👕 🧘🏼 👨🏾‍🎓 How to create an IT company from scratch - without experience in this field and programming skills? 🔔 🧓🏾 👨🏻‍🎤

After analyzing the path of his company, he divided it into several stages and added interesting stories and curiosities that accompanied us along this path.

“Searching for oneself and the pain of clients (no employees)”

The first almost year we worked as a consulting company for managing other people's teams and as project managers. Given that these were our friends or companies where we worked with a partner, our attractiveness was that our resource was cheaper to rent for half or even a third of the cost of a full-fledged project manager, and the expertise was time-tested.

They began to encounter the pains that exist in this business: constantly deadlines, a several-fold increase in the initial budget, an incompletely implemented product, etc. And we caught ourselves thinking that we could simply outsource the development.
They started selling not their expertise, but full-fledged projects, thanks to outsourced employees.

And what do you think: what problems did we face? Yes, exactly with the same as our customers. Therefore, a new stage in our development has begun.

"The first employees and equipment"

We realized that without full-time employees we can’t overcome the pain of customers, and we will have to develop competence and new expertise. The first employees in our case were hunted from existing companies with which I worked previously.

I understood these people. I knew what motivated them and what I could give them.
Our first projects have already been completed, so we are fortunate enough to come "on the ready": the contract is signed, the team is assembled, the process has started.

We start projects in coworking with a team of two developers and two analysts, we gradually immerse ourselves in the project. And immediately we feel two strong poles of attraction - the client, who is (almost) always right, and the team, the authority in which still has to be earned.

The ability to find a balance between their interests becomes our main task. We hone this skill day after day, we try to communicate as much as possible with both the client and the team in order to make the right decisions.

We are most focused on current tasks and the timing of their implementation, we feel responsible for each stage, and therefore often invest in the project shoulder to shoulder with the team.

Everything is cool: even at the stage of unfinished projects, they begin to recommend us!
Collaboration with the client gave several new projects, and now the next stage has begun.

I would compare the past stage with the "candy-bouquet" periods in the relationship: there is still romance, a fuse and you think that it will be forever. But we want more ...

New People and Priority Management

Our responsibilities have expanded and priority management has come to the fore.

We were faced with the fact that it is not so easy to find new people, and six months have passed without exaggeration since the search for the first programmer in the state from outside. Until we realized that everyone should do their own thing, and we need to find a recruiter who to this day closes absolutely all our vacancies.

Attracting new people to the team and their rotation between projects is becoming commonplace, and the agony of choice is the most often experienced emotion. For example, there is a project with which we started and where strong personal ties remained with team members. And there is another who came to us relatively recently. And I want to give all the best to my “first-born”, but business priorities may already be different. If earlier we somehow managed to combine work tasks, but at the same time remain “our own,” then now more and more often our decisions will be unpopular. At least for someone. And personal distance with the team (unfortunately!) Will begin to grow little by little.

We faced the first conflicts, and not understanding how to distribute projects and tasks between programmers and analysts. At the first and second stage, it was important to set priorities every day, but here it is unacceptable, and planning had to jump not even for a week, but for a month. The realization comes that all projects have their beginning and end. So we have to think more and more often about what kind of exhaust they will give in the future, and not about pressing problems.

At this stage, it’s just good that I was never a programmer, and thank God I did not start coding myself and plugging holes. I began to really solve management problems. At this stage, the company was still chaotic. Something turned out badly for us or business processes were idle somewhere. Here we learned to systematically load all our employees with work. Everything seems to be getting better, but we are faced with the first cash gaps and understand that the sales cycle should be constant, and not from the next day to the next day with money.
The next stage I would call:

“Now the whole world should know about us!”

We began to understand that we need to promote the company, but we just started to think and do nothing for this. Here an interesting incident happened: they gave me a ticket for the training of Pyotr Osipov “Metamorphoses. Immersion ”, which took place at the“ Sports Palace ”in Kiev.

Osipov was not allowed into Ukraine, and Yevgeny Chernyak and David Arahamia began a speech instead to give a head start for the teleconference from Moscow.

After a couple of hours, I decided to go to the toilet as needed, before the promised dinner.

Leaving the hall, I saw in the corridor some kind of filming of a program. For the sake of curiosity came up, it was a recording of the program Big Money, which I am a big fan.

Of course, I began to record stories and live broadcasts, the whole world should know where I got instead of the toilet. And then Evgeny Chernyak asks a question to the crowd - they say, what salaries do IT people have. While I was recording the video, I raised my hand, and turned out to be the only IT specialist from the one standing around. Thus, I got into the program, even debated with David Arahamia, and proved that the local IT market exists. Well, of course, I got an advertisement, and most importantly a new client in the form of Global Spirits, where Eugene is a shareholder.

By the way, I never went to the toilet, and remembered about it after a couple of hours)
So I started going to conferences and looking for completely new customers without recommendations. And here we come to the next stage of scaling.

“It’s not enough just to say, you have to do something”

The transaction cycle in our industry averages from three to nine months, that is, the next cash gap is just around the corner. And the team has grown to 20 people.

A third vector is added to the work between teams and customers - the company. Right now, we clearly feel that we are growing a company, not a sharashkin office. And for the company, all we do in the framework of interacting with customers is business. So financial management is added to our tasks, and the profitability factor begins to play an increasingly important role in what decisions we make when forming teams.

But is the customer always right? We compare clients and see that the higher the strategic importance of the client, the higher the degree of flexibility when working with him and the more he is allowed, because this is already a strategy. At the same time, a small project goes by the wayside. The inner voice often asks me: “Why?”. In the context of "why is this our company?" New problems include involving additional people in the project, acquiring licenses at the expense of the company, investing in the development of innovative prototypes of standard solutions.

And then marketing turns out to be needed, the first money spent on classic advertising. You know, at a meeting at the BANDA agency (we wanted to order naming from them), they told me a cool thing: that the name of the company can be bad or very bad.

I really hoped that it was just bad, but at the first public appearances I realized - this is my illusion. (By the way, half a year of public speaking courses are behind us to get rid of fear of the public).

It seems that here we began to balance, and for six months there is a margin of safety. We relaxed the rolls ... But nothing makes us move forward like another box office gap.

“Our orders are growing with the team”

We are proud: we learned to manage ourselves and be responsible for our projects. But the road to nowhere, you need to build up the brand and diversify the risks.

Behind us there are already quite a lot of successful projects, and agreements appear to support projects. Why do something, let the same people and I will support them. And then in a month another chaos, a mess and a cash gap. Where, of course, without him ?! We evolutionarily separate the support service and project teams, because it is not efficient to use project guys to support small tasks during the day.

We also come to a standstill by the peep of people, namely project managers. They simply do not exist or they do not fit our values. The most gorgeous thing that I remembered from the interview was the answer to my question: “What is successful completion of the project for you?” The applicant stated: "Signed Act of Completion."

We came to the conclusion that we need to grow our own and devote even more time to training.
There is little room for managerial creativity. Everything should be spelled out and regulated. Hugging, congratulating all colleagues on their birthday or walking in the evening to smoke a hookah is ok, but we realized that our system should be radically different. Otherwise, people simply begin to hide behind its shortcomings. When the jamb - "we are friends", when well done - "give a prize, we are well done."

At the same time, I notice that many specialists are characterized by a defensive mindset. This approach is manifested in the unwillingness to take on the excess and take risks.

How to deal with this?

And we realized that it is not enough to motivate people with money and our attention.

I started writing publicly and sharing my cases. This improved the image of the company and added responsibility to employees. We stopped interfering in long negotiations and started selling small projects (from one to three months). Due to the variety of different companies and projects, interest and involvement in the work has increased.

PS

It was difficult to start and grow a business without being a software engineer, but in the second and third stages it gave impetus not to dig into the OS.

One of the founder’s key tasks is to grow people. And this is not just altruism or a contribution to new generations, but a specific business task that helps grow a business and grow yourself further, higher.

The IT industry in Ukraine continues to gain momentum, offering an excellent platform
for professional development not only in programming, but also in management. Our current level of development is far from the limit.

And most importantly - do not scam your opportunities, even when you go to the toilet!

How to create an IT company from scratch - without experience in this field and programming skills?