Kubaka. Two years in the life of the lemur. Year 2012: Dive
Hi, Habr.
2 years ago, two developers from St. Petersburg began to make tools, which solves trivial, but quite relevant issue: monitoring JavaScript errors in production. What came out of it and is it easy to become a programmer startups will try to tell in our history. Of mentalities, two long trips to the States, start-bullshite, introversion, victories, and copper basin, a lot of money $200K, why does iPad need often laptop and how to get a year of free hosting.
Let's get acquainted, we have something to tell you.
Where that path led me
We started to do service, not knowing what is a startup. It was such a dream of every programmer is to make something of their own. So we will tell their story is through the eyes of ordinary developers. We had the opportunity to start doing your project, and that any nerves worth the every day work of a private company and that the entrepreneur often has no time for programming, we learned later. And yet...
And while we enjoyed the code. It may seem that the error log is very simple, but because of the peculiarities of frontend tracking javascript and much more difficult than the backend, because every browser is different according to the error with a different dataset, but IE does errors translates into different languages. And minification, inline scripts, multiple servers, and statics, that's all. And the responsibility is enormous, because the error in client script, maybe the user sites to break, and bad architecture to slow down. But we already had sufficient experience in development of high load services, so at any time since the start of the open beta we never caused any problems (except that the wheel load the page initially spun longer than usual). The architecture was divided into 4 components: the script is downloaded to the client machines and sends data to us, the aggregator receives the error reports, primarily their filters and queues, the processor examines the queue runs through Analytics and stores in the result database, a web interface allows all of this to watch. Technology is not fashionable (MySQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, PHP, Java, jQuery, Netty, Nginx), but very convenient for a quick start, it was important for us to make a prototype of the first beta. Selectel hosting in the cloud. The first logo was drawn by a girlfriend of one of the founders. The whole site is done in shades of gray, because it is not able to work normally with color. Even the engine for graphs written your because Google Charts a very long time to render. However, it is still used for more complex charts and diagrams. Paid services like AmCharts is not reached, the license for SaaS are too expensive. Graphics from Google so long to load that the whole service he was transferred to ajax. It's better in the beginning loaded goglova static than one and a half seconds (there is no caching) downloaded every time I move, plus the initialization of the charts themselves. At the start was already a few competitors, but they almost showed no activity. Even good for a startup: any investor worried if there is no competition. In the summer launched its first beta, let users all the bugs and then (what a surprise) ran out of money.
I wish you, brother, was sitting at home
In the autumn a team of two coders who think that all startups consist of yesterday's programmers first get out into the world on the first event. Before that, we spent six months sitting in the kitchen and wandered, checked LLC (via the Elbe and Modelo), looking for beta users, and so forth. And then it began.
The very first event that attracted so much attention that it was the hardest month in my life (then it was worse, but by that time already used). Some presentations, funds, accelerators, incubators, business angels, all write letters and urgently want to answer, the decision, the timing of participation in some programs burn (in September is the “season”)... let me go back to the kitchen to write code! But investment was needed, had to continue. Still no experience, and all want a percentage of the company. Decided to spend a month at parties — participated in several events to understand how things work, to ask for advice from people. In the end, decided to risk and went to an accelerator in the US at least view the world (never looked at it once), at the same time they gave some money can be stretched even half a year (alone and with no marketing costs and infrastructure). The next 3.5 months we were involved in some sort of garbage to which psychologically was not ready and did not know how all those (mentors, events, Silicon Valley around) to properly use. But these months were critical in the change of consciousness. The code itself is useless. It is important how it is used, how it is found and how to find those who finds it. And this (sadly for introverted programmers) need live interaction with people. Very much.
First smoothie in coworking
We started to suspect something. Programming began to stay less time, “some garbage” was taking more and more. It later emerged that garbage called business development ('ve been trying to understand what the term means, even though everyone around said that we need to do just that). Later even work on a marketing e-mail address, be perceived by us with joy, like work on something directly related to the product. However, we still tried and was released on new year a lot of new features, creating separation from the competition (began to follow clicks users have made all sorts of filters learned without modifying the code looking for stacktrace, show how many users are affected, in General, do not be ashamed to tell). Registered American company (accelerator), started the account in Silicon Valley Bank and moved to us hosting (ping, stability). The first money spent on domain qbaka.com (thousands of dollars, normal for 5-letter, had a long time to bargain), and was net. Managed to find a team that made awesome video of the Western level in less than a thousand dollars (now the guys take much more, but still cheap, write if you are interested). Seriously, almost none of the major services at that time, the level of the rollers was not so. Found the guy who drew the new logo.
Look, let's hang out in coworking, I have an idea for a startup, I've even risech did. Me a smoothie!
— So, from here on*** * off.
(popular joke)
And yet the users will not come, and money on advertising even with the pre-seed investment really was not. Need partnerships, promotion channels (more on this in the next post). We Finance in General were the most economical team of a startup, save on everything (purchase of a domain is the exception), although currently fashionable model for startups teaches to be a drug addict: spend fast, die young. As it turned out, even though it is the exception, but the approach was correct: with our project spending fast is a sure and pointless death, and the savings allowed us to provide a slow but immune growth, to get first to the cash prize in the competition, and then to investment to begin accepting payments. After all, the service was still free, of wages we didn't pay, and a credit card is almost maxed out. All because the service we began to make simple and close in spirit — for themselves, for programmers, and the market he was one of the most challenging: a global B2B. To buy our service will be of the company, and not the programmers of pocket, because that's what you need to provide the service without errors, but for home projects you can follow and went to the free limit. And sell to companies is not as easy as to monitor viral growth of a social service. Makeup is different budgets, different people make decisions, someone actually outsorced development, and someone too large and mired in internal bureaucracy, some net web-service, and other brick and mortar business (we use the website pizza delivery, for example).
One of the few genuine joys of the startup is to iterate the sites users be surprised how different they are (country profiles business, scale). Social network for cats to tourist resort in Canada, from major media to Dating website for infidelity spouses, from Citrix-and to home pages. But it's at the top of the iceberg, and inside — hell of the constant nerves, Zebra critical (within the company) situations. Pressed on all fronts: the deadlines of events and presentations, reports, pitches to other investors, the responses from the users, meetings with potential partners, the tax records, verification of documents, everything you need to prepare and constantly, everything goes wrong. The electronic key will burn on the flash drive at the wrong time, when hung, the transfer of money between banks and if it is not quickly confirmed, the state will take them myself. The accelerator almost two months turned out to be no money for us (as in the joke: coming startups to the investor, and the investor is also a startup), even though we already came to the States and ended the last personal reserves.
Hello, as the rain persists, and I am not dressed for the weather
he Scolded Homer, of Theocritus;
But read Adam Smith
And there was a deep economy
(Pushkin, Eugene Onegin),
If your team is small (hint: a powerful and diverse team to build from the start, if you have the resources, we have not), that in a startup you have to be incompetent the specialist in all professions that in large companies, engaged individuals. Programmer, lawyer, Evangelist, accountant, marketer, copywriter, technical support, designer, Director... Necessary to understand the blur of shares, convertible loans, the settings of nginx, what are the conference on your topic, the convenience of the registration form how much money to send to the pension Fund and that the best time to publish news. Not easy to understand, and to do it all. Every day: to Google about the action, read kilometer contracts, writing jobs, to come up with a script for a video detailing working through each scene, come up with improvements of the next version of the logo, print, banner for demo booth at an event, independently creating design presentations, to phone Bank, walk to the post office to send documents, reply on Twitter to questions about the service, to follow the updates of competitors, the list is endless. Oh, and programming-when? At night, if there are forces here after this important event where there will be many investors. And tomorrow meeting with a representative of Opera. And the day after the meetup for frontenders where popiarit service. How easy it was to go to California for almost 4 months and see nothing except the Grand Canyon.
But the year was good. On the last day before deadline, we submitted our startup to Web Ready. Little did we know that we will go to America, so the finalists were already in Menlo Park, a half-hour walk from the headquarters of Facebook, in the same house with teams of Greek and Lithuanian startups. By car, of course, also saved, so often walked half an hour to the nearest Caltrain station (the train that connects the Valley to San Francisco). It is not true that in the Valley is impossible without a car, in the fresh air is very pleasant to walk. It's a shame to abandon the final of the Web Ready, so we agreed with two good friends that they will represent our startup instead of us. In two weeks from scratch on Skype we had a few calls have trained one of them to make a presentation of our project. In the morning, once awakened, we have included the live broadcast of the final. The difference with Russia is exactly 12 hours in our 7 am in St. Petersburg just announced the winners. We won. 1st place. 500 thousand rubles (before taxes). It was the best moment in our history, this joy was not even obtained from later investment. Our friends helped us win, for which he received a prize from the generous thank you (no joke, pogruzitsya in a start-up moving even for one day), along with the girl, drew the first logo. The rest were divided among themselves, it is possible to close loans and extend for another six months, is critical to obtaining investment. At the office we save the still — working in the kitchen, only in January 2014 will move to a coworking or office. Another was a mini-grant from the SKOLKOVO 5 million rubles, but seems to get it for us.
About adventures in America, you start receiving payments, the accelerators, the major partner, the lawyers and the investment will write in the next post, there's already a lot. If you came here to learn about free hosting: startups within accelerators and other programs can obtain free of charge from $1000 to $2000 per month for a year from biggest hosting in the USA: Rackspace, SoftLayer, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. From December 2012 to date, hosting the Kubaka was free, despite multiple servers with generously allocated resources and traffic in the tens of millions of records per day. Will write more about this in the second part of the story.
P. S. We are looking for talented pretender with a strong sense of style. If you like this, please write to amima@qbaka.com
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