In 2008, the first iPhone was in the hands of Maxim Voloshin. I liked the new Apple product so much that, together with his colleagues, Maxim decided to start developing applications for the Apple App Store. In the first three months, the mobile IQ Test brought developers $4,000. Then there were several games. But when large gaming companies entered the app market, the startup’s sales fell. Then Redmadrobot decided to create custom mobile applications. Today, the company's clients include publishing houses, mobile operators and banks. This year, revenue should be 90 million rubles.

Redmadrobot

field of activity: mobile application development

Date of creation: November 2008

Money to start: 50 thousand rubles

Business idea

Maxim Voloshin

founder of Redmadrobot

When I was 18 years old, in the evenings I studied to become an engineer at MIREA, and during the day I worked as a courier in a design studio. I was proactive, so I soon became an assistant manager, then a manager, and by the age of 25, a project director. We developed corporate identity, logos, brand books, etc.

In the studio, I met web interface specialist Alexander Alekhin and project manager Nikolai Satunkin, with whom we later launched Redmadrobot.

The first iPhone came out in 2008, and we immediately ordered three from America. A couple of months later the App Store launched. It was almost empty and we thought why don't we make a couple of iPhone apps.

Success and disappointment

The simplest thing you could come up with is a mobile IQ Test. There was no need to invent anything here: a ready-made algorithm, an easy interface. We found a programmer, bought him a white MacBook for 30 thousand rubles (without a MacBook it is impossible to write code for iOS) and paid 20 thousand rubles for development. This was our starting capital.

Registering an account in the App Store turned out to be easy, filling out documents to receive money from downloads was more difficult. Organizational and legal issues took three months. We sold the app for $1.99, of which Apple received 30%, minus tax, and the rest to us. In three months, the application was downloaded by about 3 thousand people.

I still remember the moment when I received a long SMS in English. I was driving around the city and didn’t immediately understand what was going on. It turned out that 4 thousand dollars from installations of our application came into my account.

At that moment it became clear to us that you can make money from applications. We released several arcade and quest games and came up with Redmadrobot. We really liked the word “robot”, “Red” was our favorite color, “Mad” was a rejection of stereotypes. Money began to trickle in from the sale of our applications, and we left the studio. But after a couple of months, large gaming companies rushed to the App Store, investing $500 thousand in the development of their products. It became clear that we would not build a business on gaming applications.

Growing pains

By 2011, media holdings, banks and mobile operators all at once decided that they needed a mobile application. Everyone was in a hurry to get ahead of their competitors. Some did something on their own, others turned to companies that promised to do it quickly and cheaply. And this way and that it turned out bad. Then they began to look for outsourcing companies that had staff and at least some kind of portfolio, and often found Redmadrobot.

We received a dozen orders. At first we were happy, but quickly realized that we couldn’t cope. Our experience and team were not enough. Large clients expected a completely different level of development, which we did not really meet (at that moment no one on the market met it). For example, just to properly test applications, it was necessary to increase the team by a third, which we could not afford right away.

Deadlines were flying, applications were falling, and customers were indignant. The situation was critical. We urgently needed programmers, designers, testing engineers, business analysts, and high-level managers.

Before this, we subcontracted part of the work, but with the arrival of large companies, it became clear that this was a mistake: subcontractors without strong internal expertise cannot be controlled either in terms of deadlines or quality. We abandoned this scheme and quickly hired a strong core team - top managers with experience in large IT companies, who increased our staff and built our production processes. And we began to work faster and better, but a new problem arose - the threat of a cash gap.

Large client companies work without prepayment. Essentially, we had to lend free projects to these market monsters. All the money we earned on small orders immediately went to cover salary gaps in large projects. The company was on the verge of survival. But there was no other option: we understood that if we didn’t get involved in the big game, we wouldn’t improve ourselves.

Market and competition

Entering the mobile app market today is easy. Tools for the basics of iOS and Android development are free: online courses, books, forums. According to our estimates, there are already a couple of hundred small companies on the market that are stewing in the same “soup” - fulfilling small one-time orders for the development of corporate and promotional applications. The competition among these companies is very strong.

A separate story is the professional industrial development of mobile business applications. I mean long-term projects with millions of users in different regions. This requires experts in the field of coding and usability, as well as an infrastructure capable of carrying out complex integration with all systems of the client company, providing technical support and developing a mobile product.

There are three or four companies on the Russian market that can take on such projects, including Redmadrobot, and there is no serious competition in this market. There are enough clients for all of us. For example, now all 60 of our employees are busy, and if a new client comes tomorrow, we will need to find resources for him. Clients include Beeline, the Life group, the Kommersant publishing house and others.

Of course, those companies that are now stewing in the common “soup” understand that they need to reach a new level. But I don’t think they will improve at once and begin to compete with us.

Plans

By the end of this year, our revenue will be 90–100 million rubles. By the end of next year we plan to reach 150–170 million rubles. Of course, our company can grow into a factory with a staff of a thousand people. At the same time, there is a high risk of losing quality. Finding even 50 professionals of the level we need on the labor market is a difficult task. We’d rather manage 10–15 clients a year and make really cool products for them with a team of 100–150 people.

Our global goal is to increase the value of the company while maintaining the existing staff. This will become possible if we make a profit not only from the development of mobile applications, but also from the sale of our own products.

Thus, we have already launched the Business.Books electronic library for mobile platforms - a joint project with Alpina Publisher paid for itself in eight months. This is an open access reader and a corporate solution. To order, we create branded applications with the set of books required by companies. We have more than 50 contracts with leading pharmaceutical companies, retailers, banks, carriers, and telecom operators.

Through such projects, over the next five years we want to receive capital that we can invest, among other things, in educational and scientific projects.

PHOTOS: Anton Berkasov

* The calculations use average data for Russia

How we looked for an investor, created a mobile application development company in St. Petersburg from scratch and... the mistakes we made...

I would like to tell you as honestly and openly as possible about our experience of launching a business in St. Petersburg developing mobile applications from scratch, what mistakes we made, what mistakes we continue to make (well, where would we be without this) and about how we are trying to build something really large-scale and “change this world” - namely our project of the mobile product aggregator tapki (the name is funny, of course, it was born as a derivative of the English word “tap”). Looking back at the article after writing it, I see that there was quite a bit of text (about 18 pages in Word), but I hope that what has been said will be useful. Colleagues advised breaking the document into parts, but it seems to me that a coherent narrative covering a period of just over a year will provide a more complete picture of the company’s development. In the article, the reader will find the economy (managerial balance sheet), which “stretches” from the very beginning, broken down by cost item. We have not added or subtracted anything and present all the figures “as is”.

I will tell you about starting a business from the very beginning: searching for premises, searching for investments, about the main (initial) idea of ​​the business and how it changed over the course of the year, about successes and failures. Since we registered a legal entity in June 2013 (more precisely on May 29), we can consider ourselves to be one year old and can no longer remember some of the nuances, but the main milestones with photographs have been preserved. It is important - if somewhere in the text I draw a conclusion for myself (and readers) or give advice (directly or indirectly) - I ask you to regard it solely as my personal opinion, which with a 50% probability may be fundamentally incorrect. And one more thing - I can’t remember some points in detail, so there may be small inaccuracies in explaining certain numbers - this is not an attempt to hide information, but simply simple forgetfulness, because... I didn’t keep a diary (unfortunately - I’m correcting myself) and I’m writing from memory.

I would like to emphasize that this is in no way a guide from the series “10 mistakes of beginning businessmen” or, for example, “How to succeed in business from scratch.” Success is a flexible concept and we definitely do not have the right to write about it, because... We have not achieved it yet, although we are trying in every possible way, meaning, for ourselves, by “success”, achieving a stable profit in operating activities. Despite the fact that we are an investment project, our investors (and ourselves) do not set the goal of capitalization of the company (clients, contracts, payments), but a monthly dividend policy (or in other words, profit).

It’s worth noting right away that we are (for now) an unprofitable project. I have met IT businesses that literally reached payback in 3-4 months and began to return investments (if any) in the form of dividends. It’s nice to read about such projects, feeling a little envy inside of the more talented guys (no irony) who were able to “jump” into the market. We couldn’t, and moreover, our initial concept for mobile applications, for which we attracted investments, turned out to be completely unviable. I was pleased to read on Habré the story of the launch of Amperka, but trying on the experience of the guys I come to the conclusion that retail trade and software development are fundamentally different projects and in our case we reach operating profit for a long time and painfully, because business transactions vary greatly in time (unless you have a very large client for whom you assemble a team - but this was not our case).

Business idea and venture funds as a source of investment - what to expect?

So - our story. In the fall of 2013, within the team, which by the way is quite old - I think the average age is 35-37 years old, there was a feeling that we could enter the market with the idea of ​​“Mobile application designer for online stores.” Well, you know, this is when mobile applications are assembled from ready-made templates in html(5). By the way, there are such projects on the market - myapps.com, ibuildapp.com - among those that are “heard of”. Assuming that our competitive difference lies in the coverage of all mobile platforms (ios, android, windows 8 and winphone) and native development (more precisely, we use products from Khamarin), we began to develop a business plan to find an investor. And although from the very beginning I had a vague feeling that our venture funds, let’s say, were not exactly eager to see us and were focused on projects in a more mature state, the idea was precisely to send out a beautiful presentation to the main funds.

Our venture funds... It’s a strange industry, probably due to the fact that I haven’t worked in it personally, and you can’t understand it with your mind and the available bits of information. The presentation took us about a month. In April 2013, I compiled a list of funds operating in Russia and began sending them out with a cover letter. Looking back, I understand that the presentation was, to put it mildly, not very good, because... it contained few beautiful graphs (exponential upward!) and tables, but more text with a detailed description of the project. But we proceeded from the fact that in order to make a decision on investment, people, even at the first stage, must carefully study what is written and only then, if they like it, invite them to a meeting. In total, about 15 letters were sent to the most famous funds. Only one responded - he wrote that he would answer in 2 weeks. But apparently he got wrapped up and forgot. Therefore, if you have a business at the very beginning stage, when you have a team, some groundwork and a good (as it seems) idea, do not expect strong attention from funds. They can be understood because... The highest risks are precisely at the zero stage of starting a business, although here you can expect the highest returns.

And one more note - if your business includes a fund, then most often its task is to come out with a profit in 3-5 years, selling its share for more than the investment made. Accordingly, business profits may fade into the background, because All of it will be asked to be used to increase the size of the business itself - increasing capitalization. If we talk about a private investor, then most likely he will be interested not in the capitalization of the company, but in the profit distributed in the form of dividends.

To be fair, it is worth noting that now the situation with support for the early stages is changing and a pro-state fund, IIDF (Internet Initiatives Development Fund), has appeared. It's easy to find on the Internet, and I advise very young teams to consider it quite seriously. Looking ahead, I’ll note that we were nominated for the very first IIDF intake in 2013 (in the fall) and made it to the TOP 30 projects, among, it seems, 750 applications. I will also tell you about our experience with IIDF and the reasons why we ultimately did not receive (or we did not take - depending on how you look at it) investments, but in general my impressions of this organization are positive and, frankly speaking, due to my current knowledge of the venture capital industry, I don’t see any alternatives for teams at the earliest stage of development in the Russian Federation.

Returning to the issue of investment. Our partner had access to investors in St. Petersburg, who believed in us and were interested in the idea itself, and after a number of meetings with them, it was decided to open investment for us. At the same time, the investor received a 51% share in the new business. This process took us a little over a month (3-4 meetings, usually in one of the cafes) and the first days of May 2013 we could celebrate as Victory Day in the Second World War and the birth of our company. I note that we asked for investments for the initial business plan, which, in addition to describing the business process, also contained financial calculations of expected income and expenses. Naturally, as we began work, it turned out that the ideas laid down and, accordingly, the costs had nothing to do with reality, and in this regard, I advise you to make a reasonable reserve, unless your life and management experience allows you to give a detailed forecast. In relation to us, we budgeted an amount of 10,000,000 rubles, but the excess of this amount, according to our cautious forecasts, will be about 6-7,000,000 rubles.

As far as I know, it is extremely rare for venture funds to ask for a 51% stake in a business, but I assume that this is more often applicable to a situation where there is already some incoming financial flow, an interesting and proven business idea and a cohesive team. We definitely did not fall under this definition, because... I had an idea, some ideas from developers from old places of work, and a business plan. All. It seems to me that this is a completely normal “price” for the high risk of investments from zero, because otherwise (smaller share in the investor’s authorized capital), they may offer parity investment.

From my experience, let me recommend some other points in communicating with investors. There is no need to assure of success, no matter how paradoxical it may sound. Investors are serious people and, of course, expecting a return on investment many times over, they understand that market conditions are not a greenhouse for growing cucumbers with fertilizers, but not a very welcoming environment for beginners. Therefore, when assessing your chances, try to be extremely honest with yourself and with people who are ready to invest. Doubts are completely normal; I will assume that irrepressible optimism can simply do harm.

Next, write down the terms of the dividend policy. At least verbalize them. It's clear that we all want to "change the world", but the purpose of business is ultimately income and it's good to hear the investor's position on their vision for sharing future dividends. Ask a question about the future co-investor and whether your investor will be ready to dilute his stake. For example, we are currently conducting a number of negotiations on co-investment, because as already mentioned, our expectations did not coincide with reality, and the new co-investor can further allow the business to develop, while possibly returning the invested funds of your first investor to buy out part of his share (partially or completely).

What does this look like in practice? In our case, the investor is ready (theoretically) to sell 25% of his 51% in the authorized capital, subject to not just a redemption, but also the opening of additional investment in the amount agreed upon by the parties. And, by the way, this model is quite convenient, because a co-investor comes to an already operating business that shows some financial indicators, has an established client base, etc. It is worth noting here, from the experience of communicating with venture funds, it is very rarely intended to simply buy out the share of the founders (only if this is not a profitable, fast-growing business), but to receive a share in exchange for future investments. For example, I recently held a dialogue with a German fund, which outlined its position - 25% of shares for opening an investment horizon of 40-50,000,000 rubles. for 3 years (namely opening financing in exchange for shares).

Of course, the investor first of all wants to return the investment, remain with a certain block of shares (preferably blocking), not invest further and expect dividends. At the same time, a new co-investor, considering a company with a negative operating balance, may resist the repurchase of a share and here it is possible to propose a scheme in which the repurchase of a share does not occur, the new co-investor continues to invest in the company, but when it reaches self-sufficiency and receives the first profits , the first investor receives dividends based on his original share until he returns his investment.

Separately, I would like to note that we were extremely lucky with investors, because... we are free to make any management decisions, which, of course, are aimed at increasing income. Some might argue with this assertion, rationally pointing out that an investor who participates in strategic management may somewhere be able to “open his eyes” to a number of important issues. But there is a fine line between delicate participation and a situation where the investor really interferes in operational management, simply creating a nervous situation in the team.

Organizational issues of starting a company - how it happened

Returning to the launch of our business. We spent the whole of May 2013 on organizational issues - registering a legal entity, opening a bank account (we chose the rather conservative Nordea bank - Scandinavian roots, because there were familiar managers there, and the bank’s “pedigree” inspired confidence) and search premises. I don’t think it’s worth dwelling on this, because... The processes are quite simple and have been described many times, including on Habré. As for the nuances, I categorically do not advise separating the legal address from the actual one, because Our fiscal authorities are now monitoring this quite strictly and... well, why do you need these problems at the launch? Upon registration, you can use the services of an intermediary or do it yourself.

We decided to name the company after the domain name. And we started searching for the latter, keeping in mind the domain in the zone.com, because... After all, we made a construction set, which means the whole world should be subject to us! Not everything worked out for us, except for purchasing the domain - notissimus.com; the word notissimus from Latin can be translated as “well-known”, “recognizable”. The main thing is that the domain was free and a search for trademarks in the United States also did not give any matches (I searched on the website www.uspto.gov/trademarks), although logic dictates that when registering a trademark, I usually immediately register the domain name). It is pronounced as notissimus with emphasis, sometimes they call us funny. When opening a bank account (we have a legal entity with the same name as the domain - NOTISSIMUS LLC), a funny story turned out. The bank employee asked again for the name of the legal entity, and then asked: “What does this mean?” Having heard the translation from Latin: they say “it’s well-known,” she apologized and said that she didn’t know, although it seemed like the term was widely known to everyone :) .

We were lucky to find a room in the city center, next to St. Isaac's Cathedral with a more than reasonable rate of 1,100 rubles. per m2. How did you search? We used all available free resources (no agents), plus I personally drove around the city center by car and looked for the intriguing “for rent” sign - this is a fairly effective method. It was important for us and the investor to find an office in the center, near the metro (this is convenient for both employees and clients whom we invite to visit, and it also adds a little importance to the young company when you say that the office is near St. Isaac's Cathedral). We are still working in this room, gradually expanding with adjacent rooms - a class “C” business center, which in plans should turn into class “A” (with all the ensuing consequences, including those “leaked” by us). The room (45 m2) was redecorated to make it pleasing to the eye, spending about 45,000 rubles on it. along with materials (guests from the southern republics worked). We allowed ourselves to rent two parking spaces, because... in the center of St. Petersburg near Isaac there is no chance of finding parking and we understood that this would be a permanent irritating factor at the beginning of the working day (5,000 rubles for one space - looking back, I clearly understand that it was definitely worth it).

In our business plan, we included funds for a one-time purchase of fixed assets (fixed assets) to launch the company. What does this include? Computer equipment, peripherals, tables, chairs, etc. All purchases were made on the website ulmart.ru, at the same time receiving quite a few bonus points to the account - convenient, because You’ll definitely forget something small, like a cable or an extension cord. Everything was bought reasonably - simple - necessary (sometimes very simple, then I had to improve the PC - buy more memory, so I advise you not to completely reduce the cost of equipment for daily work). Below is a fragment of our management p/l (income - expenses) for May 2013. No one from the team has received a salary yet, only rental costs (partially, I don’t remember why this amount), purchase of fixed assets, opening an account, registration of a legal entity and so on. No income, only expenses in the amount of 517,000 rubles. (contribution of the founder to the company account as an investment loan).

Fragment of management reporting for May 2013 - operational activities are not yet ongoing

Financial results of work a few months after launch

Management balance sheet May-September 2013 and we are gradually spending investors’ money

If you look at p/l until September 2013, you can see an increase in costs for the wage fund and the purchase of fixed assets (administrative expenses - repairs, notary expenses, office supplies, some non-IT operating systems, office goodies, water, etc.) . But a portfolio also appeared on our website (modest of course). Legal expenses - we engaged a one-time third party to review our application development agreement. The main emphasis was placed on exclusive rights to the results of the work. Our work model does not imply the transfer of exclusive rights to the source code. There are several reasons for this, and the most important is that we have a central server part, which is common to all projects, plus we very “generously” replicate the developments of one client for others. By transferring exclusive rights, we expose ourselves to too high a risk of possible disputes with clients. Therefore, we transfer non-exclusive rights, and the client can, according to the contract, do whatever he wants with the applications. During all the time of our work, there have not yet been any special disputes with the legal departments of customers, because... we position the solution as a platform that you can connect to. The contract contains a clause according to which, if our company cannot fulfill its obligations (bankrupt), then we undertake to transfer all source codes and provide training to the customer’s specialists. It has been noticed that small online stores are most afraid of not receiving exclusive rights, while large companies are very calm about this. There were requests for the transfer of source codes, and we came to an intermediate decision for ourselves that we could rely on the experience of the 1c-bitrix company: the source codes are for sale. But in a year of work, no one has ever bought it, which allows us to conclude that most companies only in words need source codes and exclusive development rights, but in reality they just need a working solution, quickly and inexpensively. To be fair, it is worth noting that for a number of large projects with well-known brands, for some parts of the development, we prescribe exclusive rights to the result. Over the course of a year of work, we have formed a fairly loyal agreement, which is actually an agreement for the support of basic functionality. To it, there is an additional agreement for modifications, which are drawn up with order forms. This approach is quite convenient and understandable for clients.

By early autumn 2013, the concept of our business clearly crystallized. We only take on projects for companies in the retail segment that sell via the Internet and/or have an assortment that is available for ordering for pickup (of course, I’m painting a portrait of the customer too clearly, there are different clients, but the basis is the assortment around which it is already built further logic - loyalty, payments, push, etc.). We developed applications for free, including design (naturally, trying to rely as much as possible on our developments) and basically offered 3 platforms: Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Google Android. Quite unusual, but even taking into account the free development for Windows 8 and Windows Phone, clients rarely asked for these applications to be made for them. The support amounted to 15,000 rubles. per month (excluding VAT, since we are simplified) for all platforms.

Gradually, we even stopped actively offering these two platforms (Windows 8 and Windows Phone), because... at that time for us this would have been a completely prohibitive burden for developers, because there are deadlines specified in the contract (40 working days, this is naturally with a reserve). By the way, looking ahead, I will say that at the time of writing these lines we adhere to the same approach to development, only we have made small changes, because portfolio and developments already allow us to slightly improve the conditions for us: now the support is 18,000 rubles. per month for all platforms, development is still free, and design, if we do it ourselves, is 18,000 rubles. for each platform one time. At the same time, clients do not really want to do the design themselves, although it would seem that they can save money. The conclusion is quite simple - the cost of the issue is not so critical that the company diverts internal resources to this work. To be honest, the figures given are not the result of some thoughtful mathematics and market analysis, but an empirical assessment of comfort for the customer. But this approach only works if you are involved in a narrow segment of the market and have experience both in program code and in a general understanding of the customer’s processes.

It’s worth saying a little about what “basic functionality” is, which we offer for free. In fact, this is all that is needed to launch the first version of applications for a retail company with delivery or pickup. Moreover, we are gradually expanding the functional basic capabilities, adding, for example, the display of related products, reviews, product ratings, banner management, push notifications (with a personal account), etc. Naturally, no functionality will cover all the client’s needs, and most often we ask for a one-time payment for integration with the back office (registration, authorization, personal account and other “delights”). How much are we asking? Here, simply, based on experience, the figure is in the range of 70 - 90,000 rubles. If something is familiar (1C-Bitrix, for example), it’s cheaper. In the near future we will add interesting things to the basic functionality, for example: geofencing - sending push notifications when entering a given radius from a retail outlet, paying with cards directly from the application (bypassing the Apple Store with their commission), etc.

Pros and cons of the business path we have chosen

I would like to reveal our business model a little, show its pros and cons. First, about the cons. There are two sources of monetization: improvements from existing clients and payment for technical support (18,000 rubles per month). Therefore, we need to constantly expand our client base, while trying as hard as possible to convince the client to make applications progressively, using our developments, without immediately “falling” into some complex, multifunctional projects. Mostly this works, but there are exceptions. Any exception slows down our work, and we risk moving into the realm of purely custom development. Custom work will allow you to receive a larger one-time payment, but it will greatly distract the developers, which means that other projects will sag. But! Surprisingly, for the client, progressive work is a big plus too! Risks are reduced, the time it takes to release applications with sufficient basic functionality is reduced, a client base begins to grow, feedback is received, etc. The downside, of course, is that we need to do the work, often without receiving any money, which requires investment to fuel the business. Therefore, I do not recommend this model of work for a team that develops at its own expense.

Pros? Concentrating on one business segment (retail sales) allows you to feel quite confident in negotiations, because in the process of work, you gain real competence in how applications can help (or cannot, if the business is lazy to promote them). Free development within the framework of basic functionality is a definite plus and quite significant. Often a client, not knowing the value of applications, is ready to try, then it is easier for him to budget 18,000 rubles. per month of marketing funds, than to “extort” a one-time payment of hundreds of thousands of rubles from the management, realizing that if it doesn’t work out with us, they will refuse. We are not making any obstacles to this and our agreement is more than loyal. And, I think, the most important plus is that companies in the retail segment have similar processes and any improvements (and they happen regularly) can become part of the basic functionality in the future, and in the present they can be offered to other clients for little money (adaptation, in essence). For example, one company asked for geofencing functionality. What's the point? We, through a personal account on our website, make it possible to set up push notifications on different platforms if a person has entered a given radius from selected stores (say 500 m). What should I send via push? For example, a reminder about a promotion or a mobile coupon... you never know what a business will come up with. The company paid a one-time payment of about 45,000 rubles for the modification, which is not so much, because we understood the value of the functionality for other clients. And yes, indeed, many people liked it and people are asking to implement it (we call it adaptation). I can’t say that improvements for one company are always applicable to others, but roughly speaking, it works in half the cases.

It is worth noting one feature of mobile applications, which I am sure is familiar to Habr readers - applications need to be promoted. If we talk about retail companies, then, as a rule, everything is not bad with their promotion channels. Usually there is a visited site where you can place various kinds of banners with calls to install applications, and, most importantly, there is a retail network with visitors. Even simple stickers with a QR code and brief information placed at checkouts can give a good return on installations. It’s paradoxical, but we often encounter the fact that a company, having received mobile applications, is simply too lazy to engage in active (and free for it) promotion, then complaining to us about the small number of orders (although we even write instructions with advice on what and how to do). In general, analytics of the behavior of retail customers in mobile applications is the topic of a separate and large post. Now I’ll note that orders go to different categories of goods (the horeca segment is best, then fashion and at the end BT&E), and their amount varies from 20,000 rubles per day (fashion, small average bill, but high margin) up to 600,000 rub. and higher for businesses delivering products (sushi, pizza) to your home. Now through all our released mobile applications we see a turnover of over 30,000,000 rubles per month, which is not much for a good, strong online store, but not bad for a young, in general, industry called “mobile applications of retail companies.”

The most important thing is finding clients, believe me, this is simply extremely important!

How do we find clients? A strange development for 0 rubles allows us to work well on cold calls. For the first 6 months of the life of the business, I did this (it worked out terribly, because I don’t know how, and I’m embarrassed), now we have a wonderful Yulia, who works on attracting clients by phone, and I go to meetings (St. Petersburg, Moscow). You can hear her laying out her last trump card - “so our development costs 0 rubles, and there are clients from your business sector who have done this and can give recommendations.” The client’s level of interest immediately increases slightly. Naturally, even such a model does not always lead to the conclusion of an agreement, and the point is not in distrust of us (we offer a portfolio and recommendations), but in the company’s unpreparedness for applications. Naturally, there are advanced companies that clearly understand the value of applications for themselves, but more often they have to carry out explanatory work. Now we have an average of 1-2 contracts per month, clients are mainly from St. Petersburg and Moscow, although interested parties from the regions have begun to appear. The average time from the first call to the conclusion of a contract is about 1.5 months, and another about 2 months for application development. Not surprisingly, a sales scheme works well in which we refer to the experience (case) of a similar business, and ideally a competitor. Without being able to disclose all the data, we simply provide some general analytics, often impersonal.

I want to give advice that I myself would like to receive at the very beginning of our business - you need to immediately have an employee on staff who will systematically deal with cold sales, if your business is similar to ours. You can’t do this from time to time, distracted by other various tasks - wrote a blog, talked to clients, talked to developers, hurried payment, went to a meeting and started calling again. We currently have a little less than 1,000 companies in our CRM database that have had at least one cold contact. And it cannot be said that there is a line of people who want to let us earn money. Call, letter, letter, call, etc. We work in a cycle with a gradual increase in the customer base and this should be done by a separate employee. In the office. I really regret that we didn’t get to this point right away and only after 5-6 months of work did we realize the need to hire, initially focusing on production (developers, designer), and not on sales. I understand that this debate is eternal, what comes first - the chicken or the egg, but I personally came to the conclusion that in the b2b segment sales come first, and only then development (production). Even if you feel some kind of “failure” in production capacity, keep in mind that the sales organization cycle is not instantaneous (in cases similar to ours, of course) and it is more important to have a client and a contract, with built-in time reserves, than strong production without constant flow of clients. For CRM, we use the free version of bitrix24 (it’s free for up to 12 employees) and that’s more than enough. If you look at the statistics, Yulia makes about 50-60 calls on average per working day (this includes both new and repeat calls). In addition to the call, you need to enter information into the CRM.

I admit that we are not very good at selling our services over the phone, but we can estimate the conversion of cold calls into concluded contracts. Something around 0.5-0.8% in a very good case. Keep in mind the seasonal factor - in the summer there is a certain period of calm, people making decisions go on vacation or simply do not really want to engage in serious discussions of new projects before it. In general, it’s not strange, if you think about it, there isn’t much time in Russia when business activity is high, people are on the ground and ready for new breakthroughs :). In addition, we have observed that lately there has been a high turnover of personnel. I often hear Yulia trying to figure out who in the marketing department can talk to her now, because... the previous person quit. And everything has to start again.

All this is great, of course, but is there any benefit from mobile applications?

There is little return on mobile applications for business, or rather retail trade. Almost every client asks for an assessment of the expected result, even taking into account the minimum investment. Here it is worth separating different segments of the trading business, because... Comparing app sales between consumer electronics and prepared foods is simply not practical. Based on our experience, we can give the following average figures. The fashion segment is absolutely possible to receive orders worth up to 1,500,000 rubles. per month after 4-6 months of application operation. If you have a business selling sushi, pizza, woks with home delivery, then with due diligence in promotion, you can collect orders up to 300,000 rubles per day (for our clients, the numbers range from 100,000 to 300,000 per day). Household appliances and electronics - up to RUB 1,000,000. per month, exactly like the “Children’s products” category. The given figures are valid for companies with an online store (maybe a retail chain). I would like to emphasize that, of course, there are much better and much worse results. There is a very clear dependence of the number of orders on the number of application installations, which, in turn, depend on the desire to talk about them.

An example of the number of daily app installations for a company in the fashion segment

An example of the number of daily installations of applications for a company in the H&E segment

Customer losses... yes, yes, this happens too

Separately, I would like to dwell on companies that refuse further cooperation. At first it was an unpleasant surprise for us - there are installations, orders are coming and... how can you refuse? After some time, an understanding of the main motives came. Our monetization model (minimum initial fee) has another significant drawback - companies that really don’t really want the application are just trying it out. There is no investment, so why not try? Expecting a fantastic return right away, they are faced with the reality of spending their time on somehow promoting what they have done with their resources. It reaches the point of absolute absurdity, which probably partially characterizes the thinking of some managers. A chain of stores, they made apps - everyone is happy. After 4-5 months they write, saying we want to refuse, because... we don’t feel any recoil. Well, this is the client’s right, but we are trying to retain it and send analytics - guys, your installations are going, screen views are growing, orders are coming! Yes, there may not be so many orders that you begin to consider mobile applications as a stable sales channel, but forgive me - the process is still in its infancy! We need to wait, accumulate an audience. Here are examples of similar businesses. It doesn’t work out, we are determined. Okay, we suggest - let's leave the applications - let them work, we don't support them, but they will work. Everything is free. We are glad, we left it, but after a while they write again - we are removing the applications altogether, because... orders for goods began to arrive again from the application, but they forgot to update the upload (xml) (!!! Apparently the robot was turned off), so customers order goods with the wrong price. We are amazed at the powerful mind of managers, but we delete the applications. We sigh and forget about the client, but he doesn’t forget about us. It says that customers who managed to install the application earlier continue (the bastards) to order goods at the old price. Do something, we are not happy with such orders and clients, and we don’t want to update the xml, because... We’re actually making a mobile website and we don’t have time for you. Hmm... strange - but how can you force those who installed them to delete the applications? The client, worried and happy that he has found a way to finish what he has done, suggests - let’s send a push to the clients that that’s it, we won’t work with you! Yes, the idea is sound, but support for push notifications has not yet been made, so we, laughing out loud, send the client an offer - let you pay for the implementation of support for push notifications, we will do it, clients who have installed will update the applications, and then We’ll tell you that we don’t want to work with you. In general, this whole story ends here.

Unfortunately, only about 10% of all incoming requests relate to the retail segment. I sometimes don’t understand what people are counting on when they ask to make a chat with photo exchange, a clone of Yandex.Taxi or others; it is doubtful that there will be successful applications in the future. We give such projects to different companies, but in all the time of our work (a year) I have not yet heard that the project has even begun, and prices start from 700,000 rubles. for development. On average, we now receive about 3-4 “incoming” requests from the site per month (they write more often than call) given the current traffic to our site. Every time, handing over a project for implementation (even without “exhaust”), I am excruciatingly offended, but realistically assessing the situation, it is simply not possible for us to complete complex projects outside the b2c/b2b sphere at the present time with the current workload. In order to cut off those who were simply curious, I began to ask the question: “Are you ready to consider the project if the price is within 300,000 rubles?” for one platform or not?

There is an informal reward on the market in the amount of 10% from each transferred client (if the project starts, of course), but we have not received anything, and I don’t think we will receive anything. But analyzing the situation, you clearly begin to understand why mobile applications for each platform cost their money when custom developed and that specializing only in a certain area of ​​activity allows you to maintain a high pace of development. More than once, while within the team discussing the next request for, for example, an insurance company or a carrier, I carefully raised the question, saying, “Should we somehow try to fit in sideways...?” but the guys in charge of production always paid reasonable attention to the current tasks, and I forwarded the application to a third-party studio. For it is said that “a flying arrow does not wag its tail” :) and although this sounds beautiful in a situation of constant replenishment with investment money...

IIDF and other sources of financing

Returning to our story, as I already mentioned, in the fall of 2013 we submitted our application to the IIDF accelerator and, miraculously, we first made it into the TOP100 projects, and then into the list of those who were invited to the acceleration program in Moscow. The IIDF fund then had two types of participation - online acceleration (full-time) and offline (correspondence). We were offered a full-time program and for it the fund asked for 7% of the business and gave money (something about 1,000,000 rubles, and part of it goes directly to training). The interesting thing is that we were chosen somewhere at all, because... in fact, we were not very different from a regular studio, except that we developed our platform and concentrated on retail. I think that the reason is that the fund categorically lacked more or less “intelligible” projects that showed at least some results. I’ll say right away that I in no way criticize the foundation; on the contrary, I think that they are doing a great job in Russia, because At the very early stages, a young company does not have many options where to go. And FRII is a good alternative. Moreover, their first set, in fact, was also a startup with all the ensuing consequences. Now, it seems, they are on their fourth or fifth recruitment, but I still have the feeling that the problem is not with the availability of money, but with strong teams with good ideas that can then actually be monetized.

In general, if you think about it, the requirements put forward by funds look like a trap. Judge for yourself - the project must be scalable, clearly monetized, there must be a team (preferably 2-3 founders). It’s not very easy to imagine that 3 adults who have to feed themselves and their family get together and make a prototype for a while, in order to then have a small chance of getting investment. What do they eat in between? Moreover, if you look at the same IIDF, then a few teams from all sets generally received more or less serious investments.

We abandoned the face-to-face scheme because... They couldn’t just quit their business and study in Moscow for 3 months and then communicated with their mentor via correspondence (video conferences on Skype once a week). Naturally, we had access to all the materials via email. video from the full-time program, but frankly speaking, I personally did not see their value for myself. As a result, we were invited to demo day - the day of presentation to investors, or rather to a rehearsal for this day. Considering that it was too luxurious to go to Moscow for 10 minutes of rehearsal, we asked to immediately come to demo day and... we weren’t invited anywhere else :). This is absolutely our fault, because... From the very beginning we did not feel, at that time, any urgent need for additional. investments and were generally surprised that we were selected for the short list of participants. In any case, I wish the guys good luck, they were often criticized in the media, ridiculing the companies they supported, but the industry is young, they have not yet accumulated experience, and they are pioneers somewhere.

But there are programs in Russia that we would like to get into, but they no longer accept us. This is a Microsoft technology grant that is awarded twice a year. Here I will make a small digression. In our work we use all Microsoft products, and in particular Azure cloud services. The client part is developed using Xamarin (formerly Mono) (they recently received the status of a partner of this company) in C#. In May 2013, we applied for participation in the Microsoft BizPark program and I really want to say a sincere “thank you” to Microsoft for having the opportunity to completely legally use all the software we need, including paid Azure cloud resources (there is a limitation, but we have not yet reached it - we optimize server calculations as much as possible).

At the beginning of 2014, we received Microsoft Startup Accelerator status, which provides more technological support and significantly expands the cloud resources paid for by Microsoft ($60,000 per year). We have a curator and I must admit, it’s very comfortable to work with. Given our focus on Microsoft products, we really counted on receiving the grant. I won’t go into depth about the grant itself; you can read everything on the website ms-start.ru. Let me just say that we applied twice in 2013 and were rejected both times. The reasons for the refusal are not stated, but in fact they are on the surface - we have a kind of hybrid business model: neither custom work nor an application designer. Semi-automatic This model is not scalable, it has significant disadvantages, and it was our disadvantages that forced us to try new projects.

In May 2014, we applied for a grant again, but this time to support our tapki project, which is a much more scalable business. I’ll tell you what happened in the end in part 2, which I’m already preparing for publication on Habré.

What do we have today?

Returning to the story - what do we have in our assets now, after a little more than a year of work? A team of 15 people (most of them developers), ~32 concluded contracts (some are still being developed and there are no payments) and a little less clients at the conclusion stage (they think). It would seem - super (except for profit), and everything that has been said about the advantages of our business is of course great, but we are linear. Trying to work in the “triangle”: application quality, price, deadlines - we get neat mobile applications, but there is another dimension - resources! The more clients we have, the more developers we need, the further the break-even point moves away. This is another disadvantage, which actually forced us to simultaneously take on a new project - tapki (again increasing costs, having secured the support of investors for the project in advance). To be fair, I note that there is no absolutely clear linear relationship between the number of people in a business and the number of clients. Some clients “freeze” for months without requiring modifications (and therefore attention) and we switch to new projects. This fact allows us to estimate the break-even point and predict profit. I would even say that we have a small but “positive expectation” in our business.

Below is our management balance sheet from May 2013 (starting the business) to March 2014. It is clear that there is an increase in income, but, to our great regret, an increase in expenses. The reason for the increase in costs is that by this time we had gained a more or less significant customer base, but in addition to simply concluding an agreement, we also need to make applications. And here we have fallen into a new trap - lack of resources. Those. we had enough resources to support the created applications, but not enough to create new ones. If we were talking about mobile application designers, then there would be no customization for clients. And here they started. The table shows that 50% is maintenance, 50% is improvements, and this ratio remains, plus or minus, to this day. The growth of personnel led to the need for us to expand space - the rent increased. What I would like to draw your attention to is the unevenness of the flow of funds. Our income consists of payments for support and improvements. If support can still be considered a guaranteed income for some foreseeable period of time, then improvements are an extremely chaotic matter. Naturally, we make efforts to stimulate the development of applications, but it doesn’t happen all the time. Naturally, as the client base develops, there is a general increase in turnover, but there are months when there are no improvements at all, and we “fail” in financial planning. It is also worth noting that the noticeable increase in costs from December 13 to March 14 is due precisely to the fact that we began to strengthen the team to conduct a new project, but we have not yet divided the costs. As I already noted, we do not observe a completely linear relationship between the number of clients and programmers. The fact is that the load is very uneven both for initial development and for modifications. We have a client (a large fashion chain), work on which began a little less than a year ago, and it’s not our fault - because... The company is very large, approval processes take time.

Management balance sheet May 2013 - March 2014 - increasing clients, employees and... losses

The company operates under a simplified taxation system (STS) and in 99.9% of cases we have not encountered problems with the lack of VAT on the part of customers. We chose for ourselves a scheme of 10% of the difference between income and expenses, but since... Our final balance is negative, at the end of the year we pay 1% of income to the state (this can be seen in March 2014 - 7,460 rubles - tax for 2013). At the beginning of 2014, we increased the size of the occupied space (an increase in costs for this item is visible), because They simply didn’t fit anymore (an adjacent room, a hole in the wall - it’s all very simple). We have a small income from electronic money and, accordingly, have expenses (to pay for a vacancy on hh.ru, for example), but this is an exception to the rule, because we work under a contract.

Starting in April 2014, we began to divide management balances - part of the team continued to develop mobile applications, and part - tapki. Our investors supported the idea itself (more on it a little later) and the fact that we are beginning to isolate one project from another. In July 2014, we came to the conclusion that it is necessary not only to divide according to internal accounting - the division must be done at the accounting level too (individual legal entities). More precisely, we were simply advised to do this by the guys from IIDF, explaining that this is the only way to attract investment money to a new project. It is worth recognizing that in the world of mobile application development, only pure developers are considered by investors to be tasty scalable projects where it makes sense to invest. And we, even the name of the platform, continue (this is a fact) to engage in custom projects. At the same time, tapki is a scalable project and if we want to attract investments into it, it needs to be separated as much as possible from the parent company.

We applied for registration of a new legal entity, TAPKI LLC (in general, I advise, if possible, to name the legal entity the same as the brand - somehow it turns out more accurately) and at the end of August we completely transferred part of the team responsible for the new project to this legal entity. I understand that the side project, which we did not separate from the parent company, introduced certain distortions into the figures, but the understanding that it was necessary to divide did not come immediately, because Any new project goes through a number of stages, and only starting from a certain stage do you assess how many resources it actually consumes.

Management balance sheet of the company until July 2014

If we take July 2014 as a basis, we can draw the following conclusion - for our business with the current load, “cleared” monthly costs will be about 900,000 rubles (this amount also includes one-time costs, for example - purchased air conditioning this summer, or an additional monitor for the programmer... although such payments should, in an amicable way, be isolated). In July 2014, we had more incoming payments for improvements than for support, but, as can be seen from the table, this is not always true. But I can definitely note that the more clients you have, the more incoming requests you will have for various kinds of improvements.

Below are (on one graph) income, expenses and final results (from May 2013 to July 2014 inclusive). It is clear that the notissimus project, as noted, is still an investment project, but there is hope that by the winter of 2014 we will reach zero and begin to return the funds invested by the investor. It is worth noting here that since we have exceeded the initial requests for investment allocation, then we will return 100% of the profit (when it occurs) to the investor, and not according to shares in the authorized capital. When we return the amount exceeding the initially requested investment, then (I hope) we will begin to discuss how to divide the profit. Globally speaking, investors give money as a loan, otherwise all shareholders would have to contribute money to the project, according to their shares in the business. At the same time, when the company makes a profit, it begins to repay this loan in the amount as agreed.

The red line is the final result of the activity, numbers in brackets, because they are negative. The numbers starting from April 14 can be considered basic for a studio that only develops mobile applications, without side projects. Can Habr readers use this to analyze the launch of their business? I think so, because... we worked in the absence of large anchor clients from the very start (Russian Post, tender for 19,000,000 rubles for mobile applications), although, of course, we need to make significant adjustments for two factors: we have an investor and we have chosen a rather strange monetization model and very niche work.

Graph of the company’s management results for just over a year

I made myself, among others, an important conclusion - you shouldn’t be shy about asking for money for quality work, even if the company is very young, and be sure (!) to insist on an advance payment if the work to be done is a little more than small. You won’t believe how many times we regretted at the start of the next project that we did not receive at least some funds into our account. This is not about customers being deceived, it’s just that this is not a grocery store - you received the goods in your hands (for example, a loaf of bread) and gave the seller money. This does NOT work here (I'm not talking about government tenders with bank guarantees). Development is not the finished proverbial loaf of bread, but a constant dialogue with the client who changes his mind, forgets, gets angry, has hopes and all this together, multiplied by accelerating input from management, etc. And if the work is carried out in advance, then all the risks are transferred to the studio. And in those projects where there were advance payments, the situation quickly moved into a constructive plane. Moreover, now, for complex tasks, we insist on 100% prepayment, trying to explain to the client why this is so.

What is tapki? When creating mobile applications for retail, you willy-nilly think about bringing together your experience and customers into something aggregating and scalable. In March 2014, these ideas floating in the air acquired something more or less intelligible and we decided for ourselves that we needed to allocate part of our internal resources to this project. This is an aggregator of goods (in the future, maybe services) from retail companies in different segments, working on all platforms, with an emphasis on product promotions and sales. It sounds a little banal, but frankly speaking, we still do not have a “hard-won” business model for the project that would have received confirmation of its viability in practice. Although it is already clear that making a competitor to Yandex.Market is simply stupid, so we see non-standard and interesting solutions in terms of bringing online to offline using ibeacon technology.

The name itself came about by chance, one morning they started discussing options for the name, made a list, and then, during lunch, one of the guys suggested this name and we were hooked. Not everyone liked it right away, but gradually, the most ardent opponents of the name got involved. The domains tapki.ru and tapki.com turned out to be occupied (and not surprisingly) and I, not expecting any response, wrote to the owners of tapki.com, reasoning that, all other things being equal, the domain in the.com zone is more interesting and promising. The answer came the next day with a price of $1875. No haggling. It was proposed to buy a domain through the intermediary service escrow.com, which asked about $100 for its services and, having no experience working with foreign squatters, decided to overpay. The scheme is simple - the money is deposited by the intermediary and transferred to the seller from the moment the whois data is changed (paid by credit card). The entire purchase procedure took about a week and about 77,000 rubles in money. Not cheap, but it seems to me that for a long-term project it is a reasonable investment. It’s interesting that when I told my friends on Facebook about buying the tapki.com domain, they advised me to also register fapki.com, because people can make typing mistakes. It was in the morning, around 11.00, I looked and was surprised that the fapki.com domain was free, and when I finally decided to register, after lunch the domain was taken - squatters are not asleep, in short. It would be great to buy the tapki.ru domain at the same time - but it’s not clear who to write to, because... There are no contacts in whois.

That's it, finally the end of the first part...

Phew... there was quite a bit of text for the first part, I hope that someone got through it and found the story interesting and useful. We will continue publishing, talking further about our successes and failures in terms of developing mobile applications and how our tapki makes the first “screams” in life. Already now, as we connect the first large and not so large online stores to the project, we are faced with a lot of questions and I hope this may be of interest to readers. In addition, we have a huge task to promote tapki in application stores, and here, probably, our “rakes” can be useful to other developers. And given that we began to look for an investor again, but this time for the tapki project, there will be something to tell in this context too. Our technical director has already started writing an article containing technical details of the platform (Microsoft Azure + Xamarin) and this will be a separate publication, because we decided that mixing “technology” and “business” in one article would not be correct.

You can follow our life in a more “live” mode via twitter or through my facebook account.

Frankly speaking, I plan to keep a diary to record the most interesting moments from the life of the company every day, because... remembering, as it turned out, is quite difficult. I apologize if some points were not fully covered or were chaotic. Oh, and I forgot - if among the readers there are owners or managers of online stores, we will be very glad to see you all in our tapki project, just write a letter to my address [email protected] and I’ll tell you what needs to be done (in short, you need a logo, a link to the yandex.market xml file and store addresses in the sign).

P.s. We will also be happy to help with the development of mobile applications and invite owners of online stores to try working according to the “development for a % of orders” scheme, because The existing volume of developments already allows us to offer a holistic solution, but there is no established model of cooperation yet.

Maxim Kulgin

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Ilya Mikhailov - about how to work in a hyper-competitive niche and why the team is more important than investment

Ilya Mikhailov, co-owner and team leader of the IT company “Utro” (Chelyabinsk). The main specialization of the company is the development of mobile applications and software, the implementation of comprehensive IT solutions.

“You need to be prepared for a huge amount of work”

Since my second year, I have been quite immersed in the IT field. I wrote programs and worked for a company that served large customers in Chelyabinsk. Gradually, I gained not only experience, but also an understanding of what processes or projects can significantly help a particular business,” says Ilya. “However, many of these ideas and initiatives, for various reasons, could not be brought to life at my previous job. I wanted more freedom in making decisions and implementing new projects.

Last summer, I accidentally found myself at a youth forum in the “Young Entrepreneurs” session. I decided to get the most out of this event, so I attended all the master classes, lectures and meetings, and listened to all the curators. I didn’t catch the cultural program: when everyone was returning from the concerts to bed, I was still “overcoming” the already tired teachers and experts, I must pay tribute to their patience. In my opinion, 70% of the guys came to “have fun”, and the ideas for starting a business were so-so. I thought that if people come and open companies “making slippers,” then I simply have to start my own business in IT!

Upon arrival, I met a friend who had also just returned from another event. The first thing he suggested to me was to open a company. So so be it. The main thing is to be prepared for a huge amount of work, colossal emotional investments, understand that you will have to take risks and make mistakes. We'll have to live by it! Nothing goes smoothly. In addition, there is quite high competition in this area. But we receive many orders precisely because of our “informal” approach to business. Clients often do not understand the entire technology, so there is no specific technical specification. Often we have to jointly come up with a mobile service almost from scratch. This is probably one of the main reasons why I like doing this.

“Word of mouth works”

There were few investments. Basically, registration of a legal entity, legal services and organizational costs for starting “marketing things”: website design, corporate identity, business cards, etc. Everything paid off after the first order.

We also didn’t invest much in advertising, since the earth is full of rumors. Networking helps a lot. First of all, I told everyone I could about what we were doing. I have many friends from the IT field on social networks. They, in turn, at the first opportunity and mention of a mobile application, refer to me. As long as this is enough, with each new project we have, no matter how trite it may sound, satisfied clients. They recommend to their colleagues, friends, partners and so on. Word of mouth works.

The first commercial project will be remembered forever. It was an application for the World Judo Championship. One fine day there was a call from the organizing committee - they asked whether it was realistic to make an application for the World Cup. I looked at the calendar: there were three weeks left before the event. At that time I had neither a designer nor a well-assembled team. I think they approached me because the task was almost impossible: ten days and no budget.

“I’ve never been so lucky before”

But I agreed, for me it was a kind of “challenge” (in English - a challenge). We met the next day and discussed the main functionality. I dropped all other tasks, took a few days off from my main job and started cutting. I did everything myself: the design was based on the corporate style of the World Cup, I came up with the functionality during development, the server part and the database, I agreed on the integration of tickets into the application - all by myself. For the English version I connected a translator. As a result, in ten days two designs were developed and the application structure was changed several times. I slept little, worked a lot. I sent the application for moderation and waited.

There were some problems: after the launch, several errors were found in the event schedule that could mislead users, and the application was already actively downloaded in stores. I had to quickly update and send out notifications about changes in the schedule. But, in general, with the exception of some moments, everything went smoothly; the application became available to users three days before the World Cup. I've never been so lucky before.

Then, in a week and a half, we went through the development cycle, which we now complete with the team in a month. I would call it intense immersion. It was hard: these days I didn’t seem to perceive the surrounding reality, I was focused only on the application. After such a frantic pace, it took another week for the normal routine to return to normal.

“Personal contact with the team is important”

Our studio's format is more reminiscent not of a proven business model, but of a startup, where much is done on the enthusiasm and ambitions of the team. And personal contact with colleagues is important - to be on the same wavelength in order to do cool and high-profile projects.

It’s not enough to just be a good manager, invest 100 thousand to register a legal entity, rent an office, hire a couple of developers and a sales manager. Although, who knows, maybe it’s possible, but this is definitely not about our idea and not about our business.

There are currently ten people on the team. We have an excellent accountant, we love him very much. We don’t do contracts ourselves either; we have a lawyer for that. Of course, you can be greedy and try to do everything yourself, but it's not worth it, I tried. The company is registered in Chelyabinsk. Geographically – Chelyabinsk, Moscow, Kyiv. Distance is not a barrier - communications are well established. Of course, there is an office, but, to be honest, I think that to work you need a smartphone, a laptop and the Internet. My “office” is always with me: I have to travel a lot to meetings with clients, to professional events, many of which are in other cities. Mobility is much more important for our business than sitting in an office. There is also no work schedule in the classical sense, because sometimes we work 24/7.

“The main thing is not to panic”

The most difficult thing at the beginning was the state of uncertainty. There were times when the order was coming to an end, and the next one either had not yet been agreed upon or did not exist at all. And you need to pay. At first, this moment was both stimulating and depressing. It’s hard to be in a state when you don’t understand what will happen in a couple of weeks, but then you get used to it. The main thing is not to panic, this is demoralizing. Calm confidence, as they say: “Do what you must, and be what will happen.” So I just gather my thoughts, start looking for orders and work. The result is not long in coming.

Of course, there were some difficulties with clients. It was a very difficult project with a foreign customer. All preliminary agreements were reached, letters of intent were signed, and work was in full swing. As a result, when the first part was published, they told us: “Thank you, we won’t work further.” I felt that something was wrong. The customer operated in very general terms and phrases: “the project does not show a systematic approach,” “there are security problems,” and so on. I was very angry then, first of all, with myself. What was upsetting and unsettling was not so much the missed opportunity to earn a substantial amount, but the lack of understanding of what exactly we did wrong in the project. We re-read a bunch of literature, studied a huge number of development methodologies, and carried out “work on mistakes” by leaps and bounds.

“When you launch a product on the market, you immediately have a dozen competitors. And even if your application is unique and successful, a bunch of similar ones immediately appear. Therefore, you constantly need to monitor competitors, monitor their updates, reviews, ratings"

Now I already understand: it was a good kick that forced us to think through the work of the team, abandon old tools, and raise everyone to a new level. If earlier communication took place in chats, mail, Skype, and telephone, now it is a centralized program that receives not only messages, but also all employee activities. The designer made a layout, everyone saw it, and the task immediately fell to the developers. The developer has released a build, everyone knows about it, testers look for errors, and forward tasks to the developers. The user has encountered an error; he doesn’t even need to write a review; bypassing everyone, a bug report is immediately created. Operational activities are completely automated, I just monitor the process and get involved if there are problems (of course, there are plenty of them too).

In general, it is very difficult to work with government agencies: a lot of approvals and paper processes leave an imprint on the deadlines and interactions in the project. But this is something from which you are not immune when working with commercial companies - your colleagues will understand. It happens that you develop or implement some complex functionality in a few days, and then just wait two or three weeks for approval. We are for free communication and trust, we meet halfway and sometimes take on development when our lawyers are still finalizing the documents. There is a certain risk. But the client also trusts us with his data - logins, passwords to sites, etc.

There is another pressing problem in this business. Everyone in the team should have a narrow specialization, then work on the project is a clear, well-coordinated mechanism. And only then is the result guaranteed. We have experts who have been in the industry for 15 years, we have “young” and ambitious, but already proven specialists who have eaten more than one dog in their business. But there are always enthusiasts on the market who have watched tutorials on the Internet and think that they alone can make a good product at a very low cost. They come to customers and talk about it. Guys, a good application cannot cost 30,000 rubles.

But on the Internet, in app stores, there is a real battle for each user. When you launch a product on the market, you immediately have a dozen competitors. And even if your application is unique and successful, a bunch of similar ones immediately appear. Therefore, you constantly need to monitor your competitors, monitor their updates, reviews, and ratings.

“For a successful business, money is not the main thing”

I can say for sure that for a successful business money is not the main thing, the main investment is people. It is very difficult to assemble a team that is professionally ready to perform complex tasks, has certain visions in this area and is able to work harmoniously. Sometimes, as in any business, force majeure happens, and you have to urgently raise everyone. It’s great that we have reached mutual understanding with everyone in this regard.

It may seem that opening an IT studio is quite simple and anyone can do it, but this is only simple in words. In reality, we worked hard day and night. Behind the apparent ease and simplicity of the process there are many pitfalls. I've already talked about some of them. It is important to understand that you will have to invest a lot of personal time and sacrifice other things and priorities. The ideal situation is when you immediately have an order and guarantees for the next ones. Because when you hire people, you take responsibility: you need to provide them with work and wages, even if there are no orders. And this is not profitable in a studio, so when starting a business, it is important to immediately establish a regular flow of orders.

We are currently planning to improve the quality of development and continue to get used to each other. We also plan to make several of our own major projects and shift the balance in their direction, but for now we are looking for a smart idea that we will all believe in.

Many business owners today need additional interactive “assistants” that automate work processes. Mobile application development is the creation of algorithms that are used to write software for wireless devices such as phones or tablets. How to choose the right development company, what to pay attention to first?

1. Application types

Development companies typically specialize in creating one of three types of applications

1. Native apps for a specific platform (iOS, Android, Windows Phone)
2. Hybrid applications for running on any OS: such applications are developed using Xamarin, React Native, Ionic and other technologies.
3. Cross-platform applications, web applications and mobile versions of the site.

When ordering, you should find out exactly what application you will receive as a result - if it is a native application, then it will not be painlessly expanded to another platform; if it is a cross-platform application, then most likely its functionality will be significantly limited. Hybrid applications combine the advantages of native and cross-platform ones, but their cost is slightly lower than the former. In general, if you compare application types by cost, then in descending order you will get: native, hybrid, cross-platform.

Hybrid applications are considered the optimal solution in terms of price/time/quality (if we are talking about development for two or more platforms). If you need only iOS or only Android, choose native. If you just need to transfer your site to a mobile device, choose cross-platform.

2. Types of mobile app developers

Among the studios that provide services for the production of mobile applications, the following types can be distinguished:

• Freelancers. These are single professionals (or non-professionals). The concluded contract obliges the work to be completed on time. Using freelance services involves greater risks and is the least reliable.
• Companies that use templates and designers. Studios create applications based on already developed layouts with individual variations.
• Firms engaged in individual development:

The last type of companies can be divided into two subtypes:

• Working with outsourcing specialists. In this case, the studio attracts outside performers to perform some stages of production.
• Having their own team of full-time professionals. A staff of designers, programmers, planners and full-time testers is available to the customer.

The choice of one or another type of developer depends entirely on the tasks that you assign to the application. It is important to take into account not only current wishes, but also the prospects for product development in the future. A simple application with commonly used functions can be made using the designer using freelancers. A complex application with unique functionality that requires integration with the company’s internal system is a matter of solution by a serious, qualified team of developers, designers, and layout designers. In this case, your choice is a full-service studio.

The question whether the studio uses the services of outsource specialists or not must be asked. The use of outsourcing services adds an additional link to the development chain, which, on the one hand, can increase the speed of development, and on the other hand, increases the risk of failure to complete tasks. Here you need to carefully study both the company and its partners so as not to make a mistake with your choice.

3. Mobile application development: range of services

Modern studios offer services such as:

• designing applications for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Apple Watch;
• adaptation of application interfaces for various platforms;
• creating mobile versions of websites;
• building programs for running small businesses with connected databases;
• marketing and promotion of business ideas and applications.

When choosing a company, familiarize yourself with its portfolio and find out the areas of its expertise. Perhaps mobile development is not the main activity of the company; the team consists of generalists. This should be reflected in the cost of the work - the narrower the specialization of both the entire company and its team members, the better and more expensive the final product.

Leading mobile app development company

Wellsoft is the industry leader in the region. The combination of innovations and proven modern technologies Xamarin, C#, ASP.net guarantees effectiveness in solving complex problems of any complexity. Take advantage of our experience and knowledge to create exclusive, high-quality software products. With us you will increase the number of sales and loyalty of your target audience. Call us - we will help you in all matters of development and market entry.

According to statistics, we look at our smartphone screen every six minutes. We spend most of our time on mobile applications. Mobile application development has already become an independent industry that requires its own specialists.

In the book “Mobile Applications as a Business Tool,” startup surgeon and founder of the Creators art bureau Vyacheslav Semenchuk talks about who works in the industry and which specialist is responsible for what.

In a mobile application company, employees can be roughly divided into three groups - technical specialists, specialists working with the client, and marketing. All of them are equally important for business and are valued in the labor market.

Technical specialists:

Designer
Responsible for the appearance and usability of the mobile application. If the application is ugly, no one will pay attention to it, and if it is also inconvenient, then it is a complete failure.

“A designer cannot be a universal specialist,” warns Vyacheslav Semenchuk. - A web designer will not be able to do a high-quality printing design, and a printer will not be able to do a web design. Neither one nor the other will be able to do a high-quality mobile application design, since a mobile application designer needs other skills. He must have a good understanding of the mobile development process and create a design that is not only beautiful and user-friendly, but can also be the basis for quality coding. He must understand that each platform has its own design guidelines (iOS, Android, Windows), and be able to create actually three different designs for each platform.”

“If we talk about a designer of mobile applications, then in a small studio he can count on 100-150 thousand rubles a month, in a large company - from 150 thousand,” Vyacheslav Semenchuk explained to the website correspondent. “In the gaming industry, the price tag can be even higher.”

Programmer
Writes the application code, attaches the design to it and makes everything work. “Like designers, programmers are rarely universal specialists,” Semenchuk writes. - The work of a web programmer is much simpler, and a programmer who writes code for your mobile application must write three different codes for different platforms (iOS, Android, Windows). In large studios, this work is done by three different programmers. The salary level varies depending on the experience of the specialist, on average from 80 thousand for entry level and from 200 thousand for “stars.”

System Administrator
, which should ensure the uninterrupted operation of the company’s servers with which mobile applications work, their fine-tuning and optimization.
The average salary level in the market is from 40 to 90-100 thousand rubles.

Working with clients

Sales Manager
“Such a person will analyze your request in order to say what offer this studio can make, taking into account your budget,” writes Vyacheslav. “Or calculate the budget for the application that you described in the technical specifications.”

The sales manager must have an understanding of the stages of writing a mobile application, the complexity of the work and the resources that may be required. His task is not only to sell the contract, but also to help the client decide on the functionality of the mobile application within the budget, so that in the end everyone is satisfied.
The salary of a sales manager in this industry is not much different from all others: 30-50 thousand is a fixed part and a percentage of sales.

Project manager
The person who will be responsible for communication between the customer and the team. Of course, he also needs to be aware of the internal developments. “The manager organizes and coordinates the work of a development team, which can have 5 or 50 people,” explains the author of the book. - Each developer does his own job and has no idea what the other is doing. Therefore, so that they not only know about each other, but also do everything with the same speed and quality, someone must manage them and coordinate their work. A project manager does just that.”
The salary of a project manager depends on the size of the company and functionality. According to Vyacheslav Semenchuk, the industry average can be about 80-100 thousand rubles.