Competitiveness of Edtech startups in Saint-Petersburg

Only one critical argument can be made to this tool: it is its name. Digital marketeer Alexey Ezhikov says in his online course called “Summa Marketinga” that all popular names and techniques, such as viral marketing, wow-marketing, event marketing, performance marketing and others, are just a cover, which hides classic marketing theory [Ezhikov, 2019]. Therefore, the tool called Blue Ocean Strategy is the same “mask” which hides the theory about differentiation, competition principles and market analysis.

Another author who votes for avoiding of competition at all is founder of PayPal Peter Thiel. He expresses his idea in his book called “Zero to One” [Theil, 2014]. He states that one of the best ways to avoid competition on the market is by building a monopoly on the market. The main idea Peter Thiel presents is that there are a lot of similar products who have a lot of common in core, but they are almost the same, and between such products there always be competition; while if you want to avoid competition and be the most powerful player on the market, then you have to create new core, to do something that nobody did before you. This is the explanation of the name of the book, “From Zero to One”.

Both ideas, Blue Ocean Strategy and creating the monopoly, are have the same fundamental which is diversification and bringing something new. So have to do startups too: analyze competitive field on the market, bring something unique and new, try different combinations of factors and finally create successful product.

I.V. Ivanova offers another approach for classification of competitiveness factors in the research called “The competitiveness of entrepreneurial structures” [Ivanova, 2011]. Firstly, she states that the competitiveness of the entrepreneurial structure is determined by the presence of such properties as adaptability and innovativeness, where adaptability is a property that allows you to adapt to the conditions of the external (competitive) environment, and innovation is a property that allows you to update, generate and implement innovations. Secondly, author presents the following foundation of competitiveness of entrepreneurship structure that have inner relations between each other:

a) Competitiveness of entrepreneurial idea competitiveness;

b) Product competitiveness;

c) Competitiveness of production system competitiveness;

d) Competitiveness in system of sales of the product.

One more contribution to development of the theory of competitiveness was made by S.G. Svetunkov in his analysis of axiomatic core of competitiveness in the research called “Fundamentals of the theory of multilevel competition and its instrumental base” [Svetunkov, 2017]. He provides five popular statements from other researches in this field and provide critical analysis. Author came to conclusion that theories which are based on any of these statements are not 100% correct. Later in the same research author tries to develop his own model of competitiveness on the market, but these details are unnecessary for this research because it includes whole market, while here we discuss competitiveness of each concrete agent on the market.

Some researches about specific factors of competitiveness

Earlier there has been discussed fundamental researches about competitiveness from different authors. In this part of the research I would like to focus on researches about specific factors that can influence competitiveness of the startup.

Competitors on different markets are trying to find every single imaginable way for developing their leadership. It is important for startups be very competitive in the most significant factors on the market, however it is hard to discover all of them and find a way for developing it. It is even harder to do it when there is a high level of competition on the market [Coulter, 2013]. However, it is most likely that there will be high competition on the market if entry barriers are low [Arthur, 2008]. A lot of researchers write about importance of innovations, but it is a tricky way, because when innovations become a part of the company, it has to constantly improve themselves, otherwise it will not have an effect [Porter, 2008]. Some researches show up that “companies have to be flexible and to react very fast on market changes” [Tisen, Andrisen, Depre, 2006], that is really important for conservative businesses. Moreover, companies have to constantly improve, be dynamic in order to rise over competitors [Kanbanize, 2019].

Startups aims to create new products for markets. There are a lot of approaches to new product development (NPD), and therefore prefered approach (e.g. Agile, SCRUM, Kanba, mixed approaches, etc.) can become a competitive factor. While there are no studies about which approach is the most efficient, there is a research that discovered that “crisis perception positively influences new product performance directly and indirectly (via formal communication). Moreover, formal communication negatively, but informal communication positively, moderates the relationship between crisis perception and new product performance” [Samra, Zhang, Lynn & Reilly, 2019].

Corporate lifecycle by Ichak Adizes

There are much more different researches and literature that can be helpful for startups in order to create competitive advantages: how to become a true leader so the team will follow you [Gandapas, 2018]; what types of people needed for creating new products [Banfield, 2017]; histories of famous entrepreneurs and their experience like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and many others; or even complex analysis of great amount of companies and lessons from their experience [Collins, 2009]. There are a lot of possible criteria of competitiveness that authors take into account, but a lot of them can still stay unresearched.

Team is also can be considered as a factor of competitiveness according to Ichak Adizes. Here it is important to underline that this research lays between academic and business fields, so it included into this part of literature review, however it could be included near Michael Porter's researches. Adizes is one of the greatest business consultants in the world. He spent a lot of time studying the only one topic: leadership. He wrote huge number of different books, so for my research I'd like to use “The Ideal Executive”, because it perfectly fits my topic.

The main innovation which Adizes made was creating a PAEI-code [Adizes, 2004]. Letters of this code refers to for roles of manager:

a) P - Producer;

b) A - Administrator;

c) E - Entrepreneur;

d) I - Integrator.

However, there are two weak points in Adizes theory. The first one is conflict between A and E styles discovered by Hassankhani Shiva: “Managers with administrative leadership style have a higher survival need and lower freedom need rather than managers with entrepreneurial leadership style. Since both of them cover both mental and psychological needs proposed in Glaser theory, so we can conclude that the proposed conflict between A and E styles in Adizes's theory is due to the difference in the intensity of their basic needs” [Hassankhani Shiva, 2016].

Adizes created a corporate lifecycle model where he pointed out which letters team have to have on different stages of company's development [Adizes, 2012]: “Courtship [paEi], Infancy [Paei], Go-Go [PaEi], Adolescence [pAEi], Prime [PAEI], Stable [PA-I], Aristocracy [-A-I], Early Bureaucracy [-A--], Late Bureaucracy [-A--] and Death [----]”. However, there are a lot of startups that had different codes in the beginning, but they were still growing successfully. Therefore, this research aims to check hypotheses about whether it is really important to pick team members according to Adizes's lifecycle or not.

2. Methodology

This research doesn't aim to create a new model of classification of competitiveness factors, the stated goal is to check two different factors and whether they really make startup more competitive or not. Hypotheses are the following:

H0: Startups should prefer venture investments from accelerators, business-angels or venture-investors and it is important to have proper skills from corporate lшfecycle by Adizes (Paei) in order to achieve success.

H1: For achieving success it is preferable for startups to have donations, crowdfundings, 3F-investments (Family, Friends, Fools), bank credits or investing their own instead venture investments from accelerators, business-angels or venture-investors.

H2: It is less relevant to have a perfect team according to Adizes's corporate lifecycle than other factors in order to launch successful startup.

For checking these hypotheses, the following methods of data collection were chosen:

a) Providing a questionnaire among startups in Saint-Petersburg (successfully launched and failed projects) with founding period from 2017 to 2020;

b) Providing interviews with founders of these startups in Saint-Petersburg.

Research was provided in the period from 1st of march to the 1st of april 2020. In this period 109 respondents, founders of Edtech startups, passed the questionnaire. Independent variables in this research were criteria which were chosen for analysis, while dependent variables were people and metrics which were chosen for measuring stated criteria. This questionnaire aimed to find out how startups funded their projects, how long and successful they were staying on the market, did they have any incomes, what was the team and finally were they succeed or left the market. The idea was to collect basic information about the project, collect data about its funding, collect data about its team and to compare it all with results which Startup had (either succeed or closed). The confidence level was setted to 85% because of small sample, while general sample is about 5000 Edtech projects for 3 years based in Saint-Petersburg. Confident interval was setted to 7% (between 5% and 10%). The results of the questionnaire will be discussed later.

During the interview, the same questions were discussed deeply. It was important to focus on way of funding the project, the reason of choosing such way of funding, the team of the startup, financial situation of the startup, competitive factors startup had and importance or unimportance of factors stated in hypotheses. Interviews were provided in online format, so respondents might felt themselves less comfortable than usual. Finally, there were 5 respondents in this interview, and discussion with them gave valuable insights to the topic of competitiveness.

It is worth mentioning that the process of data collection have been made during COVID-19 epidemy and self-isolation in Russia (Saint-Petersburg), and during this time a lot of small projects were closed. Another important note is that it is hard to indicate specific general sample for the questionnaire, because Edtech startups in Saint-Petersburg, as in any other point of the world, appear and disappear very fast, so there might be even no clue that this project existed.

3. Research Results and Discussion

1. Questionnaire

The research result was obtained the questionnaire from founders of Edtech Startups or its team members, with the total number of 109 respondents.

The first notable thing is that 65% of startups from the list were closed due to different reasons. It is good statistics comparing to results of Genome research, where stated that 9 out of 10 startups close during 3 years [Startup Genome, 2012]. Back to questionnaire, 40% of projects were closed in less 1 year after foundation, 18% closed within 1-2 years, 5,5% closed in 2-3 years and 1,8% closed in 3-4 years.

While these Startups were based in Saint-Petersburg, the had different target markets. Only 25% of Startups were aimed on Saint-Petersburg market. 34% had whole Russian Federation as a target market. 26% of projects were aimed to global market (all countries). Finally, 15% aimed on Europe market.

There are a lot of online Edtech projects, however some of them may still be working offline or have a combination of online and offline. In conducted research 51% of Startups were working online, 37% used combination of online and offline, and only 11% were working offline.

Target audience of these projects were approximately equally separated: 34% were working on B2B audience; 32% were working in B2C segment; 34% were working on both B2B and B2C segments.

The average number of founder in Startups is 2 co-founders, while the average size of team is 7 people.

Sources of finance were different for each Startup. The most popular option was 3F (Friends, Family Fools) as it is one of the easiest ways to raise money for the project. Another popular source of funding is personal capital. Finally, there goes combination of 3F and personal capital: 28 of respondents used this combination for funding their startups. Then there are Incubators and Accelerators as a source of funding, about 30 projects took one of this option (16 in Incubators and 14 in Accelerators). Finally, the least popular options were looking for investors (business angels): only 12 projects used this option.

If we take a look on this data and compare it to succeed projects, we'll notice that only 20 of Startups who used their own capital and/or 3F funding succeed, which is 71% of all projects used these funding options and 18% of all Startups from the list. To be more precise, if we focus not only not-closed projects, but on projects where earnings are higher than spendings, only 5 Startups with their own capital or 3F funding started to actually earn money. Other project which met financial success were using:

a) 1 fundings from Incubator;

b) 1 fundings from Accelerator;

c) 3 fundings from Investors.

Getting back to H1 that for achieving success it is preferable for startups to have donations, crowdfundings, 3F-investments (Family, Friends, Fools), bank credits or investing their own instead venture investments from accelerators, business-angels or venture-investors, it is hard to make a definitive conclusion. While 5 successful projects used 3F funding and their personal capital (out of 28 non-closed), there were 5 successful projects who used financing form accelerators, business-angels or venture investors (out of 15 non-closed). It means that the second group met success 33% of time, while first group succeed for 18%. It leads to conclusion that H1 is incorrect: it is better to prefer fundings from accelerators, incubators or investors in order to launch successful project.

It can be explained this way:

a) Investors can invest more money into the project than personal capital of founder, therefore there are more resources for growth of the Startup;

b) Accelerators/incubators prefer to have Startups with any perspective for future growth, they are looking for already analyzed business idea. If Startup didn't prove that its idea may generate incomes, there is low probability that accelerator/incubator will invest resources into it.

The next block was about the team. Questions aimed to discover PAEI-code of the company and to check H2: it is less relevant to have a perfect team according to Adizes's corporate lifecycle than other factors in order to launch successful startup. Among all 109 Startups importance of P (production), A (administration), E (entrepreneur) and I (Integration) were evaluated 8,2/10, 5,6/10, 8,8/10, 7,4/10 respectively. So the average code for Startups on this step of growth can look this way: PaEi or pAEi. Was is more important, when it was asked to choose the most important parameter in this code 65% chose Production, 20% chose Entrepreneurship, 8,5% chose Integration and 6,5% chose Administration. The outcome is that most of Startups recognizes the importance of Production of the product in their project. If we consider only financially successful Startups (incomes higher than costs), then we'll see that Startups from 0 to 3 years mostly choose Production as the main parameter in their project. After the 3rd year, when company has stable business model and is able to earn money, they pay more attention to Entrepreneurship (looking for ways to grow more) and Administration (optimisation of inner processes). However, if we consider closed Startups, 52 of them (70%) chose Production as the most relevant part of their code, but this didn't lead them to success. Therefore, the outcome is that while it is important to pay more attention to Production in the project, it is not the only thing that is relevant for Startup in order to reach success.

Getting back to H2 that it is less relevant to have a perfect team (Paei) according to Adizes's corporate lifecycle than other factors in order to launch successful startup, this hypothesis is confirmed, because even if you focus on Production within your team, there are a lot of variables which define success of startup.

2. Interviews

There was provided 5 interviews for collecting data for checking hypotheses. Almost the same questions as in questionnaire were asked, however the focus was to catch what Startup founders actually think about stated hypotheses and how they personally explain their success or failure.

First Startup (A) is a provider of online internships. It was founded the project in 2013. The idea was to create a platform where students and young specialists could have an internship in big corporations distantly via online. The idea appeared when founder noticed this feature on website which helped to find an offline internship, where online internship was a small part of the service. Target market of the project was USA, while target audience was B2C. The team consisted of highly inspired and motivated people, which code was PaEi. After few months of development of the product they were funded by accelerator and got investment of $20 000. This story sounds like the story of success, however this Startup failed. After few years of testing of business model the team didn't find a way to earn money on this idea, because corporates were not willing to pay for interns. This story shows that while money were taken from accelerator and PAEI-code was Perfect according to Adizes's lifecycle, it wasn't a guarantee for success of the project.

Second Startup (B) is a school of programming for teenagers. It is a local Startup in Saint-Petersburg which exists nowadays already for almost 5 years. In the beginning it was a project with only the idea to study teenagers how to program. The team consisted of 1 founder and 3 team members (excluding teachers). The code can be described as PaEi because the Startup was working hard on Production while they also needed to keep inspiration and view off future perspective. They started with their own capital and funding from Friends (3F), and raised about 500 000 roubles in the beginning. After almost 5 years after beginning of the Startup it successfully transformed into small business working locally in Saint-Petersburg, combining online and offline formats of learning. This story shows that even if you invest your own money into the Startup, it can grow successfully, even if statistics (as it was clearly seen from the analysis of the questionnaire results) says that it is less possible to launch successful project with this way of funding.

Third project (C) is an online course for young digital designers. This Startup was created as a minor part of another business, which is actually a digital design studio. This online course was a Startup because in the beginning it was not very clear, how to earn money on it and will it be successful at all. The project was aimed to reach audience in Russia via online. The team of the project were just dreaming to realise this idea of creating an online course in reality, so its PAEI-code can be described as paEi (notice that there is no capital P in this code). It took around 700 000 rubles of personal investments to create and promote this project. After 2 years project exist it is still unprofitable. Founder is planning to finish experimenting with this online course and accept losses. This story shows two things: firstly, as the opposite side to the previous story, even if you invest your own money into the Startup it doesn't guarantee the success (even if there are examples of successful projects with the same source of investment); secondly, the team was so inspired by future success that they didn't pay enough attention to creating quality product, that is why this project was so “dull” and “raw” according to comments from users, therefore it is important to pay attention to Production in your team's PAEI-code.

Fourth Startup (D) is the offline computer classes with online courses as a second priority. It was a local business focused on Saint-Petersburg as the market and teenagers as the target audience. Founder told that it is better not to take any money from somebody in the very beginning of the Startup (pre-seed and seed steps), because 1)there are not a lot people who actually invest into projects at this step and 2)the younger your product is, the higher share investor wants to buy, that leads to losing control over product development from founder. This is the reason why the founder didn't have any external investments. He had only his own capital, but it was not too big as in other stories told previously. After checking a lot of hypotheses about the product and its business model founder came to conclusion that this project is not going to become successful, and Startup was closed. The actions taken by the founder shows his PAEI-code which is Paei in this case, because his aim was to build the product that is work and earn money, regardless anything else. While this Startup didn't become successful, this project is interesting because while making all “right” according to hypotheses stated in this research, he failed and didn't lose too much resources on this project. The outcome is that whatever path founder choose for creating a Startup, whenever he plans to find investments and whatever the PAEI-code of the team of the project is, it is important to check business model with the lowest possible losses, so there would be more resources for checking another business model in another niches on another markets.

The last startup (E) is online school of learning Russian language in Europe. The age of the Startup was less than 1 year, the market of the project was Europe, combination of online and offline services. The target audience of the project was B2B. Founder started this project on his own capital which was less than 1 million rubles. After 12 months Startup didn't start to generate incomes, so it was closed. The PAEI-code of the team was stated as PaEi by the founder. Analyzing the reasons of failure, founder said that the idea of the product was good, but it was hard to promote the product abroad in Europe while staying based in Saint-Petersburg. Therefore, the outcome of this exact story is that while there were resources and right team for developing the product, the factor of not being inside of the target market appeared to be critical. It confirms that factors which were checked in this research (H1, H2) are not the only factors of success of the startup, and there are other reasons of success or failure of projects exist.

Limitations

It is important to notice that this research aimed to provide a deep analysis of stated questions only for startups based in Russian Federation, Saint-Petersburg. Therefore, outcomes of this research could not be properly implemented in any other city of Russia or any other country. Different cities have different business climate, different local markets, different traditions, which can influence on startup funding, team, product and success. And different countries have their own traditions, laws, markets and target audiences, which can also influence on competitiveness of startup. Sometimes the market of startup is global, therefore it competes not in its local market, but with competitors from all around the world. In this case many other factors of competition must be taken into account by startup comparing to factors it might need on the local market. This research analyzed only Saint-Petersburg's startups in their specific place and time and found out possible answers on two hypotheses, about funding and about the team. More studies in future needed for proper analysis of each factor of competitiveness that can lead startup to success.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The problem of competitiveness among startups is relevant nowadays, because as we remember from the statistics 9 out of 10 startups fail within 3 years of existence. There may be a lot of different factors that influence of competitiveness, but this research aimed to provide an analysis of only two of them: the way of funding startup and the team of the startup.

This research tried to give an answer on question “Is for achieving success it is preferable for startups to have donations, crowdfundings, 3F-investments (Family, Friends, Fools), bank credits or investing their own instead venture investments from accelerators, business-angels or venture-investors”. The result was no so clear for making any confident decision. However, it was discovered that for startups in Saint-Petersburg it is more preferable to at least try to get funding from accelerator/incubator, business-angels or venture investors because they meet success in 33% of cases (according to this research). The main reason in favor of this option is that accelerators/incubators, business-angels and venture investors know more about startups, business and sometimes market than startup may know, so it becomes hard to get money from these institutions without strong argumentation. It leads to deeper analysis of the market, target audience, product and other parameters by the startup, which makes it stronger in eyes of these institutions. Once they get stronger, they have more chances on success themselves, even without getting funding yet. While the “opposite” possibility is to make “easy money” from people (3F) who trust you and usually not very experienced in the business, which leads to weak analysis of business model segments and make increases chances of startups to fail.

Another hypothesis that have been analyzed in this research is related to corporate lifecycle of Ichak Adizes: it is less relevant to have a perfect team according to Adizes's corporate lifecycle than other factors in order to launch successful start-up. According to this corporate lifecycle startup takes place on stage of Infancy, when “Paei” code is required. It is worth mentioning that there is one basic rules of Adizes that there can be all capital letters is the code. So, this research showed up that capital letter P (Production) is really playing important role in startups success, because the only one startup from interview who hadn't got capital letter P finally failed. However, it was discovered that capital letter P is not the only reason of startup success, and there are a lot of other factors play role in this process, because not all the startups from interviews who had capital letter P were finally succeed. Additionally, there were not get final decision about importance of letter E (Entrepreneurship), because sometimes it may be inspiring and motivational and sometimes it can make founder blinded to problems, so how may lose something important from his view and finally fail the project.

The main valuable outcome which can be made from this article is that startups must properly analyze its competitiveness with use of different analytical instruments, which were mentioned in Literature Review section. As there is no universal instrument for analysis of startup's competitiveness [Modern competition, 2010], there are no special sets of factors of competition which will be unique for each Edtech (or non-Edtech) startup in Saint-Petersburg (or not in Saint-Petersburg). It means that each startup should look for its competitiveness factors which are important for success of their product in their market among their target audience. Analytical instruments can only help to point out some groups of factors where specific factors can be found and sort these factor by categories, but the work of discovering whether each concrete factor really matters is up to startup to decide.

One more recommendation can be made for startups: find and analyze any possible data about each possible specific factor of competitiveness for faster search of factors that works for you. While there are a lot of different fundamental researches about competitiveness exist, there are a lot of researches related to specific factors of competitiveness too. Reading these researches can bring some new insights and ideas and show factors which can be vital to the startup. Another helpful sources of data collection is networking with founders and other Edtech startups. Project can share their experience between each other and learn helpful tricks that may lead to success. Especially valuable getting data from failed projects, because it is helpful to be informed about crucial mistakes that can be made and lead to the edge. Finally, another helpful method for collecting data about effectiveness of each specific factor of competitiveness in startup is collecting data yourselves. This method requires “try and see” approach, when you have a hypothesis that something can make the startup more competitive and you implement this thing and analyze results. It is one of the hardest, but the most efficient ways of checking competitiveness factors, just try it yourself. After checking these hypotheses, it is most likely to find some factors that really makes you stronger than competitors. This is iterative process which needs time for going through. However, the possible outcome of it can make the startup more competitive.

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Appendix 1.

General questions:

1) Startup name

2) Project idea

3) Age of the project (from opening to this day)

4) Startup market (Peter / RF / MIR)

5) Online / Offline / Mixed

6) B2B / B2C / B2G / B2B2C / other

Startup financing sources:

1) Source of funds for launching a startup

-Personal capital

-3F (Friend; Family; Fools)

-Grant

- Private non-core investor and / or friends & family

-Venture fund

-Professional business angel (private investor with more than 10 investments in the portfolio)

-Accelerator / Incubator

-Other (crowdfunding, etc.)

2) How much money was able to raise at the start of the project?

3) Source of funding at the moment

-Initial financing (the same funds as at startup)

-Own sales revenue

-Financing by the founders

-Grant

-External investment

-Other

4) What is the current stage of development of your business?

-Formulation of ideas, development of a business model, team selection

-Product development, company registration

- Stable sales and business model functioning

-Sustainable development, the search for new directions for explosive growth

-Expansion, fast growing user base and sales

-Other

5) Startup revenue for the past 12 months:

-Up to 1 million rubles

-From 1 to 10 million rubles

-More than 10 million rubles

- Until there is no income

-I can not disclose information

Startup Team:

1) How many founders does a startup have?

2) How many people are in the startup team?

3) Evaluate your team according to PAEI criteria (capital, small letters or dashes)

4) Rate the founders by PAEI

5) What is most important for your startup: product production; administration of internal processes; entrepreneurial spirit and creativity; successful integration of team members in the team

Startup Success:

1) What stage are you at? (costs> income from sales; costs = income (went to zero); costs <income (went to plus); left the market (closed)

2) What do you consider your main achievement / failure?

3) What is the reason for your success / failure?

Results are available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nFk91Zt6Q9-hcQCyI-d2m1nkscjYpVzqggO30flsTKg/edit?usp=sharing

Appendix 2

Questions for interview

Startup financing sources:

1) What do you think, if there is a possibility of choosing a starting capital between your own capital, loans from friends (and other options), then which one should you choose? Why? What did you choose for your own project?

2) Does the source of startup capital affect the success of the business? For example, if you take a loan from a bank, then the motivation to repay it will increase productivity; and if you take the money from the investor, then it's not a pity to lose them, so will the motivation be lower?

3) What do you think is a startup success? (going to zero; selling; getting into the accelerator; becoming a unicorn, etc.)

Startup Team:

1) According to the Adizes theory: what should be the PAEI-code in a startup? (What qualities of a team should be stronger than others at the startup stage)

2.1) If your team gets Paei code - does this help you in achieving success? (what would you like to change?)

2.2) If your team has a NOT-Paei code - does this prevent you from achieving success? (what would you like to change?)

Separate question that might been asked to startups:

According to Adizes, at the Infancy stage of the company (to which startups belong), the Paei code should prevail in the company to go to the next stage.

-Can the startup possess other letters (AEI; --- etc.) and achieve success?

-Can a startup have this Paei code and not succeed?

-How can this point of the Adizes theory be clarified so that it would better describe reality (under what conditions can this Adizes assumption about Paei at the Infancy stage may be true)?

Appendix 3

Responses on the interview questions

Startup A:

“В 2013 году я начал идею проекта об образовании. Я сам не закончил университет, так как не видел в этом смысла и долгое время получал знания на практике, сначала в организации AIESEC, затем работая со стартапами, в стартапе. Я понял что в эпоху удаленной жизни/работы/обучения нужно что-то что позволяло бы молодым получить удаленную практику. проект изначально был направлен на рынок сша. так как именно там я на internships.com нашел такую вещь как virtual internships. в общем пришли к мысли что надо делать удаленные стажировки. у меня был партнер, который был старше меня на 17 лет и отвечал за техническую часть. с ним познакомились работая в предыдущем стартапе по началу не было никаких денег. просто собирал команду на энтузиазме так мне удавалось привлекать к разработке и дизайну очень крутых людей, которым я бы никогда на тот момент не смог бы заплатить даже 1/4 их зарплаты. в общем мы попали в эстонский акселератор startupwiseguys - где стали учиться проверять идею акселератор дал нам немного денег (20 тысяч долларов). но получить мы их смогли сильно позже из-за юридических вопросов, да и в прочем это лишь покрывало частично какие-то наши расходы фаундеров. проверяя гипотезу и созваниваясь с разными людьми и компаниями в сша приходили к выводу что за удаленных стажеров хотят платить либо мало либо ничего в результате мы не смогли найти в этом свою бизнес модель и несмотря на то что был заинтересованный фонд, мы не были уверены что в этом есть достаточный рынок на тот момент и закрыли проект. в 2013 году мой прогноз был что на этом возможно будет зарабатывать году в 2018. потому что это по сути ниша в нише стажировок. инвестиций могло не хватить дальше развивать проект, а revenue у нас от клиентов не было. Было два фаундера + периодически подключались к нам ещё 1-2 человека. Смысл в том чтобы люди могли получать удаленную практику также как онлайн обучение или фриланс работу. Уверен сейчас рынок окреп для стажировок, хотя все равно это ниша в нише где платить возможно должны сами стажеры.”

Startup B:

“Наша школа на рынке уже 5 лет, мы в 2015 начали. На старте нас было четверо, так и осталось, некоторые услуги передаем на аутсорс.

Стартовые средства скопили сами, большую часть внёс я как основатель. взял у команды взаймы, года 3 назад уже всё вернул) Удалось собрать где-то 500-600 тысяч

Мы пробовали подаваться в акселераторы, но к нам там интерес не очень проявляли, идея была не самая свежая и прорывная, но на малый бизнес хватило, как видишь.

Команда у нас активно работает над продуктом, я отвечаю за стратегическое видение, слежу за рынком, ищу новые пути развития.

На самом деле, большая удача, что наш проект устоял. Мы следили за падением нескольких конкурентов, хотя и не конкурентов как таковых, мы с этими ребятами знакомы, общаемся. В общем, нам повезло немного больше, чем некоторым.”

Startup C:

“у нас появился курс для начинающих дизайнеров два года назад. мы думали как дальше бизнес двигать, потому что по основному направлению уже постепенно подходили к потолку. решили двинуть в онлайн образование и сделать курс, тем более у нас компетенций хватает.

Если честно то исследований рынка мы не проводили, просто выдвинули гипотезу, что это может быть интересно нашим фанатам. ну и сделали курс, вложили 500 тысяч в продакшн, ещё 100 на маркетинг, 100 на зп сотрудникам пока что затраты не окупились, решили, что это уже будет скорее такая имиджевая тема, что мы не только дизайны делаем, но и других учим, типа мы крутые. именно в этом направлении это сработало. а сам курс да, он получился хорошим, но окупить пока не удалось”

Startup D:

“изначально проект задумывался как просто хобби, мне с друзьями хотелось учить сознательных детей программированию и смежным вещам. сняли офис, сделали дизайн, начали набирать программу.

деньги сами собрали, просили у друзей и знакомых, чтобы не терять контроль над видением продукта. обычно инвесторы начинают принимать какие-то решения по продукту, но мы не хотели этого

команда была собрана хорошая, у нас было общее видение продукта, мы вместе целенаправленно к нему шли. хотелось, чтобы в итоге продукт хорошо монетизировался, поэтому пришлось несколько раз его трансформировать и изменять

но в итоге всё получилось удачно, вот, учим детишек программированию))))”

Startup E:

“мы начали разработку в 2018 году, хотели сделать онлайн школу по изучению русского языка для иностранцев. наша особенность была в том, что ты занимаешься по готовой программе, после чего раз в неделю обсуждаешь пройденное самостоятельно с коучем. на рынке вообще много конкурентов было, но мы решили, что попробовать стоит. деньги у меня с зарплаты были отложены на такие движухи, 1 миллион и пустили в дело

сначала пробовали работать на B2C, но потом поняли, что экономика не сходится, и переключились на бизнесы. там стало лучше, правда пришлось выйти в офлайн, тк клиентам хотелось после самостоятельного изучения теории общаться с живым человеком. экономика проекта улучшилась, но всё равно на прибыль не вышли.

дальше мы ещё несколько месяцев повозились, потестировали гипотезы и забили. не получилось монетизироваться удачно в итоге. в итоге проработали мы 12 месяцев

отвечая на вопрос про команду: по твоей терминологии мы активно развивали продукт и шли в светлое будущее, на администрирование тратили меньше времени, про интеграцию внутри коллектива даже не задумывались, всё нормально было.”

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