“Venture squared”, or 13: 0 in favor of the investor
A week has passed since the first post on our blog , from which the habro-audience learned that “there is such a party” - the collective investment platform VCStart. For the project, this post was the first publication, as we have not conducted any advertising activities yet, having decided to first ask about the opinion of our Habr readers about our “startup for startups”. Legends go about the exactingness and meticulousness of the Khabrovsk citizens - we knew what we were doing, anticipated questions and criticism, and were afraid, in the event of complete rejection, of a flurry of rotten eggs and tomatoes. But on the other hand, there was hope (and even some inner confidence) that we came to the address and it was here that they would appreciate, understand and support.
As a result, we got a complete set of everything we were waiting for. The project caused a reaction, legitimate questions, and the skeptics’s gang, which, although upsetting, made us confident that “they noticed us”. Egg-tomato salvo, thank God, did not follow, but some single throws were pretty well-aimed.
“Venture is, by definition, a very risky occupation. This area - a venture in the square " - this evaluation project was given by one of the commentators.
Of course, at first she was not particularly encouraged until the results of our exclusive announcement for Habr users became visible. And, judging by them, this formula has for many (we will conditionally call this group optimists) another, directly opposite to the meaning embedded by the author.
The reaction turned out to be extremely mixed, despite the rather skeptical general mood of commentators - 112 start-ups were registered on VCStart in a few days (and not a single one, the platform was closed to users before the first habratopik), of which moderation was completed by the end of the week and approved by show 13.
Opponents (let's call them pessimists) will say that this figure is so-so, in the classic Success Story there should still be at least a few zeros at the end. To which optimists will object to them that the number 13 in esotericism and numerology means a transformation, a transition from one qualitative state to another. The ancient Egyptians and Chinese, Mayans and Masons believed that this number is lucky, and even today many people believe in modern and alien prejudices.
We do not believe in numerology, but believe in Google Analytics and Yandex. A metric whose data far exceeded our expectations.
The first post on Habré was for us, rather, a test ball, than the beginning of an advertising campaign to attract startupers and investors to the platform. Now the platform works in demo mode, which lasts 42 days. Its main task is to collect a certain number of interesting and attractive investment projects. A large-scale PR campaign to attract investors is also planned, but it starts later, and immediately in several media segments, from social networks to the Yandex.Direct campaign. The main strategic task at this stage is to attract at least one thousand backers to the community of each project, who will become the core of their investment groups at the next stage of financing.
As a result, the risk was justified: in addition to the hosted startups, there were also many who wanted to invest in the demo launch phase - to date, about 2 thousand new users have registered with VCstart and some of them have already managed to make their first investments.
Several thousand users - in itself is not an object of pride. But as an indicator that the Russian Internet audience was subconsciously waiting for a service for collective investment and is already ready for this type of activity, this figure can be regarded.
Pride is something else - for the most part already moderated and hosted startups - interesting and worthy IT projects with fresh and needed ideas. Some of them are already successfully operating, attracting investments for further development, others, which are just emerging, are applying for financing for a full start. And although they are all quite different, there are common features, such as a high development potential and the benefits that they can bring to the end consumer and investors invested in them.
As an example, I will cite the project “Cargo Search”, which is a freight and information logistics platform operating since 2012, more than 75 thousand people from this professional sphere are already using its services. In addition to it, among the applicants there are independent media, mobile and cloud services, aggregators of sales, payment systems and much more. The diversity and enthusiasm with which the creators of startups reacted to our launch cannot but rejoice, because for this everything was started.
In the future, we plan to regularly acquaint readers of our Habroblog with the most interesting projects in order to help them gain financial support from investors and attract a target group of enthusiasts like their authors. And we very much hope in this to support the Habrovsk citizens as the most savvy and progressive audience.
Subscribe to the projects you are interested in, and sharing links to them on social networks would really help their authors gather the necessary audience for financing. In addition, we ask you for advice on promoting our collective venture investment service in Russia and we will be grateful for your help.
As a result, we got a complete set of everything we were waiting for. The project caused a reaction, legitimate questions, and the skeptics’s gang, which, although upsetting, made us confident that “they noticed us”. Egg-tomato salvo, thank God, did not follow, but some single throws were pretty well-aimed.
“Venture is, by definition, a very risky occupation. This area - a venture in the square " - this evaluation project was given by one of the commentators.
Of course, at first she was not particularly encouraged until the results of our exclusive announcement for Habr users became visible. And, judging by them, this formula has for many (we will conditionally call this group optimists) another, directly opposite to the meaning embedded by the author.
The reaction turned out to be extremely mixed, despite the rather skeptical general mood of commentators - 112 start-ups were registered on VCStart in a few days (and not a single one, the platform was closed to users before the first habratopik), of which moderation was completed by the end of the week and approved by show 13.
Opponents (let's call them pessimists) will say that this figure is so-so, in the classic Success Story there should still be at least a few zeros at the end. To which optimists will object to them that the number 13 in esotericism and numerology means a transformation, a transition from one qualitative state to another. The ancient Egyptians and Chinese, Mayans and Masons believed that this number is lucky, and even today many people believe in modern and alien prejudices.
We do not believe in numerology, but believe in Google Analytics and Yandex. A metric whose data far exceeded our expectations.
The first post on Habré was for us, rather, a test ball, than the beginning of an advertising campaign to attract startupers and investors to the platform. Now the platform works in demo mode, which lasts 42 days. Its main task is to collect a certain number of interesting and attractive investment projects. A large-scale PR campaign to attract investors is also planned, but it starts later, and immediately in several media segments, from social networks to the Yandex.Direct campaign. The main strategic task at this stage is to attract at least one thousand backers to the community of each project, who will become the core of their investment groups at the next stage of financing.
As a result, the risk was justified: in addition to the hosted startups, there were also many who wanted to invest in the demo launch phase - to date, about 2 thousand new users have registered with VCstart and some of them have already managed to make their first investments.
Several thousand users - in itself is not an object of pride. But as an indicator that the Russian Internet audience was subconsciously waiting for a service for collective investment and is already ready for this type of activity, this figure can be regarded.
Pride is something else - for the most part already moderated and hosted startups - interesting and worthy IT projects with fresh and needed ideas. Some of them are already successfully operating, attracting investments for further development, others, which are just emerging, are applying for financing for a full start. And although they are all quite different, there are common features, such as a high development potential and the benefits that they can bring to the end consumer and investors invested in them.
As an example, I will cite the project “Cargo Search”, which is a freight and information logistics platform operating since 2012, more than 75 thousand people from this professional sphere are already using its services. In addition to it, among the applicants there are independent media, mobile and cloud services, aggregators of sales, payment systems and much more. The diversity and enthusiasm with which the creators of startups reacted to our launch cannot but rejoice, because for this everything was started.
In the future, we plan to regularly acquaint readers of our Habroblog with the most interesting projects in order to help them gain financial support from investors and attract a target group of enthusiasts like their authors. And we very much hope in this to support the Habrovsk citizens as the most savvy and progressive audience.
Subscribe to the projects you are interested in, and sharing links to them on social networks would really help their authors gather the necessary audience for financing. In addition, we ask you for advice on promoting our collective venture investment service in Russia and we will be grateful for your help.
“The biggest risk is not to risk it. In a world that is changing very fast, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not to take risks. ”Mark Zuckerberg