How to come up with an idea for your project (using WORKZILLA as an example)
It all started about 4 years ago, in February 2009. Then, with my future partner Sergey, we worked at an electronics company in South Korea. Both were full of desire to do something, and had enough free time. Sergey worked as a developer, and I was engaged in logistics ... We had some
kind of network experience: Sergey at that time was successfully selling a photo tile, and I was engaged in a blog about green technologies.
From time to time, some ideas surfaced and we even engaged in their implementation, but they did not draw on anything meaningful.
Brainstorm
We came to understand that we need a real brainstorm, so that the palm trees bend and the ships stagger. An evening was scheduled when we, together with the trophy cognac, decided to begin our global hegemony. I will not say that cognac is an indispensable element, but with it the flight of fantasy runs a little higher.
Just gathering in the evening with brandy is clearly not enough, so we came up with a plan according to which we will hold the event. Plan:
1 Write down the requirements that each of us makes for the business;
2 List areas that are of interest to us;
3 To generate ideas from interesting areas;
4 Filter ideas requirements on ideas;
5 Describe in more detail several promising ideas.
List of criteria:
- service, not production. We could not remotely deal with stocks, logistics, etc .;
- work with end users. There are a lot of end users and the risk of losing them all is not very great;
- automation of processes. I wanted to develop technology and not my management skills;
- remote control. We were going to do business in Russian, and we ourselves were in South Korea.
Areas of interest (approximately):
-video;
-remote control;
-delegation.
Generation of ideas
This stage is actually the core of the whole process. It is very important not to criticize, but rather to support the flight of fantasy, fixing it. Ideas can be the most extravagant or too futuristic - the main thing is that they be. Not all people can make themselves easily gush with ideas, so this should be done only after discussing areas of interest, which helps to generate ideas.
Anyone who wants to create a new business, I would recommend reading Paul Graham's article “How to Get Startup Ideas”, which I found thanks to XX . IMHO, the article is absolutely brilliant.
How to choose an idea after a brainstorm?
After that evening, three promising ideas crystallized in us. There should be at least two, so that there is plenty to choose from in more detail. The task of brainstorm is not to choose an idea, but to offer options. To make serious decisions, you need to sleep with ideas, and preferably more than once.
At this stage, it’s worth choosing carefully and scrupulously. We used the standard and simple Pros & Cons Analysis, which really helps. The principle is incredibly simple, but it really works. On a piece of paper you need to write FOR and AGAINST with weights for each option and evaluate the amount of FOR and AGAINST. Of course, this is all subjective, but you will be surprised how effective it is if you have never used this method before. It is worth emphasizing that it is necessary to write out the points, and not to ponder them in the head. And, of course, this works if there are few options left, for example, 2 or 3.
At this stage, you need to conduct a small market analysis: a review of potential competitors, market size, etc. A few hours spent with search engines will help you find many answers. So for several days we discarded two ideas and decided to create a Virtual Personal Assistant.
Why Virtual Personal Assistant
The idea of WORKZILLA was born out of the idea that millions of people around the world are sitting in front of computers and doing all kinds of garbage, or they could do something useful or at least make money.
We wanted to use this potential and create an opportunity to earn money where it did not exist before. At that moment, we were thinking not about network professionals, but about ordinary people who may not be able to do something special, but can do a lot of non-special things. Here are housewives, students and young mothers. A separate line was thoughts about people with disabilities, who could also be able to honestly make money online.
On the other hand, the service was supposed to increase the efficiency of its users. They can easily delegate tasks that usually take a lot of time. A very narrow layer of people has a personal assistant, and we wanted to make it accessible to everyone. A couple of years after the launch, we got a slogan that describes our proposal well: “Focus on the main thing - entrust the routine to us”.
Things to remember when choosing a domain
I do not consider myself an expert in the field of domain selection, but I can talk about one important aspect that should be taken into account. For work, we chose the domain poruchite.ru. And the call is, it seems, about what, and it is written unambiguously. But you will easily notice that for some reason it differs from our current workzilla.ru.
About a year after the start of our work, we received a letter from the porucheno project stating that our domain is too similar to them, and we should change it. We did not take this seriously until we received a letter from our hoster, who threatened to disconnect us for the same reason without trial. The hoster apparently received a similar letter from porucheno and for some reason decided to put pressure on us. I don’t know why he decided to act this way, but this is a separate conversation.
We consulted with lawyers and they confirmed that there really is a problem. Domains are close to confusion, and our areas of activity overlap. And in the case of the court, we will lose, because our domain was registered later.
At that time, we had virtually no branded capital, so we just decided to change the domain. Although, of course, at all stages of the work this incurs additional unpleasant expenses: changing texts, website design, banners, losing the “link base” ...
Hence the conclusion: study your competitors carefully before choosing a domain. Let me remind you that we almost did not do this, and if we took more time, we would have found this project and would not have lost the time and money to change the domain.
To invent or copy?
Now we can say that we approached the choice of ideas quite adventurously. We did not do any additional analysis besides what I described above. We did not calculate economic prospects, did not calculate how much, it would cost us to attract users, what would be the cost of developing the system and maintaining it. We understood that the basis of our earnings will be the commission model, and we will come up with some additional ways of earning along the way. We just liked the very idea of giving one person the opportunity to earn money, and another - the opportunity to abandon routine problems.
We believed in history that, having created something useful and popular, we will always figure out how to make money. By the way, when we created WORKZILLA, social networks were popular enough for everyone to use them, but they themselves did not know how they would make money. At the same time, no one was going to turn off social networks, which means they believed that there was a solution. Google also once found how great it is to monetize a search through contextual ads.
When it comes to choosing an idea, the question always pops up: is it worth creating something new or is it worth it to deal only with proven projects in other markets. Again, I will not insist on the truth of my judgments, but we had a desire to come up with something new and useful. The Russian language at school was not easy for me, but I always preferred composition to presentation. This approach fuels the interest of the creators, because there is no limit to satisfaction if your idea and its implementation work. There is something tube in this, as opposed to a cold business. Of course, along with lamp heat comes the risk that everything will fail. We decided to take risks and, frankly, we didn’t even have a thought to copy anything at that time.
We completely came up with the WORKZILLA idea ourselves. By not competing in the first few days, we were even more convinced that we were the first to come up with this. The first similar sites we found only after a few months of active work. This discovery made us very upset. In an instant, from pioneers “on horseback” we turned into catching ones. The mood was at zero and there were thoughts to quit all this.
But, as it always happens, the negative shock passed and we soberly assessed the situation. The sites that we found were only partially similar, none of them allowed us to do what we wanted. They allowed us to carry out part of the tasks that we were going to solve, but they did it in a completely different way. Plus, we were reassured by the fact that we did not google these sites at the beginning of our journey, which means that their popularity is negligible and you can easily compete with them.
How do we differ from freelance
I’m talking about the uniqueness of our idea, and people may have a reasonable question: how does your project differ from classical freelance.
Several main differences:
- Speed
We focus on the quick response of performers. Therefore, at first we made a desktop application that will itself notify about a new task, and not wait until the performer visits the site. Now there is no longer a desktop client, but the response to tasks is an average of 3 minutes and can be reduced.
The range of tasks
Our focus is simple, simple tasks that can arise for everyone, and not just for those who want to make a website. Accordingly, almost everyone can work, because most tasks do not require specific knowledge.
- Price
Simple, simple tasks that are easy to place and quick to complete should cost a little. Initially, we estimated the average price at 30-50 rubles. In reality, we have several hundred, but not thousands at all.
- Selection of candidates
We really wanted to quickly solve other people's problems, so we had to immediately provide several suitable candidates, and not force the customer to choose those who responded from the sheet.
- Price bargaining.
Again, for reasons of speed, we wanted to exclude the stage of price discussions. The task immediately has a price. If you want to work for this price - you agree, you do not want - you do not agree.
- Guarantees
Guarantees for both parties, therefore, before starting work, money is reserved, and transferred only when the customer himself confirms the fact of the work.
Where to get the money
When there is a story about the beginning of some projects, I always, like many, have the question of securing financing. Where did the creators get the money? Not everyone has a bag like in the picture above.
At the beginning of the journey, we did not have any significant means. We were too young for significant savings, and the salary was quite modest. But this did not stop us at all. We planned to spend money to a minimum, and to do most of the work on our own. We estimated the creation of the entire system by sight about $ 2t, which should have included a client application and a website. We decided that we could find that kind of money and started working.
It is worth saying that we did not invest money capital, but temporary. Therefore, the total investment turned out to be colossal, but they did not require significant money.
Testing Your Idea
We must admit that we did not immediately rush to program and spend money. We already had some kind of business intelligence, and we began to discuss our idea, where possible: with our friends, colleagues, not being afraid. At that time, we had a marketing club at work, where we shared professional finds, discussed articles, etc. In this small club, I also made a presentation of our idea, after listening to a lot of criticism and interesting tips. Today I can say that this was comparable to the experience of speaking at a startup event, which is very useful for understanding my idea.
I won’t write again why ideas are worthless, even though the “ghost of stealth” still goes around the Internet. But I am firmly convinced of this and suggest that all entrepreneurs focus not on the safety of the idea, but on its implementation.
During public discussions, we received various reviews from “nobody needs this” and “without serious money, you can’t untwist anything,” to reserved approvingly. The main thing is that we did not find any noticeable minuses in the model and decided to start work.
Implementation plan
We roughly understood what we wanted to get, but the question arose of how to implement all this. Sergei sketched a small plan on a piece of what and when we need to do. It included three components: a desktop client for Windows, a server with which the client will communicate, and a site where you can download the client. I do not remember the exact time estimates that Sergey voiced, but they certainly did not exceed two months. We knew that such things were never completed on time, and threw a month on top, naively hoping to get something in 3 months.
First steps
The real work began when we started writing the ToR. Three TK were needed: TK for the design of the entire system, TK site, TK client. They were drawn up in that order, which was dictated by implementation plans. Server Sergei was going to write himself, so he did not need TK. I decided to undertake the drafting of the TOR, despite the lack of experience in this area.
Here Google helped, which gave some useful materials on the requests “how to write TK”. The viewing of TK, which I found on freelance sites, where customers posted them for their projects, greatly contributed to it. The process of writing TK turned out to be quite time-consuming. All TK took at least a month. After completing this work, the stage of selecting performers began. This was the beginning of a long history of working with remote employees, which will also be revealed in a separate article.
PS
With this post we are starting a series of publications where we want to share our experience in creating and working on the WORKZILLA.RU project. We do not pretend to know-it-all and universal genius, but want to talk about our mistakes and finds - they can be useful to someone. For us, this is an opportunity to talk about a useful service, find partners and hear interesting ideas / tips.
Articles can be divided into two main types: technical and non-technical. We will try to alternate these two types.
We are the two founders of the project and its current leaders.
This is my first article on Habré, so please do not judge strictly. Ready to take into account constructive criticism when writing the following articles.
A sample list of future non-technical articles:
- Search for first employees
- Launch of the first version
- Search for the first users
- What difficulties we encountered
- Remote work of the team
Sample list of future technical articles:
- Servers
- Preparation for a mass advertising company with JMeter
- DR - how we solve the problem of force majeure.
- More about backups
- Service monitoring with Munin, Nagios, etc.
- The problem of choosing a reliable SMTP server
What is WORKZILLA?
WORKZILLA is a service for solving tasks that you do not want or cannot do.
An algorithm is used to select candidates, the service gives guarantees to both parties, 90% of the tasks are confirmed with a rating of “+”. A few more facts at the time of writing this post (March 2013):
- monthly turnover of the service - 2 million rubles;
- the number of registered users is about 100 thousand;
- A few hundred tasks are completed per day;
- average time of occurrence of the candidate selected by the algorithm, 3 minutes;
Below is a section where I detail how we differ from freelance.
Examples of tasks: text / audio / video recognition, writing / editing texts, all kinds of design, educational assistance, tips, technical advice ...
Examples of completed tasks can be found here .
