MASHA - creating a daily menu in a preschool

Greetings, dear reader!
It will not be a story of a successful rise or fatal fall. There will be no statistics, promotion technologies, answers to the question "How to make a million?". I will try to highlight the main points that may be useful to those who are faced with the implementation and implementation of SAAS projects. Despite the fact that I do not like the word “startup,” we will talk about a project that generally fits this definition.

It all started back in 2010. By that time, I already had a decent development experience, working for myself, for the company, for myself in the company.

The first moment. The idea is not invented on purpose, you just need to do what you love.

And I did. I must say that it was not only programming. This is also the result. Each has its own Gordian knot, someone unravels it, someone cuts it, but there is nothing better than the feeling at the moment when you finally did it. And so I lived, waiting on what else "knot" to lower my "sword".
This time my gaze went to a completely unexpected area: the kindergarten, in which my children went. By chance, I knew what kind of problems were ripening there with managing the nutrition process. So, it is decided, I will help solve these problems! As a solution, I defined a WEB application that should automatically create a menu (breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.) based on certain rules.

The second moment. If you're a carpenter, you'd better be a good carpenter than a bad toolmaker.

My main tool is PHP. During my career I have accumulated enough bicycles and knew which one I would use. An action plan was formed in the head, gradually overgrown with the necessary trifles. Why in the head? Yes, because I did not consider it necessary to plan anything at all. More precisely, I had a plan, but only one: do it quickly. Imagine squeamish grimaces on the faces of some. Yes, a thorough systematic approach is good, but not in this case. This reckless behavior was facilitated by the absolute optionalness of this project. This means that I could stop it at any time without consequences. To begin with, WAMP, deployed on a computer in a kindergarten without Internet access, was quite good for me. So, riding my bike, I got ready for the marathon.

The third moment. The most detailed study of the subject of development.

Today I am absolutely sure that if I hadn’t found out in sufficient detail what needs to be developed, the project would have been dead. If you yourself cannot understand the subject of development, find someone who knows this subject thoroughly. Otherwise, get involved in another project. You can be the second Donald Knut, you can know how to do it, but if you don’t know what to do, it will be very difficult to get the result.
My task manager and guide in the world of nutrition for preschoolers was a man who knew everything about the subject. But it was not there. This did not mean at all that it remained only to write code. My task manager was as far from programming as I was from preschoolers. We sat all day, figuring out what and how should work. I didn’t even try to do any TK and I do not regret it. New requirements arose suddenly and it was not possible to document them when development was already underway. Many times I wanted to drop everything to hell! But I wanted more results.

The fourth moment. No startup money needed.

I did the best things in life for free. This does not mean that everyone should do so. Someone is looking for an investment, forming or hiring a team, planning risks and doing other difficult work. This is good and correct if it leads to a result. For me, work at home in the evenings was enough for a start. To be honest, that in the future I will earn on this, I did not think about it then. One thing was important: to solve the problem that I took up. It's like a sport, when you want to run, you run, and do not wait until you get paid for it first. You can run together or three, but for this you need the same desire of all participants.
So I continued. Is free. Quietly accepting the astonished reaction of some observers trying to find the background for such an unselfish impulse. New solutions appeared in my head and the process was unstoppable. So I got to the first alpha beta version.
"Why do you call it beta? “Cause it's betta than nothing.”

The fifth moment. The project must mature.

Probably everyone knows about this. However, it is very difficult to determine how long ripening will take and how it will pass. In the case of my project, it took a year and a half :)
At this stage, the project is already really working. Does this mean that the result is achieved? Not. In the process of maturation, all the flaws and omissions come out. But the train has already gained momentum, it is becoming increasingly difficult to change something. Here experience saved me. He forgave me for the lack of planning and design, providing in return a good architecture. It was due to architecture that I was able to rebuild a lot under the requirements that are updated on the fly. Modules were polished, errors were corrected, confidence in success grew.
Evaluated and platform. I understood that the project would be useful for other kindergartens. First, I organized the site on a small serovochka at my disposal. Each new client was decided to create their own database and their own subdomain. At the same time, the application itself remained common to all customers.
So my little local venture became a service. I still can not call it a full-fledged SAAS. We needed documentation, user support, a more reliable platform and a bunch of everything else. It takes time, time to ripen. When a baby is born, he does not speak and does not walk, but he already breathes and feels! He lives! He will learn the rest, and he needs to be helped in this. So is any project. If he began to live, do not abandon him, let him mature, help him to mature.
In the meantime, you need to think about what to do next. Overripe fruit loses its taste and attractiveness. A fresh stream is needed, and by tradition, this is money.

The sixth moment. Make money. If you can.

Making money alone is hard, which means cards are on the table. I enlisted the support of the management of the company in which I work. After the agreement on my royalty, the project received a new round. We determined the price of a license for one preschool. We determined the list of modules that is included in this price. It remained to wait for customers.
But I could not abandon my brainchild and rest on the laurels of authorship. And I jumped into the process in full. I made a business card site, rather for order than for attracting customers (here we can do without advertising, the site address in my profile). I recorded a couple of video files with a description of the system, started a couple of blogs on social networks. I printed a note in Computer News.
Nevertheless, a full-scale promotion of the project was not planned, due to specificity. Clients could only be preschool institutions, which means 99.9% - state institutions. Oh yeah! Work with state cantors is a separate song. I will not describe here all the idiocy that sometimes accompanies such cooperation. But time passed, word of mouth worked, and we collected rave reviews on a few presentations.
With increasing customers, the platform has expanded. I moved to a new servochka, dedicated specifically for these purposes by our wise leadership. Established backup. Improved the mechanism for registering new customers. Since the service is closed, registration was to create a new client virtual host, database and several folders. But when I once had to quickly connect 60 clients, I realized that the manual method is not suitable and you need to be prepared for such situations. The solution was obvious: the script that made the slice of the reference base created the necessary folders and made the user for each client.
And now the moment of the first payment from customers. No euphoria; I think you already realized that it was not for the sake of money that I was playing this game. Do not laugh, I'm certainly not against reward :) but I remembered the main thing. The main thing is His Majesty Result!

The seventh moment. Respect your customers.

Our clients are the leaders of preschool institutions. These are 100% women who are 80% far from information technology. At the same time, technical support is free and the technical support phone number is indicated ... correctly, my phone. It is difficult to even describe what kind of questions I had to answer, but I held on and was extremely correct with everyone. What is most striking, I myself was at a loss to explain this phenomenon. In everyday life, I am terribly annoyed by dull people, I can not help but raise my voice, with repeated explanation of seemingly elementary things. Here, without any particular strain, I made all requests and questions. Moreover, I called the customer back whenever I missed his call. Of course, this can only be explained by the love of your SAAS offspring.
But the customers paid me the same. There were simply no negative reviews, and many were genuinely surprised at the speed with which errors were fixed and new improvements were introduced. On this positive wave, I even refused differentiated prices for licenses, depending on the composition of the service and generously “watered” customers with new improvements. As a result, the functionality of the system almost doubled at the old price. And I do not regret it at all.

Result.

So is there a result or not? Where is the welcome feeling when you did this? Perhaps this is the main secret. I think a lot is yet to come. Today the name "MASHA" is already known, they wrote about us in a specialized magazine for managers, the customer base is growing. In fact, not everything was as rosy as you might think. There were enough difficulties, I just don’t want to write about the negative. My goal was a sincere desire to help, I can consider it achieved. But the result is something else. This is what keeps it dry. I know that a project can get better, and I will do it better. So I will do what I love! The circle is closed. Well, are you ready to return to the first moment?