Continuation of the story .
2008 year. Global economic crisis. It would seem, what does a single freelancer from a deep province have to do with it? It turned out that even small businesses and startups in the West also became impoverished. And these were my direct and potential clients. On top of everything else, I finally defended my specialist degree at the university and had no other activities left to do than freelancing. By the way, I parted with my first client, who brought in a constant income. And after him, my relationship with my potentially future wife collapsed. Everything is like in that joke.
A “dark streak” came, at the moment when the time of opportunity and growth should have come. It's time when ambitious young people rush to build a career and work hard for five, getting promoted at lightning speed. For me it was the other way around.
My life went on alone, with the oDesk freelance exchange and rare orders. I still lived with my parents, although I could afford to live separately. But I didn’t like living alone. Therefore, mom’s borscht and dad’s hundred grams brightened up the gray days.
Once upon a time I met with old friends from university to talk about life and share news. SKS company from I made a pivot from this story and moved into freelancing. Now Elon and Alain, just like me, were sitting at home on the computer, earning money to survive. This is how we lived: without goals, prospects and opportunities. Everything was rebelling inside me, I categorically disagreed with what was happening. It was a system error in my head.
The first attempt to change something was a large-scale web service.
Namely, a social network for finding work and making connections. In short - LinkedIn for Runet. Of course, I didn’t know about LinkedIn, and there were no analogues in RuNet. Fashion on VKontakte has just reached my “Los Angeles”. And finding a job was very difficult. And there were no normal sites on this topic in sight. Therefore, the idea was sound and, when I first came to the “gym,” I hung 50 kilogram weights on the barbell on both sides. In other words: having no idea what an IT business is and how to build it, Elon and I started building LinkedIn for Runet.
Of course the implementation failed. I basically only knew how to use C++/Delphi on the desktop. Elon was just starting to take his first steps in web development. So I made a website layout in Delphi and outsourced it. Having paid $700 for the development of LinkedIn, I had no idea what to do with it next. At that time, the belief was something like this: let’s make a website, put it on the Internet and start making money.
Only we did not take into account that between these three events, as well as during their process, a whole million different little things happen. And also, a website located on the Internet does not make money on its own.
Freelance
For a long time I clung to my first client Andy, with whom we worked together for more than a year. But, as I wrote in the last part, Andy decided to quietly close the contract while I was on vacation. And upon arrival, he began to twist ropes and pay a teaspoon a month.
Initially, he raised my rate on oDesk to $19/hour, which was above average at that time. Such seasoned freelancers as Samvel (the man who brought me into freelancing) had a rate of $22/hour, and were the first in the Odessa search results. This high bid backfired on me when looking for my next order.
Despite everything, I had to write to Andy that I would be looking for another client. This format of cooperation does not suit me: “Fix dozens of bugs and add features for 5 times less price.” And it wasn’t so much the money, but the fact that the fairy tale about a big investor with a bag of money over his shoulder turned into a pumpkin. The market didn’t need the project, or, more likely, Andy couldn’t sell it where it was needed. Recruit at least the first users, etc.
Realizing that it was time to look for a new order, I rushed to send out applications for job posts. The first two orders, after Andy, I successfully failed. Accustomed to the fact that you can work as much as you like, and at the end of the week there will be a round sum in your account, I was not very happy with the prospect of starting all over again. Namely, take a small fixed-price project -> win the customer’s trust -> switch to more adequate payment. Therefore, at step two or three, I broke off. Either I was too lazy to work for trust, or the client did not want to pay the established rate for me of $19. I was torn at the thought of lowering the rate to $12/hour or even less. But there was no other way out. There was practically no demand in my niche of desktop software. Plus the crisis.
A few words about oDesk of those years (2008-2012)
Unnoticed, like a bolt from the blue, the stock exchange began to be filled with residents of the tea republics and other Asians. Namely: India, Philippines, China, Bangladesh. Less common: Central Asia: Iran, Iraq, Qatar, etc. It was some kind of Zerg invasion from StarCraft, with rush tactics. India alone has produced and continues to graduate 1.5 million IT students every year. I repeat once again: one and a half million Indians! And of course, few of these graduates immediately find work at their place of residence. And here is such a ball. Register on oDesk and get twice as much as in your Bangalore.
On the other side of the barricades, another major event occurred - the first iPhone was released. And enterprising Americans immediately realized how to make a quick cash.
Of course, by releasing your iPhone application for 3 kopecks to an empty and fast-growing market. Crooked, oblique, without design - everything rolled.
Therefore, with the release of the first iPhone 2G, an additional Mobile Development category immediately appeared on oDesk, which was simply inundated with requests to create an application for the iPhone.
Getting this device and Mac was a difficult task for me. In our country, few people had these gadgets, and in the provinces they could only hear about the existence of this miracle of technology. But as an alternative, over time I bought an HTC Desire based on Android 2.3 and learned to make applications for it. Which came in handy later.
But that's not the point. My main skill was still C++. Seeing that there were fewer orders for C++, and more and more advertisements for C# .NET appeared, I slowly crawled to the Microsoft technology stack. To do this, I needed the book “C# Self-Teacher” and one small project in this programming language. Since then I’ve been sitting mostly on the Sharpe, not moving anywhere.
Then I came across large projects in C++ and Java, but I always gave preference to C#, since I consider it the most convenient, and more recently, a universal language for any tasks in my niche.
oDesk in February 2008
First big release
It often happens that if you are an outsourced or freelance developer, you may never see how your program is used in real life. Frankly, out of more than 60 projects that I completed as a freelancer, I saw at most 10 on sale. But I never saw how other people use my creation. Therefore, after going through the depressive years of 2008-2010, when there were almost no orders, I took the bull by the horns in 2011.
Although I didn’t have a need to constantly work and earn money. There was housing, there was food. I sold the car as it was no longer needed. Where should I go as a freelancer? That is, I also had money for any entertainment. It may seem like tunnel thinking - either work or play. But at that moment, we didn’t know any better. We didn’t know that it was possible to live differently: travel, develop, create our own projects. And in general, the world is limited only by your consciousness. This understanding came a little later, when the lower 4 levels of Maslow’s pyramid were satisfied.
Maslow was right
But first, it was necessary to take a step back. After pushing around on small projects for a couple of years, I decided to lower the rate to $11/hour and find something long-term.
Maybe there was a higher number in the profile, but I definitely remember that spring evening when the Kaiser knocked on my Skype door.
Kaiser was the owner of a small antivirus company in Europe. He himself lived in Austria, and the team was scattered all over the world. In Russia, Ukraine, India. The CTO sat in Germany and skillfully monitored the process, although he rather pretended to be watching. By the way, at the beginning of the XNUMXs, Kaiser was given a state prize for his innovative contribution to the development of small businesses. His idea to build a team entirely of remote employees was truly unusual in the early XNUMXs.
Our man, what will he think about this? “Yes, this is some kind of scam,” most likely will be his first thought. However, no, Kaiser’s company has been staying afloat for more than 6 years and managed to compete with such giants as ESET, Kaspersky, Avast, McAfee and others.
At the same time, the company's turnover was only half a million euros per year. Everything depended on the Holy Spirit and faith in a bright future. The Kaiser couldn’t pay more than $11/hour, but he set a limit of 50 hours a week, which was enough for me to get started.
It should also be noted that the CEO did not put pressure on anyone, and gave the impression of a kind uncle distributing gifts. The same cannot be said about the CTO, whom I had the opportunity to meet a little later. And work more closely at the time of release at night.
So, I started working remotely at an antivirus company. My task was to rewrite the back-end of the antivirus that was used in most of the company's products. (Technical details can be found in ).
Then my first one was born , about the delights and advantages of C++, which still hangs in second place in the hub of the same name.
Of course, the fault is not with the tool itself, but with the drug addict who wrote the previous antivirus engine. It crashed, glitched, was multi-threaded across the entire head, and was difficult to test. Not only did you have to install a bunch of viruses on your machine for testing, but the antivirus also had to not crash.
But little by little, I began to get involved in this development. Although nothing was clear, since I was making an isolated component that other programs use. Technically, it is a DLL library with a list of exported functions. No one explained to me how other programs would use them. So I reversed everything myself.
This went on for almost a year, until the roasted rooster bit CTO and we began to prepare for the release. Often this preparation took place at night. The program worked on my machine, but not on his side. Then it turned out that he had an SSD drive (a rarity in those days), and my fast scanning algorithm filled all the memory by quickly reading files.
Eventually we launched and my scanner was installed on tens of thousands of machines around the world. It was an indescribable feeling, as if you had done something significant. He brought something useful into this world. Money will never replace this emotion.
As far as I know, my engine works in this antivirus to this day. And as a legacy, I left behind a reference code created according to all the recommendations from the book “Perfect Code” “Refactoring” and the series of books “C++ for Professionals”.
In custody
One famous book says: “The darkest hour is before the dawn.” This is what happened to me in those days. From complete despair in 2008 to the founding of my own IT company in 2012. In addition to Kaiser, who consistently brought in $500/week, I got myself another client from the States.
It was difficult to refuse him, since he offered as much as 22 $/hour for quite interesting work. I was again driven by the goal of accumulating more start-up capital and investing, either in real estate or in my own business. Therefore, income increased, goals were set and there was motivation to move.
After finishing the Kaiser project and slowing down with another project, I began to prepare to launch my startup. I had about $25k in my account, which was enough to create a prototype and look for additional investments.
In those years, there was real hysteria around startups in Russia, Ukraine, and all over the world. The illusion was created that you could quickly get rich by purchasing some innovative thing. Therefore, I began to move in this direction, study specialized blogs, meet people from the crowd.
This is how I met Sasha Peganov, through the Zuckerberg Call website (which is now ), who then introduced me to the co-founder of VKontakte and investor. I recruited a team, moved to the capital and began creating a prototype using my own funds and further investments. Which I will talk about in detail in the next part.
To be continued ...
Source: habr.com