How to invent and launch a startup? Personal experience with the BabbleLABEL project
In August of the past year, having arrived at the Moscow State University + Intel + Rosnano training in Dubna, we did not suspect that he would bring us not only important knowledge, but also the idea of a new project. And it all started with the Design thinking module, which was conducted by Irina Kuteneva, Elena Khromkova and their team from Lumiknows. The task was this ...
The task of our team was to develop a product that would improve the customer experience. We had to interview colleagues, outline a portrait of a consumer, identify hidden needs, conduct a brainstorming session to address identified needs, and make and present a prototype. Of the 50 ideas that came up, we decided to develop a mobile application that would display information on it when hovering over a product’s barcode. Thus, the buyer would be able to instantly get a description, specifications, recipes, etc. without a seller and without surfing on different sites from a small phone screen Then we won among the rest of the teams and got books from Intel.
Upon returning home, they began to ponder the idea. It turned out that there are a lot of analogues in the world. Thinking further, they decided to abandon the principle, but change the idea, “socializing” it: to do something like twitter, but tied to every thing that has a barcode on it. The barcode in this case can be compared with a hash tag. That is, the user scans the barcode and sees not only the description of the product, but can also leave his short comment in it, photos, videos, record a voice comment.
The idea seemed very unusual to us, because then every thing seems to begin to live its own digital life , it becomes “social”! As it turned out, we were not the first to think of this. In the states there is a very strong project www.stickybits.comwhich was recently invested. But such a find did not upset us, but on the contrary made us happy. We chose this strategy: quickly do something simple, throw it into the market, and run around potential partners, customers, users. And then decide whether to deal with it.
Then the active work began. We set ourselves a tough deadline; it became the St. Petersburg International Innovation Forum. We deliberately told everyone that on it we will present the first release of such a service . We agreed with Megaphone, who provided us with prizes for a small quest based on barcodes. There was nowhere else to go and had to do. Of course, it was not without leaving the office at 2 nights and later, but we did. That was a good lesson. Put deadlines and burn bridges!
At the forum, we have collected a large number of positive feedback. Over the following autumn months, they were able to light up at IT2Days, Russian Internet Week, AdBreaker, Marketing Mix and other events. Communicating with people, we received several offers to invest in the project. But our most important victory for this short period was reaching the finals of, perhaps, the largest competition of IT projects in the Russian Federation - Web Ready . We reached the top three among 211 applications in this nomination. And again, we received investment offers.
Probably, some have the question - how can you make money on this? Business model, as we now see it for ourselves, consists in subscribing barcode owners to the possibility of posting advanced information on their product. Plus, some kind of payment for promotional messages highlighted in color and fixed in the first position in the comment feed. For example, scanning a product in store A, you see the first line "In store B, this product costs 999 rubles." Probably the next question is how to catch up with so many users to make it interesting for manufacturers?
This technology is a fairly universal platform, on the basis of which other scenarios can be implemented. For example, a book of reviews in cafes, shops, museums. Imagine if you had an instant opportunity to express your opinion about an object of art and see what others think. Or if you were sitting in a cafe, you could immediately write that you liked the nice waitress or make a comment? Or while standing in line at the checkout, tell the retailer that they did not find their favorite juice? This is probably only tomorrow in terms of the actual need for such organizations to communicate with their customers. Or maybe tomorrow has already arrived. These scripts are free.
Surely, many of you, having read up to this place, have already involuntarily come up with 2-3 other scenarios. We will be very grateful if you share! However, the idea goes even further, everything described here is more of a preparatory stage. But more on that later.
Of course, we heard a lot of skepticism about us: they say, nothing original, why do this, since it is already in the states? people have too few smartphones, nobody needs it! Yes, this is no different from Yandex.Market!
We will comment on the latter - we wanted to make and test not so much a product information search system as social fun, a way to breathe digital life into the surrounding things . Well, if you have a desire to test the project, then welcome to www.BabbleLABEL.com! We will be very happy to hear good feedback and, possibly, ideas, recommendations.
The task of our team was to develop a product that would improve the customer experience. We had to interview colleagues, outline a portrait of a consumer, identify hidden needs, conduct a brainstorming session to address identified needs, and make and present a prototype. Of the 50 ideas that came up, we decided to develop a mobile application that would display information on it when hovering over a product’s barcode. Thus, the buyer would be able to instantly get a description, specifications, recipes, etc. without a seller and without surfing on different sites from a small phone screen Then we won among the rest of the teams and got books from Intel.
Upon returning home, they began to ponder the idea. It turned out that there are a lot of analogues in the world. Thinking further, they decided to abandon the principle, but change the idea, “socializing” it: to do something like twitter, but tied to every thing that has a barcode on it. The barcode in this case can be compared with a hash tag. That is, the user scans the barcode and sees not only the description of the product, but can also leave his short comment in it, photos, videos, record a voice comment.
The idea seemed very unusual to us, because then every thing seems to begin to live its own digital life , it becomes “social”! As it turned out, we were not the first to think of this. In the states there is a very strong project www.stickybits.comwhich was recently invested. But such a find did not upset us, but on the contrary made us happy. We chose this strategy: quickly do something simple, throw it into the market, and run around potential partners, customers, users. And then decide whether to deal with it.
Then the active work began. We set ourselves a tough deadline; it became the St. Petersburg International Innovation Forum. We deliberately told everyone that on it we will present the first release of such a service . We agreed with Megaphone, who provided us with prizes for a small quest based on barcodes. There was nowhere else to go and had to do. Of course, it was not without leaving the office at 2 nights and later, but we did. That was a good lesson. Put deadlines and burn bridges!
At the forum, we have collected a large number of positive feedback. Over the following autumn months, they were able to light up at IT2Days, Russian Internet Week, AdBreaker, Marketing Mix and other events. Communicating with people, we received several offers to invest in the project. But our most important victory for this short period was reaching the finals of, perhaps, the largest competition of IT projects in the Russian Federation - Web Ready . We reached the top three among 211 applications in this nomination. And again, we received investment offers.
Probably, some have the question - how can you make money on this? Business model, as we now see it for ourselves, consists in subscribing barcode owners to the possibility of posting advanced information on their product. Plus, some kind of payment for promotional messages highlighted in color and fixed in the first position in the comment feed. For example, scanning a product in store A, you see the first line "In store B, this product costs 999 rubles." Probably the next question is how to catch up with so many users to make it interesting for manufacturers?
This technology is a fairly universal platform, on the basis of which other scenarios can be implemented. For example, a book of reviews in cafes, shops, museums. Imagine if you had an instant opportunity to express your opinion about an object of art and see what others think. Or if you were sitting in a cafe, you could immediately write that you liked the nice waitress or make a comment? Or while standing in line at the checkout, tell the retailer that they did not find their favorite juice? This is probably only tomorrow in terms of the actual need for such organizations to communicate with their customers. Or maybe tomorrow has already arrived. These scripts are free.
Surely, many of you, having read up to this place, have already involuntarily come up with 2-3 other scenarios. We will be very grateful if you share! However, the idea goes even further, everything described here is more of a preparatory stage. But more on that later.
Of course, we heard a lot of skepticism about us: they say, nothing original, why do this, since it is already in the states? people have too few smartphones, nobody needs it! Yes, this is no different from Yandex.Market!
We will comment on the latter - we wanted to make and test not so much a product information search system as social fun, a way to breathe digital life into the surrounding things . Well, if you have a desire to test the project, then welcome to www.BabbleLABEL.com! We will be very happy to hear good feedback and, possibly, ideas, recommendations.