So I wanted to share with you this text which was written for first version of our website.
I like it so much….
Our Story
· Gift from Father - Once upon a time, 14 year teenager got a present from his father, packed in black box. The boy asked the father. “What is inside it?” The father answered. “This is the Future my son, Your Future…”. When boy opened the box he found Personal Computer there. It is a real story happened about 7 years ago. Exactly at that day, his father passed away, leaving him a PC gift, which further became the boy’s Future!!! Being a teen, he couldn’t understand the exact meaning of his father’s words. From that very date, the guy, inspired with affection and insight powerful energy to move forward, always keeping dady’s words in mind, made his first steps entering the world of IT, full of innovation, rapid growth and “Future Opportunities”. The boy realized that he must and would make the dreamed future present. Spending many days, hours in front of PC, digging out information in the Internet, hitting the books and mastering the skills of software development, the boy decided to work. Finally, he did it! At the age of 14, he found a job in one of Armenian IT companies, expecting in the nearby future to run his own IT company. In such a way, one of TX Systems Founders entered the IT Industry, “The World of Future”.
· PC of Dreams -Once upon a time, there was 9 years old Armenian schoolboy. As any child of his age, he was always madly interested in trying new experiences, playing and etc. The guy was especially fond of reading books. One day when he was a pupil of the 3rd class, he came about the book, called “MS DOS Fundamentals”. The book was rich in content and illustrated. It was the first time the pupil learned about the existence of PC and dreamed of having this tiny box, full of information and entertainment. In the meanwhile, starting watching different TV channels, he saw a PC of his dreams. He asked his parent to obtain the PC for him. 15 years teenager was surprised finding PC at his room. It was one of the happiest days in his life. Spending almost days and nights right on his desk, he felt extremely happy and proud to have access to “Amazing World of Information”. Since 2001, understanding that he likes IT sphere, the guy decided to build his future career in this area. Gradually, specializing in software development, he had a vision of owning his IT business. In this way, one of TX Systems Founders had made his dream come true.
· Acquaintance- Once upon a time, there was a young Armenian lady. Being very energetic and hard working person, she earned her Masters Degree in Marketing simultaneously combining her studies at the university and 3 year American Program, which aims to prepare marketing specialists. The lady always combined her studies with work. She liked the mobility in her job experience and was fond of new, challenging experiences. One day, giving a try to another new experience, the lady accepted an offer of IT company and decided to try her skills and abilities in IT Sales & Marketing. She liked her job, full of innovative experiences, approaches and rapid growth, she was so fond of. Everything started when the lady met one of her co-workers at that organization. They became friends. The guy told her that he had a goal to run his IT business in the future and had this idea since his childhood. Why don’t we make that idea reality? Sharing thoughts, exchanging experiences, combining efforts, discussing all opportunities, overcoming all the barriers, they made big efforts and succeed. Making precise plan to move forward they overcame all the difficulties and survived, giving a birth to another successful business. It was a story about how two of TX Systems Founders met each other, linking the bridges of further cooperation.
· Establishment
A team of three risk takers, with the vision of possibilities decided to move forward. We only invested our time, efforts and ideas to make the business run, without any financial resources. We met each other at cafes, cafeterias, parks to discuss all the organizational issues. Without office space, we were doing Internet research either from our homes or Internet clubs. Our primary goal was to find a customer, at least one customer, who would be in need of our expertise and help. The establishment procedure was challenging, full of obstacles, embarrassment and ambiguity. We spent many sleepless nights to make a tactical plan, define the goals we pursued and bring in one project. Finally, that bright day came! During long hours of surfing on the Internet, through intermediary online outlets we did find our first customer. We established direct contacts with customers, offering reliable expertise, high quality service and superior customer care. Our first expectations were met, we received the order for a tiny project. As a result, we rented small office space and hired 2 software developers. Month by month, pushing on market research and landing one customer after another, we could afford to move to larger and comfortable facilities, hiring new employees
Trying to understand audience of social gamers for mobile do they really exists?It is the user-base who play games on Facebook and look for something similar on iPad and iPhones ?Based on the chart below I can see that downloadable games have much bigger potential for now (if you earn 100K$ year spending 0.99$ for an app can be reasonable and if you are mainly from US).But if you look at Top Grossing in App Store currently games from Pocket Gems and TeamLava are doing pretty well.
And what about high end games market for mobiles and tablets ?Do they have potential I mean games which will cost from 5$-30$?
What do you think porting all top social game mechanics with high end graphics will work on these platforms?I think it is really different audience and balancing of social for mobile will be a very different task do do.Maybe they are currently sitting on Top Grossing first position but who knows how is the Top Grossing calculated is it by revenue?Installs?or what?
I did a lot of mistakes during my career and telling truth I am proud of many mistakes which I made.The best thing which I did was not making same mistakes twice.So here I want to collect all those mistakes and update list frequently.
1.Opening legal entity to early - You can have a team and work on the product or service from home until you see so much stability that you can go legal and cover all operational costs which arise from that.Do not open a legal entity to fast having company registered is not necessary from early days - so work without that then if you see that it is worth to get into that - Do that.
2.Expanding to fast - Do not expand your team to fast if you do not have enough management people or time to manage those people.From some period you need to layoff them fast to keep your costs lower.
3.Hiring wrong people - I am not telling you to hire only 5-7 years experienced developers but if you want to deliver high quality service or build exceptional product hire only best graduates with at least 1 year programming experience.Hire engineers who can grow on their own and will not consume all time asking questions from your best people.If you do not see growth in 2-3 months layoff them fast.
4.Do not acting fast - Layingoff people and friends with whom you have worked many years or moving to small office is a really hard decisions to make but if you see you cannot keep these costs do it fast.
5.Believing technical people - Do not believe and plan on deadlines which you get from your developers and technical persons do not wait until they deliver check and monitor each day ,better every hour :).It is not about they are wrong resources it is about they think different and concentrate more on solving problems and you need to think and accelerate the process of doing it fast enough.
6.Not having Project Managers - If you get to much responsibility on you someday you will stuck with a bunch of different tasks and meetings for which you just did not have enough time.Hire project managers split responsibilities right and monitor and tune the process if you can do it well you will got effective results.
7.Missing Market Knowledge - Some period we were doing something for which we do not know market exists or not if you want to start something learn talk with people which are doing same thing or if there are not that kind of companies just ask yourself why?It is really depressive when you work on something 6 months and then just understand that there is no successful examples ,and what you are doing cannot work on audience which you target.
8.Do not do something which you do not love- It is always hard doing something which you love but if you do something some period and do not get in love with that then cancel that ASAP.
9.Putting wrong resources in wrong positions - Making great project manager or product manager from great software engineer can be an impossible to do you need to understand pros and cons of each resource and use them in appropriate position.
Those are the first bunch if you like it I will post more :) I do not have much experience as any other cool entrepreneurs which are mentoring and giving speeches but these mistakes are real mistakes which I made during my career as a CEO.So I hope you enjoy.
The most Creative,Diligent and Open-Minded team in the world :)
Many individuals located outside of US start their entrepreneurial career as a consultants or remote workers for some big companies located in US or Europe.
Everybody knows that labor costs are cheaper in countries like India,China,Russia,Ukraine,Armenia and and many Foreign Companies consider outsourcing as a cost saving solution(In 90% it can have reverse effect) for their R&D needs.
Motivated by this many good software engineers starting to look for outside opportunities they go through sites like Odesk , Elance,Getafreelancer,…etc, and get some work for evenings and nights.
So they have stability and also additional revenue stream.And after that some of them who think they can make a business based on that decide to start a company.So in similar situation was I 5 years ago.I got a project for 3 months and I thought that it is enough to cancel my full-time job and start building next cool startup (Actually outsourcing companies are not startups :) ).So we have 0 about business knowledge ,some programming experience and 3 months project with very small budget which we somehow got from European company.After 3 months of work client decided to close project (because of delays ) and do not make a last transfer - having no English knowledge but having so much motivation to keep everything started ,we somehow negotiated a terms to keep project and got paid.
A lot of technical knowledge gained during that period but the most important class which I got was
1.Be Able to Communicate - The most important part of every business in any part of the world is Communication.It is not about language knowledge it is much about how you need to talk with a person based on a situation which you are ,relationship and positions.Be accurate with words and sentences think twice before talking.Analyse the situation because each additional word can work against you and your future.
To build a great company you need to have great sales channels,great stuff and great processes -to deliver great results - Communication Skills are key components for each part of this whole mechanism.
Communication in Sales Process - Do not send template emails to your potential customers grab more info about them ,understand with whom you are going to talk(Do they check emails frequently or no?The best way to reach them?).Understand the business which they are doing and do not spend your time on sending non targeted emails or messages to persons which will not hire ever.I really get frustrated when I got 10-15 emails from some 2-3 person Indian Startups which telling me to Outsource my operations to them?Man why I need that?I am in a same business.
Think twice analyse the persons experience with whom you are going to talk analyse their business and then only Press Send Button I can tell you for sure it will improve your reply rate by couple of times.
I am sorry for any spelling and grammar mistakes which I did here it is funny that person who talks about communication can make mistakes in Blog but I am not a native speaker and i do not have an english education so I will appreciate if you can just tell me my worst mistakes and I will re-edit.
So in the next article I will write about what are the key components for Outsourcing Business and why it is so hard to transition from Outsourcing to Product Development.
Last couple of years I really want start blogging but because of timing issues ,each time it was only one small article and keeping frequently updates was impossible.
So today I am going to start frequently blogging about different stuff keep following and hope you will enjoy.
So first of all I would like to know why do you keep blogs?
How you decided to start blogging?
What do you want to achieve by blogging?
What topics do you write about?