If you are thinking about your startup, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the master class of Arkady Moreinis, which he held in the Technopark. Here he shares his view on startups as such, talks about the most diverse aspects of their creation and important points that need to be paid attention to. Lecture notes, as always, under the cut.

Scope: what is a startup?

There is an opinion that startup creators get millions, hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in one night. That a startup is something like a game, a quest: you are doing nonsense to nobody, and some simpleton pays you a disproportionate amount of money for it. In principle, such a model has a right to exist. But there are nuances.

In general, the concept of “startup” and the associated hysteria came to us from America. By and large, we can say that there is a certain American way of the emergence and development of startups, which, unfortunately, for obvious financial and economic reasons is not being implemented anywhere else in the world. What is the American startup model? One or several founders create a product and begin to develop it. This is due to investment money. And for the entire duration of the startup, no money is earned or attracted. In general, this is not necessary, because the main goal is for a larger company to buy your startup at some point. This magical moment is called exit. A coveted “way out” for founders and investors who, roughly speaking, only at this moment receive money in their pocket.

In principle, there are still legends about IPO (Initial Public Offering), that is, the company's first entry into the stock exchange, but here the same story. A startup just takes part of its shares and sells them on the stock exchange, but not just one big company, but a bunch of private traders. Moreover, on the margins, we note that in the total volume of “exits” 90% are purchases by larger companies, and only 10% are IPOs. These "exits" are the classic American model. What happens in the process, whether people make money, doesn’t matter. The most important thing is whether another large company will need this company.

Why did such a model develop in America? For two main reasons. Reason number one: the pressure of money in the market. In all kinds of funds accumulated a huge amount of money. They cannot deposit them and receive their legitimate interest. They are obliged to invest them in order for this money to work in the economy. As a result, there is pressure from investment money - the flow of money that needs to be invested somewhere. If there is such a need, then a market appears for companies that are ready to take this money. Reason number two: an exchange that works. After entering the stock exchange - after the company became public - the company has papers that receive a separate consumer value. Consumer value is very conditionally related to the dividends received by the owners of this share. There is such a ratio P / E -price-earnings ratio - the ratio of the share price to the annual dividend per share. For well-traded companies, this ratio may be, for example, 200 (or maybe more ). That is, I can sell a share for a price equivalent to 200 years of receiving dividends on this share. At the same time, the company may have a profit, but it may not be - it worries about something else: can I make money by reselling these shares.

Here are two reasons why a mysterious economy arises, in which the real performance of the company and the money that can be earned in this company in one way or another are two separate phenomena. From here a number of consequences arise. Everything is being done to show that the company is growing and developing, so that its shares cost more. Many have tried to implement this model in other national markets, but it does not work anywhere. Large companies do not want to buy small ones, because they do not see the economic sense in this, as a result, there is no buyers market. If in Russia we want to sell, for example, an e-commerce company, then its value will most likely be 0.5-1 annual profit, or, in other words, the valuation multiplier will be 0.5-1. And no one understands why to buy a startup for more money.

It was from here that the very “dark side” arose, about which I mentioned in the headline - “What if this does not work?”. Unfortunately, there is only one option left - to try to make money. Sad, cruel truth, but this is the way that you can and should go, because everything else is fortune-telling on coffee grounds, roulette. With the same success, you can go and put all the money in the casino to zero. I am not saying that there are no exceptions. Sometimes someone buys someone. I also had this: Price.ru, which I made and managed for 10 years, was bought by Rambler, one of the startups in which I invested two years ago was bought by a European company. It was a service Podorozhniki.com - search for travel companions. In January, BlaBlaCar bought and opened its Russian representative office on its basis. But this cannot be counted on systematically. You can and should only rely on the fact that we came up with the idea of ​​a new business, started doing it and make money on it. All. Point. Welcome to the dark side! Forget about all sorts of good investors, blue helicopters, free investments.

Why start a new business?

If you have this question, then you do not need to do this. Because 99% of new businesses will die. “I have already done enough work for my uncle, now I want to work for myself. I want to do some business ”- this is almost a dead end approach. Because, I repeat again, 99% of these attempts will be doomed to failure. Harsh, cruel statistics. The period of time during which a company will die is a painful and difficult process. These are nightmares, these are horrors: "How will I pay my salary tomorrow?" It is the responsibility of those people who believe in you and begin to work for you. And even if successful, this process of either survival or dying - which is called the "death valley" - is 3-5 years of the company’s work. You do not know what will happen. You know one thing: with a 99 percent probability you will not crawl to the end of this valley. And therefore, I repeat once again, this can and should be done only if you cannot but do this for some reason. For example, there is an iron core inside you that forces you to do something. Or you are hit hard, and for some reason you want to change the world.

Leo Tolstoy once said: “Write only if you cannot help but write” (well, or something like that). Doing business is from exactly the same area. That is, they can and should be dealt with only when you cannot help but already, and when you are ready for all the problems arising from this. Elon Musk once said: “Opening a new business is like looking into the face of death. If you are ready for this, you can go forward. ”

When we start a new project, we must understand that the business consists of three levels. The first is the ambitions of the founders. What makes them or him engage in this business. The second level is the level of the company. That is, you are doing a company that has a (disgusting word) “mission”. There is such an English expression - the company must have a “mission” and a “vision”. In general, in the corporate world, both these words have recently been used with contemptuous intonation. Because more often than not, “mission” and “vision” are some pieces of paper on which it says “We want peace in the world so that everyone is happy, we bring prosperity to all our shareholders, happiness to our employees, joy to our customers from life”. And other nonsense from the same series. By and large, the company really has a certain mission, a field of activity, a general principle, by which she works and acts. At the third level, specific products, goods or services that the company sells arise. And here, on the third level, the most important thing is to make money. That the company lived, that the "mission" of the company was fulfilled, so that the founder’s ambitions were satisfied. This level should be very well thought out, calculated, because none of the consumers will bite your ambitions and “missions” without specific products. Imagine: you are the founder of a startup with ambitions, you went out onto the street and said: “I want money for a new apartment, throw off as much as you can.” How much will you get? Therefore, you must disguise your ambitions, turn them into "mission" and "vision", and then into specific products in the eyes of those who will pay the money. goods or services that the company sells. And here, on the third level, the most important thing is to make money. That the company lived, that the "mission" of the company was fulfilled, so that the founder’s ambitions were satisfied. This level should be very well thought out, calculated, because none of the consumers will bite your ambitions and “missions” without specific products. Imagine: you are the founder of a startup with ambitions, you went out onto the street and said: “I want money for a new apartment, throw off as much as you can.” How much will you get? Therefore, you must disguise your ambitions, turn them into "mission" and "vision", and then into specific products in the eyes of those who will pay the money. goods or services that the company sells. And here, on the third level, the most important thing is to make money. That the company lived, that the "mission" of the company was fulfilled, so that the founder’s ambitions were satisfied. This level should be very well thought out, calculated, because none of the consumers will bite your ambitions and “missions” without specific products. Imagine: you are the founder of a startup with ambitions, you went out onto the street and said: “I want money for a new apartment, throw off as much as you can.” How much will you get? Therefore, you must disguise your ambitions, turn them into "mission" and "vision", and then into specific products in the eyes of those who will pay the money. to satisfy the founder’s ambitions. This level should be very well thought out, calculated, because none of the consumers will bite your ambitions and “missions” without specific products. Imagine: you are the founder of a startup with ambitions, you went out onto the street and said: “I want money for a new apartment, throw off as much as you can.” How much will you get? Therefore, you must disguise your ambitions, turn them into "mission" and "vision", and then into specific products in the eyes of those who will pay the money. to satisfy the founder’s ambitions. This level should be very well thought out, calculated, because none of the consumers will bite your ambitions and “missions” without specific products. Imagine: you are the founder of a startup with ambitions, you went out onto the street and said: “I want money for a new apartment, throw off as much as you can.” How much will you get? Therefore, you must disguise your ambitions, turn them into "mission" and "vision", and then into specific products in the eyes of those who will pay the money. How much will you get? Therefore, you must disguise your ambitions, turn them into "mission" and "vision", and then into specific products in the eyes of those who will pay the money. How much will you get? Therefore, you must disguise your ambitions, turn them into "mission" and "vision", and then into specific products in the eyes of those who will pay the money.

Where does the money go?

And now we’ll try to understand where this money appears and where it disappears. Any company has four sides. The first, most important aspect, is the buyers who bring you money. The second side is the conditional suppliers of goods that you sell to the buyer. As you know, almost any model can be brought under the buy-sell scheme.

When we talk about the “buy-sell” model, the first association is the old paradigm that really existed and lived for a long time: you had to find a cheaper product, buy it, bring it and find buyers for it in order to sell at a higher price. But this paradigm is already slowly ceasing to work, and because of the Internet. On the Internet, the path between the buyer and almost any seller is minimal. You can find almost everything you need. And offline, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find buyers for previously purchased goods. Therefore, I defend a completely different paradigm: now the main value of any business is your customers, your target audience, that is, those people who already trust you. Customers who buy something from you. Your task is to understand what they need, then to find it somewhere or do it - and sell it. That is the situation the opposite of the buy-sell model: “find what to sell to your customers.” A great example is Apple. There are people who buy Apple computers - let's make an iPod and sell it to Apple customers, then make an iPhone and sell it to computer and iPod buyers, and so on. This is a good classic story that shows very clearly that your customers are your faithful loyal customers. Once you have found them, your task is to understand how to please them now. The third party is infrastructure. In order for the business to work, we need employees, an office, a warehouse, a server, and production. The fourth side is taxes. Which also takes money. who buy Apple computers - let's make an iPod and sell it to Apple customers, then make an iPhone and sell it to computer and iPod buyers, and so on. This is a good classic story that shows very clearly that your customers are your faithful loyal customers. Once you have found them, your task is to understand how to please them now. The third party is infrastructure. In order for the business to work, we need employees, an office, a warehouse, a server, and production. The fourth side is taxes. Which also takes money. who buy Apple computers - let's make an iPod and sell it to Apple customers, then make an iPhone and sell it to computer and iPod buyers, and so on. This is a good classic story that shows very clearly that your customers are your faithful loyal customers. Once you have found them, your task is to understand how to please them now. The third party is infrastructure. In order for the business to work, we need employees, an office, a warehouse, a server, and production. The fourth side is taxes. Which also takes money. than to please them now. The third party is infrastructure. In order for the business to work, we need employees, an office, a warehouse, a server, and production. The fourth side is taxes. Which also takes money. than to please them now. The third party is infrastructure. In order for the business to work, we need employees, an office, a warehouse, a server, and production. The fourth side is taxes. Which also takes money.

As a result, money comes from one side, and leaves from three. But here, in fact, two more arrows are missing. Firstly, advertising. In order for us to have buyers, we must spend money on attracting customers. In a good way, you need to spend money on attracting suppliers. To buy from them at the best prices, under normal conditions, they have to be courted, taken to expensive taverns, watered with expensive cognac, and convinced. That is, money leaves in as many as five directions, but comes as before from one side.

Counting money

I would prefer to forget about investments for now. For several reasons. The first is that as soon as people start planning for investments, they involuntarily begin to think that the main goal of their business is to get those investments. This is a dead end. Ideally, you should strive to make money, not get it. Therefore, money is, rather, another infrastructure resource. That is, you can get an investment, but you can take a loan from a bank, lay an apartment. Or, if you need an area, someone can give you use the premises instead of money. That is, money is the same resource. We get the money and still pay for their use: interest on the loan, shares in the company or something else.

The whole problem of opening a new business is actually not in investment, but in attracting customers. Where can I get them, how much will I have to spend on this? Hiring people, oddly enough - this is not a problem, but a task. If the problem can be solved with money, this is not a problem, it is an expense. These are understandable, predictable processes that, in the presence of demand and money, any competent, sane person can solve.

Warning for nerds

When I use the word "nerd", it is not out of harm. I myself graduated from the faculty of VMiK Moscow State University with honors, so I'm the same honored nerd with experience. So, a warning to nerds: a product is not what we do, it is what we sell. A product is not software, not a website, not an application that you have made. A product is a set of properties that you sell to a potential buyer. A few examples to illustrate.

Example number one. A letter comes from the programmer - he is developing a trading platform on which sellers can place their goods: “I am a programmer, I have already completed the project, I have already completed the site, there are only two little things left - tell me how to find buyers and sellers. Everything else has already been done. The project is 95% ready. ” This is just a common mistake. If you don’t know where to get buyers and sellers, you don’t have a product on hand. You have anything on hand, but not a product.

Second example. The same technology or technical component may be a different product, depending on how you apply it. For example, a blender and a meat grinder. We understand that from the point of view of an engineer, this is one and the same thing. What's the difference? There is a certain shredder that rotates on the axis inside the tank, horizontally or vertically, the shredded product can be squeezed out or remain inside the tank. But still, these are two completely different products. They are advertised in different ways, designed for different target audiences. As advantages, completely different properties are put forward. Therefore, what you program or do with your hands and what you sell are exactly two completely different things. You can even sell what is not yet. And you need to start with this. Therefore, we smoothly move on to the next topic, which is called ...

Iterate it

In order to start selling something, you first need to realize whether it is necessary for someone. This is followed by two more questions: are people ready to pay for it and are people ready to pay you for it? Because there is a difference whether this product is offered by IBM or Vasya Pupkin. These are the three most important questions that need to be answered as soon as possible. The question is whether we can program this - the fourth and much less important.

Most startups get burned out because they satisfy non-existent needs. They invented a certain need, then for some time developed a product that supposedly satisfies this need. After 12 months, for example, they enter the market with this product. And they understand that there is no effect. Because they still didn’t understand whether anyone needed this product at all. So the most important rule - starting any business, you need to understand whether someone needs what you do and whether people are willing to pay for it. The sooner you answer this question, the better. You need to know what is the main property of your product. What exactly are you trying to offer people? What kind of need are you trying to satisfy?

A very common situation when novice startups come and ask for money to develop a product. For example, they want to make a dating application. Or a dating site. “Why will people use it?” - “There are 28 reasons for this.” In fact, there is only one reason. The most important. If you cannot single out this reason, this is already the problem that confronts you. As soon as you have identified this main reason or the main property of your product and started testing to understand whether people need this “satisfactory”, an interactive cycle begins. We must make the so-called MVP (minimum viable product), a minimally workable product, the main task of which is on the knee, at least crookedly obliquely, but to check the first, main hypothesis. After that, we start trying to sell. Try to attract customers with this minimally workable product. Next, we evaluate the results of this engagement. And based on their results, we either make changes to the main hypothesis, or start testing further, adding more and more new properties, expanding the range of offers.

In the ideal case, this process will look like a spiral from the course of Marxist-Leninist dialectics: with each new iteration we are more and more bringing the product closer to its ideal form. But the bottom line is that in each new version, in each new release we are trying to test a certain hypothesis that people need this thing, they are ready to pay for it. In this case, I repeat, in some general case, MVP is not even a product in the full sense of the word, because the most important thing is to find out if people are ready to buy it. For example, an American company came up with the idea that they would sell people sets of ingredients and recipes right away for cooking for a week. That is, people can order a menu once a week, receive sliced ​​products with the courier and cook a week from this. Where would the average boob in a startup start? From a simple: he would program a site with a selection of recipes for the parameters. And what did the authors of the idea do? They went to the nearest supermarket and began to catch aunts. That is, they literally approached the aunts who went to buy this supermarket and said: "We have a service - for $ 9.95 a week we can bring you food and recipes for a whole week of cooking." And pay attention - they did not ask: “But if we make this product, would you use it?” No need to ask at all. This is a very simple law. Why not ask? Yes, because all people lie. And most of the time. Someone from evil, someone not from evil. And what did the authors of the idea do? They went to the nearest supermarket and began to catch aunts. That is, they literally approached the aunts who went to buy this supermarket and said: "We have a service - for $ 9.95 a week we can bring you food and recipes for a whole week of cooking." And pay attention - they did not ask: “But if we make this product, would you use it?” No need to ask at all. This is a very simple law. Why not ask? Yes, because all people lie. And most of the time. Someone from evil, someone not from evil. And what did the authors of the idea do? They went to the nearest supermarket and began to catch aunts. That is, they literally approached the aunts who went to buy this supermarket and said: "We have a service - for $ 9.95 a week we can bring you food and recipes for a whole week of cooking." And pay attention - they did not ask: “But if we make this product, would you use it?” No need to ask at all. This is a very simple law. Why not ask? Yes, because all people lie. And most of the time. Someone from evil, someone not from evil. And pay attention - they did not ask: “But if we make this product, would you use it?” No need to ask at all. This is a very simple law. Why not ask? Yes, because all people lie. And most of the time. Someone from evil, someone not from evil. And pay attention - they did not ask: “But if we make this product, would you use it?” No need to ask at all. This is a very simple law. Why not ask? Yes, because all people lie. And most of the time. Someone from evil, someone not from evil.

Speaking of supermarkets, there was once such a psychological experiment: researchers stood at the entrance and asked people what they were going to buy. And then, when leaving the supermarket, they checked these lists with what was really in the person’s basket. Matches less than 50%. No need to ask, because anything can answer you. Gallup once received interesting research results: for men interviewed by young girls, the average income level was 25% higher than the average in the sample. Well, people are lying, what are you going to do now? Therefore, asking is pointless.

The second reason not to ask is that many people really don't know if they want something or not. Do any of you remember Norton Commander? It was at one time a legend for every programmer, and just a DOS user. Its creator, Peter Norton, once came to Moscow in the early 1990s and told a story: “Imagine there is a regular DOS user (black screen, green letters, etc.). I come to him and ask: “And if I make such a program that closes DOS from you, and there are two blue panels there, and with the F5 button you can copy files between these panels?” It is clear that in the best case they would be answered: “Damn him,” and in the worst: “Why do we need this?” We have a DOS. ” If this is something new, people cannot say whether they will use it or not. In addition, the details are very important. No need to ask. You need to do it as quickly and simply as possible.

Coming back to these two guys from the supermarket. They found the first aunt who agreed to pay them $ 9.95. After that, they again did not run to program. They began to pick up recipes, buy goods, cut, lay out in bags and every week bring all this to aunt and listen to all the feedback from her last week from her. And get your legit $ 9.95. In parallel, they molested other aunts. They started to make some kind of service out of it only at the moment when they stopped dealing with the flow of aunts. They realized that they had groped a topic, and people need it. This is one of the examples when you can and should start, without completely making the product.

Another simple implementation of this principle is the landing pages (landing pages) that have already been imposed on your teeth, which, however, are molded by anyone, on the case and without it. At that moment when you want to test whether people need it or not, you start a simple advertisement that leads to one page with a description of the product and the button “Leave your email, we will notify you the moment the product starts”. If you are unable to gather people even there, then the product can be omitted. In any story, you need to test, find out if there is a response - does anyone need your product.

So, the basic principle, the basic equation of a business is that the cost of attracting a buyer should be less than the earnings per buyer. If you spent one hundred rubles on advertising, one client came to you, and you earned 101 rubles on it, that means that there is some chance. Otherwise, why is such a business needed? By the way, another popular fallacy of many startups: “There is business, we do something and sell, we need money” - “And what is the money for?” - “Well, we need money for advertising so that everyone knows about us.” If money is lost on every sale, it will be even worse if everyone finds out about you. You’ll just lose even more money, that’s it.

Therefore, there is such a thing as “unit analysis” - analysis at the level of one sale. What happens in one transaction? How much do we earn on one transaction, how much and on what do we lose money? If at the level of one transaction a positive balance is not obtained, then this means that is all. For simplicity, I subtracted the fixed costs (staff, office, etc.). Because here is just a matter of scale. Even if you spend 100 rubles, earn 101, and spend 100 on the office, this means that you need to sell one hundred units of goods in order to only cover these fixed costs. And everyone who comes to me does not understand this simple formula. They have the whole story: - "We have no customers, give us money for advertising." - “Okay, how much does it cost to attract one client?” - “Oh, but we don’t know” or “We didn’t count”. There is another good answer: "They come to us themselves." When people for some reason come themselves, this means that you cannot influence this process. And it is possible that you cannot in any way increase this flow. Take the same investment. They are needed exactly at the moment when you conducted a unit analysis. That is, you realized that you know how to spend 100 rubles and earn 101. At this point, you really can come to the investor and say: "Give me a million rubles, and as a result we will earn the corresponding amount of money."

This is the very first stage in the development of any startup: testing a hypothesis in the process of which you try either to change a product so that it becomes attractive to a person, or to change the way of conveying the value of a product. And for this unit analysis a lot of money is not needed. At the level of 10, 50, 100 buyers, this is already starting to work. If it doesn’t work even at this level, it won’t become better if more money is spent, only worse.

The change in product properties during adaptation varies in a very wide range. It should be based on observations of user reactions, and not just from the head. What did YouTube start with? It was conceived as a dating service in which people simply could upload their videos. As a result, it suddenly came to the realization that people did not get to know each other very actively, but they watched the videos with great pleasure. Therefore, it was decided: to do video hosting.

Another example. One American company at the beginning of the last century sold mixes for making muffins. It was enough to take the workpiece and put in the oven. Nobody bought this mixture. Then they removed the eggs from this mixture and said: "You have to buy this mixture, break the egg, and then the cupcake will be ready." And women began to buy it. Because they began to participate in the cooking process. That is, they could proudly say to her husband: "I have prepared."

Sometimes it’s enough to change the distribution channel of your product. Again, an American example: Life Savers candies. Nobody bought them (as the legend says), then they agreed with small shops and began to lay out these Life Savers at the checkout. And then it started, people began to buy them while they stood in line or for change. That is, changes can be associated with so many things. This is exactly the stage at which you need to test the hypothesis. And you do not need to need external resources to test this idea.

The second problem is the team. Among you - the founders, the founders of the project - there should be people who are required to conduct all these tests. You do not need to hire programmers or marketers. You should be able to do all this and be able to do it yourself. Because there is nothing worse than the situation: - “Well, I have an idea” - “Well, well, what do you need?” - “I need money” - “For what?” - “Well, how? I need to hire a programmer, marketer, and sales person. ” Then the question arises: “Who are you at all? What do you know, what is your value? ”

Competition

When you try to test an idea, it is very important to understand how people now satisfy this need. And it’s important to look not only at those who do the same as you. And for those who satisfy the same need. A classic example from Kotler: a person comes to a store to buy a drill. What is the competitor of this drill? Not only other drills, but perforators, punches, “husbands for an hour” and any other means that can provide a hole in the wall. Because a person comes to the store to buy a hole in the wall, not a drill.

Now the question arises: what are the main criteria your idea must meet in order to be worth it in all serious ways? And here we come to paradoxical thought. In order to articulate it clearly, let's face the phenomenon of competition. We understand that we live under capitalism, competition is the basis of the capitalist mode of reproduction. Why is competition bad? As soon as we try to do the same as others, we enter into competition. As a result, if a certain mass product is already being sold, then at some point a person begins to choose according to price. This is a normal occurrence. Why buy something more expensive if you can buy cheaper? Therefore, for the user, everything is wonderful and good. He receives goods and services all cheaper, cheaper and cheaper. All better, better and better. And sellers in the struggle for lower prices are forced to cut their margins, reduce costs, that is, lower the quality of their work. Everything is in pursuit of the buyer, for reducing margins. This means that if you come up with an idea in a market where there are still a lot of people-sellers, the question arises: “Have you even gone there? Do you understand what this will lead to? ”

In such markets, there is one paradoxical belief among venture investors - that you need to invest in companies that operate in existing markets. That is, the need for a certain product has already been confirmed - which means that you can invest in some other company that works in this market. This company has investment money, and it begins to work in the red. They sell goods at a loss just in order to gain some mythical market share, according to the principle "If we kill everyone else now, we will remain the only ones, then we will start making money." But precisely because of the very competition, they will never remain the only ones. More and more naive companies that decide to work in competitive markets will come to the place of the dead, more and more investment money will come, people will spend more on attraction than they earn. These companies have huge losses. Why? Because they are fighting for some market share. For speed, for growth. As a result, they have investment replenishment, and they are washing out other smaller businesses, normal people trying to make money.

So, any attempt to enter the competitive market is a clear understanding that sooner or later this will lead to a reduction in margin to a minimum. Or this is an attempt to follow the American investment model, because in this market there are mergers and acquisitions. It’s easier to buy a competitor, attach it to yourself and continue. But at the same time, the economic benefit for the buyer is not particularly obtained (but to the one who sold it is good). If one loss-making company bought another loss-making company, more money will not appear in the process. Then the question arises: what to do? All markets are competitive by definition. And now, go and hang yourself?

Fast forward to 1969. Jack Trout and Al Rice wrote an article in the New York Times Magazine, if I'm not mistaken, called Positioning. The battle for the mind ”-“ Positioning. The battle for the heads. " The briefly stated idea sounds like this: our world is oversaturated with information (this was said back in 1969!). And our brain is trying to adapt to this, simplifying everything around. As a result, we perceive all the flows of information in a simplified form. What does this mean in terms of marketing? If you launch a certain brand, the brain tries to associate with this brand some basic property of the brand, the product. An associative pair is created. And when you want to buy something that has this property, it is this brand that first comes to mind. So briefly looks the theory of positioning. Moreover, when I hear "market positioning", my hand reaches for the gun. After all, people do not understand what they are saying. Positioning takes place in the brain of the consumer!

This leads to several consequences. Corollary number one: if this property is already occupied by some brand, you won’t get it out of a person’s head. Or knocking out takes a lot of time and money. Corollary number two: your main task and, in general, all the efforts that you must make must not be from the series "you must sell the same as the other, but cheaper." You have to come up with some new property, category, niche (you can call it whatever you like) so that your product, your brand is associated with it. That is, all marketing policies and advertising should be aimed at finding and consolidating a new association between you and your main property. The challenge is precisely to be the first in the heads, and not in the market. Who made the first personal computer? None of you will remember. Because those who released the first personal computer did not reach the goals of potential consumers. That is, the main thing is not just to release something, but to convey it. At the same time, the association that you invented for yourself is not always accepted by people.

Let's take an example: McDonald's and Burger King. Both that, and another - hamburgers. At one time, Burger King tried very strongly to "dissociate" from McDonald's. They thought for themselves that McDonald's is food for children. After all, McDonald's was very focused on children, families. Burger King launched an advertising campaign: “But we are burgers for adults, so we have large portions, all in an adult way.” But it didn’t work out. Because for the consumer a burger is a burger, there is no difference. On the other hand, for example, Starbucks succeeded. How is coffee at Starbucks fundamentally better than at any other coffee shop? In fact, practically nothing. But they managed to separate from competitors.

Create a category

Bringing a product to the market, even at the level of inventing ideas, you need to understand in which category you want to play, which category you want to create. Ideally, this category is created or occupied by you alone. Because sooner or later, any category becomes a struggle between two leaders. Or two leaders and one catching up. The ratio of markets between the three players is usually 4 to 2 to 1. As soon as you try to enter a category in which someone is, if you do not occupy it entirely or become a leader, you will most likely die. New categories can be created by, for example, dividing existing categories. This is called a niche. At one time there was a large category of “computers”, then came the category of “mini-computers”, then - “personal computers”. Or categories can be created. The “in itself” category, for example, is Apple. There is a separate category “iPhone” and a separate category “smartphones”. When creating a category, I mean “brand”, not “company”, because sometimes one company has several brands in different categories. Examples are Nissan and Infinity, Honda and Acura, Toyota and Lexus, Mercedes and Maybach, Mars and Snickers.

Positioning has many advantages and only two drawbacks. First: positioning is very hard to come up with. That is, to come up with such a new category from the point of view of the consumer, so that it really is vital and that it really works. And this is “new”, I repeat once again, there should be a “new” in the minds of consumers, and not in your brain. For example, electric cars. Not Tesla Motors made the first electric car, but it created the specific category of "premium electric car." The second drawback: any positioning is a sacrifice. By associating a property with yourself, you will not get rid of it. Any attempts will lead to only one thing - people will cease to associate you with this property. Volkswagen produced only "Beetles" at one time. And all the ads for the US market were “think small,” although ordinary American thinking is think big, think positive. And at that time Volkswagen was America’s number one importer in America. At some point, when Volkswagen began to produce the entire line of cars, they were already seventh. That is, positioning carries some limitations. You can’t get anywhere from this.

It follows that we must first test our idea with a view to the future. You need to think, look inside what you are doing, some new property. And try to check - do people perceive this property? Can you ride him and become the future of Apple, the future of Coca Cola, the future of Starbucks, or someone else? You need to understand if you have enough resources for this, or you will die.

Where to start and how to continue?

Most successful businesses are made by two or three founders. If you are alone, most likely, you will not succeed. Here is the truth of life. There are practically no successful companies (although there are exceptions) that have one founder. Recently I came across a book by some American business promoter, written somewhere in 1900 - "13 axioms of successful business." Axiom number one - every business should be done by at least two people. Moreover, this statement is based on several facts. Fact number one is specialization or competency. It is generally believed, especially in technology-related companies, that there should be a hacker and hustler. That is, a person who knows the technical side, and a person who knows how to sell. If they unite, then they have a chance of success.

Some believe that these competencies should be three - hacker, hustler and designer. Moreover, the “designer” is not the one who draws, but the one who understands how the user will visually, tactilely, as you like, feel the user. In this sense, Dropbox is a good example. The founders at one time ran, looking for investments for two years. Because by this time there were already a lot of archiving systems on the Internet. And then they did some MVP: they shot a video in which they showed how it would look in reality. The main strength of Dropbox is its seamless integration into the system. Lack of settings, simplicity and visibility. In one night, they received the same 45,000 registrations on the not yet existing Dropbox.

If even in business there is no technical component at all, for example, you open a store, then one runs around the buyers, the other organizes work in the store. But almost every business has several competencies. And one person usually does not manage to be both a Swiss and a reaper, and a dude as a player. He simply does not have enough head, time, strength.

The second point is psychology. As I said, the story of any new business, the story of a startup is a story of disappointment. You have too many horrors and a nightmare; you come to the conclusion that everything is lost more than once. Nothing will work out, nothing will happen, success will never come, everything we do, nobody needs it, etc. Winston Churchill once said: “What is success? Success is the ability to go from one failure to another without losing enthusiasm. ” And the two founders, no matter how ridiculous, can simply support each other in difficult times. When one thinks that everything is bad, the second says: “No, not quite bad, it will be even worse.” After a while, they change roles. This is a psychological shoulder, support.

There is a saying: "Behind any successful dude in jeans is an adult dude in a suit." It was at one time that they talked about Apple. They had the first investor angel, business angel Mike Markkula, and Jobs admitted that if there was no Mike, nothing would have worked. Therefore, let me make a digression and talk a little about the role of a business angel in the life of a starting business (this is what I have been doing for the last 4 years).

The main reason that founders of start-up projects come to a business angel is not money at all; come for him to help test the hypothesis at the minimum product level. This is the stage that should require a minimum of money, simply by definition. If this is not so, then this is an incomplete team, or the guys are doing some nonsense. Given that the founders must also risk something (their time, money, etc.), you can bring the idea to the point of absurdity and say that the ideal business angel is the one that will make the project achieve first success for their own money. That is, not investing at all. Therefore, very often, to the business angel, I myself can say, they come precisely behind the third shoulder (if the first two shoulders are in the first two founders) - as to a person who already has some experience, connections,

In no case do I want, will not and cannot replace the founders. I tried to do this. It turns out to replace very easily. Replace - in the moral sense. You start telling them what to do. At some point, they agree with everything, begin to listen to you and become full impotent in the sense of business. They just went and did as they were told. And then they returned to you and said: “Okay, what to do next?” Or: “But we didn’t succeed. What to do next?". Therefore, a business angel is a third party, angel or devil who shares experience, a glance from above, connections, and possibly money. But this is not a classic investment (“give us more money”), but help at the stage of hypothesis testing.

It is very difficult to find a founder for a finished project, to infect it. Because the infection is somehow different. Therefore, usually the process looks the other way around. In the beginning, a group of people interested in something similar appears, doing something together, within the same class, Technopark, special courses - anywhere. Then a certain idea crystallizes out and a team appears that is already ready to take risks and go to iterate the process, try to understand whether it works or not.

Communicating people is crucial for giving birth to ideas. If you think you can sit in an empty room, put your hand on your forehead and come up with an idea, you are mistaken. Either you come up with something obvious, or nobody needs it. There is a good book called “Where good ideas come from”. The author claims that the industrial revolution in England occurred at the time coffee houses appeared. Because before that, public places were public houses. People came there, quickly got drunk, and all conversations flowed in different directions. People started drinking coffee in the coffee shop, as a result of communication, new ideas began to arise that led to an explosion of invention and everything else that led to the industrial revolution.

Another interesting story on the same topic: they put cameras in one research institute and recorded people's actions and conversations for some time. After some time, analyzing, they were surprised to find that almost all new ideas appeared in the canteen. That is, where people talked, talked. In the laboratory, only a check of ideas was carried out. That's all. By the way, more about these coffee houses. I met with one of the Moscow restaurateurs and once told him about the connection between coffee houses and the industrial revolution. He says: “For several years I have been thinking of writing a book about the role of coffee houses in general in the history of civilization. Damn it, with the industrial revolution, the French revolution also originated in coffee houses, and then splashed out onto the streets of Paris. ” There are many stories.

Sometime in 1990, I started programming on a Macintosh. They already came with microphones at that time. And I wrote a program that could transfer sound from a computer to a computer over a local area network. This program somehow in a random way on a disk with shareware hit the American company that was developing a similar program, but it turned out they didn’t do very well. As a result, they bought this program from me and began to sell instead of theirs. And I received at that time a crazy bunch of money that I invested in the first business. And the very idea of ​​this program arose from some random conversation in the smoking room of the research computing center of Moscow State University, where I was working at that time.

The idea of ​​the same Price.ru, which I founded in 1997, arose from a very simple thing. Once we were sitting with a friend, Boris Lozinsky, one of the founders of Consultant Plus, and he said: “Listen, but why isn’t there such a convenient catalog on the Internet where you could compare prices quickly, efficiently, a lot?” At that time there was only the most important paper directory "Mobile" and a few small and inconvenient Internet services. I got hooked on this thought, and so Price.ru appeared.

Where to start your business? Need to communicate. Rotate in the company of people with whom you are comfortable and who share your interests. Learn something new, meet and discuss programmer, non-programmer, any problems. Only the presence of these connections can lead to the emergence of some kind of clue, moreover, from real life. And already continuing to discuss with people who have expressed an important idea, it is possible to form, refine an idea - and these same two or three founders will appear.

Immediately a warning. As soon as an idea occurred to you, search the Internet first. And then it comes to the ridiculous. If people think that their ideas have no competitors, this means several things at once. First, they do not do research. The second - they point blank do not see competitors. Thirdly, they are just stupid. There are no unique ideas. And this means that if you came up with a certain idea, then either it has already been implemented or has already died, because it turned out to be useless to anyone. The last option is not a verdict, just each time has its own fruit. If this idea was not accepted some years ago, now it can already go, but in some new reading. Apple made the first commercial computer with handwriting in 1993, it was called Newton, but did not go at that moment for a number of reasons. And in 2007, the iPhone appeared. Prototypes were made much earlier, but the idea was released to the market relatively recently. So if the idea is dead - it’s not scary. But the main law - try to find out what already exists on this topic. And not forgetting the drills and holes in the wall. That is, it is absolutely not necessary to look for exactly what repeats what you thought up. One must seek that which satisfies the same need. And you have to understand how your product is different, or why it didn’t work with your predecessors, but it will work for you.

And the last one. Learn! This puts the brains in order. Learn, communicate, seek, think. And come to me if you have ideas or want to learn how to stop suffering and start trying to build a business. Firstly, every Tuesday from 2 p.m. I meet with new projects at the Good Republic anti-cafe on Myasnitskaya, Default City. Secondly, since in one meeting it’s all the same what I think you won’t tell and you won’t drive - I started to conduct an online course on “anti- start-ups ”, you can record and study - all in an adult way, with lessons, assignments and tests .

Thanks. Good luck.