The story of DashaMail: from launching a clone of an American email start-up to quarrels with investors and a new start
Today, the Internet has a huge number of stories of a variety of startups, especially foreign ones. Often they are quite interesting to read, but there are still not so many embellished stories about the experience of creating projects in RuNet.
We decided to rectify this situation and tell our story of creating a successful clone of the American product, attracting serious investors, quarreling with them and starting a new project from scratch.
It all started 10 years ago in St. Petersburg when two student friends were thinking about making money. We had no resources or acquaintances, and the only chance to earn money without serious investments at that time was the Internet. Therefore, we decided to launch an online startup.
And here are the very students: Daniil Sosnin and Julia Rozhkova
Since we especially did not have experience, the idea to make a clone of some useful foreign service and adapt it to Russian realities seemed good. After a fairly lengthy analysis, it was decided to plunge into the field of email marketing. We had to clone the Mailchimp service, which by that time had already gained serious popularity.
One of the main advantages of this product was the focus not on large business, but on small and medium-sized companies. This ideology was close to us, so we decided to make “Mailchimp in Russian” - and called the project “Pechkin-mail.ru”, you can remember it from the blog that was quite popular at the time on the hub (here is one of our old articles ).
An interesting fact: many are still interested in how “pirated” that name was - of course, when we were students and only came up with a project, we did not particularly think about the legal side of things. However, later everything was officially done - we acquired the right to use the image of the postman Pechkin from Eduard Uspensky for a period of two years.
At the first stage, we actively studied Mailchimp, analyzed their solutions to various problems, took something as is, had to finish some things. In general, the choice of product for cloning was very successful. The story is widely known according to which this system of email marketing for internal needs was created in a web studio that was engaged in the creation of sites and interfaces.
The founders of this project had vast experience in conducting UX research, analyzing interface solutions. As a result, the product turned out to be very convenient and of high quality. We could simply borrow many solutions, because we were confident in the quality of analytics that preceded their implementation in Mailchimp.
Of course, we added Russian specifics - for example, unlike foreign products, we did not have a rigid subscription model. In Russia, in the b2b sphere at the time of our launch, such a payment scheme was unusual. For many years, we have not implemented a tight subscription, when access to all services is immediately blocked during late payments - this allowed us to build good relations with the audience, the path and at the cost of some revenue reduction.
We had to modify the functions associated with audience segmentation. In our country, CRM is still far from being available in all small and medium-sized companies, and at the time when we were working on our email product, such systems generally only penetrated our market.
International services are still not very ready to show such empathy and understand the needs of customers in the markets that are not largest for them. Then, 10 years ago, this was an even greater competitive advantage for our target audience.
Another point is the payment for the service. American companies will allow you to pay only with a card or via paypal in dollars, but we worked hard to add the maximum number of payment methods. Including bank transfers convenient for Russian legal entities.
We patented our developments in Russia, the market was constantly growing, and the service was developing. Everything went perfectly, and as a cherry on the cake, we received an offer to buy a business from American investors. This would allow us to obtain funds in order to launch the next project in some new, more capital-intensive and interesting niche. Therefore, we agreed and very soon regretted our decision.
It all started with growing disagreement over the further development of the project. As founders, we believed that Pechkin should remain a tool for small and medium-sized businesses, and large companies already had someone to work with. But American investors were tough for reorienting toward enterprise solutions. And in violation of the agreements, they began to carry out these changes in life.
To top it off, we have not yet been paid the second part of the payment for our shares in the business. Therefore, in the end, we parted and decided to develop a new project that would follow the principles that we originally laid down in Pechkina.
When we realized that no one would transfer the second part of the money for the sale of Pechkin and that there would not be enough money to start larger-scale projects, but we needed to do something, we decided to go along the beaten track. We had to again make a service for email marketing, but already consistent with all the latest trends.
The new product is called DashaMail - we chose it for a reason. It was important for us to show first of all to the old Pechkin users that his team had left and was making a new project. Our support service was led by Daria Savitskaya, she also did a new service with us. Many clients were personally acquainted with her, because we thought it would be great to name a new project by her name.
Since the start of the Pechkin-mail project, which was largely a copy of Mailchimp, email marketing has taken a big step forward. Even Chimp itself was seriously updated, and we built the previous product, inspired by its old version. We did what we already knew how to do well - we adapted foreign experience to the realities of the Runet, improved those places that we considered necessary. The result should have been a new, modern tool for email marketing.
And we did it, but it was not so simple at all.
The launch of a new startup in a short time, and even against the backdrop of a corporate conflict, could not pass without problems. Firstly, time has changed. If, starting “Pechkina”, we were young and we were quite happy with the situation when we earn 15 thousand rubles a month, now everyone already had families and a different level of expenses. It was necessary to start earning immediately.
Secondly, competition has increased significantly. We never looked at foreign markets, but in our home Russian a lot of email marketing systems appeared, for example, from developers with Ukrainian roots. As a result, the cost of attracting customers at least doubled.
The move with the choice of the name did not justify itself. Users did not consider analogies and did not understand that the team they already knew made the new product, they did not feel any continuity between Pechkin and Dasha. Therefore, we had to win from scratch even those customers who already worked with us a year or two ago. This was an unpleasant surprise, although in the end we managed to reach the indicators that the old business had before its unsuccessful sale.
Another unexpected problem - we developed the previous project in startup mode, and also involved our friends and acquaintances. If we knew that a person is a good programmer, and even our friend, we would definitely turn to him. When launching DashaMail, the situation was seriously complicated - all our specialist friends grew up professionally in 6-7 years, it became difficult for us to offer them tasks appropriate to their level, and even payment. Therefore, I had to devote much more time to finding new team members and external contractors.
After our team left the Pechkin project, interruptions in its work began. The new leadership could not maintain the level of service at the same level, as a result of which failures and technical problems began. At their peak, the service did not work at all for some time.
Interestingly, many of the customers continued to believe in the product and regularly paid for it even when they could not use it. This showed us that we correctly selected our audience - the management and employees of small companies are attached to the products and are ready to endure some inconvenience. In the case of enterprise-business in case of problems you will immediately lose customers, and it will be much more painful - if a large client leaves, who brings a significant part of the money, this is a lot of stress. So the main lesson from this whole story is that it’s important to correctly identify your audience.
The second conclusion that we made from the results of the story with cooperation with American investors is not to be afraid to attract external sources of financing that are not associated with the emergence of new partners. Good relations and agreements reached do not give any guarantees. Therefore, now we are not shy to use the same loans to solve the problems we need. And we quite manage to do without any investors.
The third thing that we realized in a situation of increased competition is that it is important to be very flexible in marketing and R&D. Today we have a much more diverse set of tools and approaches to promotion than it was during the first project. We also actively use machine learning to analyze and create new “features”.
Well, the fourth conclusion: the cloning approach of successful Western projects and their adaptation to the realities of Runet can still work. But as the level of competition has grown, simply copying even the most successful service is not enough. It is necessary to conduct market research, take the best of different products, and look at interesting moves from projects not even from your niche. Then you can gather enough information to do better than theirs. For example, as a result, the mailing editor in our new product turned out to be even better than the main reference - Mailchimp.
We do not plan to stop and will continue to develop the service: add new features, including those peeked at foreign projects. For example, in the near future, the release of the function of connecting email newsletters with social networks is similar to Mailchimp.
An important area of ​​work is the further optimization of the service for working with mobile devices, mainly on Android. We see great growth potential for companies like Xiaomi or Huawei, so our product should be able to interact with these platforms.
You need to work on monetization. So far, despite the success in attracting customers, including those who used our previous product, we still have to reach profitability. At the same time, we do not plan to abandon established principles for the sake of quick money.
The dynamics of the growth of the project DashaMail
In the old project, only two managers served the thousand paying customers - all the time it seemed that you could manage with one. As a result, in 2014 the revenue per employee per year amounted to $ 200 thousand for us. This scheme seems to be working now, so we will not increase the staff, but rather plan to optimize business processes and increase work efficiency.
That's it for today, thanks for watching! If you are interested in some moments of our history - let me know in the comments, there are questions - ask, we will try to answer everything.
We decided to rectify this situation and tell our story of creating a successful clone of the American product, attracting serious investors, quarreling with them and starting a new project from scratch.
Prologue: students want to do business
It all started 10 years ago in St. Petersburg when two student friends were thinking about making money. We had no resources or acquaintances, and the only chance to earn money without serious investments at that time was the Internet. Therefore, we decided to launch an online startup.
And here are the very students: Daniil Sosnin and Julia Rozhkova
Since we especially did not have experience, the idea to make a clone of some useful foreign service and adapt it to Russian realities seemed good. After a fairly lengthy analysis, it was decided to plunge into the field of email marketing. We had to clone the Mailchimp service, which by that time had already gained serious popularity.
One of the main advantages of this product was the focus not on large business, but on small and medium-sized companies. This ideology was close to us, so we decided to make “Mailchimp in Russian” - and called the project “Pechkin-mail.ru”, you can remember it from the blog that was quite popular at the time on the hub (here is one of our old articles ).
An interesting fact: many are still interested in how “pirated” that name was - of course, when we were students and only came up with a project, we did not particularly think about the legal side of things. However, later everything was officially done - we acquired the right to use the image of the postman Pechkin from Eduard Uspensky for a period of two years.
First steps
At the first stage, we actively studied Mailchimp, analyzed their solutions to various problems, took something as is, had to finish some things. In general, the choice of product for cloning was very successful. The story is widely known according to which this system of email marketing for internal needs was created in a web studio that was engaged in the creation of sites and interfaces.
The founders of this project had vast experience in conducting UX research, analyzing interface solutions. As a result, the product turned out to be very convenient and of high quality. We could simply borrow many solutions, because we were confident in the quality of analytics that preceded their implementation in Mailchimp.
Of course, we added Russian specifics - for example, unlike foreign products, we did not have a rigid subscription model. In Russia, in the b2b sphere at the time of our launch, such a payment scheme was unusual. For many years, we have not implemented a tight subscription, when access to all services is immediately blocked during late payments - this allowed us to build good relations with the audience, the path and at the cost of some revenue reduction.
We had to modify the functions associated with audience segmentation. In our country, CRM is still far from being available in all small and medium-sized companies, and at the time when we were working on our email product, such systems generally only penetrated our market.
International services are still not very ready to show such empathy and understand the needs of customers in the markets that are not largest for them. Then, 10 years ago, this was an even greater competitive advantage for our target audience.
Another point is the payment for the service. American companies will allow you to pay only with a card or via paypal in dollars, but we worked hard to add the maximum number of payment methods. Including bank transfers convenient for Russian legal entities.
Not everything is so smooth: experience with US investors
We patented our developments in Russia, the market was constantly growing, and the service was developing. Everything went perfectly, and as a cherry on the cake, we received an offer to buy a business from American investors. This would allow us to obtain funds in order to launch the next project in some new, more capital-intensive and interesting niche. Therefore, we agreed and very soon regretted our decision.
It all started with growing disagreement over the further development of the project. As founders, we believed that Pechkin should remain a tool for small and medium-sized businesses, and large companies already had someone to work with. But American investors were tough for reorienting toward enterprise solutions. And in violation of the agreements, they began to carry out these changes in life.
To top it off, we have not yet been paid the second part of the payment for our shares in the business. Therefore, in the end, we parted and decided to develop a new project that would follow the principles that we originally laid down in Pechkina.
From Pechkin to a new project
When we realized that no one would transfer the second part of the money for the sale of Pechkin and that there would not be enough money to start larger-scale projects, but we needed to do something, we decided to go along the beaten track. We had to again make a service for email marketing, but already consistent with all the latest trends.
The new product is called DashaMail - we chose it for a reason. It was important for us to show first of all to the old Pechkin users that his team had left and was making a new project. Our support service was led by Daria Savitskaya, she also did a new service with us. Many clients were personally acquainted with her, because we thought it would be great to name a new project by her name.
Since the start of the Pechkin-mail project, which was largely a copy of Mailchimp, email marketing has taken a big step forward. Even Chimp itself was seriously updated, and we built the previous product, inspired by its old version. We did what we already knew how to do well - we adapted foreign experience to the realities of the Runet, improved those places that we considered necessary. The result should have been a new, modern tool for email marketing.
And we did it, but it was not so simple at all.
Problems of the new project
The launch of a new startup in a short time, and even against the backdrop of a corporate conflict, could not pass without problems. Firstly, time has changed. If, starting “Pechkina”, we were young and we were quite happy with the situation when we earn 15 thousand rubles a month, now everyone already had families and a different level of expenses. It was necessary to start earning immediately.
Secondly, competition has increased significantly. We never looked at foreign markets, but in our home Russian a lot of email marketing systems appeared, for example, from developers with Ukrainian roots. As a result, the cost of attracting customers at least doubled.
The move with the choice of the name did not justify itself. Users did not consider analogies and did not understand that the team they already knew made the new product, they did not feel any continuity between Pechkin and Dasha. Therefore, we had to win from scratch even those customers who already worked with us a year or two ago. This was an unpleasant surprise, although in the end we managed to reach the indicators that the old business had before its unsuccessful sale.
Another unexpected problem - we developed the previous project in startup mode, and also involved our friends and acquaintances. If we knew that a person is a good programmer, and even our friend, we would definitely turn to him. When launching DashaMail, the situation was seriously complicated - all our specialist friends grew up professionally in 6-7 years, it became difficult for us to offer them tasks appropriate to their level, and even payment. Therefore, I had to devote much more time to finding new team members and external contractors.
Main lessons
After our team left the Pechkin project, interruptions in its work began. The new leadership could not maintain the level of service at the same level, as a result of which failures and technical problems began. At their peak, the service did not work at all for some time.
Interestingly, many of the customers continued to believe in the product and regularly paid for it even when they could not use it. This showed us that we correctly selected our audience - the management and employees of small companies are attached to the products and are ready to endure some inconvenience. In the case of enterprise-business in case of problems you will immediately lose customers, and it will be much more painful - if a large client leaves, who brings a significant part of the money, this is a lot of stress. So the main lesson from this whole story is that it’s important to correctly identify your audience.
The second conclusion that we made from the results of the story with cooperation with American investors is not to be afraid to attract external sources of financing that are not associated with the emergence of new partners. Good relations and agreements reached do not give any guarantees. Therefore, now we are not shy to use the same loans to solve the problems we need. And we quite manage to do without any investors.
The third thing that we realized in a situation of increased competition is that it is important to be very flexible in marketing and R&D. Today we have a much more diverse set of tools and approaches to promotion than it was during the first project. We also actively use machine learning to analyze and create new “features”.
Well, the fourth conclusion: the cloning approach of successful Western projects and their adaptation to the realities of Runet can still work. But as the level of competition has grown, simply copying even the most successful service is not enough. It is necessary to conduct market research, take the best of different products, and look at interesting moves from projects not even from your niche. Then you can gather enough information to do better than theirs. For example, as a result, the mailing editor in our new product turned out to be even better than the main reference - Mailchimp.
Plans
We do not plan to stop and will continue to develop the service: add new features, including those peeked at foreign projects. For example, in the near future, the release of the function of connecting email newsletters with social networks is similar to Mailchimp.
An important area of ​​work is the further optimization of the service for working with mobile devices, mainly on Android. We see great growth potential for companies like Xiaomi or Huawei, so our product should be able to interact with these platforms.
You need to work on monetization. So far, despite the success in attracting customers, including those who used our previous product, we still have to reach profitability. At the same time, we do not plan to abandon established principles for the sake of quick money.
The dynamics of the growth of the project DashaMail
In the old project, only two managers served the thousand paying customers - all the time it seemed that you could manage with one. As a result, in 2014 the revenue per employee per year amounted to $ 200 thousand for us. This scheme seems to be working now, so we will not increase the staff, but rather plan to optimize business processes and increase work efficiency.
That's it for today, thanks for watching! If you are interested in some moments of our history - let me know in the comments, there are questions - ask, we will try to answer everything.
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