Hardcore Startup, Part IV

The Product

There’s no man without a dream. Everyone has some brilliant ideas. Many people think of starting a business but not everyone is smart and brave enough for that. I’ve been carrying the trade since I was 14, created 3 successful businesses, I became self-confident. As for startups, I had a devil-may-care attitude, as any kind of business within my value system was easy for me to run. But the real startup experience got me real. Create what does not yet exist and make it a success? It’s often too much even for old-stagers, I’m not saying about unexperienced creatures.

The Problem

I was building a house in 2009 and looked for the contractors, instruments and materials. A local newspaper helped me to manage everything from the list. I thought then: “If only there were a single marketplace for every item in the world, so that anyone could use anything he wants for once or twice!..” I didn’t want to buy all those instruments in order to make it a future dust collector.
I distinguished something that not everyone could see. I realized I had to probe deeper and that there most probably already are some solutions of such problems in the market, or somebody is already developing this idea. I didn’t rush to share my thoughts with the surrounding. I wasn’t afraid the idea coulв be stolen by them, no. I just knew that I needed some more time to get the swing of the things, to delve into the idea. What’s more, I didn’t want them to get my head out of the clouds.

Diving into the Idea

I was all about that Idea. I was sitting in front of my PC researching foreign experience and already existing products of the sphere, night by night I was analyzing all pros and cons of anything much or more alike to what I was crazy about. Day by day, piece by piece the new features were forming like embrionically. I was creating my own online items’ marketplace incubating a new business plan. I reached the final vision of the product while thinking about price-aggregator in an online shop. I came to the idea of a huge catalog of items and services where purchased items don’t disappear but move to personal user profile.

Interface and Logics

My friend who thought the same way and I began to contemplate the resource’s logic and interface. I drew some sketches on the paper, and my friend digitized them. UI/UX solutions took lots of time after hours. Two months of working evenings and every day after midnight. It was a really absorbing process.

Architecture

We started to think over the project’s architecture. This stage required some understanding in how to distribute the loading for the future “house’s” fundament and partition walls so that nothing could be broken in the future. It’s important to clarify the parts that can be modified and added in advance. If the probable architecture variations are not originally taken into account, then developers can refuse to introduce your new ideas in the future. By then we decided upon which program blocks should be explicit and which could be varied. Many projects are destined to be restarted if they don’t consider something from the development start. Several years can be put down the drain if you don’t have some geek that can think over for several years to come.

You can’t stew the product and finally get something fresh

We launched the development process, started to prepare presentations and posing. There the problems began to appear. We sent the future product’s description to several specialists, visited some startup parties and still couldn’t get our message towards the crowd, we couldn’t figure out the idea, the problem and the solution. The listeners were tied themselves up into knots of multitasking and versatility of the project. But the feedback from some experienced people made us rethink some details and sober up a little. I strictly refused to agree that there was something hardly airtight within the idea, I wanted to create an ‘all inclusive hotel’, not just a napsack. I tried to embrace a wide range of problems and simultaneously solve them, everything seemed clear from my narrow view, every detail was of a great necessity. I wanted to breathe life into every note, every sketch and every single part of what I created. As a result, I obtained a vast spaceship.

The People

Our gross mistake was not to challenge the target audience. In fact, we didn’t have any opportunity for that, as we didn’t have even an image of our typical client. Communicating with the audience we dived deeply into the problems’ solutions and it helped to figure out who we were aiming at. The project solved the problem of items’ availability, but was followed by logistic and trust matters. The illumination of truth came at once: we didn’t even understand why we missed the details at first! Our target audience were new settlers, students and neighborhoods. They at least know each other by sight and know how to reach one another. This was at least a pattern of trust inside the community. Interviewing students’ dorms we we assured we went the right way and found our market fit.

Twist the Knife

We had to fully redefine everything. I faced the fact that we needed to restrict the resource functionality, it is like amputation without anesthesia. It was really hard to abandon what you created, built and gestated. We cut out the ready social e-commerce catalog with item’s flypage and we got what we have now. The next to be cut was an idea of ‘anyone can be a celebrity’. When we are using some branded items, we advertise them in fact, but unlike the real celebrities, we don’t make any profit of it. We changed the situation: within Rexpax user can download links to certain items from his online home that were bought in certain shops. When his followers transfer to the item’s flypage, the user gets a reward for recommendation.

Cutting off the ready function is like giving up for adoption at baby’s birth. But the variations while creating are escapeless. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.© The flightline should always be updated according to target audience’s demands, and can’t be formed on the basis of your own ideas.

Home Online

Minimum Viable Product — is not just a ready product, we made it step by step to reach the World’s First Home Online.
We came to a question: how to bring back trust between all people and encourage them for mutual consumption of items? The main feature were the neighbors: we could develop trust in their environment. The next step was implementing blockchain. Blockchain caused a revolution in the world of international transactions, it revolutionized the Trust’s global meaning as well. Owing to blockchain trust and local ratings can be built. Taking as a base reputation earned in one’s narrow circle, we can create new trust-based relationships with new neighbors worldwide.

Encouraging people to trust, we’ve created conditions for mutual consumption of items and services, it’s the simplest and the cheapest way to change life for the better. We’re giving users free access to the global world of items and help to reach a new level of unity, communication and trust between all people. Items unite people.

Rexpax initially aims at short-term mutual consumption in geographically close and relatively private communities (housing complexes, districts, neighborhoods, university campuses).

Within Rexpax users can:
-find their neighbors and chat;
-take advantage of neighbors’ services;
-find out the latest news in the neighborhood.

Just like that, we help to reveal those who are at an arm’s and from you, share your talents and stop being invisible to each other.

The Conclusion

One of the major mistakes was elaborating business-plans, as well as sharpening the product logic which we thought was clear. We came up to some common problems: perfectionism and procrastination as a result. Maybe my logic was still clear, but I spent too much time for hypothesis testing. We needed to launch an MVP as quickly as it was possible to get a real feedback from the users. If everything is OK with MVP, the users will start the ball rolling. Hypotheses could be tested quicker and cheaper. All’s well that ends well, but it’s better when it is to be continued;)