Adaperio means "Discover the Truth." The story of one startup in two hardcore monologues
Let me tell you about myself. My name is Alexey, in a month I will be 30, behind a posh career in a bank. At 25, I was already the director of retail business of the bank branch of TOP-20. To understand how cool this is, I can only say what the most important uncles from the Central Bank of Russia confirm after such checks. Then I had an enviable job at a large law firm with an excellent salary, an affordable schedule and free internet (and also coffee). And emptiness. Emptiness from the fact that you will not leave anything behind.
At work, if you do not have new interesting tasks, and everything is debugged to automatism, you gradually turn into a hypnap. Moreover, if you have enthusiasm, brains and are lucky with interesting work, then you will realize someone else's dream and this will put pressure on you from the other side even more. Therefore, one fine day, I decided to leave and start something of my own. So begins the story of Adaperio.
# What for?
Let's estimate the advantages of an employee and the advantages of “stopdown” (wait, do not rush to call Cap, this is not obvious to some).
### Employee
1. Stable salary.
2. Guaranteed vacation and less (as a rule) work load.
3. Interesting highly specialized tasks.
4. Career growth - in 5 years you can become a boss.
5. It is important to rotate the mustache, telling how cool we are.
### Stopdown
1. Unstable s / n, but potentially larger.
2. Unstable vacation, but potentially after 5 years I am in Thailand (in the Canary Islands) and with a laptop.
3. Not very interesting tasks (as a rule), but potentially we will hire Vasya to do deployment, scripts and tests.
4. But I’m immediately the boss (but see paragraph 5).
5. Doshirak tastes better at home.
# A wave of horror
Suppose you decided to leave "for Doshirak", told the HR department everything you think about them, stole a working flash drive and went home. Turn loud heavy music, lock the door, and get ready for the waves of horror ...
Firstly, it is generally accepted that doing business on the Internet is much easier than in real life. The standard scheme: it’s washed down super-geo-socio-photo-sharing, there are hundreds of users, and you are rich! Not. Nobody will come to you right away. And you will surely fall into the "valley of death", in which users no longer become over time.
Secondly, customers will get you. At first, almost every client has to talk to YOU individually, explaining how and what (not) works. Get ready for being a "liar and a scammer." In this sense, a shawarma tent or a stall with vegetables on the corner is a super stable, predictable and scalable business. For example, in the case of Adaperio, we are creating a relatively new product for our market (despite the fact that there is Carfax in the USA). Many people simply do not believe that you can find out any reliable information about the car, sitting at the computer and poking at the buttons.
Thirdly, developing at one’s own expense is difficult. You no longer have the right to make a mistake. At the start, you have to explain to your relatives why you practically do not get any profit in this rich Moscow, where if you have a salary of less than 100 pieces, then you are a sucker.
Your hungry children will come to you (it’s good that only one of us has a child), you will be haunted by constant torment of choice. How to make pivot? Now or not? It is only at Eric Rice's pivot to make it easy. Or maybe wait "another week", and the situation will improve? Do not merge right away from the idea? Let's wait another week! No need to talk about clear goals and KPIs. If people immediately did pivot, as soon as they didn’t do anything, there wouldn’t be many products.
Not enough of your horrors? There are still investors with their own. Their knees are shaking. They need a ready-made business with a turnover of a couple of million rubles a month so that they think about investing in the project 100 thousand dollars for a share of 50%. No venture exists in Russia. Most likely, in other countries too. Nobody is ready to give you money for a really risky project now. Do not believe. They would give Zuckerberg or Bryn money only by kinship. That is, they would not.
#Rake
I’ll tell you a story. In fact, my first venture was a complete fakap - an information portal, the development of which was spent a year and a half and money to buy a BMW X5. It turned out to be not as demanded by users as it was seen in my dreams. In short, if you are a masochist like us, you made the right choice. Read on.
You know, this experience taught me one simple rule. If you want to reduce the likelihood of a project failure, increase the number of users and simplify the product itself. Therefore, our current project - Adaperio - is aimed at one of the largest audiences - motorists and those who plan to become them. Yes, we are not ideal and not a magic pill to solve all problems, but the information we find helps to conduct an initial selection of options. After that, you can go to the station and carry out detailed car diagnostics.
# Buns
# Start, not because you CAN start. Start because you CANNOT start.
If you still dream of launching your project, but your dreams have remained dreams, here is a little motivation:
1. Have you seen at least one “businessman” who returned back to his usual work as a developer?
2. You probably already HAVE everything you need! There is a car. Sell her! Is it expensive to live in Maaaaaskva? Go home, oh, you’ll live on the money from the sale of a car for two years. Is there an expensive iMac for 100 kilobbles? And if I find it?
3. By the age of 45, you don’t really want and can’t really keep up with new technologies. Who do you want to go to 45 years old? Super-specialist in file systems? Not so bad. But understand - you do not scale! If at 20 you can plow 7x15 hours a week, and at 45 you can do 5x8, then this does not compare with the “productivity” of people like Elon Musk or Kaspersky (and this is several thousand people x 5 x 8 hours a week). If Elon Musk can try to make 5-6 stories, then you will have only one for life - your file system.
4. After 15 years, each yard dog will be able to deploy a landing page and even fix another mowing layout in IE32. Your children and grandchildren will constantly distract you (and you will really be glad to be able to communicate with them, and not with a computer), and your brain will not work faster.
5. It is not necessary to leave your job. Write the code in the evenings / weekends. Have a vacation? Allocate it to create MVP.
Remember - most likely you do not become like Musk or Kaspersky. Stupidly according to statistics. But do you need it? You can be a very decent middle peasant who is not written about in the newspapers, in the evenings riding a Porsche in your yard and spending several months of the year traveling around the world.
Understand - your own “cheburechny in the center” - this is also really very cool. You just need to pull yourself together, fix the “steel eggs” and take the first step.
Anton: I have long wanted to write something unmatched on Habré about technologies, colliders, neural networks and other caches with monkey patching. But since I like to read “science fiction” books about IT and business most of all, my story today is more likely not about technology, but about the inner experiences of a man of about thirty, who went into stopdowns after a long ruble, and what came of it.
... 8 (or 9) years I worked as a hardcore C / C ++ developer. At the very beginning of my career, I was very interested in drivers and low-level / system programming. I wore glasses, comfortable shirts, came to work on a bicycle, did not recognize Apple, had only rare successes among the female population of the country. I hated the web, hated this mess, these ugly technologies and languages ... As a result, I didn’t learn how to write drivers normally, but I clearly articulated my desire for the next 5 years - “I want to do something useful for people.”
I did not want to do only the “engine”, I wanted to develop a whole “car”, if such an analogy works. I wanted to be closer to the client, I didn’t want to sit in the basement, where golden CD-R discs occasionally went down (if you remember such). Well, can a conditional “driver” develop some really useful service where knowledge is needed in breadth, not depth?
My tasks became more high-level, and I got girls. At home, I had to make different completely “light” projects, take courses on all kinds of Anglular.JS and other Node'am. Sometimes I was thrown into a cold sweat, and in the afternoon I had to wipe away tears. How disgusting and uninteresting. But gradually I left my main job and switched to my projects.
I even learned to enjoy the web. All for the sake of victory! Sometimes, of course, I really want to “jump up at night” and do something great. But this happens less and less.
Yes, not often do I need to think about quick-sort or binary trees. But on the other hand, I can twist it right here with my own hands, do this ... and in an hour a particular person will feel better and more comfortable living! I no longer want to spend a lot of time diving deep into. For it practically does not move me closer to “I want to do something useful for people.” Am I grown up or am I tired of doing “empty"? I do not know.
About the authors:
Alexei Danilov - CEO, founder Adaperio.ru:
Over 7 years of experience in creating and developing a business, building and automating business processes within the framework of MDM Bank, Cliff Law Firm, and ProOffshory.ru information portal.
“Perhaps our mistakes will help someone make the right decision at some point (although everyone prefers their own rake, of course).”
Anton Akentiev - CTO, co-founder of Adaperio.ru:
Over 7 years of experience in programming applications for Windows, Linux, IOS, Android, including in the lead-developer position.
“In general, I highly recommend relying only on my resources. It mobilizes and strengthens. Of course, an investor is needed, but if you can’t put the project into orbit yourself / don’t believe in it, the investor will not help here. ”
Adaperio is a used car history checker. We decided not to focus on the project, but rather talk more about what is connected with the decision to do it. We think that if someone is interested in a story, they will go to VCStart and they will read more about it there .
Recall that the Adaperio project is hosted on the VCStart collective investment platform in order to collect investments. You can help the project (and dozens of other startups) and become its co-investor here:
At work, if you do not have new interesting tasks, and everything is debugged to automatism, you gradually turn into a hypnap. Moreover, if you have enthusiasm, brains and are lucky with interesting work, then you will realize someone else's dream and this will put pressure on you from the other side even more. Therefore, one fine day, I decided to leave and start something of my own. So begins the story of Adaperio.
# What for?
Let's estimate the advantages of an employee and the advantages of “stopdown” (wait, do not rush to call Cap, this is not obvious to some).
### Employee
1. Stable salary.
2. Guaranteed vacation and less (as a rule) work load.
3. Interesting highly specialized tasks.
4. Career growth - in 5 years you can become a boss.
5. It is important to rotate the mustache, telling how cool we are.
### Stopdown
1. Unstable s / n, but potentially larger.
2. Unstable vacation, but potentially after 5 years I am in Thailand (in the Canary Islands) and with a laptop.
3. Not very interesting tasks (as a rule), but potentially we will hire Vasya to do deployment, scripts and tests.
4. But I’m immediately the boss (but see paragraph 5).
5. Doshirak tastes better at home.
# A wave of horror
Suppose you decided to leave "for Doshirak", told the HR department everything you think about them, stole a working flash drive and went home. Turn loud heavy music, lock the door, and get ready for the waves of horror ...
Firstly, it is generally accepted that doing business on the Internet is much easier than in real life. The standard scheme: it’s washed down super-geo-socio-photo-sharing, there are hundreds of users, and you are rich! Not. Nobody will come to you right away. And you will surely fall into the "valley of death", in which users no longer become over time.
Secondly, customers will get you. At first, almost every client has to talk to YOU individually, explaining how and what (not) works. Get ready for being a "liar and a scammer." In this sense, a shawarma tent or a stall with vegetables on the corner is a super stable, predictable and scalable business. For example, in the case of Adaperio, we are creating a relatively new product for our market (despite the fact that there is Carfax in the USA). Many people simply do not believe that you can find out any reliable information about the car, sitting at the computer and poking at the buttons.
Thirdly, developing at one’s own expense is difficult. You no longer have the right to make a mistake. At the start, you have to explain to your relatives why you practically do not get any profit in this rich Moscow, where if you have a salary of less than 100 pieces, then you are a sucker.
Your hungry children will come to you (it’s good that only one of us has a child), you will be haunted by constant torment of choice. How to make pivot? Now or not? It is only at Eric Rice's pivot to make it easy. Or maybe wait "another week", and the situation will improve? Do not merge right away from the idea? Let's wait another week! No need to talk about clear goals and KPIs. If people immediately did pivot, as soon as they didn’t do anything, there wouldn’t be many products.
Not enough of your horrors? There are still investors with their own. Their knees are shaking. They need a ready-made business with a turnover of a couple of million rubles a month so that they think about investing in the project 100 thousand dollars for a share of 50%. No venture exists in Russia. Most likely, in other countries too. Nobody is ready to give you money for a really risky project now. Do not believe. They would give Zuckerberg or Bryn money only by kinship. That is, they would not.
#Rake
I’ll tell you a story. In fact, my first venture was a complete fakap - an information portal, the development of which was spent a year and a half and money to buy a BMW X5. It turned out to be not as demanded by users as it was seen in my dreams. In short, if you are a masochist like us, you made the right choice. Read on.
You know, this experience taught me one simple rule. If you want to reduce the likelihood of a project failure, increase the number of users and simplify the product itself. Therefore, our current project - Adaperio - is aimed at one of the largest audiences - motorists and those who plan to become them. Yes, we are not ideal and not a magic pill to solve all problems, but the information we find helps to conduct an initial selection of options. After that, you can go to the station and carry out detailed car diagnostics.
# Buns
# Start, not because you CAN start. Start because you CANNOT start.
If you still dream of launching your project, but your dreams have remained dreams, here is a little motivation:
1. Have you seen at least one “businessman” who returned back to his usual work as a developer?
2. You probably already HAVE everything you need! There is a car. Sell her! Is it expensive to live in Maaaaaskva? Go home, oh, you’ll live on the money from the sale of a car for two years. Is there an expensive iMac for 100 kilobbles? And if I find it?
3. By the age of 45, you don’t really want and can’t really keep up with new technologies. Who do you want to go to 45 years old? Super-specialist in file systems? Not so bad. But understand - you do not scale! If at 20 you can plow 7x15 hours a week, and at 45 you can do 5x8, then this does not compare with the “productivity” of people like Elon Musk or Kaspersky (and this is several thousand people x 5 x 8 hours a week). If Elon Musk can try to make 5-6 stories, then you will have only one for life - your file system.
4. After 15 years, each yard dog will be able to deploy a landing page and even fix another mowing layout in IE32. Your children and grandchildren will constantly distract you (and you will really be glad to be able to communicate with them, and not with a computer), and your brain will not work faster.
5. It is not necessary to leave your job. Write the code in the evenings / weekends. Have a vacation? Allocate it to create MVP.
Remember - most likely you do not become like Musk or Kaspersky. Stupidly according to statistics. But do you need it? You can be a very decent middle peasant who is not written about in the newspapers, in the evenings riding a Porsche in your yard and spending several months of the year traveling around the world.
Understand - your own “cheburechny in the center” - this is also really very cool. You just need to pull yourself together, fix the “steel eggs” and take the first step.
Anton: I have long wanted to write something unmatched on Habré about technologies, colliders, neural networks and other caches with monkey patching. But since I like to read “science fiction” books about IT and business most of all, my story today is more likely not about technology, but about the inner experiences of a man of about thirty, who went into stopdowns after a long ruble, and what came of it.
... 8 (or 9) years I worked as a hardcore C / C ++ developer. At the very beginning of my career, I was very interested in drivers and low-level / system programming. I wore glasses, comfortable shirts, came to work on a bicycle, did not recognize Apple, had only rare successes among the female population of the country. I hated the web, hated this mess, these ugly technologies and languages ... As a result, I didn’t learn how to write drivers normally, but I clearly articulated my desire for the next 5 years - “I want to do something useful for people.”
I did not want to do only the “engine”, I wanted to develop a whole “car”, if such an analogy works. I wanted to be closer to the client, I didn’t want to sit in the basement, where golden CD-R discs occasionally went down (if you remember such). Well, can a conditional “driver” develop some really useful service where knowledge is needed in breadth, not depth?
My tasks became more high-level, and I got girls. At home, I had to make different completely “light” projects, take courses on all kinds of Anglular.JS and other Node'am. Sometimes I was thrown into a cold sweat, and in the afternoon I had to wipe away tears. How disgusting and uninteresting. But gradually I left my main job and switched to my projects.
I even learned to enjoy the web. All for the sake of victory! Sometimes, of course, I really want to “jump up at night” and do something great. But this happens less and less.
Yes, not often do I need to think about quick-sort or binary trees. But on the other hand, I can twist it right here with my own hands, do this ... and in an hour a particular person will feel better and more comfortable living! I no longer want to spend a lot of time diving deep into. For it practically does not move me closer to “I want to do something useful for people.” Am I grown up or am I tired of doing “empty"? I do not know.
About the authors:
Alexei Danilov - CEO, founder Adaperio.ru:
Over 7 years of experience in creating and developing a business, building and automating business processes within the framework of MDM Bank, Cliff Law Firm, and ProOffshory.ru information portal. “Perhaps our mistakes will help someone make the right decision at some point (although everyone prefers their own rake, of course).”
Anton Akentiev - CTO, co-founder of Adaperio.ru:
Over 7 years of experience in programming applications for Windows, Linux, IOS, Android, including in the lead-developer position. “In general, I highly recommend relying only on my resources. It mobilizes and strengthens. Of course, an investor is needed, but if you can’t put the project into orbit yourself / don’t believe in it, the investor will not help here. ”
Adaperio is a used car history checker. We decided not to focus on the project, but rather talk more about what is connected with the decision to do it. We think that if someone is interested in a story, they will go to VCStart and they will read more about it there .
Recall that the Adaperio project is hosted on the VCStart collective investment platform in order to collect investments. You can help the project (and dozens of other startups) and become its co-investor here: