a while. If you make a tool, then it becomes possible to serve, in fact, an unlimited number of users who independently create something of their own.

Do not be afraid of giant competitors

Now our competitors are such powerful companies as Netflix, YouTube, Facebook. We are not afraid of this, but on the contrary, we are proud of it. This means that we are leading the domestic market in the right direction.

Small projects have many advantages: they are independent, there are no many circles of approval, decisions are made instantly. If you are a small startup, then you are flexible and quickly adapt to market conditions.

Learn from the professionals

Our mentor and partner constantly told his friends and top managers from various fields about us so that we could find some common ground with them. He gave us their contacts and said: "Next yourself." So he introduced us to Timur Bekmambetov, who became the project advisor.

The search for any important people for the project should be carried out according to several rules. Look only for those who really understand your field, understand all its subtleties and can help and suggest somewhere. The right investors and mentors provide a startup not only with money, but also with the networking necessary for growth. The necessary contacts can become a locomotive for the project and launch it into the big league much faster than several years of development and spending of the investor budget on testing various hypotheses.