-Let’s welcome Dmitry Voloshin, founder of Simpals and such brands as 999, point.md and others
-Well I wanted to tell you about the connection error that fails the request. Guys, hi. I will tell you a lot of different interesting things today, but I want to warn you that everything I do not say is a personal experience and I do not impose it to anyone and I’m not going to write a book. I’ll just talk about how I did it all in life and maybe something useful for yourself underline. Well firstly I am Amir for some reason said that not everyone knows what the company Simpals, so I decided to do a little presentation what our company is doing, how many we have done different projects good and bad, stupid, bringing money, bringing losses are different. So I’ll run through them quickly, and then we’ll start talking about how to arrange our lives so that we have to work less to enjoy life only from work. Okay, well, let’s switch slides slowly. You’ll probably have to hang out on the floor, because there’ll be a lot of slides. Back in the year nine hundred and ninety-nine, I learned what the Internet was. I went to Polytechnic Institute, graduated with a degree in computer science. Here. And at that time, the Moldovan segment of the Internet was literally 20 or 30 sites, mostly ISP sites and there was no portal as such, there were differently news sites. Runet was still strong back then, I remember. But no one knew anything about cell phones and I decided to open a site dedicated to cell phones. At that time we had Wokstel, or not even, no lie, we had Wokstel and I realized that the domain was disappearing, the beautiful gsm.md. I bought it. The domain is there, let’s do something with it. We created a site that turned out to be the ancestor of all our now enormous number of sites. All came out of here and forum.md where it appeared gsm. md and the bulletin board also came out of the bulletin board on gsm.md. The next step we had the creation of 999, also the 99th year. We created 999 which is called so because it is the official version of 999 and now you know it as a big official website and it brings enough money to maintain such a huge site like Simpals and back then it was a small website, a bulletin board which was in competition with Roylsoft.md which the provider made Roylsoft with the ads, called the bird. That was the second site with ads and it so happened that the site slowly faded into oblivion, and ours remained. Then came forum.md, which you know, which used to be a scandalous, big, bright site, a bright spot on the Moldovan Internet, where scandals, squabbles, and arguments used to happen. There were frantic events where people got drunk and broke the furniture. About them printed in the newspapers all sorts of nastiness.In short, it was fun. now the forum is not the same. It is now under the pressure of Facebook. classmates, and other social media. a little bent and became more relaxed, about him few people know the modern generation of Internet users. But now we are engaged in its redesign and restructuring and repositioning, in order to give it a new force to somehow squeeze the strong media of everything and take its place in our market. Yes.md is our project, I don’t even know how to call it. actually, there was a virtual city and a prototype of these social networks in Moldova in 2003-2002 and we created a site where you can meet people, visit friends, give flowers, some virtual gifts, we had a virtual city where you can live and visit each other. But we didn’t know then that Facebook and Odnoklassniki would come and there would be nothing left of Yes.md, moreover here we made a very big strategic mistake, which I may mention later, but the point is that there is no point in multiplying projects that then eat each other up. That is, we could have integrated all the functional that we had at Yes.md into the forum.md that was successful at that time. It would have been even more successful, even bigger and more interesting. So it turned out we made two weak brands, one weakened, the other weakened. We got two medium-sized brands instead of one big one. This should not be allowed under any circumstances, and if you work with one thing, try to put all efforts into it. If you open a new direction, a new brand, try to make sure it does not intersect with what you have or the intersection was minimal. If they overlap by more than 50 percent in functionality, in meaning, in philosophy, then just give up the new name and strengthen what you have. Next, Joblist is a wonderful site, very useful, very necessary in our country. Isn’t it true Andrew, but it happened to be made in the dreary early noughties and we haven’t done anything with it since then. It is now written in such a programming language that we don’t even have the source code. If something suddenly breaks, we cannot even fix it. It just keeps working and we are working on a new version of it. In 2014 first quarter, hopefully you’ll see a revamped Joblist, with a new logo, but this is one project that we just lost, it was supposed to be very, very popular board for employers and job seekers, but it died because we had no resources to do it, we just made more projects than we could handle. it’s another tick that you shouldn’t reproduce very fast, if you can’t control everything you do, just start collapsing at the edges of your empire will all collapse. Joblist this is the story. Only now we have the opportunity and the resources to do it, but we lost 5 years and we will be far from the leaders in the job market by now. play. md is a financial killer of Simpals, it continues to suck our money at a very high speed, it was created in 2005 because Moldova needs its video hosting, one must have it, but unfortunately the hopes that it will become profitable have not been met and despite all its attendance, it doesn’t bring more money than forum.md. Why? Because it is very difficult to create such a structure in Moldova. So, everything is local, local hosting, local servers, hard drives, traffic, etc. And all this is very expensive and not at all profitable. We can’t close it, it’s like giving a sick child to an orphanage and never communicating again. So, such a friend was born and now we are going to drag him as much as we can, so that Moldova would have its own YouTube. Let’s move on. Colegi-one more, a stone to the same garden about the forum, it’s also purely a social network, we saw Odnoklassniki and said Wow cool, how cool, how fast they grow. We also want the same success, the Moldovan Colegi will be the same as Odnoklassniki but more beautiful. Nothing has become better, no one needed it because there were Odnoklassniki and the site died a couple of years later. Although if we again, but already reinforced forum Yes-added functionality, now the forum would be a big big site with all the functionality of Yes, Colegi. There was everything we needed and the people, there were friends and blogs, there were a couple of details, but we thought that the more the better. It wasn’t any better. Monsters is our animation school, we do computer graphics, we still do commercials and now we do cartoons.There are no human resources in the country, probably not even worth talking about, you know about it, no management, no programmers, no animators, no one. So if you want to get stuff, you have to learn it. That’s why we opened a computer graphics school and teach young people who are interested in working in this field and prepare them to work in the studio. Numbers. About Numbers in two words. I will tell you an interesting story about the creation of the brand and Boris will tell you what kind of product it is. When we decided to open an online advertising division, we understood that Simpals is not the kind of company that should be selling online advertising. We need a separate division that will deal specifically with online sales and have long puzzled over what to call it. Because there was no name on the surface and the good thing is that we were looking for a name at the same time with the logo. there are great websites that show different designs. and on one of the sites we saw a logo, the name was digits and to make it interesting the word digits were written in numbers instead of letters. We liked the idea and thought if not digits, then Numbers. We just wrote Nambers in numbers and that’s how the name and logo appeared at the same time. So that’s the feature.
Imobil.md-is our real estate agency, which we have, which is integrated into the three nines and does what a real estate agency should do. You probably don’t know much about it. It’s not very well known, but it’s there. drive.md is a car portal, it was born from 999. Now we’re also wondering why we bother doing it. What is now happening is that 999 is ruining drive.md and we are losing it too and there is nothing we can do about it because the content is essentially the same whether it is drive.md or 999 and the support and maintenance needs resources that we don’t have so drive.md may disappear from the Moldovan internet. Mafia. You probably know many people here. Amir is doing it successfully. Let’s give him a pat on the back. We brought the Mafia from Moscow, I had an old partner who worked there and he brought me to a smoky room and showed me what the Mafia is, and the Muscovites are very aggressive, I don’t know who played in Moscow or in other big cities, they yelled at me all who could, I left the table pecked, red from the table. I thought that this is a terrible game. He said, go ahead and play. I played for a few days, got involved. I liked it and we decided to start this business together in Chisinau. That is, it’s not just a game in Moscow, it’s a business, they make money on it. It’s such a startup, where they negotiate with clubs and at the same time in dozens of establishments, a game of Mafia goes on for a week. People make money on it.That is, we decided to take the Moscow model and integrate it into Chisinau. But plans broke down, as it turned out that Chisinau is not Moscow and the market here is not as big as in Moscow, so we’ve reduced everything to a few games a week and we’re not talking about profit for a long time. This is more of a minus than a plus. But it’s a very interesting project, very bright, we’re interested. We still support it and will continue to do so in the future. Garage is also an interesting project of ours, which also in 2014 will change, it will cease to be what it was originally conceived. It was originally conceived as a startup incubator, that is, a place where people come with their ideas and we, with the help of our mentors, our experts and money, our advertising resources, help them turn their little ideas into big projects and make money. That is, venture capital investment. The project is already three years old, we have done a couple of startups, but because we have very little startup activity, and they usually all have the wrong understanding of this most important period of business formation, we decided that we would not do it anymore and are repositioning the garage as a place where you can just come up with an interesting idea that will not necessarily be profitable. It could be some kind of social project, some stupid project to launch a rocket into space. And now we’re going to do this year in the garage will arrange a robot battle, that is, we will recruit young people who will be based on Lego constructors to create robots and arrange between them duels. We will travel to competitions in Ukraine and Russia together with them. In other words we will help our youth to enter this sphere and plus we will raise the spirits of all our citizens. Point.md is our second pride after 999. It is a big site and now it is the second most visited site in Moldova after 999. You know, the first thing is news, there is a map, weather forecast, catalog. We spent a lot of time on it, but thank God we didn’t have anything like that, we didn’t take a bite out of anybody, so it was a success and we consider that you are one of our successes. The logo is probably known to you, you have already seen it on any car in the city. We saw this project in Russia, we thought it was interesting. They said please go ahead and do the same in Moldova. They found these crazy activists, and we’re all waiting for him to get in the face. He doesn’t come, he can’t get hit in the face, I promised him a bonus, but nothing helps. A couple of times, he came in with a bruise, I said – Oh, really! He said yes. Then they said he was wearing mascara. I really wanted the bonus. When he should get it, he behaves very properly in the frame. Mama.md- This project is not really ours, or rather it was not conceived by us, other people who have brought it to a very good state, it has the advantage that there is a female audience, it is very easy to sell any site or resource. So we paid attention to it and bought it last year. Now he is in the simpals family and we are actively promoting him, actively moving, we have very high hopes for him. Sportster is our new project, it’s related to my last, my last bzik with sports. We opened it this year and by the way Oleg took an active part in its creation. I offer him a round of applause, bravo. This site is about amateur sports in Moldova, we’re trying not to deal with professional events, but exactly what’s going on in amateur sports, we’re trying to gather people into groups, joint training, joint jogging, joint travel, so that people become aware of each other’s existence, meet, make friends and start to do sports together. We are engaged him for 4 years actively. How many more will be engaged in an unknown, because the way over the horizon, rolls a tumbleweed, but now we are releasing literally this winter, the second series is already so more or less long about how death came to the pirate, who on a sliver of a ship guarding the chest of gold. Well, in principle we have not conceived it as a project that makes money. We just and very interesting to do it. We are happy that our citizens like it and in general people watch it with pleasure. Why shouldn’t they do it. In addition to that, we’re doing, we did commercials before that, we have more than 200 of them, we’ve done them in 10 years. Further the next slide. we did and clips for Ozone we did four clips including dragostea Din Tei and all the others. and for Alina and for the Eurovision who we had. We also had a long way to go, but we closed that direction and moved it into animation. I will also tell you why we did it and move on to the second stage of presentation. I believe that delegation doesn’t solve all the issues with free time and being comfortable at work. So I want to talk about how to arrange your life in general, so that it was not a burden, if you own a business, that is, and this is already a multifaceted issue, delegation, here solve all my questions, here’s a million dollars and do it. so, let’s look at this. so I think the main thing in business properly delegate, but what should be the business, so you can take a passive part in its development. We had a business connected with advertising and we were producing a website, we had a period.It’s very difficult, because when you’re under constant attack, what goes wrong, goes out to the director and messes with his head, it’s very hard to be distracted when they tell you that you know nothing, deal with it yourselves. Nothing will work out that way. I think that for a successful business there should be production, perhaps the production of services, not resale. Here you buy, there you sell. Give it up because in a market where there is buying and selling it is easy to enter the competition, and competition already means that there is a fight for every penny, for every customer, for every gram and here you are not relaxed. A multi-company is a company that consists of many other companies can be called differently. If you have several divisions, several directions, try to group them into different companies, have an accountant, a director, an organizational chart, a complete cycle. This will help you avoid feedback from them upwards to you, respectively, the hooks which will constantly pull you. That is,those questions which are born inside the company,they should be closed there by the forces of management. Partnership-your main people who were indicated many-armed, many-legged in the previous presentation should be your partners, that is, if you see that this man will go with you to the end of the business, give him a share in the company, because sooner or later the glucose in his muscles is over and the person will just not be interested in working even for big money. And we dig in depth, this is the mistake about which I said.We have several businesses, we do not go horizontally, but dig deep into it, well. We try not to dig new holes. That, in a nutshell, is how I described the company and what it’s supposed to be about. We still have a family that also claims your free time, which is also needed so that your free time that you open at work is not sucked out by the family, then you also need some things that I for example in time for myself have understood. First the children, and you can spend an hour with him some interesting game, where you will look him in the eyes, and not one eye on the TV or in a laptop, and you will play with him and interact. He will get much more from you, much more will remember and that’s why I do. I come home late, I give an hour, but I give it only to children. The same goes for holidays. If the kids have any events that are important, for example my daughter is swimming, my son had a matinee. Which I do for example. Last week at the daughter was a matinee at school and for the 3rd year we spouse there Santa Claus and the Snow Maiden. It started with the fact that we have no money, let someone will. We immediately raised two hands and now it has become a good tradition, all the children know that we will be Santa Claus and the Snow Maiden. This year we switched, I was the Snow Maiden and my wife was Santa Claus. And so we spent half a day on the event, and the child will remember for life that was Dad and Mom, Santa Claus and the Snow Maiden at the party, and you can spend two weeks and he will remember nothing. So I’m for quality rather than quantity. The wife will be happy if you travel with her. She will be glad if you take her to travel with you, she will be only grateful. This will allow you to combine business with pleasure. Get a grandmother, again for the children, to take to the nursery, to take away from the garden. If grandmother does not wind up, make a babysitter, I think you can afford it, so she helped you, that your communication with children did not end with going to the store, picking up from day care, try to communicate with children as with adults, as partners, that is communication, so children learn something from you. Because to take your child from kindergarten, it’s not 2 hours, no good for him, nor you. About the holidays I have already said, try as much as possible to give time to make them bright and memorable. Order of the day. I’m confused. So besides this as a company, there are many different things, which I have bought myself over several years and which I use and which help me to release my time. First of all, try not to eat lunch alone. You probably have a lot of meetings, a lot of friends, business partners who want to talk to you, they have a lot of questions. do not meet them in the office, try not to negotiate, invite them to lunch, have lunch, talk and solve a lot of questions. Phone,I won’t talk about the phone. If you get a call and say, here I have filed an ad, and we do not respond or moderators erased, what to do. I say that I did not know that it was my project at all, now I will call Roma and find out what happened and immediately all the phones are transferred. just transfer these calls to other people and motivate that I am not knowledgeable in this matter, I do not understand, now just transfer it and the man will solve all the issues. The worst thing for the manager when he goes on vacation and does not get off the phone, constantly sitting in Skype and solving questions. I am proud that my phone during the vacations is always in silent mode, no one bothers me, no one pulls me. it says that I do not need anyone, but in the fact that no one solves any problems, I call useless. weekends are taboo. You give yourself to your wife, give to your children, grandmother, hobbies your business issues are excluded, but the truth is this rule I can say that it is relevant only in the last four years, I worked both Saturday and Sunday late, but I try to come to this, that Saturday and Sunday is time not for business, but for personal life. again for why? Because the time is priceless, because doing everything that’s written here and in the previous slides, you save yourself time but probably at a loss for the company, because your company is your face and you can’t run it better than you can. So you have to be ready that trusting people with the main issues and tactical operations for you, you will miss 5% of 10% of profit but you will free up a lot of time for yourself. The main thing in life is not the money you earn or the company you grow, but the time you have to enjoy life and enjoy it. And you can’t make all the money. Let’s move on. Morning. morning. Let’s go back, let’s get this straight. What is morning actually? In the morning, what do I do in the morning? In the morning, I wake up, take the kid to school, then I run, come home, change, and go to work. And everything has contact. So if you decide to go that route and try to free up your life, allocate some of your life from work to yourself, some of it to work take your mornings. And leave the work in the afternoon starting there at 12:00 and there until the end. And from 8:00 till 12:00 leave time for your tasks, i.e. try to cram all your matters, all your hobbies, hobbies, lovers, all that you have into the first half of the day, so as not to dilute the working day with chunks there an hour here, an hour there. That’s the hustle and bustle that begins. Solved all your issues, went to work or there all the issues that is us two chunks. And the morning is more convenient, well, at least for me. The question is why do you need company, and everything is fine with you. She can do without you. Well, maybe it can, but not for long, 2-3 years will wither away and die. That’s why the company needs you. But, you, a great pyramid was drawn and was in the previous presentation, operating costs, tactical and strategic. That’s the main thing you have to do in the company has to do strategy. I don’t work as much now as I used to, but I can’t say I’m not effective for the campaign. I think my efficiency if not the same as it was, maybe it’s even higher, but that doesn’t mean I should be working 12 hours a day. I decide strategically where we dig, dig a well, deepen it, dig another well next to it, or bathe the next well. I try to interview for important, important positions, that is, for me it is important to recruit those people who I see the potential, who I can trust. I generally believe that the team is a reflection of your alter ego. These are the people with whom you not only like to earn money, but also like to communicate. That’s why now my colleagues won’t lie to me that at Sympals they have a very comfortable, friendly atmosphere. All people have their own, as if they were, you know, there are no people who are not like the main masses, they all resemble each other a bit, that is, they all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. It is very important to create such a friendly atmosphere. Key figures try to select myself, and they in turn select people in their own image and it turns out that one cheerful company. The company needs your connections, your acquaintances, that is a wonderful presentation each of you has made. Here I have answered something for myself. I’ll come over and meet these people and then I can bring you to the company. They will also be, well our department will also be very useful to use connections to do business. And the main thing I think that if you are the head of the company, you are the founder of it, you are the leader, you have to inspire people who follow you. That is, they should look at you from the outside, watch what you do, what you do, how you move and be a little, they should like that you are their leader, that they are some fat dude who does not show up at work and he has many different cars, some prostitutes, drugs and he is not at work, and the man does something, where he moves, he has some goals, he develops. It is very important for people to be inspired by what they do. So they bite off a few hours every day, 4-5 hours a day with a lot of work, with stress for the family, for themselves, and there they are – what to spend them on? What do I spend them on? I mean, I spend it now on what I had three years ago, I started spending it on my upgrade. First, I got rid of my glasses, I repaired all 16 of my teeth, I got cured of hypertension, I started exercising, I started to clean up. Then travel is a wonderful way to learn something new. In general I want to say that all the time you spend outside work, it should indirectly help what you do at work, that is, it should help you to grow as a person, you should see something, grow, begin to understand something. You can be involved in training. It could be languages, it could be… It can be , I do not know, my partner Roman for example from childhood wanted to learn to play the piano and so last year he took a piano course and studied. Bought a synthesizer played the piano. But everyone has their own cockroaches. About sports I have already said, too, probably a separate conference, I do not know if there will be questions I’m happy to tell about the adventures that we have life occurred with sports. but it’s long enough here. But now I probably spend all of those 4 hours in sports, because I see my development in it now, and that’s where I’m going. A lot of people are also interested in art, but it just so happens to be art. For example, we have a cartoon that we make here and there I realize myself as a director, that is, the work coincided with my free time, so part of the time I spend on the cartoon. And politics. Why is it in question? Because politics is not really the direction in which to spend your precious hours and days and years of your life to drain your business. I have many friends who went into politics from business and ended up without both politics and business. That’s why I don’t recommend this technology. Well you can also go back, now, there’s also one invisible point there . What most of us do these 4-5 hours that they release, they are happy to spend on work . Well this is everyone decides for himself. If it is a pleasure to work, why should I work. I would also like to point out guys that everyone has his own way, everyone has his own path, I have not read any books, I have not gone to any conferences, I have not listened to anyone. What you have heard today is my personal experience, I think that after listening to everything you have to make some conclusions for yourself. So forget what I said. Move on, grow up, I hope everything will be very good for you and everything will work out. Thank you!
-Let’s get started. I see the first hand. And the question is one question, that is, you understand the hand and you ask one question, not 2-3 questions, the topic-delegation in business, how to combine work with rest and no politics
-You were a little shrewd, just a question about politics. It will be very slippery indeed.Hi Dima. You mentioned politics with a question mark, having such a large portal under your wing. I don’t think it happens in Moldova that one can be aloof from political issues, and you said that you wouldn’t go into politics, but politics will come to you sooner or later. There have been some moments of pushback from the powers that be, if you can say so
-I can tell you why, I can’t. Point is now the only site that is not red, green and blue enough, but there have been attempts I don’t want to say whose, but there have been. Not an assault with blackmail and threats, but just a suggestion to paint the site a certain color for all time and eternity. But we have made this proposal and the point is still colorless.
-And there were no guests in epaulettes?
– All is quiet calm. I think the days are over, that such a thing is possible in our country.
Thank you.
-I have a question, maybe off-topic. You said that 3-4 years ago you began to upgrade your body, began to play sports. How did you come to this, I’m just an athlete myself and I respect your choice. I want you to tell everyone, let’s help people.
-No, it’s very cool, I also want to help people, so I’m not only actively involved in various sports, but also actively promote it, that the average office worker can achieve such rapid results, run a marathon, climb a mountain . Maybe the guys can tell us how they climbed the Mont Blanc. And how you can ride a bike for a long time and become an Ironman. By the way, I just recently became the champion of Moldova in freediving, as strange as it may seem. There’s nothing hard about it. It’s very good, it’s very interesting and it’s cool to see what miracles your body is capable of. Let it seem to you that you can over 30 all we are already old and sick good for nothing but starting to work out every month you have a new discovery that you are capable of. For me now is a great joy, I bought a special device that puts on your fingers to measure your heart rate does not do anything else. But it gives me such a wild pleasure when I wake up in the morning, put my finger in there, look there pulse less than 50 – 49 beats. It’s just beautiful, do you have any idea how cool it is. When I had hypertension 2 years ago in a very unpleasant form. My father is hypertensive . My pulse rate in the morning was like 70. Now it’s less than 50 and that’s the kind of little joys, that’s really great guys. I highly recommend everyone to do cyclic sports and freediving.
– Hello, my name is Michael and I have this interesting question. It’s interesting for me. Well here is one project, the 2nd project, the third project, the 7th project, the 13th project, the 15th project, the 17th project again. Probably all very interesting from the 17th project. It is hardly money, maybe money, maybe a million a day, maybe it will help everybody. Is there a global goal that you have to work toward?
-I got it. Well guys, that’s my answer to that. I don’t set goals for myself. I try to do what I want to do. If we still want to do sports, I start doing them and if I’m interested in this subject, I create a site about sports. If I’m not interested in rocket science, I launch a rocket into space. I do not pursue any goal. I just have at this point in my life is interesting to do what I do, it may cease to be interesting in 2-3 years, and I’ll close this project. I do not set any global goals for myself, but I have never sought to make money. None of the projects were built with the expectation that it would make millions. All the projects were created with wow effect, it seemed to us that it will be great, it will be interesting, it will be useful to people and some of them probably brought some money in gratitude and thank them for that.
-Hello, my name is Anastasia. My question is the following, when you hire people in your company by what criteria do you understand that this person is right for you, any tests or a personal conversation? That is, how do you know that the person is yours?
– Thank you Nastya, that’s an excellent question. It’s a very important part of the business. It’s the people who work there. It’s not for nothing that I pointed out in my presentation that the business owner has to understand the involvement. What certain things, but the first things I’d like to say are important to me. I don’t really hire people correctly, which makes me suffer, because my hr hates me and so does Roma . Well, I take people to work according to their feelings. He came here, he tells me something, it does not matter what he says, it is important how he does it. If I like a person even though he has gaps, he is not able to do something, and for sure he has professional problems and as an employee may not be very good, but if I take a person with whom I like to communicate and with whom we have established contact, I hired him. So because I employ a lot of people like that according to my feelings, half of them, with half of them I have to leave after a while, but the half that remains creates a wonderful team which no one would deny that it’s very warm and friendly. It’s very important in a company to have a very pleasant and friendly atmosphere.
– I am interested in this question someone wants to keep something for a long time. Here you are – family, money, hobbies, or just to realize themselves?
-That’s a great question too, thank you. Yeah, you know, I’d like to. I told you that I don’t set any specific goals, I believe that a man should live his life happily. That is his task. Not to make someone happy, not to make happy children or wife or relatives or friends. To be happy himself. If a man will be happy himself in life, will live in his own pleasure, then people around him in the same way, looking at this model and taking for themselves will also be happy. Just a lot of people say I live for the sake of children, I want everything to be good. These people do not think that children will take the same model for themselves as their father or mother, and also will take care of their children and they will not be successful. This is a road to nowhere. So everyone should try to live his life to his own pleasure, to get the most out of life, get high and try not to do in any case what he does not want to do. This is very important and do not let anyone change themselves. Thank you
-Can I ask you a question from me? The question is this. Moment is that 3 years ago you were able to dedicate less time to work, how did this happen? It didn’t just come to you, I will exercise for 3 hours, what was it? That’s what I want to do.
– What was, what happened? The first background happened way back in 2007 or eighth year when he started this journey and it started with a big problem. Our business was built on the fact that we placed on our websites were 5-6, placed advertisements of such monsters as Orange, Vokstel, large advertisers and our budget and fiscal year was based on the contracts that we concluded with companies each year. These contracts were growing every year by 1.5 times, because the Internet was growing and so were our contacts. For these contracts we hired people and equipment, and so on. And then one year, it was 2008, when the crisis hit, Orange said that he wouldn’t give us the money, because the crisis was just outside and he decided to let our competitors’ sites go, we would get a bump. Here we were in a terrible depression, because we had to fire a few people, we had to roll back some of our projects, we had to squeeze a lot. This moment is very important why, because that’s when what happened that allowed 999 to become nines. We compensated this loss from the company by introducing the publication for one leu on tens, that is, until now people did not pay per ad, it was just forbidden to give more than a few ads. In 2008, we began to take one leu from this. Now on the republish brings in 4 times more money than all the advertising of all, all the banner ads on the site. And what’s the point, that’s exactly the point…
– Here’s this point, how you started to spend less time working, and your effectiveness of this…
– These are all the things that you told your presentation, they didn’t happen in one year. It took me from that point on when our business re-purposed and became that business that I was talking about and I started to slowly fill out all the boxes and tick all these boxes, within two or three years I had free time. I still in the presentation that it is not necessary to spend all this time on something not working, because there is also work that brings pleasure, that is at work things that you do for fun. I still work as a designer at simpals, which means that all the sites you see are drawn by me. I’m not a programmer, I don’t understand anything, but I do design and I enjoy it. So I spend my time on it and I don’t regret it at all.
-You just said how many people work in the company and how do you delegate anyway, it still came back to you delegating.
– How I delegate. Andrei, how many people work in the company at the last moment? -112 people.
-And how does it happen, is it a pyramid, are you in charge?
-No, a lot of issues are solved, I do not even know about their existence. Yes this is the first year when I told Andrei that you do corporate, team building New Year, I do not want to know anything at all. I just want to go there as a guest. It’s going to suck, it’s going to suck, promise I won’t scold you. Probably will be two times better.
– My name is Andrew, a question about the competition. Inspire, stifle?
-We love our competitors, it’s amazingly motivating. We start hustling like bugs, especially the broker is a lot of joy. When we learn that they have a new version, rush to do, work at night, on weekends, as we had three years ago. We found out about it in 3 months we released a new version of the site, they were itching for another 6 months. You think what it was. We love, yes we love our competitors very much. Because they’re always pushing us. It’s really great.
-So here’s a question. Tell me please, do you motivate people to keep up with the times or do people want to be better than your competitors, or do you tell them, let’s work. Or they themselves want to do better. How does it all happen?
-Well, all people are different, it is impossible to put them all under one roof, each has its own mechanisms. Well, for example there are 2-3 layers, one management is naturally he supports the company, he worries. It is also important to be the first, also to remain a leader, he also understands the philosophy of the company. But there are some links, for example like programmers who, excuse me, Dmitry Sergeevich, I understand the company’s philosophy, but maybe we will come to some agreement. Of course we will. Certainly, as in any company, there are such people. It is normal absolutely
-Hello… My name is Denis. My question is. You talk about delegation and your different projects. When you retire, who will be left after you, do you want your children to go on with the business or let them go to ballet for example, and you leave a good company of your friends and colleagues?
– I do not have the task of raising my son as a successor to the company. I’d like him to start his career with a degree from Cambridge in McDonald’s. That would be the right path for him to take. And who I will leave the company to, I’m not ready to say when it will happen, even sooner to my partner Roma. He has a problem who he will leave the company to when he goes on vacation. I do not know when it will happen and how it will be when I go on vacation. Maybe it will be in 20 years in Tibet, maybe it will be in 10 years in some mines, I do not know.
-Hello, my name is Natalia, to continue this topic. You said that you don’t have a common goal, that is you have no idea how you will end up with what you want to achieve. But we all are not eternal, and if you continue, aren’t you afraid that what you have created will be lost, because you don’t know that you want this child to grow. What are you striving for? And in general, how do you motivate your employees, what do you achieve and what do your employees achieve?
– Well I, I will try to answer this difficult question. I want my employees, my colleagues to enjoy their lives as much as I do. I want my work to be enjoyable, for them to understand that they are doing something useful for people. I don’t want them to have numbers in their heads for which they work, that in 5 years I’ll get this much, and in 10 years this much. And I want them here and now to enjoy life, so we try to create such working conditions that they feel comfortable, that it was not a burden for them, that it was good. I work in the same way, I do not work to create a corporation that will enslave the whole world and in 4 years it will have a turnover of 4 billion euros. I understand that any company will die sooner or later.
-I’m not talking about numbers, I’m talking about your idea, you have a dream, right?
-I have a dream, I want to learn how to fly.
-You didn’t start this company to learn how to fly. Have you thought about anything?
– I didn’t think about anything. I just liked it, and I do it. Why should there be any clear goals, you just do what you think is right and you do it.
– Do you have a strategic plan for what’s gonna happen with Simpals in ten years?
-And not 10, but a year or two, we certainly have plans, what attendance figures, how many cartoons to release. Yeah, but it’s about what happens to the campaign when I die.
-No, it’s about when you turn 50 and you realize that that’s it, I’ll take care of the family, and the business, let Roma take care of it…
-I do not divide the family, the business is just life. And there are 3, 5 …
-Talking about brands, when we talk about it, about family. We talk about what we believe in.
– Are you talking about philosophy? I can talk about philosophy. It’s different, it’s not a strategy, it’s clearly and clearly reflected in our logo. We’re trying to make life easier, we make nines to make it easier for people to advertise, cartoons to make it easier for people to have fun, to be happy, joblist to make it easier to find a job, stopham to make it easier to walk. All our projects are aimed at making people’s lives easier, to make life easier for people and it reflected the name of our company Simpals.
-I wanted to ask you this question, in any team, you also happen to have conflict situations. If you have any conflicts with your partner, how did you resolve them and how do you solve them when you have misunderstandings as a manager?
-I have two questions here. The founder of simpals, when simpals was founded in 2002, I had 50% and 50% of my classmate Alexander with whom I opened the company. I gave a very fast pace to the development of the company, we were working 25 hours a day, and after a year and a half he couldn’t take the pressure. Let’s divide the business. we began to friction and so i collected a year 3000 dollars to give him for 50% simpals and i settled with him and became the owner of 1. and literally this year i gave a share to my partner roman shtirb, because he with me already 10, shoulder to shoulder works. I’ve never had any conflicts, he’s a very amazing person, the only person in the company who in 10 years has never once stumped me for his salary, not once. I just picked it up when I thought it was necessary and it always pleased him. I’d like to give him a pat on the back now and I’m very pleased to have someone like that in my life.
-Say, how do you contract this moment of separation from your partner? And having already had experience with the first partner and trust you so much that as friends you will just separate or as our lawyer always tells us that it is better to have a founder’s agreement
-Of course there’s a contract, he’s the founder of Sympals, of course.
-And how do you resolve issues in the team?
-Fighting? With a scuffle, usually like… like, usually.
-Good evening again, I thank you for today’s wonderful presentation very much. So to say you immersed me very interesting such a state of the student, although lately tried to teach someone, as such I have a question. I have four children. The youngest son is 4 months old. Moreover, at the age of 40 I entered my first year of university. A lot of things happened, but I haven’t worked for a few years now, I don’t go to work, I wake up when I want to have a certain income. I was able to build a network organization of 6,000 people . It works by itself. I don’t get involved at all. But recently I started working with a salaried employee. And I started to have problems with it. I’m serious when I say that in the networking business I was able to get people to work for the idea, and when you start to talk to a person about the salary, when you try to bend a person to work for a salary, you do not get that return, you do not get that energy that, say, in my other direction people did it without receiving any money. And I would like to ask you how you manage to keep it 112 people, do you have some idea, and that keeps these people without administrative resources, or still more, how do you keep this person?
– I get it. well, administrative resources is actually one of the weakest resources of staff motivation. Our staff are mostly motivated by the fact that we give people good working conditions, our salaries aren’t the highest on the market, I would say they’re average, maybe a little bit higher, but there are a lot of places where our programmers can work and get more money in foreign companies, but they work here with us, because first of all they understand that they’re not making sex shops for Great Britain. They’re making national products that their family and friends and friends go to, they can be proud of it. It’s the same with us in 3d, I mean we make a cartoon, which is the only cartoon moldova makes. I know that they get a lot of awards, they are in the credits, everyone knows them, the country is proud of them and any person who works in Simpals, those products that are made in Simpals, are made for the benefit of our country, as pompous as it may sound or for them this is the best motivation.
-Hello, Anastasia. You said that you did your projects out of enthusiasm. But still, when the idea came up, did you plan it first, think through for which audience and structure everything, or did you start the project on enthusiasm, and then think about how to systematize it?
– Audience is all bullshit, business plans, the monitor. If you feel that something interesting projects and people will eat it up and use it, you have to do it. You’re likely to make a mistake, but it’s the right thing to do, because if you start counting, you’re more likely to start nothing. Just start doing it and you’ll figure it out as you go along.
– Hello Dmitry, you said you have projects, the store at 999.
-Yes, the store manager is here.
– I have this summer, I kind of tried it.
-Something bad is about to happen.
– I was looking for a 999 drill, found it in your store. Called at lunchtime, I like what they said, like I’m having lunch, what do you want from me. The one I wanted to order was not, then I was offered another. I asked when it will be, I was told that at 5 pm I will bring. At the end of it brought to me something like 4-4:30. That’s it, what a bad experience…
-A question?
-Wasting four hours waiting, doing nothing…
-Remember my presentation, I’m going to put our director on the phone. All I do not know what is going on there with the store, of course the business is not running flawlessly, certainly there are a lot of problems, there are rough edges, but if I worry about every drill not delivered on time, nothing good for the company will happen. I then look at Vadim strictly, very strictly, he will make that face and everything will be fine.
-What 4 hours delivery is a lot?
-What 4:00? delivery? In Moscow there is no pickup on the same day in principle. You order in the best case the next day you will bring. If we promised for three, but brought for 4, then this is pork.
-Alexander is my name. That’s looking at you that you are a person who in the world of the Internet, well, at least has a very large knowledge base, an understanding of this market, Moldovan, foreign and so on. Among those present here I know for sure there are a lot of people who are also involved in the Internet. The question is, what opportunities to earn through it, maybe to share experiences, or maybe a more correct direction or even just the only direction for people who work in the same field, but perhaps they don’t have the knowledge that you already have and the experience as well. Thank you!
-I understand, excellent question, because now we have a change of policy, the strategic policy of development in the Moldovan segment is that we will be happy to share the traffic, the projects, the resources that we have, the external companies that may come to us and say guys we have a scheme to monetize additional 999. We will be glad to develop an extra module, move it to 999 and start earning money with them. The same with any of our projects, that is, we are now open to young start-ups coming in and connecting to our resource and we make money together. If you have a specific idea, let’s do it together.
-Please tell me how much you can leave the business now without damage.
-You mean leave it at all?
-Yes, to forget, for a few years, turn off the phone and just go away.How many years it can exist, how long can you leave it?
-I could probably not go to work at all and turn off my phone.
-No, without affecting business.
– No, not without harming the business.
-for how long, not a week, a day, a month, six months? How involved are you. Because you said you delegate, you have reliable people, you can keep it.
-I was the one who said I can make decisions strategically, I decide where we dig, I decide. I don’t decide the drill.
-Okay, and your business, projects are self-funded?
-Yes, we do not have any investors, no loans. We make our own money.
-No, but each project separately…
-Oh, it’s such a mess, it’s terrible. There is 999, the locomotive that pulls the train with these plays, cartoons, that is the main there are several directions: Numbers Successful, 999, Point, a couple more, the rest are in deficit and we just drag. What happens to one locomotive, if I am absent, it will go by inertia. Roman I think he will be able to develop it over time, he’s not dumber than me, but I don’t know what numbers to call. That is, in a year, in 10 or at all will not die and will turn into some kind of superpower, a supercorporation, I can not answer unfortunately, sorry, I’ll pass.
-Good evening. You say there are a few projects, they are pulling all the others, but how much of a problem are the people who work on projects that bring in money? And the rest, who seem to work, but the money they only consume. Why should he give money from his project or he could use it for his project and he gives it to another one?
-Close the cartoon, for example?
-Not the cartoon, the cartoon is good.
-Okay, let’s close play.
-Let’s go to .
-That’s good.
– No, these are questions, as you can see.
-But for example, we have a point, there are journalists, there’s a director, we’ll tell him, Nikita, we’re going to close the point. We told him about it. Let’s close it. He says, no, the concept is not like that. Let’s shake it up a bit and make it stop slowing down and I’ll take it over and make it 2-3 times more visited and you’ll pay for it. We don’t depend on people’s motivation financially whether we have unprofitable projects or not. If we close play, the programmers’ salaries won’t grow. There is no connection. My income will increase personally. My dividends will go up, but why should the programmer’s salary go up?
-The company’s resources are growing.
-Growth.
-Invest this money into this project.
– But I do not motivate people with money.
-And you don’t have to, the project is growing.
– So what. That is, not to invest in the cartoon, but to invest in the point, to give advertising on television. To develop it. Well, we can not projects that are dead, we just close. we still believe that the play should be and cartoons. We are not in a situation now where we have to make such tough unpleasant decisions that if we do not close this project, they will sink our ship here. Thank God the business allows us to keep these projects afloat. It’s great in general. It’s our balloon phenomenon, that is, when you go up in a balloon to have well with you 20 bags of sand which you can drop everything. If you don’t have them and have nothing to dump, then you’re screwed. So if suddenly bad times come, God forbid, we will have what bags to dump.
– I just wonder where the questions about closing the business to leave come from, it has no logic, because the business grows and the person grows. It seems to me it is possible to clap separately a man whose successes in the sport and he to me a 20-year-old young man, prevails over the work of some federations on which we work. Dima such a question, in the ratio of paper, I said correctly paper and electronic advertising? Well maybe the brokerage had a strategic mistake for a period that they have more .
– Absolutely,they made a strategic mistake when they saw young 999 as a potential competitor. They should have, well I would have just tried to buy us if I were them. About 7-8 years ago when there were some reasonable numbers, well at least make an attempt at it. And the second step was of course to actively reduce the newspaper and build up the Internet. If that’s what it’s about. In the ratio I do not know, we are not engaged in paper advertising, but the only thing I know that from year to year it is actively falling, shrinking the budget for the press and growing on the Internet. These are the areas where you have to choose or not choose between TV and the Internet. It doesn’t make sense to give both. And that’s why the Internet is now actively absorbing paper.
– Good evening everybody, my name is Alexander. How do you feel about startups? The atmosphere of youth? Why is it so dull why people don’t want to do anything in business? I see a lot of real business representatives, whose products you can really touch and feel. Why are it people not so mobile.Why don’t they want to apply to incubators, give applications to a garage. A garage that’s on a non-cool street that they don’t know where it is. Why isn’t there a red carpet?
– Well, this question is not even about the Moldovan startup, but about the Moldovan mentality in general, why in principle people here are not ready to take risks and are not ready to be active. Why 100 people gathered here and not 1,000. It’s the same question, that is, our people are not yet ready in principle, it’s possible not even our children, our grandchildren will have a different way of thinking. We’re just not ready for that yet. We thought that our atmosphere would be good for startups; we were wrong. I admit that this project is wrong, it’s a garage project, and it needs to change the very scheme, that is, people. But here’s the problem with startups in general – many of them don’t want to say their idea. They are afraid that I will steal it, they don’t understand that everything was invented a long time ago, nothing new is happening. Secondly, many people usually don’t have teams, they just come and say, “I have an idea, let’s launch rockets with advertising in space. And who is going to program it, I don’t know. No, I can’t. Well, you probably know all the problems. Well, we in the garage to make so that, a man who just came up with the idea and not demand a business plan, something interesting that he came up with, he will just do and run. It won’t make money it won’t matter and we don’t expect that here in Moldova we have a startup that will conquer the world. In order to create projects like twitter or facebook, I think you need to have a little different mentality, that is, I can’t think of a startup that will conquer the world. I do not nurture people that I can make some startup for the whole world.
-Well, there’s this imposing building of a startup being built, which will bear the proud name of a startup, some press wrote.
– I hadn’t heard about that.
-It says there will be support from the government.
-So this will change the mentality of Moldovans? I don’t understand anything. It won’t change, maybe money will be pumped in, but the number of successful start-ups will not grow in Moldova. We just need to wait and here’s what we’re now about to connect to our resource, maybe it will give a boost to start-ups, because we’ve solved a lot of issues with audience, with advertising, with money. You just have to connect to the service and make money. It may improve the situation somehow, but in general it’s very difficult. People ask me now, Dim, if you were a young green in your 20s, you would have started it all, to start doing it now. It is clear that I didn’t make 999 anymore, so I say that the market will collapse. What I would do now niche products, that is, I would make a niche site dedicated to hunting, dedicated to women, fans of broken matches, but clearly to an audience, understand who hangs out there and made as much as I could do. Here’s where to drip it seems to me.
-Hi Dima, my name is Dima. I have such a question in the continuation, Connect to us. do you plan to ip? in some way to give a mechanism for simply connecting, and whether it is in the plans?
-Yes there are plans for the second half of 2014. Now we have plans to comb all our sites, transfer them to the platform, because written in 5 different programming languages, half of the sources we do not have a complete mess mess, from the side may look more or less strange but in fact it is complete horror, complete shambles. Now we are combing, in the first half we will finish combing all our sites. We’re now combining into one database and all of our 20 sites will have one user base, one wallet universal and after that we’ll get into Ip, where we can connect, use our resources.
– Let’s 2 questions and that’s the end of it.
– Dimitri good evening, alexander. i would like to ask if at the moment there would be a proposal to you to buy the main package of the company simpals itself. What decision would you take?
-There was an offer to buy three nines, I can’t say from whom, but there was a continuation and it was pretty decent. Well, I will not sell my business and a billion euros, I do not know what to do with it, it will not make me miserable, nothing will change just a lot of money but I now take from life all I need I have enough income that I can realize all my needs I do not understand why I need more money, but if I lose my company is like cutting off my hand, I certainly if this does not stand up so I will not sell for any money
-You said that you can not understand why you were not offered to buy your company 7-8 years ago, that is, at that time you could sell?
– No, I said that at least made an offer, I would have refused.
-Then you have this question, given your knowledge and understanding of the Internet. Here’s the thing, I do not know if I’m right, but I think that if you had chosen a different market and how we have most of the IT people are probably working for overseas orders. Probably you earned more money there, much more. Why have you stopped here, in Moldova, besides the fact that you were born and raised here, it’s a national product, everything like that. But nevertheless we can say that this is why you refused some of the money.
– I see.
-And then there’s the second question. Are you thinking about going out with some of your projects which are probably the most successful, to the international market or just to the market from another country, let’s say three nines, to launch in Europe, Russia or somewhere else?
– Regarding the first question, I want to stress once again that I do not do business for the money and I do not want to make a billion or 1000000 dollars, so I do business here because I feel comfortable doing it here. The people here . I have a wife, I have kids here, I feel very well here, I will not leave – that’s the first question. The second question – yes, we do. And we just a month ago bought three nines.ru, 999.ua and plan to start next year, find a partner to run there. That we will not go home to live all the same.
-Dima hello, such a question. Did you have any experience in some traditional business in the real sector, not online, offline, and the second point, where do you invest your money in the real sector, if it remains? After so many projects?
-Any nonsense, offline business. Offline business. Is an online store an offline business, Vadim? If anyone remembers the sms market newspaper, well, it was an offline business and the experience was not very good. We tried to compete with the broker, it was a year on the battlefield did not work out well, we suffered 3 years, but it gave a huge increase in traffic 999 and recognition, because the newspaper then renamed to the three nines, which were distributed in the offices for free. It gave us a good boost for the product itself, the brand promotion. But I can’t say now, but it seems to me that the online store is an offline business in the first place, and then online because the shop window that you have is just a shop window, people still call to make an appointment, the courier comes to bring the goods to Moldova, to be in a catalog, in a newspaper anywhere. But all the same, I am strong in online business, I am unlikely to go into offline business, it’s probably still not my thing. And where the money goes? So it turns out that the money we do not send the Swiss bank, we do not cash, do not keep under the pillow, but somehow it turns out that the money we have left on the salary, a little more. I do not know why this happens. I am not able to save money, we have free resources, and we take programmers. Something else appears there, we increase the salaries in some department. No investments, although we are looking for land, we want to buy some land and start building our office, that will probably be a big investment.
-I wanted to ask you were planning a project with the commonwealth, that is, well, I got this information. Card system. Accordingly I wanted to ask whether you plan to create maybe to set up such a symbiosis – this card system – this system of consumers, to integrate the consumer Internet network such a project. It’s just my way of saying that some kind of bomb project with three nines is just going to happen.
-How information leaks out … It is possible not to answer this question yet, the information is still raw, yet secret. Let it remain in question, there is no such a thing is unknown. I will try after the announcement of the cartoon I said when I found a producer and that he gives 5 million euros and we start making a cartoon, I am vicious and cautious about our new projects and try not to talk about it until they come out.
-All but one last thing? Imagine you’re 20 -22 -25? whatever. 2014. You’ve just graduated from university. You left your job, you want to go into business, how much money would you put down or would you look for an investor. Where would you go, online business or offline. Dima I’m 24 years old, what would I do, so in a nutshell.
-I told you that I would probably start a business, I would probably do profile products, maybe I would make a platform that allows you to make sites along the lines of activity, we have so many, what a wonderful market we have in moldova that it is free. The competition, if there is any, it is very weak. There are many segments of people who are not united by a media resource. I would start a site for housewives, fans of porno movies, gardeners, fishermen. I would try to unite them in a network. And with this product, that is, first separately, and then collapse, that is, I would do it this way. How would I do it, I would probably not take credit, probably no one gave them, and would do it with my friends. How I started out in principle nines, that’s but I was talking about Alexander, who had 50% simpals, was a programmer. I did the design, he did the programming. It would be the same here, I would find a team, I would convince them that it would work. Basically what many of us are doing and would have moved that way.
– Let’s give a round of applause to Dima.
