What a startup is: the best ideas. Startup without a budget: what is most important? Money does not lie on the road

Startup Without a Budget, authored by Mike Mikalowitz, is for those who want to start their own business but do not have financial support... Nowadays, there is an increasing opinion that being employed will not allow you to earn enough to satisfy all your needs. And the modern generation wants to live well. For this reason, many young people think about starting a business, but they are stopped by the fact that they do not have start-up capital. This book is suitable for those who are wondering what to do in this case.

The book is written in an exciting way. The author tells in a living language about his own experience and gives examples of other successful people. You get the feeling that you are talking to a friend who gives you useful tips, sometimes describing the situation with humor. The whole book is imbued with energy and positive, it gives an opportunity to believe in yourself and motivates well.

In addition to a positive attitude, the author, of course, provides useful knowledge. He not only makes you believe that you can grow your business, but also tells you how to do it. He offers his own methods of analysis and planning, among them you can choose those that are suitable for a particular case, taking into account the peculiarities of the mentality of Russians.

The book will help you look at the situation more broadly and see new opportunities. For those who doubt their abilities or their idea, the book will push them to check it in practice and, it is quite possible that everything will turn out very well.

On our site you can download the book "Startup Without a Budget" by Mike Mikalowitz for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy a book in the online store.

The last thing you want to do after an 8 hour day is work on your startup. But if you do not do this, if you do not open yours, you will find yourself in an endless cycle of working for someone. And you will have to adjust to corporate rules, climb the career ladder and rush to the office every morning by 9:00.

How to learn to wake up at 5 am

I decided to get up at 5 a.m. and do my startup before the juice-sucking day in the office begins. I decided to become an early riser, but found that my morning zombie brain deftly tricks me and overcomes all obstacles just to get some more sleep. On those happy days when I managed to get out of bed, I just sat and stared at one point.

Productivity blogs look easy, they constantly bombard you with examples of amazing feats that mythical people perform in the morning: “8 things everyone should do before 8 AM”, “7 things that early risers do differently”, “Why get up early “… Reading about the achievements of these superheroes, who manage to save the world a couple of times before 8 am, you feel guilty for oversleeping again. Are they people at all?

For example, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, gets up at 5:30, meditates, runs 9.5 km, and then works for about 8 hours on Twitter and Square.

The truth is, waking up at 5am is hell. Morning you are the enemy of your undertakings. This is your second person, who sneakily turns off the alarm before important morning meetings and constantly presses the "Snooze" button on it so that you miss the train. You cannot trust the morning demon, but you can overcome it by changing the usual wake-up pattern in the morning.

Find an alarm clock that's smarter than you

I don't know where this tradition came from - jumping up to the deafening ringing of the alarm clock, but for some reason we are quite satisfied with this every morning shock therapy. Instead of voluntarily being attacked by a wildly screaming alarm clock every morning, find one that gradually and gently wakes you up. A slow awakening allows your body to accept the fact that you are waking up. And when your brain really wakes up, you will no longer have an obsessive desire to crack the hated squeaker.

You can use an alarm clock that brews coffee at the appointed hour and wakes you up with aroma. Or an alarm clock that glows softly to simulate dawn. It seems to the body that the sun is rising, and it is easier to wake up.

Or try a smart wristband alarm. It will wake you up with a vibration on your wrist during your REM sleep cycle, but it won't bother your partner, and they won't have the urge to kill you for getting up early. By the way, a cat, dog or a child also helps a lot to wake up, which at 5 in the morning may decide to look like your face.

Personally, I use the Warmly app along with a standard smartphone alarm. Warmly slowly wakes me up with a 5-minute chirping of birds, and finally I wake up to the vibrating sound of Yo-Yo Ma's cello. Outsmart your morning demon by starting with an alarm clock.

Establish a long distance relationship with the alarm clock

Developing good habits is not rocket science; it can be learned quickly. A simple strategy for acquiring good habits and breaking bad ones is to set affordances.

In design, we create affordances when we want the user to take an action. This encourages desired behavior (making it easier for the user) and discourages unwanted behavior (which is difficult to accomplish).

If you need to get into the habit of not turning off your alarm in the morning, create many obstacles in the way of turning it off. Set up a few alarms, download to a smartphone that doesn't stop ringing until you solve the puzzle, put your phone in the jar and close it. I want to fall asleep in an embrace with a smartphone, and when I wake up, I want to look at social networks. But if I decide to get up early, I'll have to put it away.

Force yourself to drink coffee

Those who survived the fight with the pillow, pulled away from it and even, it seems, woke up, another problem awaits: you want to go to bed again. You are still so young, there is a lot of time ahead, so why not get up early tomorrow? Oh, every day I hear that voice, tempting me to go back to bed. Morning me is a terrible type. So let's kick it in.

You can prepare coffee the way you normally would. Get up, put coffee in the coffee maker or put the kettle on to brew instant coffee. But be prepared for the fact that your morning monster will not let you reach the kitchen. His goal is to get you back to bed with all his might, and he will ignore your attempts to get to an invigorating drink.

Coffee needs to be integrated into your awakening process. The goal is to make the alarm a trigger for the coffee habit. The alarm is ringing - you are drinking coffee. Experiment with automating the brewing process.

Initially, I tried to start brewing coffee when the alarm went off. But I didn't go to the kitchen. Then I tried to make coffee at night and put it on my desk. But I didn't get to the table. I eventually started putting a cup of coffee on my smartphone. That is, to turn off the alarm, I had to remove the cup. And when coffee is already in hand, not drinking it is completely weak-willed. Make 5 a.m. the start of your day, drink coffee, and build your startup.

By the way, here's another easy way to get up early: Twitter is here. With help, schedule this tweet in the morning: “I want to get up at 5 am. If you see this tweet and reply to it within 5 minutes, I will send you 100 rubles. " Schedule a tweet for 5:15 am. You will have 15 minutes to get up and cancel it, otherwise you will have to pay off the nimble lucky ones.

Procrastinate To Wake Up

Still not awake? A little will not hurt anyone. And ignore all of the self-taught productivity tips from the internet.

I spend an absurd amount of time looking at funny cats on Reddit, Imgur and 9GAG. Over and over I refresh the pages, hoping to see something new there. Although I know that nothing fresh has appeared there.

Looking at funny pictures before bed, you earn insomnia by looking at them in the morning - helping yourself wake up.

Looking at your smartphone or computer screen first thing in the morning will really help you wake up. The blue glow of LED screens affects the melanopsin photopigment, which leads to the suppression of melatonin production, and as a result, the feeling of drowsiness disappears.

If you can't jump into a startup right in the morning, spend some time playing on your smartphone or computer until your morning demons calm down.

How to create your startup

Divide the project into several micro-projects

And so I conquered myself and stood up. And I don't want to start the day by fixing a server bug. I'm dull in the morning. And the challenge is an additional incentive to get back into the crib.

Do you know why all these do not work? 88% of people do not reach them, because it is unrealistic to raise the bar. "I want to defeat hunger in the world", "I will pump up abs" (although I have never been to the gym since school days). This is not a Miss Universe contest, why splurge?

IN magazine The Art of Manliness tells how micro-habits line up into one big change. The goal is not to do a big chunk of work for the startup in the morning, but to at least start doing something. Once you start your engine, it will be easier for you to get down to serious business.

If you want to get into the habit of flossing your teeth, start brushing just one tooth. Just one tooth is your goal for the day. Cleaned up - cross the case off the list. But here's the trick: Once this micro-habit comes into use, it’s hard for you not to finish the job.

Break your project down into micro-steps that you can take half asleep in the morning. Develop your application by writing one line of code a day. Write to the blog one paragraph at a time. Add one sketch per day to your portfolio. You're more likely to build yours by incrementing each day a little bit, rather than trying to set aside a full-time job for it. And once you’re close to starting a startup, you’ll feel sleepy in the morning.

Build a Lean Startup

It's hard to believe, but at first no one really understands how the project should turn out. Even today's monsters have spent a lot of time to feel the ground under their feet. Airbnb survived by selling flakes of Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s with political leaders painted on the packages. Slack grew out of the failed game Glitch. Even YouTube started out as a video dating service called Tune in Hook Up.

Micro-startups work well with the Lean Startup methodology (read about this in Eric Ries's book Business from the Ground Up). Micro-startups are easier to start and provide short cycle times feedbackallowing you to stay in touch with your audience. Given that 75% of startups fail, would you rather sit in the basement for 100 days inventing something your audience might like, or keep in touch with users to tailor the project to their needs?

Always assume that you are wrong. Test all your ideas and guesses with micro experiments.

When I started Krown.io, I explained the functionality of the service as "Annotation Blogging Platform". And after a while I realized that most people have no idea what "annotation" means. We tried Smart Blogging, Highlight Blogging, Feedback Blogging, and Contextual Blogging Platform. And here's a surprise: people still didn't understand what we mean. Then we added under the heading the phrase "Highlight the text and add a comment to the selected piece" ...

Test your hypotheses.

Submit your work

We all have an irrational fear that as soon as we present our project, trolls around the world will unite to shower us with dislikes. The truth is, they don't care. There are so many things happening in the world every day that you will have to try to get noticed. This is not an easy task, you need to really stand out.

If you can't even get up early and create your own, then why do you already care if the public will like it? It's like worrying that you might become a Harvard professor if you study too much. If you have been suffering with your masterpiece for a long time, then presenting it to the public will help you finally get up earlier and finish it.

Keep a project journal on a daily blog

The blog will come in handy in any case for the subsequent promotion of the project. If, even before launching, you start recording what is happening with your startup every day, here's how it will help:

1. As I write this post, I am discussing the progress of my project. How to improve interaction with the audience? Should you ditch the WordPress commenting system and switch to Disqus? What tasks can I automate? And have I gone crazy starting my own business?
2. Niche blogging takes time and it takes at least 1,000 short articles to start getting organic traffic from Google. The daily entries in the project journal will form the basis of the blog.

I blog TechMob on my Krown platform, it is located in the techmob.krown.io subdomain, hence every post promotes my blogging platform.

Get ready to run a marathon

At about 7 am you will have to switch to your main job - 5 days a week for 8 hours. Of course, I would like to devote all my time to a startup, but, unfortunately, people are in a biological trap: we need to eat, drink and sleep with other people. Damn you, Darwin!

Be sensible. Don't put your whole life on the line in a game of poker. Put some of your assets in a game that may change your life, but keep working in the casino itself. It takes time for a startup to grow, and you need to eat something.

Based on the barbell theory from Nassim Taleb's book Antifragility, you should devote 20% of your resources to high-risk, high-return activities (startups, bungee jumping), and invest 80% in low-risk activities: school , daily work, family meals. Extract best experience from both worlds. Start your startup as a side activity, make sure your hypotheses are correct, and then jump into the unknown.

Get up early and build your startup

Find an activity that suits your goals. If you're going to spend 8 hours doing a job you hate, spend at least one hour doing something you love. It is very strange to do the same thing every day and expect some new result. Don't let "reality" lead you in the wrong direction. Face the chances that will change your life. Get up early and start your startup!

As a hunter, I somehow have to watch the stories of a variety of startups. And in fact, all teams go through the same stages, step on the same rake. Having received my personal portion of the rake during the construction of a hunting agency, I carefully stored them all and took them into account when I recently launched the PRUFFI Friends app.

Count only on yourself

The first thing you will hear when you start doing a startup is: "What a fine fellow you are, do it, do it!" At this point, it is very important to remember two things. First, no one really wants you to succeed. Second: no one will help you. All the people who will shout “We are with you!” At the start will not help you in the long run. And if they do, then you shouldn't count on it. You should rely only on yourself. You have a path of great loneliness ahead of you. Most likely, from the team with which you start, by the end of the first year, there will be about twenty percent. And with the rest, you are likely to ruin your relationship for many years. Get ready for this.

Hard mode

You are very mistaken if you think that after six months of hard work everything will work out. Nothing like this. The stories of everyone without exception successful projects Are long stories. They last for 5, 10 years. Your startup will absorb you and your team completely (PRUFFI Friends now work on average 18 hours a day). Therefore, you must have a very hard physical regimen: you get up at a certain time, go to bed at a certain time, and do sports at a certain time. And so it is constantly. Your brain works in accordance with a program assigned to it from the outside, and it is very important for you not to allow it to fail.

If you are going to start your own startup, first of all, get some sleep: you will not be able to do this for the next many years (of course, if you treat the startup not as a hobby, but seriously). Sleep, read, rest - you will forget about it for the coming years. And warn your team to do the same. Everyone will plow in the same way, regardless of competencies.

First team

They say the team is very important. It's true. But understand, the story about the fact that “our team was so wonderful from the very beginning, we all walked together for 10 years, holding hands,” was invented by those who survived as a team after these ten years. Not that they made up these stories. It's just that they probably forgot how it really was.

And if we begin to analyze how everything really happened, we will see that almost no one of the first team members reached the end. Based on the experience of PRUFFI and other projects in which I have worked, I will say the following thing: it is important to absolutely trust your colleagues, but at the same time understand that at different stages of life these people tend to disappear. For a variety of reasons.

When an idea turns into a product, things change very seriously. Either the product is not liked by those who work with you, or your accomplices do not match it in terms of competence. While working on PRUFFI Friends, we tried to take this moment into account from the very beginning, so what is called the boring word "goals and objectives" was discussed and said so many times that everyone who participated in the project seemed to have developed their own tongue.

And this is very important, because if you think differently about your product, you will either have to part with your accomplices, or carry them on yourself as a kind of technical tool: after all, they once believed you, they laid down their cars, they were with you, they you were supported.

Will the family stand

Any serious business tends to destroy not only your friendships with colleagues, but also your family. So don't go to a startup if you have a recent relationship. Believe me, they won't stand it. By the time you take on your own project, you either shouldn't have a relationship at all, or it should be well-established. Because if your family does not help you, they will at least interfere with you minimally.

Attention girls. The moment your little chocolate shop scales up, you are no longer a girl. This does not mean that you stop wearing skirts, no. This means that you are no longer perceived as a girl and you get even more. You yourself stop perceiving people gender. And now comes an even more terrible stage when you turn from a girl into a creature without gender. You become entrepreneur... And by the way, when you try to “turn on the girl,” no one reacts to this (there is only one young man in the PRUFFI team. - Forbes).

Not your money

If everything goes right for you, you will make your first money pretty quickly. In no case should you take them out on yourself, even if you really want to. And you will want very, very much: you want to go somewhere, buy a car and so on. Do not do this. Your business will need this money very soon, and the more you have, the more likely you are to survive. And that's why.

Investor money is a very unreliable thing. If you started building a business on investor money, it means that you are building it on the money of a business angel. And no matter how decent a business angel is, the fact remains: this is his personal money. This means that they are completely dependent on him. He can go broke, get sick, or just leave. And he will not necessarily want to throw you. It's just that circumstances can turn out as you like. Therefore, it is imperative to have your own, comparable to the investment capital.

At a certain stage, you and the investor will certainly have a conflict. For example, you will want to somehow adjust the direction of your startup's development, and the investor at this moment will quite rightly say: "I am not ready to invest in this, we discussed such and such a business framework, you must move there." And you answer this: "And I want to come here, and I am absolutely sure of this, you will have to risk your money." This is where it all happens.

Now there is a paradigm in which you need to make a business very quickly and sell it very quickly. It works because there is a lot of easy money on the market now. They will definitely come to you with them. And believe me, there is nothing worse than accepting not your own money. This is a loan commitment. I will say as a woman: you need to choose an investor much more carefully than a husband. Because divorcing an investor is a hundred times more difficult than divorcing a husband.

Gain experience

And finally, one more piece of advice. Don't go into business small. If you want to prove something (to yourself or to someone) - then go, they will see you and take you to a large company. But if you are doing everything seriously, go to a large company first. Understand what the world looks like, what the business is inside. Get a name there, connections, make money, and only then go into big business. This will make it much easier for you.

There is, of course, an exception to this rule: it doesn't work if you're Zuckerberg. But if you're Zuckerberg, chances are you aren't reading this right now.

It is unlikely that someone from modern people at least once did not think about starting their own business, but not everyone succeeds. Why, with the same investment of effort, material resources and time, business develops for some people, while for others it literally subsides. Perhaps the question is how to find an idea for a startup. And ideas are usually around us, you just have to look around and observe a little.

The goal is to do it with quality and not like others

And you need to watch for discontent among the masses, for criticism of the offered goods and services, for proposals and arguments of people on the topic "If only I could ...". This is often the answer to the question of how to come up with an idea for a startup. It will be enough to do everything possible to satisfy the desires of the "critics". To do well, with high quality, so that people seek help and gladly pay for the services provided.

Freedom of creativity!

Interesting ideas for a startup are a prerequisite for project implementation. Offer the client absolutely new Product, a service, an unusual solution to a problem - this is the essence of such an undertaking.

Creativity and innovation are the main differences between a startup and an ordinary business. These can be already existing technologies, which have positively proven themselves in terms of making a profit, to which any fundamentally new approach is applied. Opening an ordinary sewing atelier, for example, may not get much attention, but opening a sewing atelier for pets, where you can get advice from an experienced designer, will certainly make you talk about yourself and attract visitors.

New or well forgotten old

Can be used to create a new target audience, and for positioning on the other, new side a product that is already familiar to everyone. Yes, a startup and an operating stable business are fundamentally different things. But any business starting up with innovative ideas is already a startup.

Having decided on the search for ideas, you can think about other criteria that will help you make a successful start.

Team spirit

First of all, you need to find a good team. It is better not to develop ideas alone, but to try to attract like-minded people who are ready to promote the project for the sake of implementing ideas, and not just because of earnings. All concepts, strategies are best born in disputes. It is easier to work in a team if everyone fulfills the role assigned to him well and on time, realizing his responsibility for the success of the whole team.

Who really needs it

It is important to pay attention to which will be embodied new project, especially if any ideas are borrowed from someone else's experience.

It is clear that ideas for a startup in small town may differ from those that were introduced in the metropolis. It is unlikely that in a town with a population of 30 thousand, the opening of a photo gallery or a “Self-improvement School for those who are over…” will enjoy long-term popularity, since the rhythm of life and interests of people may differ somewhat from the views of residents, for example, in the capital. But the opening of some "House of Amateur Art" may be in demand, where people, in their free time from work or classes, would develop their creative abilities, which is often so lacking in small towns. Profit in this business can be obtained both from payment for the classes held, and from participation in various corporate parties, concerts, competitions.

To organize successful business the main thing is to choose the right ideas for a startup, take into account the needs of the target audience and your capabilities.

Consider differences in turnover

Before you open, you need to understand that due to the small number of customers, the payback period of your business can be much longer than in big cities, and the turnover will not be so large. But this is a chance not to work "for an uncle", but to earn money and build your own life, while doing what you really like.

Anyone can use these no-investment startup ideas.

If you want to start your own business from scratch without money, then first of all you need to determine those directions in which this is possible:

• provision of various kinds of services;
• sale of goods of different groups;
• information;
• partner business;
• own production.

Services, useful goods, and information you need are a win-win

1. Services. In the event that you know how to do something well or even better than others, you provide your services to the relevant market and thus earn your first money, and then expand your business by attracting new employees or start another with the money earned.

In almost 90% of cases, money can be successfully started only on services! Everything here is quite logical and simple. You earn using your knowledge and skills.

2. Sell goods as an intermediary. You can choose this direction only if you really know how to sell well, if you know where to buy as cheap as possible, if you know how to find a client for a more expensive price. You leave the difference from the sale to yourself, and with this money earned in this way, you can already afford, if necessary, to purchase goods and expand.

3. If you have useful and unique knowledge that can really be useful to many (absolutely perfect optionif your knowledge has already been contacted and you are sure that it will be in demand). You need to actively communicate your knowledge and sell it to others.

4. Become a partner to your employer. You have been working in a company for a long enough time, you have proven yourself well and have knowledge or skills that can give this company significant growth and development, allow you to save on something, etc.

- excellent profit with minimal investment

Residents of small towns and especially the private sector almost always have, even a small, but their own farm (chickens, ducks, cattle) and plots for growing vegetables and fruits. What is not a startup? Everyone can just sell, for example, apples on the market, but make sure that they buy from him, and even advise friends - not everyone can do it. You can earn in this direction all year round, but even if the investment is minimal, you will need to work wonderfully well. But everyone knows that free cheese only in a mousetrap.

How do you find suitable startup ideas?

Having decided that your own business is exactly what you need, you should not immediately rush into the maelstrom of business. It often happens that even people who are confident in their idea and have good experience own production, they simply dropped what they had begun and began to implement a cardinally opposite idea that had been started earlier. And what is most surprising - they did it perfectly well! Successful people give advice to beginners without stint. We tried to collect the best of them.

1. In order to understand what people need, you need to find and clearly identify the problem, and even better if you or your loved ones have a problem. You need to make sure that the problem really exists and it is not far-fetched, as well as that people really need to solve it and are willing to pay for its solution. This can be, for example, a developing group for children or some kind of hobby group.
2. Copy and improve what already exists. See what you can bring to already ready ideathat has paid for itself many times, but just do it in your own way and uniquely.
3. Communicate with smart people, participate in forums, seminars. Develop and ideas for a startup will be born in your head! This is one of the key conditions. Those who are trying to calculate profits and come up with the most profitable business idea, of course, can also achieve their goal, but this is no longer a startup, but a business (we discussed the differences above). Do not focus on income and they will find you themselves.
4. Think about old ideas that have already been forgotten, but at one time brought income. Perhaps it is you who will find options for applying this knowledge at this time.
5. Do what you like, what you can do. Often a hobby develops into profitable business, and the question of how to come up with an idea for a startup will be lifted by itself. Cases where a hobby code also brings quite tangible profits are not so rare. Just remember, you need to appreciate your work, especially when it comes to needlework.

Real-life examples of successful ideas that paid off

The young man was well versed in plumbing. Friends have contacted him many times. He realized that this could make money, and began to provide plumbing services... Note, absolutely without investing money, he just did his job very well and with high quality, received more and more orders and began to earn decent money. Now he has opened a plumbing store and has a pretty decent turnover.

"Inscription in the Sand" is an online service that operates in real time. It allows you to order an unusual gift - an inscription on the sand, which can be made on any beach in the world specified by the customer.

"Supercooker" - the idea is very simple to implement, its essence is to cook a dish at home, then you post a photo of your creation on the website, set a price, indicate a place where this creation can be tried, and wait for brave and hungry customers who ready for culinary experiments.

"I didn't like him anyway." The essence of the project is that a trading platform is provided. But the trade here will not be ordinary goods, but gifts made by former lovers. In addition, this site also acts as a psychological office, since here you can speak out and tell about what a bad person this ex was.

Ideas for a startup without a budget and special investments were not initially considered as a way to make money. Only after a while, and in most cases unexpectedly for their innovators, did they begin to make a profit. Perhaps this is the main secret of a startup's success.

The best startup ideas are waiting in everyone's mind. Reading about the success of others, we often think about what we could have done better ... And why not? Go for it !!! Everything is in your hands, but do not forget to use our advice.

The world is one, the Internet erases borders - and this is wonderful. But only for those who have already received investments. And if you have just drawn the first prototype of your drone-vacuum cleaner for catching flies, a long road awaits you. Because talking to a business angel on a hanging Skype from Kostomuksha is to wake up the business devil in him. For presentations and negotiations, you need a personal presence, which means you need to go where there are accelerators, business incubators, technoparks and other nests of investors.

In America - Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, and, of course, Silicon Valley, where any beggar has a startup presentation with him.

In Canada - the small town of Waterloo, where the Blackberry is fighting for the life and a young sprout of startups is growing, many of which are associated with the half-dead giant.

In Germany - Berlin.

In India - Bangalore, the local analogue of Silicon Valley, where investors from all over the world come to get hold of shares of very high-quality Indian startups.

In Russia - Moscow, where there is Skolkovo, and besides it - well-known accelerators and venture capital funds: IIDF, GenerationS, Farminers. Also Kazan, where the Pulsar Venture accelerator works and Peter with iDealMachine.

Choice of assistants

It only seems that there are a lot of ideas around, but little money. In fact, there is nowhere to invest much. In reliable banks, the rates are zero. In stocks, the risk is high, but the income is not very high. But a successful startup gives up to 1000 percent per annum - there are definitely those who want to help.

FFF - from family, friends, fools (family, friends, fools). They will finance you a little at the start, because you managed to have common genes, study together or be optimistic.

Business incubator. If the project impresses, the incubator will provide premises, office equipment and a coffee maker for a small fee or share in the project. The secretaries are not given, alas.

Accelerator is a business incubator with training and supervision options. The goal of the accelerator is to polish the project so that when reading the presentation, investors do not think of suicide. And then sell. Business angel - will buy out the share from the accelerator if he believes in the growth of the project. There is no clear border between an accelerator and a business angel, they can replace each other. But business angels are usually picky.

Venture fund - from here you will receive your first big money. Or you won't. The foundation can spend hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars on your project, but only if everything is already working and growing at the rate of broiler chicken.

Answers on questions

This step will be repeated every time, from investor to investor. And the easiest way to stumble on it. Therefore, first, answer the questions for yourself.

Does someone need your product? Most startups are shutting down because the product is not needed. Yes, the public has simply not yet grown to the appendix that defines the German philosopher from the first volume of the text. But it's better to understand it right away.

Is this a venture business? If we are talking about 25 percent per annum, it is easier for an investor to buy a pub in Munich. A startup can only attract him with a tenfold profit in a short time. This is the essence of the venture business: big win at great risk.

Do you have something to show? Investors want to see an MVP (minimum viable product) - a product that can be sold right away, even if it's damp. That is, the prototype drone should at least bounce. Can you scale quickly? To grow 10x quickly, a business must scale quickly. Making another 100 beer houses is a year and a billion. Turning on new distribution channels for an app is a week and a million. And which is more attractive?

Is there a competitive advantage? To rivet the same Facebook, but with purple buttons, is a feat that will not be appreciated. Investors advise to “look for pain” - to find out from buyers what they lack in an existing solution to a certain problem.

Is this a seasonal business? The application for an urgent call to Santa Claus will set a record for downloads on New Year's Eve, but during the rest of the year it will only interest bored penguins. And this is a rather narrow market.

Registration

Startup co-founders discussing pre-seed in a coworking space over a glass of smoothies often forget that at the exit it will still be a banal LLC or CJSC with tax reporting and staffing table... Or GmbH, Ltd, LLC, SRL - depending on the country. Therefore, any investor will want to see at least the basic documents.

Confirmation of the existence of a legal entity. Charter, constituent agreement, extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, certificate of registration. The whole procedure of pumping money into a startup is accompanied by the transfer of shares from one hand to another. The investor must be sure that not a single detail in the structure of the legal entity will interfere with this.

Registration of intellectual property. If you came up with a rubber suitcase that holds everything at all, and immediately shared the idea with the whole world, as we do now, an investor, at best, will pour you strong sweet tea to relieve stress. Because someone else has already patented the product and is preparing it for sale. All your ideas should be formalized, there should be contracts for others.

Receiving the money

Pre-seed stage. There is a team, there is a working prototype, there are first buyers, there is no money for a full launch. At this stage, it is better to go to three Fs, or do bootstrapping - this is the delicately called shaking out a piggy bank, mortgaging an apartment to a bank, selling a favorite collection of Bryansk porcelain. Accelerators at this stage give money only to very tasty projects. The investment amount is usually 1–1.5 million rubles.

Seed stage. The rights are registered, the market is studied, the growth charts are drawn in Excel, the economy is calculated. Here you can connect an accelerator or a business angel. The main startup mistake at this stage is generosity from despair. If you give the first investor a third in the enterprise, then in the course of the next financial injections, other people's shares will exceed 50 percent. And venture capital funds believe that a startup with a small share of their own is losing motivation - they don't give them big money.

Round A. The project worked for a year or two, the unit-economy (income-income from one client) is positive, the growth is continuous and there is still room to grow. This is the stage at which an accelerator or business angel is ready to sell his stake to a venture capital fund. This means that you will have a conversation with a major investor who will pour 50-100 million rubles into your business.

Round B. Everything is going well, and the investor proposes to start scaling in a serious way, at the international level. Here, up to a billion rubles can be poured into promotion.

IPO. The secret dream of any startup and investor, for the sake of which everything is started, is the launch of the company's shares into free circulation. The procedure is slow and requires transparency and good reporting. But it is on the stock exchange that your share will be valued in money and can immediately turn into money if you just give an order to the broker.

Round BBB (beach, boat, blond). Yes, we read in your business plan about mission and community benefit. But for this round everything was started, right?

Growth technologies

A startup can be launched with only an old laptop and mobile. But they must have something new in order to increase the chance of success. For example, new information Technologyspecially designed for startups. If you do not know about these, then your competitors probably already know.

VTsOD. A virtual data processing and storage center is when power is rented to you cloud service and there you create a virtual machine with up to sixteen cores. Rostelecom has such a service: it leases out the capacity of the National Cloud Platform. You can scale up - for example, with the growth of site traffic - you can quickly and without contacting technical support.

Virtual PBX. If your startup is tied to a lot of incoming calls, you need multiple lines. And buying them separately - the whole tranche of round B will just go away. But the virtual PBX gives a bunch of lines and numbers of internal subscribers on one city number. Again, it scales quickly.

VPN with DDoS protection. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network - virtual private network. That is, you do not pull cables around the office, but rent a virtual server and work through it. Rostelecom also protects tenants from DDoS attacks - this is when villains overload the server with requests so that no one can enter.

Virtual Contact Center... Instead of renting a semi-basement at the price of a suite in the Ritz and moving operators there, you can order the service that comes with Rostelecom's virtual PBX. In a couple of days, a contact center of any scale will be deployed to you - it can be controlled remotely without buying new equipment.

Web video conference. If any meeting with partners and investors ends with beer and dancing until the morning, you should not risk your business. By connecting to the Internet in Rostelecom, all participants in the negotiations can be united in one video conference without downloading new software and regardless of what kind of browser they have.