December 30, 2010 at 11:00New Year's Eve Report
Hello!
As promised, we make a report on the work done. Fairly fed up with the Khabrovsk citizens with their articles ( about the budget , office and LLC , income ) about our startup Copiny , they tried less PR and more facts. Yes, and accumulated questions that I would like to answer.
Under the cut, I’ll tell you about the current situation in the company:
UPD: For unknown reasons, our report was considered a tough PR and hid the topic, although a bunch of other projects are published in Startups and Services simply with a description, without numbers, without any background and other interesting information. Even the question “Where did we hide the topic?” Came to the PM. In connection with this, we decided to start a Habré company blog. So even better. Now only you and no one else can appreciate what the topic is worth.
Oddly enough, but only after 4 months of working on the project, we finally realized what the service is and what really value it brings to customers. So, Kopini is NOT a service for collecting ideas . This is a collective knowledge base, a support forum and a way to organize effective feedback in one package. Gathering ideas is just a small part of the feedback. We want to make our service a universal means of productive communication between companies and their customers on the Internet.
Copini allows you to improve the quality of customer service and reduce support costs, increase customer loyalty and attract new ones, receive effective feedback and be closer to customers . This distinguishes us from analogues.
One of the most significant achievements for us was the victory in the WebReady contest in the nomination "The best project based on the results of online voting." After the contest, 3 foundations and 2 business angels became interested in us, but they had to refuse, because managed to reach the one we really need! Read more at the end.
And before that, they almost bought us, wrote in more detail on our blog . Good is all that ends well. Looking back, I can say that the sale would be a fatal mistake.
Well, a little service statistics , it is constantly updated on the main one:
Expenses . Currently spent 495894r . - on the one hand less than planned, on the other hand there were rather big unforeseen expenses. The main expenses were salary fund 307000r (with taxes), 82320r. furniture and office equipment, 45400 rub. rent, about 30,000 business trips (did not plan so much). In general, the financial plan for expenses was kept within. By the way, only one hired employee remained in the team, so the costs were cut down to almost 50,000r / month. But this is not for long, because in January a new employee will come to us.
Revenues . Many destroyed us in the comments and talked about the unreality of the numbers. Someone advised to divide the potential income by 10. In fact, not everything is so scary. Currently earned 50,904p, in fact it is almost December. What conclusions can be drawn?
We made a mistake not with the order of numbers and the number of customers, but with the time it takes to launch a new product on the market, as well as the difficulties of selling it. More on errors below.
As already mentioned above, in December, 3 people remained in the team in the office. The programmer and our only girl, unfortunately, left the project. The departure of the programmer is due to the fact that the guy after 3 years of freelancing could not work in the office and combine an internship. For the girl, there was no corny job. Despite the fact that there are three of us, and there are 2 free places, the office significantly organizes and helps the work.
In parallel, in December, they began to remotely collaborate with my old acquaintance, we are not yet introducing him to the company’s staff. And since January we have a new teammate.
Upbeat sales plan . Due to the lack of experience in the niche and incomplete understanding of the product, they made quite decent mistakes in the calculations. On the one hand, the number of customers is not at all what they expected and this is bad. On the other hand, customers do not pay on a monthly basis, but immediately, for the year (almost all) and this is good =).
The complexity of sales . It is also very difficult to sell a new product in a market that is not yet available. But this is a separate story, more details here .
Quick start . This rake follows from the first point, counting on big sales, they started working as a "big adult" company, skipping the stage of idea validation.
Most importantly, we realized our mistakes in time and took action. In a startup, what matters is not the initial idea and business plan, but the ability to change.
Briefly tell about the main features and opportunities that have appeared since the start. There’s no point in considering trifles; in a couple of months there were dozens of improvements.
Integration into the design and transparent authorization allow you to fully integrate the community into the client’s infrastructure. Thanks to transparent authorization, visitors are immediately logged in and do not need to register. And integration into design will make the community a full section of the site.
A living example: Aist, a leading Internet provider in the Samara region .
Surveys and important discussions allow company representatives to find out the opinions of their customers and put forward important questions for discussion or make an easily accessible FAQ.
Login through popular Russian social networksallows you to log in to Copini in 1 click. And a lot more.
Here are collected questions that we are most often asked and which, frankly, are fed up =) If there are any more - welcome in the comment.
How do we differ from Reformal and peers? Friends, understand, we are completely different, although at first glance they are very similar. Reformal is a service for collecting ideas, their main goal is to improve your site (as they say). Copini is a way of effective interaction between customers and company representatives, our main goal is to get the maximum benefit from communication (customer service, loyalty, lower support costs, etc.)
Why are we paid?Everything is simple here. Kopini is our only project, this is our brainchild to whom we surrender completely. All team members work full time. This allows us to develop by leaps and bounds, provide quality service and support, ensure reliability and stability. When receiving money, we take legal responsibility for the service’s performance, for the data and its safety. When you use the free service, nobody owes you anything, and if it suddenly closes tomorrow, you will lose everything and there will be no one to ask.
Are we reliable? Pah-pah-pah there was no malfunction. Uptime server is 100% and it is loaded now no more than 3%. And most importantly, when paying for the service, be sure that it will work throughout this entire period. We give a guarantee and legally arrange it.
Who are your customers? This question is usually asked by those who are frightened by our youth and "lack of promotion." Not a lot of iconic customers, but already have someone to brag about =)
Functional.
First of all, we will develop the service in the direction of integration. In the first quarter of 2011, a commercial API will be ready that will integrate Copini with any systems, including SVN, HelpDesck / ServiceDesk, etc. New widgets will make it easier and more efficient to use Copini. The plans include a search widget, a voting and polling widget, etc. Connecting payment with electronic money is also on the way. And of course, we will work to improve the efficiency of our service as a whole.
Investments.
Before the new year must sign an agreement on conditions with a business angel. If everything goes smoothly, we will receive the funds at the end of January. I just found it - I wrote a letter with information about the company, then we met first together, then the whole team. Despite the fact that we have almost reached the operational payback, we need the attracted investments for rapid growth. Terms of the transaction and the name is not disclosed. As the saying goes, don’t say gop until you jump over.
For a long time puzzling over the monetization model, we stopped at freemium. Therefore, tentatively from February 2011, Copini will be available for free . In order not to miss the moment, follow us on Twitter . For free-accounts will be available almost all the main functionality of the service.
That, perhaps, was all that I wanted to tell about Kopini .
We wish you all success and goodness in the new 2011 year. Holiday greetings!
As promised, we make a report on the work done. Fairly fed up with the Khabrovsk citizens with their articles ( about the budget , office and LLC , income ) about our startup Copiny , they tried less PR and more facts. Yes, and accumulated questions that I would like to answer.
Under the cut, I’ll tell you about the current situation in the company:
- how much they earned and spent (accurate to the ruble =)),
- what about the team and the office,
- what rake stepped on
- how we found a business angel and what we agreed to,
- whether Copini will be free.
UPD: For unknown reasons, our report was considered a tough PR and hid the topic, although a bunch of other projects are published in Startups and Services simply with a description, without numbers, without any background and other interesting information. Even the question “Where did we hide the topic?” Came to the PM. In connection with this, we decided to start a Habré company blog. So even better. Now only you and no one else can appreciate what the topic is worth.
What is copini?
Oddly enough, but only after 4 months of working on the project, we finally realized what the service is and what really value it brings to customers. So, Kopini is NOT a service for collecting ideas . This is a collective knowledge base, a support forum and a way to organize effective feedback in one package. Gathering ideas is just a small part of the feedback. We want to make our service a universal means of productive communication between companies and their customers on the Internet.
Copini allows you to improve the quality of customer service and reduce support costs, increase customer loyalty and attract new ones, receive effective feedback and be closer to customers . This distinguishes us from analogues.
4 months after launch
One of the most significant achievements for us was the victory in the WebReady contest in the nomination "The best project based on the results of online voting." After the contest, 3 foundations and 2 business angels became interested in us, but they had to refuse, because managed to reach the one we really need! Read more at the end. And before that, they almost bought us, wrote in more detail on our blog . Good is all that ends well. Looking back, I can say that the sale would be a fatal mistake.
Well, a little service statistics , it is constantly updated on the main one:
- 522 Communities registered.
- 53222 Members in all communities.
- 5449 Discussions created by the participants.
Finance
Expenses . Currently spent 495894r . - on the one hand less than planned, on the other hand there were rather big unforeseen expenses. The main expenses were salary fund 307000r (with taxes), 82320r. furniture and office equipment, 45400 rub. rent, about 30,000 business trips (did not plan so much). In general, the financial plan for expenses was kept within. By the way, only one hired employee remained in the team, so the costs were cut down to almost 50,000r / month. But this is not for long, because in January a new employee will come to us.
Revenues . Many destroyed us in the comments and talked about the unreality of the numbers. Someone advised to divide the potential income by 10. In fact, not everything is so scary. Currently earned 50,904p, in fact it is almost December. What conclusions can be drawn?
We made a mistake not with the order of numbers and the number of customers, but with the time it takes to launch a new product on the market, as well as the difficulties of selling it. More on errors below.
Team and office
As already mentioned above, in December, 3 people remained in the team in the office. The programmer and our only girl, unfortunately, left the project. The departure of the programmer is due to the fact that the guy after 3 years of freelancing could not work in the office and combine an internship. For the girl, there was no corny job. Despite the fact that there are three of us, and there are 2 free places, the office significantly organizes and helps the work.
In parallel, in December, they began to remotely collaborate with my old acquaintance, we are not yet introducing him to the company’s staff. And since January we have a new teammate.
The main rake
Upbeat sales plan . Due to the lack of experience in the niche and incomplete understanding of the product, they made quite decent mistakes in the calculations. On the one hand, the number of customers is not at all what they expected and this is bad. On the other hand, customers do not pay on a monthly basis, but immediately, for the year (almost all) and this is good =).
The complexity of sales . It is also very difficult to sell a new product in a market that is not yet available. But this is a separate story, more details here .
Quick start . This rake follows from the first point, counting on big sales, they started working as a "big adult" company, skipping the stage of idea validation.
Most importantly, we realized our mistakes in time and took action. In a startup, what matters is not the initial idea and business plan, but the ability to change.
Key Features
Briefly tell about the main features and opportunities that have appeared since the start. There’s no point in considering trifles; in a couple of months there were dozens of improvements.
Integration into the design and transparent authorization allow you to fully integrate the community into the client’s infrastructure. Thanks to transparent authorization, visitors are immediately logged in and do not need to register. And integration into design will make the community a full section of the site.
A living example: Aist, a leading Internet provider in the Samara region .
Surveys and important discussions allow company representatives to find out the opinions of their customers and put forward important questions for discussion or make an easily accessible FAQ.
Login through popular Russian social networksallows you to log in to Copini in 1 click. And a lot more.
FAQ
Here are collected questions that we are most often asked and which, frankly, are fed up =) If there are any more - welcome in the comment.
How do we differ from Reformal and peers? Friends, understand, we are completely different, although at first glance they are very similar. Reformal is a service for collecting ideas, their main goal is to improve your site (as they say). Copini is a way of effective interaction between customers and company representatives, our main goal is to get the maximum benefit from communication (customer service, loyalty, lower support costs, etc.)
Why are we paid?Everything is simple here. Kopini is our only project, this is our brainchild to whom we surrender completely. All team members work full time. This allows us to develop by leaps and bounds, provide quality service and support, ensure reliability and stability. When receiving money, we take legal responsibility for the service’s performance, for the data and its safety. When you use the free service, nobody owes you anything, and if it suddenly closes tomorrow, you will lose everything and there will be no one to ask.
Are we reliable? Pah-pah-pah there was no malfunction. Uptime server is 100% and it is loaded now no more than 3%. And most importantly, when paying for the service, be sure that it will work throughout this entire period. We give a guarantee and legally arrange it.
Who are your customers? This question is usually asked by those who are frightened by our youth and "lack of promotion." Not a lot of iconic customers, but already have someone to brag about =)
- UMI.CMS - I hope you do not need to represent the company,
- Aist Internet company - a leading Internet provider in the Samara region,
- Alor + - are included in the TOP5 brokerage companies in Russia,
- NovaFilm - translation studio (known on Habré),
- Lucas Gold - Moscow Jewelry Factory.
Plans
Functional.
First of all, we will develop the service in the direction of integration. In the first quarter of 2011, a commercial API will be ready that will integrate Copini with any systems, including SVN, HelpDesck / ServiceDesk, etc. New widgets will make it easier and more efficient to use Copini. The plans include a search widget, a voting and polling widget, etc. Connecting payment with electronic money is also on the way. And of course, we will work to improve the efficiency of our service as a whole.
Investments.
Before the new year must sign an agreement on conditions with a business angel. If everything goes smoothly, we will receive the funds at the end of January. I just found it - I wrote a letter with information about the company, then we met first together, then the whole team. Despite the fact that we have almost reached the operational payback, we need the attracted investments for rapid growth. Terms of the transaction and the name is not disclosed. As the saying goes, don’t say gop until you jump over.
Copini will be free
For a long time puzzling over the monetization model, we stopped at freemium. Therefore, tentatively from February 2011, Copini will be available for free . In order not to miss the moment, follow us on Twitter . For free-accounts will be available almost all the main functionality of the service.
That, perhaps, was all that I wanted to tell about Kopini .
We wish you all success and goodness in the new 2011 year. Holiday greetings!