In 2008, the first iPhone was in the hands of Maxim Voloshin. New Product Apple liked it so much that, together with colleagues, Maxim decided to start developing applications for Apple App Store. In the first three months, the mobile IQ Test brought developers $4,000. Several games followed. But when large gaming companies entered the app market, sales from the startup fell. Then Redmadrobot decided to create custom mobile applications. Today, among the company's clients are publishing houses, cellular operators and banks. This year, the revenue should amount to 90 million rubles.
Redmadrobot
field of activity: mobile application development
Date of creation: November 2008
Start money: 50 thousand rubles
business idea
Maxim Voloshin
Founder of Redmadrobot
When I was 18 years old, in the evenings I studied engineering at MIREA, and during the day I worked as a courier in a design studio. I was enterprising, so I soon became an assistant manager, then a manager, by the age of 25 - a project director. We have developed form style, logos, brand books and more.
In the studio, I met Alexander Alekhin, a web interface specialist, and Nikolai Satunkin, a project manager, with whom we later launched Redmadrobot.
In 2008, the first iPhone was released, we immediately ordered three pieces from America. A couple of months later, the App Store launched. It was almost empty and we thought why not make a couple of apps for the iPhone.
Success and disappointment
The simplest thing you could think of is a mobile IQ Test. Nothing needed to be invented here: finished algorithm, easy interface. We found a programmer, bought him a white MacBook for 30 thousand rubles (it is impossible to write code for iOS without a MacBook) and paid 20 thousand rubles for development. This was our starting capital.
It turned out to be easy to register an account in the App Store, but it was more difficult to issue documents for receiving money from downloads. Organizational and legal issues took three months. We sold the app for $1.99, of which Apple got 30%, minus tax, and we got the rest. In three months, the application was downloaded by about 3 thousand people.
I still remember the moment when I received a long SMS in English. I was driving around the city and did not immediately understand what was the matter. It turned out that 4 thousand dollars came to my account from the installations of our application.
At that moment, it became clear to us that you can earn money on applications. We released several arcade and adventure games and came up with Redmadrobot. We liked the word "robot" very much, "Red" is our favorite color, "Mad" is a rejection of stereotypes. From the sale of our applications, money began to drip, and we left the studio. But after a couple of months, large gaming companies rushed to the App Store, which invested 500 thousand dollars in the development of their products. It became clear that we would not build a business on gaming applications.
Growth problems
By 2011, media holdings, banks and mobile operators decided at once that they needed a mobile application. Everyone was in a hurry to beat the competition. Some did something on their own, others turned to offices that promised to do it quickly and cheaply. And so and so it turned out badly. Then they began to look for outsourcing companies that have a staff and at least some portfolio, and often found Redmadrobot.
We got a dozen orders. At first we were delighted, but quickly realized that we could not cope. Our experience and team was not enough. Big customers assumed a completely different level of development, which we did not really correspond to (at that moment no one on the market corresponded to it). For example, just for proper testing of applications, it was necessary to increase the team by a third, which we could not afford right off the bat.
Deadlines flew by, applications “fell”, customers were indignant. The situation was critical. We urgently needed programmers, designers, test engineers, business analysts, high-level managers.
Before that, we subcontracted part of the work, with the advent of large companies, it became clear that this was a mistake: subcontractors without strong internal expertise cannot be controlled either in terms of time or in terms of quality. We abandoned this scheme and promptly hired a powerful backbone of the team - top managers with experience in large IT companies who built up the staff and built our production processes. And we began to work faster and better, but there was new problem- the threat of a cash gap.
Large client companies work without prepayment. In fact, we had to lend free of charge to projects for these monsters of the market. All the money that we earned on small orders immediately went to cover salary gaps in big projects. The company was on the brink of survival. But there was no other option: we understood that if we didn’t get involved in a big game, we wouldn’t pump ourselves.
Market and competition
Entering the mobile app market today is easy. Tools for the basics of iOS and Android development are free: online courses, books, forums. According to our estimates, there are already a couple of hundred small companies on the market that are boiled in one "soup" - they fulfill small one-time orders for the development of corporate and promotional applications. The competition among these companies is very high.
A separate story is a professional industrial development mobile business applications. I mean long-term projects with millions of users in different regions. Here we need experts in the field of coding and usability, as well as an infrastructure that can carry out complex integration with all systems of the client company, implement technical support and mobile product development.
There are three or four companies in the Russian market that can take on such projects, including Redmadrobot, and there is no serious competition in this market. There are enough clients for all of us. For example, now all 60 of our employees are busy, and if tomorrow comes new client, we will need to find resources for it. Among the clients are Beeline, the Life group, the Kommersant publishing house and others.
Of course, those companies that are now stewing in the general "soup" understand that they need to reach a new level. But I do not think that they will pump at once and begin to compete with us.
Plans
By the end of this year, our revenue will amount to 90-100 million rubles. By the end of next year, we plan to reach 150-170 million rubles. Of course, our company can grow into a factory with a staff of a thousand people. At the same time, the risks of losing quality are high. Finding even 50 professionals of the level we need in the labor market is a difficult task. We'd rather lead 10-15 clients a year and make really cool products for them with a team of 100-150 people.
Our global goal is to increase the value of the company while retaining the existing staff. This will become possible if we make a profit not only from the development of mobile applications, but also from the sale of our own products.
Yes, we have already started electronic library"Business.Books" for mobile platforms - a joint project with Alpina Publisher paid off in eight months. It is an open access reader and a corporate solution. To order, we create branded applications with the right companies a set of books. We have more than 50 contracts with leading pharmaceutical companies, retailers, banks, carriers, telecom operators.
Through such projects, over the next five years, we want to receive capital that we can invest in educational and scientific projects, among other things.
PHOTOS: Anton Berkasov
* Calculations use average data for Russia
As we were looking for an investor, we created a mobile application development company in St. Petersburg from scratch and ... the mistakes that we made ...
I would like to tell as honestly and openly as possible about our experience of launching a business in St. Petersburg to develop mobile applications from scratch, what mistakes we made, what we continue to make (well, where without it) and about how we are trying to build something really large-scale and “change this world” - namely, our project of the tapki mobile commodity aggregator (the name is funny, of course, it was born as a derivative of English word"tap"). Looking back at the article, after writing it, I see that it turned out to be quite a bit of text (about 18 pages in word), but I hope that what has been said will be useful. Colleagues advised to break the document into parts, but it seems to me that a whole narrative, covering a period of just over a year, will allow us to give a more complete picture of the development of the company. In the article, the reader will find the economy (managerial balance), which "stretches" from the very beginning, broken down by cost item. We did not add or subtract anything, and all the figures are given "as is".
I will tell you about starting a business from the very beginning: finding premises, finding investments, about the main (initial) idea of the business and how it changed throughout the year, about successes and failures. Since we registered a legal entity in June 2013 (or rather on May 29), we can assume that we are 1 year old and we can no longer remember some nuances, but the main milestones with photographs have been preserved. It is important - if somewhere in the text I draw a conclusion for myself (and readers) or give advice (directly or indirectly) - I ask you to regard it solely as my personal opinion, which with a probability of 50% may be fundamentally wrong. And one more thing - I can’t remember some points in detail, so there may be small inaccuracies in terms of explaining certain numbers - this is not an attempt to withhold information, but simply elementary forgetfulness, tk. I did not keep a diary (unfortunately - I am correcting myself) and I write from memory.
I emphasize that this is by no means a guide from the series “10 mistakes of beginner businessmen” or, for example, “How to succeed in business from scratch”. Success is a flexible concept and we absolutely have no right to write about it, because. we have not yet reached it, although we are trying in every possible way, meaning, for ourselves, by “success” is reaching a stable profit in operating activities. Even though we investment project, our investors (and we ourselves) do not set the goal of capitalization of the company (customers, contracts, payments), but a monthly dividend policy (or in other words, profit).
It should be noted right away that we are (so far) a loss-making project. I have met IT businesses that literally in 3-4 months reached a payback and began to return investments (if any) in the form of dividends. It is pleasant to read about such projects, feeling inside a slight envy of more talented guys (no irony), who were able to "jump" into the market. We could not, and moreover, our original concept in terms of mobile applications, under which investments were attracted, turned out to be completely unviable. I enjoyed reading the history of the launch of Amperka on Habré, but trying on the experience of the guys for myself, I conclude that retail and software development are fundamentally different projects, and in our case, we reach operating profit for a long time and painfully, because. business transactions vary greatly in time (unless you have a very large client for whom you are gathering a team - but this was not our case).
The idea of a business and venture funds as a source of investment - what to expect?
So, our story. In the fall of 2013, within the team, which by the way is quite old - I believe that the average age is 35-37 years old, there was a feeling that we could enter the market with the idea of "Mobile Application Builder for Online Stores". You know, this is when mobile applications are built from ready-made html(5) templates. By the way, there are such projects on the market - myapps.com, ibuildapp.com - from those that are "on hearing". Assuming that our competitive difference lies in the coverage of all mobile platforms (ios, android, windows 8 and winphone) and native development (more precisely, we use products from Hamarin), we began to develop a business plan to find an investor. And although I had a vague feeling from the very beginning that our venture funds, let's say, are not quite eager to see us and are focused on projects in a more mature state, the idea was precisely to send a beautiful presentation to the main funds.
Our venture funds... A strange industry, probably due to the fact that I personally did not work in it, but it is impossible to understand it with the mind and the available bits of information. The presentation took us about a month. In April 2013, I compiled a list of funds operating in Russia and started sending out cover letter. Looking back, I understand that the presentation was, to put it mildly, not very good. there were few beautiful graphs (exponential upwards!) and tables, but more text with a detailed description of the project. But we proceeded from the fact that in order to make a decision on investments, people, even at the first stage, should carefully study what was written and only then, if they like it, invite them to a meeting. In total, about 15 letters were sent to the most famous funds. Only one answered - he wrote that he would answer in 2 weeks. But apparently twirled and forgot. Therefore, if you have a business at the very zero stage, when you have a team, some developments and a good (as it seems) idea - do not expect much attention from the funds. They can be understood, because. the highest risks are precisely at the zero stage of starting a business, although here you can expect the highest return.
And one more note - if your business includes a fund, then most often its task is to exit with a profit in 3-5 years, selling its share for more than the investment made. Accordingly, business profits may fade into the background, because. all of it will be asked to be used to increase the size of the business itself - to increase capitalization. If we talk about a private investor, then most likely he will be interested not in the capitalization of the company, but in the profit distributed in the form of dividends.
It is fair to say that now the situation with the support of the early stages is changing and a pro-state fund IIDF (Foundation for the Development of Internet Initiatives) has appeared. It's easy to find on the internet and I advise very young teams to take it seriously. Looking ahead, I’ll note that we were nominated for the very first IIDF recruitment in 2013 (in autumn) and made it to the TOP 30 projects, among, it seems, 750 applications. I will talk about our experience with IIDF and the reasons why we did not receive (or we did not take - how to look at) investments, but in general, the impressions about this organization are positive and, frankly, due to my current knowledge of the venture industry, I see no alternatives for teams at the earliest stage of development in the Russian Federation.
Returning to the issue of investment. Our partner had access to investors in St. Petersburg, who believed in us and became interested in the idea itself, and after a series of meetings with them, it was decided to open an investment for us. At the same time, the investor received a 51% stake in the new business. This process took us a little over a month (3-4 meetings, usually in one of the cafes) and the first days of May 2013 we could celebrate both the Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War and the birth of our company. I note that we asked for investments under the original business plan, which, in addition to describing the business process, also contained financial calculations of expected income and expenses. Naturally, as the work began, it turned out that the ideas laid down and, accordingly, the costs had nothing to do with reality, and in this regard, I advise you to make a reasonable margin, unless your life and managerial experience allows you to give a detailed forecast. In relation to us, we have pledged the amount of 10,000,000 rubles, but the excess of this amount, according to our cautious forecasts, will be about 6-7,000,000 rubles.
As far as I know, venture funds rarely ask for a 51% stake in a business, but I assume that this is more often applicable to a situation where there is already some kind of incoming financial flow, an interesting and confirmed business idea, and a solid team. We definitely did not fall under this definition, because. there was an idea, some developments from developers from old places of work and a business plan. All. It seems to me that this is a completely normal "price" for the high risk of investing from zero, because. otherwise (a smaller share in the investor's authorized capital), they can offer parity investment.
From my experience, I will allow myself to advise some more points in communicating with investors. No need to assure success, no matter how paradoxical it sounds. Investors are serious people and, of course, expecting a return on investment many times over, they understand that market conditions are not a greenhouse for growing cucumbers with fertilizers, but not a very friendly environment for beginners. Therefore, when evaluating your chances, try to be extremely honest with yourself and with people who are ready to invest. Doubts are completely normal, I suppose that indefatigable optimism can simply do harm.
Next, write down the terms of the dividend policy. At least spell them out. It is clear that we all want to "change the world", but the goal of business is ultimately income and it is good to hear the investor's position on his vision of sharing future dividends. Ask a question about the future co-investor and whether your investor will be ready to dilute his share. For example, we are currently in a series of negotiations on co-investment, as as already mentioned, our expectations did not match reality, and the new co-investor may further allow the business to develop, while possibly returning the invested funds of your first investor to buy out part of his share (partially or completely).
What does it look like in practice? In our case, the investor is ready (theoretically) to sell 25% of his 51% in the authorized capital, subject to not just a buyout, but also the opening of additional investment in the amount agreed by the parties. And, by the way, such a model is quite convenient, because a co-investor comes to an already operating business, showing some financial indicators, having an accumulated client base, etc. It is worth noting here that, from the experience of communicating with venture capital funds, it is very rarely intended to simply buy out the share of the founders (only if it is not a profitable, fast-growing business), but to receive a share in exchange for future investments. For example, I recently held a dialogue with a German fund, which outlined its position - 25% of the shares for opening an investment horizon of 40-50,000,000 rubles. for 3 years (namely, the opening of financing in exchange for shares).
Of course, the investor first of all wants to return the investment, to remain with a certain block of shares (preferably blocking), not to invest further and expect dividends. At the same time, a new co-investor, considering a company with a negative operating balance, may oppose the buyout of a share, and here it is possible to propose a scheme in which the share buyback does not occur, the new co-investor continues to invest in the company, but upon reaching self-sufficiency and receiving the first profits , the first investor receives dividends based on his initial share until he returns his investment.
Separately, I note that we were extremely lucky with investors, because. we are free to accept any management decisions, which, of course, are aimed at increasing income. Some may argue with such a statement, reasonably pointing out that an investor who participates in strategic management, maybe somewhere "open blurred eyes" on a number important issues. But there is a fine line between delicate participation and a situation where the investor really interferes in operational management, creating a simply nervous situation in the team.
Organizational issues of launching a company - how it was
Getting back to starting our business. The whole of May 2013 was spent on organizational issues - registration of a legal entity, opening a bank account (we chose the rather conservative Nordea bank - Scandinavian roots, because there were familiar leaders, and the bank's "pedigree" inspired confidence) and search premises. I don’t think it’s worth dwelling on this, because. the processes are quite simple and are repeatedly described, including on Habré. Of the nuances - I strongly advise against separating the legal address from the actual one, because. our fiscal authorities are now quite strictly monitoring this and ... well, why do you need these problems at the launch? By registering, you can use the services of an intermediary or do it yourself.
We decided to name the company after the domain name. And we started looking for the latter, keeping in mind the domain in the .com zone, because. after all, we made a constructor, which means that the whole world should be subject to us! Not everything worked out for us, except for buying a domain - notissimus.com; the word notissimus can be translated from Latin as "well-known", "recognizable". The main thing is that the domain was free and a search for trademarks in the United States also did not return matches (I searched at www.uspto.gov/trademarks, although the logic suggests that when registering a trademark, I usually register a domain name right away). It is pronounced as notissimo with emphasis, sometimes we are called funny. When opening a bank account (we have a legal entity with the same name as the domain - LLC NOTISSIMUS), we got a funny story. The bank employee asked the name of the legal entity again, and then asked: “what does this mean?”, Having heard the translation from Latin: what is it they say “it is well-known”, apologized and said that she did not know, although it seems that the term is widely known to everyone :) .
We were lucky to find a room in the city center, next to St. Isaac's Cathedral with a more than reasonable rate of 1,100 rubles. per m2. How did you search? We used all available free resources (no agents), plus I personally drove around the city center and looked for an intriguing inscription "rent" - this is a fairly effective method. It was important for us and the investor to find an office in the center, near the metro (this is convenient for both employees and clients whom we invite to visit, and it adds a little importance to the young company when you say that the office is next to St. Isaac's Cathedral). We are still working in this room, gradually expanding due to adjacent rooms - a class "C" business center, which is planned to turn into a class "A" (with all the ensuing consequences, including "leaking" us). The room (45 m2) was redecorated to be pleasing to the eye, spending about 45,000 rubles on it. along with materials (guests from the southern republics worked). We took the liberty of renting two parking spaces. in the center of St. Petersburg near Isaac, there is no chance to find a parking lot and they understood that this would be a permanent annoying factor at the beginning of the working day (5,000 rubles for one place - looking back, I clearly understand that it was definitely worth it).
In our business plan, we had funds for a one-time purchase of fixed assets (OS) to launch the company. What is included? Computer technology, peripherals, tables, chairs, etc. All purchases were made on the site ulmart.ru, along the way, having received quite a few bonus points to the account - it’s convenient, because. you will definitely forget something from the little things, what kind of cable or extension cord is there. Everything was bought reasonably - simple - necessary (sometimes very simple, then I had to improve the PC - buy more memory, so I advise you not to completely reduce the cost of equipment for daily work). Below is a fragment of our managerial p/l (income - expenses) for May 2013. No one from the team has received a salary yet, only the cost of rent (partially, I don’t remember why such an amount), purchase of fixed assets, opening an account, registration of a legal entity and so on. No income, only expenses in the amount of 517,000 rubles. (Founder's contribution to the company's account as an investment loan).
Financial results of work a few months after the launch
Management balance May-September 2013 and we are gradually spending investors' money
If you look at p/l until September 2013, you can see an increase in the cost of the payroll and the purchase of fixed assets (administrative expenses - repairs, notary expenses, office supplies, some non-IT OS, goodies for the office, water, etc.) . But there was also a portfolio on our website (modest, of course). Legal Expenses - We engaged a third party to review our application development contract on a one-time basis. The main emphasis was placed on exclusive rights to the result of the work. Our model of work does not imply the transfer of exclusive rights to the source code. There are several reasons for this, and the most important one is that we have a central server part, which is common to all projects, plus - we are very “generous” replicating the achievements of one client for others. By transferring exclusive rights, we expose ourselves to too high a risk of possible disputes with customers. Therefore, we transfer non-exclusive rights, and the client can, according to the contract, do whatever he wants with the applications. For all the time of our work, there have not yet been any special disputes with the legal departments of customers, because we position the solution as a platform to which you can connect. The contract provides for a clause according to which, if our company cannot fulfill its obligations (bankrupt), then we undertake to transfer all source codes and train the customer's specialists. It has been noticed that small online stores are most afraid of not obtaining exclusive rights, while large companies take it very calmly. There were requests for the transfer of source codes, and we came to an intermediate solution for ourselves that we can rely on the experience of 1c-bitrix: source codes are sold. But in a year of work, no one has ever bought it, which allows us to conclude that most companies only need source codes and exclusive development rights in words, but in reality they just need a working solution, quickly and inexpensively. In fairness, it should be noted that for a number of large projects with famous brands, we, for some parts of the development, prescribe exclusive rights to the result. For a year of work, we have formed a fairly loyal contract, which is actually a contract for the maintenance of basic functionality. To him, there is an additional agreement for improvements, which are drawn up with order forms. This approach is quite convenient and understandable to customers.
By early autumn 2013, the concept of our business clearly crystallized. We only take on projects for companies in the retail segment that sell via the Internet and/or have an assortment that is available for self-delivery orders (this, of course, I paint the portrait of the customer too clearly, there are different clients, but the basis is the assortment that is already being built around further logic - loyalty, payments, push, etc.). We developed applications for free, including design (of course, trying to rely on our work as much as possible) and basically offered 3 platforms: Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Google Android. Quite unusual, but even considering the free development for Windows 8 and Windows Phone, customers rarely asked to make these applications for them. Support amounted to 15,000 rubles. per month (without VAT, because we are on a simplified system) for all platforms.
Gradually, we even stopped actively offering these two platforms (Windows 8 and Windows Phone), because. at that time, for us, this would have been a completely prohibitive burden for developers, because there are deadlines prescribed in the contract (40 working days, this is natural with a margin). By the way, looking ahead, I’ll say that at the time of writing these lines, we adhere to the same approach to development, we only made minor changes, because. portfolio and developments already allow us to slightly improve the conditions for us: now the support is 18,000 rubles. per month for all platforms, development is still free, and design, if we do it ourselves - 18,000 rubles. for each platform once. At the same time, clients do not really want to do the design themselves, although it would seem that they can save money. The conclusion is quite simple - the price of the issue is not so critical that the company diverts internal resources to this work. To be honest, these figures are not the result of some thoughtful mathematics and market analysis, but an empirical assessment of comfort for the customer. But this approach only works if you are engaged in a narrow market segment and have experience both in the program code and in a general understanding of the customer's processes.
It is worth saying a little about the fact that there is such a “basic functionality” that we offer for free. In fact, this is all it takes to launch the first version of applications for a retail company with delivery or pickup. Moreover, we are gradually expanding the functionality of the basic capabilities, adding, for example - output related products, reviews, product ratings, banner management, push notifications (with a personal account), etc. Naturally, no functionality will cover all the needs of the client, and most often we ask for a one-time payment for integration with the back office (registration, authorization, Personal Area and other "charms"). How much are we asking? Here, simply, based on experience, the figure is in the range of 70 - 90,000 rubles. If something familiar (1C-Bitrix, for example) - cheaper. In the near future we will add interesting things to the basic functionality, for example: geofencing - sending a push notification when entering a given radius from outlet, payment by cards immediately from the application (bypassing the Apple Store with their commission), etc.
Pros and cons of our chosen business path
I want to reveal a little about our business model, to show its pros and cons. First about the cons. There are two sources of monetization: improvements from existing customers and payment for technical support (18,000 rubles per month). Therefore, we need to constantly expand the client base, while trying as much as possible to convince the client to make applications progressively, using our developments, without “falling down” immediately into some complex, multifunctional projects. This generally works, but there are exceptions. Any exception slows down our work, and we risk moving into the plane of purely custom development. Custom work will allow you to get a larger one-time payment, but it will greatly distract developers, which means that other projects will “sag”. But! Surprisingly, for the client, progressive work is a big plus too! The risks are reduced, the time for the release of applications with sufficient basic functionality is reduced, the client base is beginning to be recruited, Feedback and so on. The downside, of course, is that we need to get the job done, often without getting any money, which requires investment to feed the business. Therefore, I do not recommend this model of work for a team that develops at its own expense.
Pros? Concentration on one business segment ( retail sales) allows you to feel quite confident in the negotiations, because in the process of work, you get real competence how applications can help (or cannot, if the business is too lazy to promote them). Free development within the framework of the basic functionality is a definite plus and quite significant. Often a client, not knowing the value of applications, is ready to try, then it is easier for him to budget 18,000 rubles. per month of marketing funds than to “knock out” a one-time payment of hundreds of thousands of rubles from the management, realizing that if it doesn’t work out with us, they will refuse. We do not create any obstacles for this, and our contract is more than loyal. And, I think, the most important plus is that companies in the retail segment have similar processes and any improvements (and they are regularly available) can become part of the basic functionality in the future, and in the present they are offered for little money to other customers (essentially adaptation). For example, one company asked to make geofencing functionality. What is the point? We, through a personal account on our website, give the opportunity to set up a push notification to different platforms if a person has entered a given radius from selected stores (say 500 m.). What to send by push? For example, a reminder of a promotion or a mobile coupon ... but you never know what the business will come up with. The company paid for the revision a one-time order of 45,000 rubles, which is not so much, because. we understood the value of functionality for other customers. And yes, indeed, many people liked it and people are asking to be implemented (we call it adaptation). I can’t say that improvements for one company are always applicable to others, but roughly speaking, in half the cases it works.
It is worth noting one feature of mobile applications, which I am sure Habr's readers are familiar with - applications need to be promoted. If we talk about retail companies, then, as a rule, everything is not bad with promotion channels. Usually there is a visited site where you can place all sorts of banners with calls to install applications, and, most importantly, there is a retail network with visitors. Even simple stickers with a QR code and brief information placed at the checkout can give a good return on installs. Paradoxically, we often encounter the fact that a company, having received mobile applications, is simply too lazy to engage in active (and free for it) promotion, then complaining to us about a small number of orders (although we even write instructions with advice on what and how to do). In general, the analytics of the behavior of retail customers in mobile applications is the topic of a separate and long post, now I will note that orders go to different categories of goods (best of all, the horeca segment, then fashion and at the end of B&E), and their amount varies from 20,000 rubles per day (fashion, small average check, but high marginality) up to 600,000 rubles. and above for businesses delivering groceries (sushi, pizza) to your home. Now, through all our released mobile applications, we see a turnover of over 30,000,000 rubles per month, which is not so much for a good, strong online store, but not bad for a young, in general, industry called "mobile applications retail companies».
The most important thing is to find customers, believe me - it's just paramount!
How do we find clients? A strange development for 0 rubles allows us to work well on cold calls. For the first 6 months of my business life, I did this (it turned out terrible, because I don’t know how, and I’m embarrassed), now we have a wonderful Julia who is working on attracting customers by phone, and I go to meetings (St. Petersburg, Moscow). You can hear how she lays out the last trump card - "so we have a development of 0 rubles, and there are clients from your business area who have done this and can give recommendations." The degree of customer interest immediately rises slightly. Naturally, even such a model does not always lead to the conclusion of an agreement, and the point is not in distrust of us (we offer a portfolio and recommendations), but in the company's unpreparedness for applications. Naturally, there are advanced companies that are clearly aware of the value of applications for themselves, but more often it is necessary to carry out explanatory work. Now we have an average of 1-2 contracts per month, clients are mainly from St. Petersburg and Moscow, although interested parties from the regions have begun to appear. The average time from the first call to the conclusion of the contract is about 1.5 months, and about 2 more months for the development of applications. Not surprisingly, the sales scheme works well, in which we refer to the experience (case) of a similar business, and ideally a competitor. Not being able to disclose all the data, we simply provide some general analytics, often anonymized.
I want to give advice that I myself would like to receive at the very beginning of our business - you need to immediately have an employee on the staff who will systematically deal with cold sales if your business is similar to ours. You can’t do this from time to time, being distracted by various other tasks - wrote a blog, talked to clients, talked to developers, hurried with payment, went to a meeting and started calling again. We now have a little less than 1000 companies in the CRM database with which there was at least one cold contact. And it cannot be said that there is a line of people who want to give us money. Call, letter, letter, call, etc. Cycle work with a gradual increase in customer base and this should be done by a separate employee. In the office. I am very sorry that we did not get to this immediately and only after 5-6 months of work did we realize the need for hiring, initially focusing on production (developers, designer), and not on sales. I understand that this dispute is eternal, what comes first - a chicken or an egg, but I personally concluded for myself - in the b2b segment, sales are primary, and only then development (production). Even if you feel some "failure" in production facilities, keep in mind that the sales organization cycle is not instantaneous (in cases similar to ours, of course) and it is more important to have a client and a contract with time reserves built in than a strong production without constant flow clients. For CRM, we use the free version of bitrix24 (it is free for up to 12 employees) and this is more than enough. If you look at the statistics, then Yulia makes about 50-60 calls on average per working day (these are both new and repeated calls). In addition to the call, you need to enter information into CRM.
I admit that we are not very good at selling our services over the phone, but you can estimate the conversion of cold calls into contracts. Something around 0.5-0.8% in a very good case. Keep in mind the seasonal factor - in the summer there is a certain period of calm, decision-makers go on vacation or simply do not really want to engage in serious discussion of new projects in front of him. In general, strange as it may seem, if you think about it, there is not much time in Russia when business activity is high, people are on the ground and ready for new breakthroughs :). Moreover, we observe that Lately high staff turnover. I often hear how Julia is trying to understand who in the marketing department can talk now, because. the previous person retired. And everything has to start all over again.
All this is certainly great, but is there any benefit from mobile applications?
A little on the return on mobile applications for business, or rather, retail. Almost every client asks for an estimate of the expected result, even considering minimum investment. Here it is worth dividing the different segments trading business, because comparing selling through consumer electronics apps to ready-to-eat foods is simply not practical. Based on our experience, the following average figures can be given. Fashion segment - it is quite possible to receive orders for up to 1,500,000 rubles. per month after 4-6 months of application operation. If you have a business selling sushi, pizza, woks with home delivery, then with due diligence in promotion, you can collect orders up to 300,000 rubles per day (our customers' numbers range from 100,000 to 300,000 per day). Appliances and electronics - up to 1,000,000 rubles. per month, exactly like the category "Children's goods". The above figures are valid for companies with an online store (maybe retail network). I emphasize that, of course, there are results that are much better, and much worse. There is a very clear dependence of the number of orders on the number of application installations, which, in turn, depend on the desire to talk about them.
An example of the number of daily app installs for a fashion segment company
An example of the number of daily installations of applications of a company in the OB&E segment
Loss of customers ... yes, yes, this also happens
Separately, I want to focus on companies that refuse further cooperation. In the beginning for us it was unpleasant surprise- there are installations, orders are coming and ... how do you refuse? After a while, the understanding of the main motives came. Our monetization model (minimum initial contribution) has another significant disadvantage - companies that don't really want an app just try it. There are no investments, why not try? Expecting a fantastic return right away, they face the reality of wasting their time to somehow promote what has been done on their resources. It comes to absolute absurdity, which, probably, partially characterizes the thinking of some managers. A network of stores, made applications - everyone is happy. After 4-5 months they write, they say we want to refuse, because. we do not feel the return. Well, this is the right of the client, but we are trying to keep and send analytics - guys, you are getting installs, screen views are growing, orders are coming! Yes, maybe there are not so many orders for you to consider mobile applications as a stable sales channel, but sorry - the process is still in its infancy! We need to wait, accumulate an audience. Here are some examples of similar businesses. It does not work, they are determined. Well, we suggest - let's leave the applications - let them work, we do not support them, but they will work. Everything is free. We are happy, we left it, but after a while they write again - we remove the applications in general, tk. Orders for goods began to come again from the application, but they forget to update the unloading (xml) (!!! the robot was apparently turned off), so customers order goods with the wrong price. We are surprised at the mighty mind of managers, but - we delete applications. We sigh and forget about the client, but he does not forget about us. Writes - customers who managed to install applications earlier continue (here are the bastards) to order goods by old price. Do something, we are not happy with such orders and customers, and we don’t want to update xml, because we generally make a mobile site and there is no time for you. Hmm... strange - but how do you get those who installed it to uninstall the apps? The client, worrying and rejoicing that he found a way to finish off what he has done, offers - and let's send a push to clients that that's it, we won't work with you! Yes, the idea is sound, but support for push notifications has not yet been made, so we, laughing at the top of our voices, send an offer to the client - let's you pay for the implementation of support for push notifications, we will do it, customers who installed it will update the applications, and then We will send that we do not want to work with you. In general, the whole story ended there.
Unfortunately, only about 10% of all incoming calls relate to the retail segment. I sometimes do not understand what people are counting on when they ask to make a chat with the exchange of photos, a Yandex.Taxi clone or others, it is doubtful that successful applications will be in the future. We give such projects to different companies, but for the entire time of our work (a year) I have not yet heard that the project has even begun, and prices start at 700,000 rubles. for development. On average, now we receive about 3-4 "incoming" calls from the site per month (more often they write than call) with the traffic of our site. Every time, when I submit a project for implementation (even without a “exhaust”), I am painfully offended, but realistically assessing the situation, it is simply not possible for us to complete complex projects outside the b2c / b2b sphere at the current load. In order to cut off those who are simply curious, he began to ask the question - “are you ready to consider the project if the price is within 300,000 rubles. for one platform or not?
There is an informal reward on the market in the amount of 10% from each transferred client (if the project starts, of course), but we did not receive anything, and I don’t think we will receive it. But when analyzing the situation, you begin to understand quite clearly why mobile applications for each platform cost their money with custom development and the fact that specialization only in a certain field of activity allows you to withstand high pace development. More than once, when discussing another appeal within the team for, for example, an insurance company or a carrier, I carefully raised the question, “can we somehow try to fit in sideways ...?” but always the guys in charge of production wisely paid attention to the current tasks, and I forwarded the application to a third-party studio. For it is said that “a flying arrow does not wag its tail” :) and although it sounds beautiful in a situation of constant replenishment with investment money ...
IIDF and other funding sources
Returning to our story, as I already mentioned, in the fall of 2013 we submitted our application to the IIDF accelerator and, miraculously, first got into the TOP 100 projects, and then into the list of those who were invited to accelerate in Moscow. The IIDF fund then had two types of participation - online acceleration (full-time) and offline (correspondence). We were offered exactly the full-time program, and for it the fund asked for 7% of the business and gave money (something around 1,000,000 rubles, and part of it goes immediately for training). It is interesting that we were chosen somewhere at all, because in fact, we were not very different from the usual studio, except that we developed our platform and concentrated on retail. I think that the reason is that the fund categorically lacked more or less "intelligible" projects showing at least some results. I must say right away that I am in no way criticizing the fund, on the contrary, I think that they are doing a great job in Russia, because in the early stages, a young company does not have many options for where to go. And FRII - good alternative. Moreover, their first recruitment, in fact, was also a startup with all the ensuing consequences. Now they seem to be on their fourth or fifth set, but I still have the feeling that the problem is not with the availability of money, but in strong teams with good ideas, which can then actually be monetized.In general, if you think about it, the requirements put forward by dfunds look like a trap. Judge for yourself - the project must be scalable, clearly monetized, there must be a team (preferably 2-3 founders). It is not very easy to imagine that 3 adults who have to feed themselves and their families get together and make a prototype for a while, so that later they have a small chance of getting investments. What do they eat in between? Moreover, if you look at the same IIDF, then a few teams from all sets generally received more or less serious investments.
We abandoned the face-to-face scheme, because they couldn’t just leave the business and study in Moscow for 3 months and then communicated with the mentor in absentia (video conferences via Skype once a week). Naturally, all materials were available to us in email. seen from the full-time program, but frankly, I personally did not see their value for myself. As a result, we were invited to a demo day - the day of the presentation to investors, or rather, to the rehearsal of this day. Considering that it was too luxurious to go to Moscow for 10 minutes of rehearsal, they asked to immediately come to the demo day and ... we were not invited anywhere else :). This is definitely our fault, because. From the very beginning, we did not feel, at that time, some kind of extreme need for additional. investments and were generally surprised that we were selected in the short list of participants. In any case, I wish the guys good luck, they were often criticized in the media, ridiculing the supported companies, but the industry is young, there is no experience yet, and they are somewhere pioneers.
But there are programs in Russia that we would like to get into, but they no longer take us. This is a Microsoft Technology Grant that is contested twice a year. Here I will make a small digression. In our work we use all Microsoft products, and in particular Azure cloud services. The client part is developed using Xamarin (formerly Mono) (recently received the status of a partner of this company) in C #. In May 2013 we applied for the Microsoft BizPark program and I really want to say a sincere “thank you” to Microsoft for being able to legally use all the software we need, including Azure paid cloud resources (there is a limitation, but we have not yet reached it - we optimize server computing as much as possible).
In early 2014, we received the Microsoft Startup Accelerator status, which provides more technology support and significantly expands cloud resources paid by Microsoft ($60,000 per year). We have a curator and I must admit that it is very comfortable to work. Given our focus on Microsoft products, we really looked forward to receiving a grant. I will not delve into the grant itself, everything can be read on the ms-start.ru website. I can only say that we applied twice in 2013 and both times we were refused. The reasons for the refusal are not prescribed, but in fact they are on the surface - we have a kind of hybrid business model: neither custom work nor an application designer. Semi-automatic This model is not scalable, it has significant disadvantages, and it was our disadvantages that forced us to try new projects.
In May 2014, we applied for a grant again, but this time to support our tapki project, which is a much more scalable business. What happened in the end - I'll tell you in part 2, which I'm already preparing for publication on Habré.
What do we have today?
Returning to the story - what do we have now in the asset, for a little more than a year of work? A team of 15 people (mostly developers), ~32 signed contracts (some parts are still being developed and there are no payments) and slightly fewer clients at the conclusion stage (think). It would seem - super (except for profit), and everything said about the advantages of our business is great, of course, but we are linear. Trying to work in the "triangle": quality of applications, price, terms - neat mobile applications are obtained, but there is one more dimension - resources! The more clients we have, the more developers we need, the further the break-even point moves. This is another minus, which actually forced us to start a new project in parallel - tapki (again increasing costs, having secured the support of investors for the project in advance). In fairness, I note that there is no absolutely clear linear relationship between the number of people in business and the number of customers. Some clients “freeze” for months without requiring any improvements (and, accordingly, attention) and we switch to new projects. This fact allows us to estimate the breakeven point and predict profit. I would even say that we have a small, but "positive mat-expectation" in our business.Below is our management balance sheet from May 2013 (business start-up) to March 2014. It can be seen that there is an increase in income, but, to our great regret, an increase in expenses. The reason for the increase in costs is that by this time we have gained a more or less significant customer base, but in addition to simply concluding a contract, we also need to make applications. And here we have fallen into a new trap - lack of resources. Those. we had enough resources to support the created applications, but not enough to create new ones. If we were talking about mobile application builders, then there is no customization for customers. And we have started. The table shows that 50% is maintenance, 50% is improvements, and this ratio remains plus or minus to this day. The growth of staff led to the fact that we needed to expand the area - the rent increased. What I want to draw attention to is the uneven income Money. Our income is made up of payments for support and improvements. If support can still be attributed to a guaranteed income for some foreseeable period of time, then improvements are an extremely chaotic matter. Naturally, we make efforts to stimulate the development of applications, but it is not necessary once in a while. Naturally, as development client base, there is a general increase in turnover, but there are months when there are no improvements at all, and we “fail” in financial planning. It is also worth noting that a significant increase in costs from December 13 to March 14 is due precisely to the fact that we began to strengthen the team to manage a new project, but the costs have not yet been divided here. As already noted, we do not observe a completely linear relationship between the number of clients and programmers. The fact is that the load is very uneven both for initial development and for improvements. We have a client (a large fashion chain) that started a little less than a year ago, and it's not our fault - because. the company is very large, the approval processes take time.
Management balance May 2013 - March 2014 - growing customers, employees and ... losses
The company operates under the simplified taxation system (STS) and in 99.9% of cases we did not encounter problems with the absence of VAT on the part of customers. For ourselves, we have chosen a scheme of 10% of the difference between income and expenses, but since we have a negative final balance, at the end of the year we pay 1% of income to the state (this can be seen in March 14 - 7,460 rubles - tax for 2013). At the beginning of 2014, we increased the amount of space occupied (you can see an increase in costs for this item), because. they simply didn’t fit anymore (an adjacent room, a hole in the wall - everything is very simple). We have a small income from e-money and, accordingly, there are expenses (to pay for a vacancy on hh.ru, for example), but this is an exception to the rule, because we work under the contract.
Starting from April 2014, we began to share management balances - part of the team continued to develop mobile applications, part - tapki. Our investors supported the idea itself (about it a little later) and the fact that we are starting to isolate one project from another. In July 2014, we came to the conclusion that it is necessary not only to divide according to internal accounting - the division must be done at the accounting level too (individual legal entities). More precisely, we were simply advised to do it by the guys from IIDF, explaining that it the only way attract investment money new project. It is worth recognizing that in the world of mobile application development, only pure designers are considered by investors to be tasty scalable projects where it makes sense to invest. And we, even the name of the platform, continue (this is a fact) to engage in custom projects. At the same time, tapki is just a scalable project, and if we want to attract investment in it, it needs to be separated from the parent company as much as possible.
We applied for registration of a new legal entity TAPKI LLC (in general, I advise, if possible, to name the legal entity the same as the brand - somehow it turns out more accurately) and at the end of August we completely transferred part of the team responsible for the new project to this legal entity. I understand that the side project, which we did not separate from the parent company, introduced certain distortions into the figures, but the understanding of what needs to be divided did not come immediately, because. Any new project goes through a series of stages, and only starting from some stage do you evaluate how many resources it actually diverts.
Management balance of the company until July 2014
If we take July 2014 as a basis, then we can do following output- for our business with the current load, the “cleaned” monthly costs will be about 900,000 rubles (this amount includes one-time costs, for example, they bought an air conditioner this summer, or an additional monitor for a programmer ... although such payments are necessary , in a good way, isolate). In July 2014, we had more incoming payments for improvements than for support, but as you can see from the table, this is not always true. But I can definitely note that the more clients, the more incoming requests for various improvements you will have.
Below are (in one graph) income, expenses and final results (from May 2013 to July 2014 inclusive). It can be seen that the notissimus project, as noted, is still an investment project, but there is hope that by the winter of 2014 we will reach zero and begin to return the funds invested by the investor. It is worth noting here that since If we have exceeded the initial requests for the allocation of investments, then we will return 100% of the profit (when it is) to the investor, and not according to the shares in the authorized capital. When we return the amount of excess of the initially requested investments, then (I hope) we will begin to discuss how to divide the profit. Globally speaking, investors give money as a loan, otherwise, all shareholders would have to contribute money to the project, according to their shares in the business. At the same time, when the company makes a profit, it begins to repay this loan, in the amount as agreed.
The red line is the final result of the activity, the figures in brackets, because they are negative. The numbers starting from April 2014 can be considered basic for a studio that only develops mobile applications, without side projects. Can readers of Habr use this to analyze the launch of their business? I think so, because we worked in the absence of large anchor clients from the very start (Russian Post, a tender of 19,000,000 rubles for mobile applications), although, of course, we need to make a significant adjustment for two factors: we have an investor and we chose a rather strange monetization model and a very niche job.
Schedule of management results of the company's work for a little over a year
In addition to all the others, I made an important conclusion for myself - do not be shy to ask for money for quality work, even if the company is very young, and be sure (!) To insist on an advance payment if the work to be done is a little more than small. You won’t believe how many times we regretted at the start of the next project that we didn’t receive at least some funds to the account. It's not about customers cheating, it's just not grocery store- you received a product (for example, a loaf of bread) in your hands and gave the seller money. This does NOT work here (I'm not talking about government tenders with bank guarantees). Development is not a finished notorious loaf of bread, but a constant dialogue with the client, who changes his mind, forgets, gets angry, hopes and all this together, multiplied by accelerating input from management, etc. And if the work is carried out in advance, then all the risks are shifted to the studio. And in those projects where there were advance payments, the situation quickly turned into a constructive plane. Moreover, now, for complex tasks, we insist on 100% prepayment, trying to explain to the client why this is so.
What is tapki? When creating mobile applications for retail, you willy-nilly think about how to bring together your experience and customers into something aggregating, scalable. In March 2014, these ideas, hovering in the air, found something more or less intelligible, and we decided for ourselves that it was necessary to allocate some internal resources for this project. It is an aggregator of goods (in the future, services) from retailers in different segments, working on all platforms, with a focus on product promotions and sales. It sounds a little trite, but frankly speaking, we still do not have a “suffered through” business model of the project, which would have received confirmation of its viability in practice. Although it is already clear that it is simply stupid to compete with Yandex.Market, so we see non-standard and interesting solutions in terms of bringing online to offline using ibeacon technology.
The name itself came about by chance, one day in the morning they began to discuss options for the name, made a list, and then, during lunch, one of the guys suggested this name and got hooked. Not everyone immediately liked it, but gradually, and the most ardent opponents of the name were drawn into it. The tapki.ru and tapki.com domains turned out to be occupied (and not surprisingly) and, without expecting any response, I wrote to the owners of tapki.com judging that, all other things being equal, a domain in the .com zone is more interesting and promising. The answer came the next day with a price of $1875. No haggling. It was proposed to buy a domain through the escrow.com intermediary service, which asked for something like $ 100 for their services and, having no experience working with foreign squatters, decided to overpay. The scheme is simple - the money is deposited by the intermediary and transferred to the seller from the moment the whois data is changed (paid by credit card). It took about a week for the whole purchase procedure and about 77,000 rubles in money. Not cheap, but it seems to me that for a long-term project it is a reasonable investment. It is curious that when I told my friends on Facebook about buying the tapki.com domain, I was advised to register fapki.com as well, because. people can make mistakes when typing. It was in the morning, around 11.00, I looked and was surprised that the fapki.com domain was free, but when I decided to register it, the domain was busy in the afternoon - squatters are on the alert, in short. It would be great to buy the tapki.ru domain at the same time - but it's not clear who to write to, because. There are no contacts in whois.
That's it, finally the end of the first part...
Uff ... it turned out quite a bit of text for the first part, I hope that someone mastered it and the story seemed interesting and useful. We will continue posting further on our successes and failures in mobile app development and how our tapki makes the first "shouts" in life. Already now, connecting the first large and not very online stores to the project, we are faced with a lot of questions and I hope this may be of interest to readers. In addition, we have a huge task to promote tapki in app stores, and here, probably, our "rake" can be useful for other developers as well. And given that we started looking for an investor again, but this time for the tapki project, there will be something to tell in this context as well. Our Technical Director already started writing an article containing technical details platform work (Microsoft Azure + Xamarin) and this will be a separate publication, because. we decided that it would not be right to mix “technology” and “business” in one article.Our life can be followed in a more "live" mode through twitter or through my facebook account.
Frankly, I plan to keep a diary in order to write down the most interesting moments in the life of the company every day. Remembering, as it turned out, is quite difficult. I apologize if some points were not fully covered or were chaotic. Yes, and I forgot - if there are owners or managers of online stores among the readers, we will be very glad to see you all in our tapki project, just write a letter to my address [email protected] and I will tell you what needs to be done (in short, you need a logo, a link to the yandex.market xml file and store addresses in the plate).
P.s. We will also be happy to help with the development of mobile applications and invite owners of online stores to try to work according to the “development for % of orders” scheme, because. the existing volume of developments already allows us to offer a complete solution, but there is no built-in model of cooperation yet.
Maxim Kulgin
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Mobile-developer is an IT specialist specializing in creating applications for tablets and smartphones on iOS and Android. Since mobile applications are created by programming, a mobile developer is primarily a programmer who works, depending on the development platform, with Java, Objective-C, or Swift.
What are the prospects for a mobile application developer?
According to a study by the Statista portal, in 2014 there were 1.57 billion active smartphone users in the world, and at the end of 2017 their number reached 2.32 billion, an increase of 48% over this period. The growth rate of mobile users is increasing every year, at the same time the number of applications being created is increasing. To reach a growing audience, there is a shortage of qualified developers in the market.
The mobile development market is a goldmine for many business areas. The trends of recent years demonstrate not only an increase in the number of downloaded products, but also an increase in in-app sales. Thus, the gross income of companies developing mobile applications is growing annually by an average of 20%, and by 2020 will exceed $100 billion (App Annie data).
The scale of the mobile products market guarantees employment and top positions in the ratings for highly qualified developers wages.
In this article, we will look at the pros and cons of this profession, the qualities and skills, necessary for a specialist this area of IT, as well as helpful tips for beginner programmers.
Features of the profession
Mobile developer specializes in developing software products for mobile devices.
Mobile applications are of various types depending on the subject matter and the functions they perform. There are entertainment applications (for learning languages, reading books, traveling, sports), shopping applications (e-commerce segment) and a separate category - mobile games. Mobile applications are also classified according to which platform they are intended for (Android, iOS, Windows Phone or cross-platform utilities).
The profession of a developer is quite new, especially in Russia and the CIS, so specific requirements for this category of specialists have not yet been developed. According to the analysis of vacancies in many IT studios, the developer is required to understand both programming, both frontend and backend, as well as user interface design and layout.
Pros and cons of the profession
Among the advantages of the profession of a mobile application developer, we highlight the following:
- Decent pay level. There is a shortage of qualified developers on the market, which affects the level of wages. Today, mobile-developer in Moscow and St. Petersburg earns a third more than, for example, a php programmer. The average salary of mobile application developers in Moscow ranges from 60 to 250 thousand rubles, on average in Russia - from 40 to 150 thousand rubles.
- An interesting and exciting profession. Technologies are rapidly becoming obsolete, so in order to stay at the top of the skill, a programmer needs to improve, keep abreast of the latest in the IT industry, and constantly replenish their knowledge and skills. The constant search for information on forums and specialized sites, the analysis of large amounts of information keeps the brain in good shape.
- prospects career development. For a good Java developer, final goal. He can successfully develop by mastering technology artificial intelligence and the Internet of things (internet-of-things).
The disadvantages of the profession include the exactingness of customers and all the same large amounts of information and constant search, which does not allow you to relax for a minute. So, if you do not like to read, read a lot and analyze what you read, then you should not be developing programs at all.
Required skills and personal qualities
In order to develop serious products, it is necessary:
- Knowledge of OOP (Java, Objective-C, Swift);
- Knowledge of Java Script, HTML, SCC;
- Experience with design patterns;
- Knowledge of SQL and network protocols.
To further progress in the mobile development segment, you will have to delve into Computer Science, algorithms, and data structures. A professional developer also needs to understand the user interface and user experience (UI/UX) philosophy in order to not just write programs, but make products that are useful and easy to use.
Personal qualities
- Perseverance and perseverance;
- Curiosity;
- Stress resistance;
- multitasking;
- Focus on results.
How to get started with mobile app development?
We advise a beginner to start with the basics of object-oriented programming (OOP). There are many educational materials and video tutorials on this topic on the network. The study of OOP is best done on the example of a specific language, Java or Objective-C. We recommend Java, as it is not only an android programming language, but one of the main platforms for creating software.
After you get familiar with the basics of Java programming, take the time to practice. Try programming in a new language by creating programs of varying levels of complexity. As soon as you feel that you have become from Java to you, proceed to the next stage - learning the features of development for Android or iOS mobile platforms.
You can find many courses on the web on the basics of creating programs for iOS and Android. We recommend the following ones:
- Mobile Development Course at Stanford University;
- iOS development course in Swift at the University of Toronto;
- Android development course at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT).
About what is the process of android development, read our article:
Application builder websites can be a great help for novice developers. These free and shareware free services will help you create a mobile application using a specific set of templates. Some of these platforms open the source code and documentation of the program to the user, which allows you to study the project from the inside and make the necessary changes to the code.
Many business owners today need additional interactive "assistants" that automate workflows. Mobile application development is the creation of algorithms that are used when writing software for wireless devices such as phones or tablets. How to choose the right developer company, what to pay attention to first of all?
1. Application types
Developer companies tend to specialize in creating one of three types of applications
- Platform specific native apps (iOS, Android, Windows Phone)
- Hybrid apps to run on any OS: development of such apps is based on Xamarin, React Native, Ionic and other technologies.
- Cross-platform applications, web applications and mobile versions of the site.
When ordering, you should find out what kind of application you will receive as a result - if it is a native application, then it will not be possible to painlessly expand it to another platform, if it is cross-platform, then most likely its functionality will be noticeably limited. Hybrid applications combine the advantages of native and cross-platform ones, but their cost is somewhat lower than the former. In general, if you compare the types of applications by cost, then in descending order you get: native, hybrid, cross-platform.
The optimal solution in terms of price / timing / quality (if we are talking development for two or more platforms) are considered hybrid applications. If you need only iOS or only Android - choose natives. If you just need to transfer the site to a mobile device - choose cross-platform.
2. Types of mobile app developers
Among the studios that provide services for the production of mobile applications, the following types can be distinguished:
- Freelancers. These are lone professionals (or non-professionals). The signed contract obliges to complete the work on time. Using freelance services is more risky and less reliable.
- Companies that use templates and constructors. Studios create applications based on already developed layouts with individual variations.
- Custom development firms:
The last type of companies can be divided into two subtypes:
- Working with the involvement of outsourcing specialists. In this case, the studio attracts outside performers to perform some stages of production.
- Having their own team of full-time professionals. The staff of designers, programmers, designers and full-time testers is at the service of the customer.
The choice of one or another type of developer depends entirely on the tasks that you assign to the application. It is important to take into account not only the current wishes, but also the prospects for the development of the product in the future. A simple application with common features can be made on the constructor by freelancers. A complex application with unique functionality that requires integration with internal system enterprises - a matter of decision by a serious qualified team of developers, designers, layout designers. In this case, your choice is a full cycle studio.
The question whether the studio resorts to the services of outsourcing specialists or not should be asked without fail. The use of outsourcing services adds an additional link to the development chain, which, on the one hand, can increase the speed of development, and on the other hand, increases the risk of failure to complete tasks. Here you need to carefully study both the company and its partners, so as not to make a mistake with the choice.
3. Development of mobile applications: a range of services
Modern studios offer services such as:
- designing applications for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Apple Watch;
- adaptation of application interfaces for various platforms;
- Creation mobile versions sites;
- building programs for small business with connected databases;
- marketing and promotion of business ideas and applications.
When choosing a company, take a look at its portfolio and find out its areas of expertise. Perhaps, mobile development is not the main activity of the company, the team consists of specialists of a wide profile. This should be reflected in the cost of raarbotka - the narrower the specialization of both the entire company and the members of its team, the better and more expensive the final product.
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1C solutions can work in two architectures: file and client-server. When file variant of work, platform 1C:Enterprise provides interaction of the client directly with database:
The file database in this case consists of several DBF files; their DBMS is part of the 1C platform. The file version of the work is easily deployed and does not require specialized software other than the 1C platform itself. However, it has a number of restrictions on its use and is generally less reliable than the client-server version.
Client-server job option requires third-party DBMS and a 1C:Enterprise server cluster between the client and the database itself:Herself platform 1C:Enterprise in both cases is a shell over the database. Its task is to improve the ease of development. The developer does not have to design database tables to build an application solution; instead, it operates with applied objects, that is, direct analogues of "physical" objects subject area. For example, electronic documents.
On the 1C platform can be developed configuration- that is, a specific application solution that closes certain user tasks. For example, there are configurations for accounting or vehicle management.
Question 01.07 of exam 1C: Platform professional. Where is the structure of the created business application in the 1C:Enterprise 8 system determined?
- Technology platform
- Configuration
- Information base
Question 01.08 of exam 1C: Platform professional. Where are business application credentials stored in 1C:Enterprise 8?
- Technology platform
- Configuration
- Information base
Question 01.61 of exam 1C: Platform professional. What is used to develop business applications in the 1C:Enterprise 8 system?
- Technology platform
- Configuration
- Information base
Question 01.62 of exam 1C: Platform professional. How does the 1C:Enterprise 8 system work with infobase data?
- Technology platform
- Configuration
- Information base
- DBMS
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