Cheerick. The story of one startup. To be fair

Hello, Habr!

We are Cheerick.ru , the first Russian micro-service service. We want to talk about the path our team took, the mistakes made and the results obtained, as well as to hear the opinion of the habrazhiteli about the startup and get fair criticism.

Idea come up with an idea

Probably it all started with us as usual. Just like others. At first - the idea of ​​creating your own business - not to work for an uncle. The advantages of this approach are obvious, but the responsibility is greater.
For a programmer, there are two ways in the IT industry as a businessman:

1. Work to order. Those. open the company that deals with software development yourself, look for customers, a team, etc. yourself.
2. Make some kind of startup project (framework, library, website, etc.), which then sell or earn money on it.

Differences in risks and the amount of potential profit. The first way is more gradual and consistent: less risk, faster money back, but less than the amount of possible profit.

The second way is the more risky one. The likelihood that the idea will take root and will make a profit is low, the funds invested in the project will not come back very soon, but the amount of possible profit is greater.

Our choice is the second way

After several dozen meetings of our team, which discussed all kinds of ideas and suggestions, we went through a lot of options. Some undertook to implement, but on time found already existing and well-known solutions.

Conclusion 1. The market needs to be studied before proceeding with the implementation.

One wonderful day, we stumbled upon an American startup - fiverr.com. The essence of the project is that any user can place a service offer that he is ready to provide for $ 5. We didn’t have to think long: firstly, we liked the idea very much, and secondly, in Russia, moreover, in the CIS, there was no such project yet, we set to work. The project solves several issues: the main one is a legal and honest opportunity to earn money on the Internet for a person who does not have any special skills.

The goal became obvious to us - to be the first to enter the CIS market (and earn a million in 20 years). Everyone in the team more or less knew Java, so they started writing on it ... They
made a mistake. There were already ready-made implementations of a similar PHP script on the Internet. We lost about two weeks.

Conclusion 2. No need to reinvent the wheel. Perhaps a ready-made solution already exists.

The purchased script has undergone processing. Defects were fixed, integration with Vkontakte, integration with WebMoney, etc. were added. They came up with a site name - Сheerick - unique, connected with money and birds. Hosting and domain purchased, website launched. Well, everything seems okay. The point is small - to formalize everything and start advertising.

But it was not there. The glorious Belarusian legislation (we are from Belarus) does not allow formalizing such a scheme of work. It took about a month to clarify legal issues.

Conclusion 3. First, you need to thoroughly study the legal side of the business. There may be problems with the law.

About two and a half months have passed since the start of the project from the idea stage. The team got tired, some began to lose enthusiasm. About two weeks Chirik was inactive - no one was engaged in it.

A familiar investor became interested in the project. This gave us a new impetus. We took up the presentation of the project, its business plan, etc. Very advanced, launched live users on Chirik. But, here we were overtaken by another just punishment. I’m exploring the Internet in search of competitors, we found several (!!!). One of them was pretty well promoted.

Conclusion 4. Do not waste time. Do and promote your project, otherwise you may not be in time.

We decided not to give up and continue to engage in Chiricon despite the competitors that appeared, filling up cones and making the necessary conclusions. A few days ago, we conducted the first real operation with unfamiliar users. At Chirik, bugs are fixed, shares are held, new functionality is added a little bit. In general, we found an application for unspent talent.
Always believe in your project!

Interesting Facts

Our team consists of students of BSUIR. Already at the beginning of the semester, it was clear that it was impossible to do everything - startup, work and study. Therefore, we went to each teacher and told us that we are doing a startup. The session received excellent marks on most subjects, without passing a single lab.

PS What is the best price for one service on Cheerick in your opinion? We are very interested.