May 12, 2014 at 09:57A coward does not play air hockey: how to win when there is no chance
Want to do your business? Get ready to take chances.
This simple morality is not difficult to deduce from every second success story, whether it is an article in Forbes magazine or a biography of a famous businessman.
Risk, of course, is a noble cause ( we ourselves respect it ). Only here, the real practice of entrepreneurship is far from being so romantic. If only because any risk goes hand in hand with a bluff.
Developing your business, you willy-nilly constantly have to bluff. Dust people in the eyes. Inflate your cheeks. And promise what you (for now) do not have.
Whether you like it or not, everyone who builds their business from scratch does it. And how else to make something out of nothing? The main thing, while bluffing, is to have trumps in your hands - and get them out of the sleeve at the right time.
In this story I want to talk about, our chances of success from the very beginning tended to zero.
We risked not just losing money, but also sitting in a puddle in front of important federal officials and heads of major Russian IT companies. And our bluff could come to us sideways.
But the prize was worth it ...
For everything it's worth saying thanks to this blog.
In February, we took part in the 3dprintexpo exhibition, presenting 3D pens 3doodler and a Form 1 printer on it. Then we wrote a report on Habré . And we read our record in Mail.ru.
In general, thanks to our stupid activity and some luck, MadRobots received an offer to participate in the opening of the Mail.ru technopark in Baumanka. Provided, of course, that our glorious company will be able to present truly non-trivial gadgets at the event.
We decided that this is our chance to express ourselves well. The opening of the technology park was planned on a large scale. Waited for the Deputy Minister of Communications. Rector of the Institute. Mail.ru Group CEO Dmitry Grishin. And many famous people in the IT market.
In addition, the terms of cooperation were offered quite commercial. And the proceeds from the event made it possible to attract engineers to MadRobots who were required to establish the equipment.
And this meant that we could even come half a millimeter closer to our dream: turn over time the online store into a company that not only sells, but also develops innovative electronics.
In general, they do not refuse such offers. We made up a shortlist of various interesting pieces that we could show. And they tried to make it truly impressive.
Mail.ru chose our 3Doodler pens, the Choc Edge Creator chocolate 3D printer, the Oculus Rift virtual reality helmet, and the air hockey robot from this list.
As a result, we signed a contract. And everything would be just wonderful if we were the happy owners of all these super-devices. But apart from the pens, we really had nothing (so far).
One day at four in the afternoon I received a letter from Mail.ru: we want to drive to your office tomorrow morning, look at the virtual reality helmet. Yes, please, I answered. And he immediately climbed into Yandex and opened the Avito message board.
Although the helmet project turned out to be noisy and raised three million dollars on Kickstarter, before that we had not thought to buy it. Because its first version was crude and was intended only for software developers.
That is, sending a letter, I still could not know for sure whether we could actually show this helmet in the morning. We only had a few hours to find and buy a working model. I was bluffing - but roughly imagining which cards I had in my hands.
After sitting on the phone and getting a little nervous, we got this helmet and the next day we proudly demonstrated it in our office.
However, solving the problem with air hockey and a chocolate printer turned out to be somewhat more difficult. Because, strictly speaking, we had no certainty that both of them exist in nature.
About the chocolate printer, we told our wonderful partners at Mail.ru that it was already ordered and should be delivered right away.
It was not that it was not true ... Let's just say: artistic hyperbole. Having signed a contract with Mail.ru, I immediately wrote to the UK the developers of this chocolate unit. Fortunately for me, they quickly answered me, promising to send their device in a short time.
But then we began to bureaucratic troubles. They billed us in pounds. According to the law, we could not pay it from our foreign currency account, because it was opened in dollars. Almost two weeks passed before we figured out how to pay them (in the end, we paid via PayPal).
Then, as always, they began to suffer with delivery, and realizing that we weren’t in time, they despairingly sent the printer to Italy and pulled it out of there, sending the courier by plane. He took the printer and brought it in his luggage.
Because inside they saw a bunch of some strange pieces of iron - and not a single piece of paper that would tell how to assemble them into a single whole.
We called to England, after which the guys sent us some indistinct instructions. This partly facilitated the assembly task. Only on the way the box shook and the printer bent an important part. I had to tinker.
The fate of air hockey was even more dramatic. It was impossible to buy it at all - it could only be done on its own using the instructions posted on the Internet by its inventor.
The circuit generally looked uncomplicated. It was difficult to get all the necessary details, since some of them, by design, had to be printed on a 3D printer. And our printer, as if evil, broke.
I had to search again for spare parts all over Moscow, and even Russia (we eventually found some in Kazan). As a result, the last details for a robot playing air hockey came to us the day before the opening of the technopark.
The story reached a dramatic glow in the evening on the eve of the gala event.
We somehow fixed the printer, but we were not able to uncover the robot. Engineers dug in the office, which served us as a production workshop, as they vowed not to sleep a wink, but to overcome the apparatus. Therefore, at the assembly of stands in the technopark, there was a trite lack of working hands.
The Mail.ru managers were worried and even wanted to lock me in the facility so that I would help to mount the equipment, despite all my admonitions that my hands were growing out of the wrong place and there would be more harm than good from me. In the middle of the night, I went to Yulmart to buy a second screwdriver for the workers ...
Nobody seemed to believe that we had time.
But we did it.
The printer was printing chocolate figures. Our robot pretty quickly beat the puck in air hockey. We smelted figures on 3Doodler. They showed people the future of virtual reality.
It was as if they were preparing for this event for six months, and did not fasten the last details the night before.
And when all the excitement was left behind, it turned out that Mail.ru seemed to be very pleased with our work.
More importantly, thanks to this story, we learned about the demand for technology shows and interactive design. We realized that this is an interesting direction - both for business and for creativity. And we want to do it.
Create installations from Tesla coils. Play with their help the imperial march of Star Wars. To print works of art on a chocolate printer (and not necessarily chocolate - you can use sausage with mayonnaise). To develop robots - and not just for playing air hockey ...
If you want to implement something similar for your company or you are interested in participating in the implementation of such a project, write .
It is easy to imagine what would have happened to us if we had screwed up. Yes, puffing out cheeks, throwing dust in your eyes, bluffing - this may not be too noble. But in business, as in life, winners are not judged.
And what is needed to win? Willingness not to sleep at night, to work hard, to seek non-trivial solutions ... And also banal luck. And the further you go, the more you need all this.
Indeed, with each new step, the stakes are rising. The dose of adrenaline rises. There is excitement (which probably ruined more than one novice entrepreneur). But, in my opinion, otherwise you can’t build any business at all.
Want to become an entrepreneur? Welcome to the bluff club.
///
Previous parts of the Madrobots story:
Part 1. How I bought wi-fi scales, quit my job and started living
Part 2. Suitcases of iPhones and gopniks in Butovo: how we almost went broke on Apple products.
Part 3. 80 meetings in 3 days: how we played big in Vegas
This simple morality is not difficult to deduce from every second success story, whether it is an article in Forbes magazine or a biography of a famous businessman.
Risk, of course, is a noble cause ( we ourselves respect it ). Only here, the real practice of entrepreneurship is far from being so romantic. If only because any risk goes hand in hand with a bluff.
Developing your business, you willy-nilly constantly have to bluff. Dust people in the eyes. Inflate your cheeks. And promise what you (for now) do not have.
Whether you like it or not, everyone who builds their business from scratch does it. And how else to make something out of nothing? The main thing, while bluffing, is to have trumps in your hands - and get them out of the sleeve at the right time.
In this story I want to talk about, our chances of success from the very beginning tended to zero.
We risked not just losing money, but also sitting in a puddle in front of important federal officials and heads of major Russian IT companies. And our bluff could come to us sideways.
But the prize was worth it ...
Half a millimeter closer to a dream
For everything it's worth saying thanks to this blog.
In February, we took part in the 3dprintexpo exhibition, presenting 3D pens 3doodler and a Form 1 printer on it. Then we wrote a report on Habré . And we read our record in Mail.ru.
In general, thanks to our stupid activity and some luck, MadRobots received an offer to participate in the opening of the Mail.ru technopark in Baumanka. Provided, of course, that our glorious company will be able to present truly non-trivial gadgets at the event.
We decided that this is our chance to express ourselves well. The opening of the technology park was planned on a large scale. Waited for the Deputy Minister of Communications. Rector of the Institute. Mail.ru Group CEO Dmitry Grishin. And many famous people in the IT market.
In addition, the terms of cooperation were offered quite commercial. And the proceeds from the event made it possible to attract engineers to MadRobots who were required to establish the equipment.
And this meant that we could even come half a millimeter closer to our dream: turn over time the online store into a company that not only sells, but also develops innovative electronics.
In general, they do not refuse such offers. We made up a shortlist of various interesting pieces that we could show. And they tried to make it truly impressive.
Mail.ru chose our 3Doodler pens, the Choc Edge Creator chocolate 3D printer, the Oculus Rift virtual reality helmet, and the air hockey robot from this list.
As a result, we signed a contract. And everything would be just wonderful if we were the happy owners of all these super-devices. But apart from the pens, we really had nothing (so far).
There was no helmet, no air hockey, no chocolate printer. There was only confidence that we would be able to get all these innovative gadgets on time.
One day at four in the afternoon I received a letter from Mail.ru: we want to drive to your office tomorrow morning, look at the virtual reality helmet. Yes, please, I answered. And he immediately climbed into Yandex and opened the Avito message board.
Although the helmet project turned out to be noisy and raised three million dollars on Kickstarter, before that we had not thought to buy it. Because its first version was crude and was intended only for software developers.
That is, sending a letter, I still could not know for sure whether we could actually show this helmet in the morning. We only had a few hours to find and buy a working model. I was bluffing - but roughly imagining which cards I had in my hands.
After sitting on the phone and getting a little nervous, we got this helmet and the next day we proudly demonstrated it in our office.
However, solving the problem with air hockey and a chocolate printer turned out to be somewhat more difficult. Because, strictly speaking, we had no certainty that both of them exist in nature.
A LOT OF IRONS - AND NOT ONE PAPER
About the chocolate printer, we told our wonderful partners at Mail.ru that it was already ordered and should be delivered right away.
It was not that it was not true ... Let's just say: artistic hyperbole. Having signed a contract with Mail.ru, I immediately wrote to the UK the developers of this chocolate unit. Fortunately for me, they quickly answered me, promising to send their device in a short time.
But then we began to bureaucratic troubles. They billed us in pounds. According to the law, we could not pay it from our foreign currency account, because it was opened in dollars. Almost two weeks passed before we figured out how to pay them (in the end, we paid via PayPal).
Then, as always, they began to suffer with delivery, and realizing that we weren’t in time, they despairingly sent the printer to Italy and pulled it out of there, sending the courier by plane. He took the printer and brought it in his luggage.
In order to assemble the unit and understand how it works, we had two working days. And when we opened the box, gasped.
Because inside they saw a bunch of some strange pieces of iron - and not a single piece of paper that would tell how to assemble them into a single whole.
We called to England, after which the guys sent us some indistinct instructions. This partly facilitated the assembly task. Only on the way the box shook and the printer bent an important part. I had to tinker.
The fate of air hockey was even more dramatic. It was impossible to buy it at all - it could only be done on its own using the instructions posted on the Internet by its inventor.
The circuit generally looked uncomplicated. It was difficult to get all the necessary details, since some of them, by design, had to be printed on a 3D printer. And our printer, as if evil, broke.
I had to search again for spare parts all over Moscow, and even Russia (we eventually found some in Kazan). As a result, the last details for a robot playing air hockey came to us the day before the opening of the technopark.
The story reached a dramatic glow in the evening on the eve of the gala event.
We somehow fixed the printer, but we were not able to uncover the robot. Engineers dug in the office, which served us as a production workshop, as they vowed not to sleep a wink, but to overcome the apparatus. Therefore, at the assembly of stands in the technopark, there was a trite lack of working hands.
The Mail.ru managers were worried and even wanted to lock me in the facility so that I would help to mount the equipment, despite all my admonitions that my hands were growing out of the wrong place and there would be more harm than good from me. In the middle of the night, I went to Yulmart to buy a second screwdriver for the workers ...
Nobody seemed to believe that we had time.
BLUFF CLUB
But we did it.
The printer was printing chocolate figures. Our robot pretty quickly beat the puck in air hockey. We smelted figures on 3Doodler. They showed people the future of virtual reality.
It was as if they were preparing for this event for six months, and did not fasten the last details the night before.
MadRobots entrenched in the heart of the Russian technology industry. Against our background, Vladislav Surkov and Dmitry Grishin gave interviews about the future of technology.
And when all the excitement was left behind, it turned out that Mail.ru seemed to be very pleased with our work.
More importantly, thanks to this story, we learned about the demand for technology shows and interactive design. We realized that this is an interesting direction - both for business and for creativity. And we want to do it.
Create installations from Tesla coils. Play with their help the imperial march of Star Wars. To print works of art on a chocolate printer (and not necessarily chocolate - you can use sausage with mayonnaise). To develop robots - and not just for playing air hockey ...
If you want to implement something similar for your company or you are interested in participating in the implementation of such a project, write .
It is easy to imagine what would have happened to us if we had screwed up. Yes, puffing out cheeks, throwing dust in your eyes, bluffing - this may not be too noble. But in business, as in life, winners are not judged.
And what is needed to win? Willingness not to sleep at night, to work hard, to seek non-trivial solutions ... And also banal luck. And the further you go, the more you need all this.
Indeed, with each new step, the stakes are rising. The dose of adrenaline rises. There is excitement (which probably ruined more than one novice entrepreneur). But, in my opinion, otherwise you can’t build any business at all.
Want to become an entrepreneur? Welcome to the bluff club.
///
Previous parts of the Madrobots story:
Part 1. How I bought wi-fi scales, quit my job and started living
Part 2. Suitcases of iPhones and gopniks in Butovo: how we almost went broke on Apple products.
Part 3. 80 meetings in 3 days: how we played big in Vegas