The most unsuccessful investment projects in the world. The worst ideas in business. How USA Today became profitable again

Uncommunicativeness

Everyone who starts a business will have to look for suppliers, customers, investors, contractors and many others. Knocking on the door and offering collaboration is a great way, but it hardly works. This is understandable: business does not like unnecessary risk, and getting in touch with a stranger can be fraught. Darcy Rezak, the ideologue of positive networking, in his book "Connections Is Everything" recommends not to miss events with useful people, and also not to look down on even the most, at first glance, non-influential acquaintances. Another commandment of the Cutter is to use good old business cards. They will help people remember the name and company name of a new acquaintance. So that information is not lost, the Cutter digitizes every single business card that gets to him. Andrey Romanenko, the co-founder of the Qiwi payment service, has a similar approach. For a long time he has not been able to cope with this himself: the contact base, in which there are only 40 thousand suppliers, is helped by the secretary. The approach clearly works: Qiwi has long become the largest payment network in Russia, its capitalization exceeds two billion dollars.

Conservatism

The well-known Californian entrepreneur Raul Varsneya, who created the SMM service for startups Foster.fm, believes that failure is inevitable if you do not know how to quickly adapt. The market and customer needs are changing at lightning speed, you have to be willing to give up everything you've worked on for six months if necessary. Blindly sticking to a business plan is a failure, so be prepared to change course. Dave McClure, founder of the 500 Startups venture fund, has a similar approach. He says that nothing will work for those who have worked in the corporation for five or more years. Such people value stability too much.

Narrow thinking

When discussing early signs of startup failure, Quora mentions choosing too narrow a niche. Choosing the right niche can help a startup shoot, but if it's overly narrow, it's death to the business. When evaluating a startup idea, you definitely need to check it for scalability or even global expansion. Without this, you can forget about attracting investments.

Extravagance

Founders don't need to spend half start-up capital for renting a beautiful office, a company may well do without a secretary, and hiring the most expensive specialists is far from always justified. The advantages of bootstrapping (with this approach, the founders do not attract external funding and retain control) can be talked about endlessly, but you have to save by default. But it is important not just to count every penny, but to try to optimize the processes. Many books have been written about bootstrapping, but one of the most comprehensive is the Bootstrapping Bible by Seth Godin, which can be downloaded for free.

Blind copy

The success of an idea in the United States does not at all guarantee success in Russia. It's about the size of the market. Let's say you are making an application for an iPhone, an analogue of which has been downloaded by millions of users in the United States. But according to ComScore for 2014, 70 million iPhone users live there, and only 6.5 million in Russia. The situation is aggravated by the cost of programmers' services, in Moscow it has almost reached the level of the United States. It will take a long time to wait for them to pay off. Against this background, the approach of Russian investors seems inhuman - they still prefer to invest in what has already shot up in the West; it is very difficult for original projects to obtain funding. But this is just another reason to follow the bootstrapping precepts. See point 4.

Bad team choice

Usually, startups are advised not to start a business with friends or family, but there are many exceptions to this rule. For example, the brother of the co-founder of Vkontakte Nikolay Durov is a modest genius responsible for the technical part social network... Human skills are more important than the presence or absence of family ties. And balance is also important. Co-founder of travel startup Mozio.com David Litvak believes that if a company has several non-technical founders and only one programmer, then nothing good will come of it. At the same time, investors pay attention not only to the skills of founders, but also to their number. For example, in IIDF there is only one founder - this is

In business (as in life), there are times when you want to close at home, be sad and not show yourself to anyone. For example, when I ordered a large batch of goods for a special offer, and bullshit came, or when an old partner let me down and even does not pick up the phone.

These are the most difficult situations for young businessmen. But one failure is not a reason to close the business and go into downshifters. We've collected four stories of varying severity from seasoned entrepreneurs about what went wrong and what they learned from their mistakes.

The names have been changed, but the stories are real.

Don't rush if you can't see the fire

Except for some of my neural connections, no one was hurt then. The ingenuity and the ability to think logically helped. Since then, I am no longer in a hurry at all. I don't see a fire, so we check everything inside and out. It can be slow and "with smoke breaks", but carefully.

Don't promise to do what you don't know how to do

Once I undertook to make a project for an online store with a connection to a European aggregator of goods. There were only 6 such projects in Russia at that time, and we had no experience even with ordinary online stores. The customer wanted a site on one control system, but in the end, when we already took the money, they told him that we could not do it on this system (it was a shame). They offered another option, and praise the Lord that I found a person who could do it.

In the end, they did everything well, without earning, however, even 1000 rubles on this project - they worked for the sake of work. Still, the customer asked to transfer the website to another control system - bitrix (we never worked with them at all).

I did not consult with the programmer and the team, and told him the amount for the work "from the ceiling". Later it turned out that I took 2.5 times less than the development cost. Say: “Pay me more money! 4 times more! " was no longer an option. At least I thought so. I realized that I wouldn’t make a website for the customer for my own money, I had to refuse him. It was very dumb, it seemed that it was a failure, pain and generally the end.

Six months later, I found out that this customer nevertheless transferred his site to bitrix, and paid more than 450 thousand rubles for this (I forgave 140 thousand). After that, it became insulting: I could explain that I had calculated the cost of the work incorrectly and that I needed to increase the budget, and not be afraid that I would be impudent.

In the end I don't take anymore unique projects without consulting their direct developer.

Explain what is included in the cost of work

In general, it was like this: on the eve of the new year, a call from Khanty-Mansiysk (rich north, cool!) - “We urgently need a website for our private security company !!! Needed yesterday! We pay double the price, or whatever you say. " I named the standard price, did it yesterday, shook hands, launched it into the light. Somewhere in February, a call from private security companies: "Why is our site not shown on the first line of Yandex?" I explain that SEO - additional service, you have to pay for it (2011 was, all that). The director of the private security company screamed at me, said that he would come to "our fucking Yekaterinburg", and he also had a service weapon. And then no one will prove anything.

As a result, I returned the money to him, the conflict was settled. The site stood on the Internet under the domain purchased for the customer, but then closed on its own. Since then, I have always told customers that search engine optimization is not part of the development of the site. Three times in different words... And that it can, as a result, cost several times more than the development of the site itself. And that promoting in social networks is also not equal to website development.

And 6 more rules that would be good to follow

My biggest business failure is complete ruin.

It wasn't even about Russia. It's simple: the rise in the dollar rate forced us to change the course of development (the price of goods from China increased). After 2.5 years of work (one and a half years only as a plus and the last six months at zero or minimum profit), we had to close. It was a painful blow - I invested all my money in this business.

Then I took up another business, already without pegging to the dollar, but the powerful ate it without chewing. After that, he was engaged in the release of anti-slip tapes. Why he left - read in paragraph 6 of the rules that must be followed so as not to screw up:

1. Engage in the release of your goods / products, which does not depend on the $ exchange rate.
2. Always be prepared for inspections by supervisory authorities.
3. Laziness. Put away. Generally.
4. Savings don't have to be everywhere. And working for the sake of postponing is not always necessary.
5. You need to go into the area with which you are more or less familiar or into the one in which you are in love.
6. Don't work with friends! You will lose your friends. But if you decide, then you need to negotiate on the shore: with contracts and prescribing all points of partnership or cooperation.

Refusals are normal. Learn to accept them

Another painful thing in life and business is rejection. In the supply of goods, in cooperation, in credit, after all. Do not take each of them to heart and then google "conspiracies to fail in the enemy's business." Better learn how to deal with your own setbacks.

However, you may be surprised to learn that you must accept failure and fail often enough. Here are eight reasons why it's good for you:

1. Business failure teaches you

“I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won't work. " - Thomas Alva Edison.

People who make mistakes often learn faster. When you fail, you learn what works and what doesn't.

Venture capitalists are known to invest in entrepreneurs who have had multiple business setbacks. They believe that an entrepreneur who has never experienced failure is unverified.

Criss Dunn (founder of Skill Incubator) says: “My YouTube channel ChrisDunnTV has been stagnant for several years. After several videos failed to collect even 1000 views during this time, I finally discovered the type of content that people considered the most valuable to them. Failure helped me learn about what people wanted to see and hear, and I reached over two million views in less than a year. "

2. You will discover what is missing

“Failure is a sign on the road to success” - Clive Staples Lewis.

Failure is simply a signal that something is missing. Failure indicates what you need to change in order to be successful. Through failure, you open up gaps in yourself, your strategies, your system, your business, and your team. You will learn about your weaknesses or deficiencies, which gives you an understanding of what needs to be changed or improved.

By failing in business, you will find obstacles. After that, you can make a plan that will enable you to jump over or bypass each of the obstacles that impede your success.

“Like many entrepreneurs, I tried my best to stay in shape because I convinced myself that I was too busy to eat healthy and worked regularly. I found that the reasons for business failure lead to my inability to lose weight. " - says Criss Dunn.

Failure is often caused by those nasty little habits or conditions in your environment that guarantee failure before you start. Once you identify and address the causes of failure, it will open up the “highway” for you to achieve your goals.

3. Business failure forces you to pause.

“In fact, there are times when you need to refuse because you are doing something by mistake. But if you are sure that something you are doing is right, then you should never give up. ”- Elon Musk.

Business failure forces you to pause. This gives you time to reflect on what you are doing and consider whether you should continue or should give up. This forces you to consider the question, "How badly do I really want this?"

As Stephen Covey says, “If the ladder is not leaning against the correct wall, every step we take simply directs us to wrong place faster."

Without time to think, you may end up wasting energy, energy, resources, and time on "stairs against the wrong wall."

4. Failure in business can be a sign of the beginning of success.

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly figure out how far they can go." - Thomas Stearns Eliot.

Failure can be a sign of the beginning of success. Great failures are often accompanied by great achievements. You cannot hope to achieve real success at anything by sticking to small things, being detached and trying to be safe.

Robert Kiyosaki shows this concept really well: “Winners are not afraid of losing, unlike losers. Failure is part of the success process. People who avoid failure also avoid success. "

5. Business failure often creates an immunity to fear.

“There is only one thing that makes it impossible to achieve a dream - the fear of failure” - Paulo Coelho.

Fear of failure limits you. If you are afraid of failing, you are also afraid to take risks and grow quickly. Fear of failure limits your growth. Frequent failure creates a kind of immunity to the fear of failure. When you are not afraid of failure, you can accept any criticism and comments from your partners and clients.

As Aristotle put it, "There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."

Criss Dunn said, “When I was in my early 20s, I was in debt - my debt was $ 90,000 and I was almost without Money... After failing in my first business, I learned that my worst fears are not so bad.

I had to make short-term sacrifices, but the fear soon disappeared and freed my mind, allowing me to build a seven-figure business over the next two years. "

6. Business failure creates entrepreneurial traits

“Winning is great, of course, but if you're really going to do something in life, the secret to learning is failure. No one is invincible all the time. If you can get up after a crushing defeat and go on to win again, someday you will become a champion. " - Wilma Rudolph.

Failure is necessary to create valuable traits for entrepreneurial success. Traits like perseverance, perseverance, and flexibility are vital to any kind of long-term success. Your ability to move on through setbacks where others go out of business will lead you on the path to success.

7. Failure Makes Success More Valuable

"Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill.

People value success significantly more after they have experienced failure. When you can remember humiliating moments of failure before you succeeded, you value success significantly more. You also don't take success for granted because you know how difficult it was to achieve it.

As Ellen DeGeneres said, "Failure gives you the right perspective on success."

8. Business failures create a strong personality story.

“No person is ever interesting without failure. The more you fail, after which you recover and improve, the better you become as a person. Have you ever met a person who always had everything, he succeeded at once with minimal effort and no failures? There are probably very few such people, or they do not exist at all. " - Chris Hardwicke.

Failure creates your strong personality story. Remember how Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he founded, before going back there director general after a little over 10 years? Failure makes you more tolerant and condescending to other people. The success you have achieved despite failure in business delights other people, adding value to your experience.

Your failures, from which you were able to recover and succeed, can also motivate people around you (such as your employees, your investors, and your colleagues) to work side by side with you and help you.

Another great benefit of having multiple business failures is that it makes you humble. An entrepreneur who has never experienced failure tends to be arrogant. Worse, this arrogance can create a false belief that you are infallible and lead you to devastating mistakes.

Business failures can hurt, but we must view them as positive experiences. We must make mistakes and make mistakes often, because in this we also open up opportunities for our success.

On the pages of our magazine, we often talk about successful business ideas and somehow forget to cover the mistakes of a business, especially a large one. Let's rectify the situation, besides it is very interesting to think about the reasons for such failures. After all, big business has everything - a day, whole departments of analytics and marketing.

The investment company ONEXIM announced the launch of a project to create a popular, environmentally friendly car. Its budget was about 150 million euros. The developers said that the production of machines at an industrial rate will begin in 2012. Not far from St. Petersburg, there was a presentation of the price of a new car of about 360 thousand rubles. Then the launch date had to be postponed until 2013. And at the beginning of this year, it became known that the firstborn would come off the assembly line by March 2015. The approximate cost also increased to 500 thousand rubles.

Experts believe that the release of e-mobiles will remain a dream, since the team is not very experienced, and the project itself is not sufficiently funded. ONEXIM in 2011 admitted that she was looking for co-investors. Sources estimate that an investment of € 115 million is still needed to sustain the project.

Solar panels

An unsuccessful example of Russian big business will be the project of Rusnano and the Nitol group for the production of polycrystalline silicon, which is used in solar powered Usolye-Siberian Silicone. Since the beginning of 2009, the firm has invested in new project 9.4 billion rubles

But this area has become unprofitable. Processing exceeded market prices seven times. Now Nitol is asking the state for a subsidy equal to 4.7 billion rubles for the development of production. The opinion of experts is that there is no future for such production, since Russia is not a country where solar energy will be in the first place, as, for example, in Spain. In it, solar energy has led to higher electricity prices.

Sweet crucifixion.

In 2004, the American confectionery company Russel Stover released New Product... It was a fifteen-centimeter crucifix-shaped chocolate bar. The believing population was outraged by the novelty. He was joined by high-ranking clerics, who also felt that the crucifixion in the form of chocolate was not the most The best way convey religious feelings.

Ford tradition.

Henry Ford, for the first time in 1908, launched his Model T. In those years it was a first-class car. Time does not stand still and the car market has been developing rapidly. In addition, other companies appeared, and with them the latest models and types of machines. But Henry Ford, the head of Ford Motor, did not want to start releasing new models, and the company produced the same T. As a result, Henry Ford lost 45 percent of the market.

If we are guided by the Pareto law, then out of 10 launched in real life 8 ideas will fail and only two will survive. We all love to read, but we often don’t think about the fact that a huge percentage of projects fail and people lose money. Sometimes these are amounts of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

We will talk about such projects today.

You can't run a business without risk. How does it all start? Well, initially appears promising idea, in which there is a desire to invest money. Moreover, it should be noted that I want to invest not only the previously estimated amount, but also everything that is on the "balance sheet", if only it works! After that, you just have to wait ... maybe you will be lucky.

Let's look at top 6 business projects that did not meet either the investment or the investors' hopes

Average car price vehicle of this type, depending on the configuration type, ranged from 450,000 to 490,000 rubles. Release of this hybrid model planned for early 2015.

The financial investment amounted to approximately 250 million euros. During the entire development phase, only four working copies were created. And one of them, as an advertisement, was presented to the most famous and provocative Russian politician - Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky.

The body of the produced Yo-Crossback EV hybrid had only three doors. Unfortunately, it did not work out to make a hybrid installation, for this reason, only electricity is used to operate the machine. The project was closed in the spring of last year.

Business project number 2. Sputnik is a search engine.

May 22, 2014 developers Russian company Rostelecom has created a search engine and a whole Internet portal called Sputnik.

Development price - 60 million US dollars. In the first few days, the number of transitions to other Internet resources amounted to more than five million. But already at the beginning of September 2014, the same indicator dropped to 16 600 visitors. On the this moment, according to LiveIntrnet statistics, at least 1,000 people visit this Internet portal every month.

Business project number 3. Transport on two Segway wheels.

The amount of financial investments is USD 125,000,000. The innovative vehicle was developed specifically to replace the usual cars and change the usual transport system in principle. Despite the use of advanced technologies, this tool has become an alternative version of the "hybrid" walking and driving. But after all, a replacement for this has long been found - a bicycle, and its cost is several dozen times more affordable.

Today, the Segway is not a replacement for the car. It has become something of an amusement ride that you can ride in a nearby amusement park.

In addition, in the first couples, the invention received a bad reputation. In 2010, millionaire Jimi Heselden, who owns the Segway company, died at the age of 62 while walking in an innovative two-wheeled vehicle. By an absurd accident, he could not cope with control and fell into a river in the UK.

Business project number 4. Yotaphone.

This development was released at the end of 2013. The national team worked on the project together with others. production organization"YotaDevices". This LTE phone is equipped with two independent screens, an LCD and a display that uses ‘electronic ink’ technology.

Last year a new model came out - Yotaphone 2.

The size of the investment fund is about USD 50 million. In the first thirty days, about 600 copies were sold at retail. Today this type of “smart phone” can be purchased on the market, but, unfortunately, investors do not feel much profit from this.

Business project number 5. Bippy service.

The Vippy service is designed to enable netizens to share news with friends about their latest purchases made with the card.

The size investment capital- USD 13,000,000.

The idea did not work, because few Internet users wanted to provide the developer company with data on their passwords. bank cards... And on top of that, online shopping is not so interesting for the average man in the street.

Business project number 6. Cars from the manufacturer "Marussia Motors".

In 2007, the famous race car driver and showman Nikolai Fomenko, with the support of businessman Efim Ostrovsky, founded one of the largest domestic car manufacturing companies. It was this organization that was engaged in the production of "sports cars" "Marusya".

Already after 7 years this company was declared bankrupt, and all of her property was sold at auction.

The total contribution to the project was 100 million euros. But, unfortunately, the concept of the new car turned out to be incapable of life and, as a result, the serial production of the "sports car" did not happen.

The Marusya project was not the only one.

At the beginning of 2014, at the state level, 3,600,000,000 rubles were allocated to develop a vehicle intended for the country's ruling officials. The working name of the development is "Tuple". The budget was planned to be used over the next two years.

Were engaged in the development of FSUE NAMI and the concern "MarussiaMotors".