Startup life during cr * zis

With this publication, we open a series of interviews with the leaders of large and well-known startups in Runet. Venturemag decided to find out how startups feel during the crisis. Have their plans changed, or maybe they are going to retire altogether. The first signs were the answers of the director of the city community “AroundMe.ru” , Vladimir Dolgiy-Rapoport.


How has the crisis affected your business?

Positive, no matter how strange it sounds. The fact is that the crisis is not only a threat, but also new opportunities that did not exist before or we did not pay attention to them.

There are three ways to deal with a crisis:

1. pretend that everything is fine, not pay attention to the crisis - this path leads to the almost inevitable death of the enterprise. Those startups that have received the full amount of funding for 2008-2009 choose this path.

2. You can choose a wait-and-see tactic, cut most expenses and wait for it to end. This path contains the least amount of risk. The bad news is that when the crisis ends, the company will at best have a website with those audience metrics that it had before the crisis. Unfortunately, most companies choose this path.

3. The third way is to use the opportunities that the crisis offers. This is the hardest way. It requires extreme concentration, a huge amount of work, speed, constant generation of ideas, rejection of all superfluous and patience.

We have chosen the third way. This imposes on us great obligations and enormous responsibilities.

Have the project development plans changed?

Of course. In connection with the expected decline in the advertising market, we recounted our revenue plans in 2009 downward. In this regard, we also revised the development plan, abandoning those projects that do not directly affect the audience or income.

This does not mean that the project will not develop, on the contrary, the development will be even more active than we previously planned, it’s just that this development will go only in key areas.

Are staff reductions foreseen?

The fact is that before the crisis AroundMe.ru was a small company by the size of its staff. So we had no one to cut back on. We had no extra people. But we increased the working day by 4 hours (now 17) and reduced, as I said, all unnecessary processes.

Do you intend to cut costs?

Yes, we revised the budget for 2008-2009, removing from it all the pleasant, but optional items. First of all, the cuts affected the project estimate - as I already answered, we froze all the projects that did not directly affect AroundMe.ru indicators. Thus, the budget for development and marketing was reduced. At the same time, the budgets of target projects remained unchanged.

The salary fund didn’t come under reduction - people who believe in the project work for us, they work with full dedication. and cut their salaries would be just dishonest. I believe that the well-being of the people you work with and the well-being of the project are inseparable things. A person cannot fully work if he thinks how he will repay the loan or how to feed the children.

Of course, it is worthwhile to understand that the market has not yet reached the bottom, and now no one knows where this bottom is. And if the most pessimistic crisis scenario is realized, then we will have to reduce the salary fund. But we will do this last.

Are there any problems with monetizing the resource?

Well, there are no special problems, because so far the resource does not generate income. We planned to start monetization from the beginning of 2009. We have no changes in terms or in terms of monetization models. The only thing that we changed, as I said, is the plans for revenue downward, as we expect the advertising market to fall in 2009.

We also asked questions to Alexander Smirnov, Development Manager, Moskva.fm. To which we received a very interesting answer:

Yes. Changes have occurred. They are as follows: the person responsible for correspondence and correspondence was fired. In this regard, no one will be able to send you an answer to the questions posed.

We did not give up and asked, maybe Alexander himself will be able to formulate the answers. But, alas, Alexander Smirnov replied:

I am a robot, I can not think and answer questions.

Not everything is so good in our kingdom.