How to make money in IT from $ 3000 if you are not a developer or a tester (lecture notes)

How to create your own IT company: what to do first, what to pay attention to and what should not be forgotten - Valery Kamensky, founder and CEO of Klika Tech, shares his experience. This experience can be useful not only in IT, but also for aspiring entrepreneurs from other fields.

- I've been in the IT industry for over 12 years. He started his career as a programmer, since 2021 I have been running a company that specializes in the development of IoT solutions for business, with offices in New York, Miami, Berlin and Minsk. Today more than 100 engineers work in the Belarusian office of the company.

At the start, almost all aspiring IT entrepreneurs make the same mistakes. Some of them are easily experienced and corrected, others may lead to the closure of a young company. Some of the suggested recommendations are my personal experience. Part was born as a result of more than 12 years of observation of the industry, the ups and downs of IT companies of different levels. Here are some tips I can give aspiring IT entrepreneurs.

Make sure you are not a keen programmer

What will the client pay you money for? This is a question to start with, and one that very often aspiring entrepreneur-programmers ignore. You need to see the needs, not focus on the technology that interests you.

The right product solves the problem. It is for the solution of the problem that the client pays money.

It's important to understand that programming is just a tool.

Whatever you do - the needs of the client should come first.

Ask yourself security questions to make sure your focus is on customer needs, not technology:

• What problem are we solving? (business niche)
• Who cares about this problem? (clients)
• How do we solve this problem? (product)

Answers to these questions should be concise and clear. You must clearly see the problem that other people are experiencing, find a solution to this problem - this solution will be your product.

Keep asking yourself these questions throughout the life of your company. Otherwise, all areas will suffer, from marketing and sales to manufacturing.

Founder of the IT company Secreate

The IT sphere is rightfully considered one of the most promising and in demand. Rapid growth, the absence of a ceiling for development and a low entry threshold are still tempting young entrepreneurs to start their own business in IT.

But as in any other business, IT is full of difficulties and pitfalls, so it is important to correctly assess your strength, understand the specifics of the market and have a clear plan of action.

Dmitry Zhidkov, the founder of Secreate, tells what problems a novice entrepreneur will face and what tasks will have to be solved on the way of establishing the company.

Lack of expertise

A common problem faced by aspiring entrepreneurs is the lack of expertise in certain processes. Even if you already had relevant experience and participated in projects as a developer or any other link, it is much more difficult to organize it yourself.

The first difficulty is to determine the real terms of completion of the project. Due to the specifics of the development process, it is not always possible to accurately inform the customer about the completion date.

Lack of proper experience and fear of losing a client force us to estimate approximate terms based only on our vision of development. As a rule, this has nothing to do with reality.

Only experience on real projects and an understanding of how your team will work will allow you to get closer to real deadlines. And in order to avoid misunderstandings with the customer, we advise you to announce the terms "with a margin" at first.

The second problem arising from the first is the difficulty in estimating the cost of the project. How much should I set so as not to frighten off the client and not make it too cheap?

On July 19, a new sales training course in IT SaleSolution ("SaleSolution") from "Studio Sorokin and Kulinkovich" with the support and on the basis of IT-Academy (brand of the HTP Educational Center) starts.

Last Wednesday, one of the course experts, Yuri Sorokin, gave an announcement master class. Using specific examples, he showed that almost any purposeful person can become a seller in IT.

What do IT people trade?

The entire IT business in Belarus once started with “selling heads”, that is, with pure outsourcing. In those days, our developers were cheap, hungry and good enough. But over time, the price of an hour of a Belarusian developer began to increase - now we are becoming uncompetitive in the market. Yes, Belarus has become an elite country in the outsourcing market, but not as popular as before. At prices per hour, we began to lose to Ukrainians, Indians, Chinese and Mexicans, whom we also outgrew in price.

The owners of IT businesses now face a serious dilemma. Building a business on bodyshop (head trading) is unpromising. This means that you need to make your own IT products. Or try to build up expertise and specialize in developing knowledge in specific areas of client business: healthcare, banking, security, e-commerce projects, and so on.

Where a simple “head for export” costs $ 40, a head with narrow expertise and portfolio can cost both $ 200 and $ 400. ...

And how much do IT salespeople make?

Well, actually yes. 7–12% of the money that comes to the current account from the seller often goes as a bonus to the seller himself.

In the first year, a seller with no outstanding experience in Minsk may well earn $ 2,000 a month. The top bar, according to Yuri Sorokin, is $ 8,300. ., but it is not easy to grow up to such a salary. In Moscow, for comparison, the lower salary level is slightly higher, but the upper one is gradually decreasing and is now less than 8000 USD. ...

Yuri Sorokin, based on his experience and the latest portal research on working in IT dev. y, showed that the average earnings of developers in Belarus is kept at the level of 2-3 thousand dollars. The maximum is usually around 3500 USD. ., which a developer can rarely surpass unless they start a vertical career with the company.

At least once in his life, every entrepreneur asks himself the question: "In what direction to develop?" And very often, low launch costs, speed of distribution and huge coverage, as well as the postulate software will eat the world, narrow the search field to programming. But even when choosing IT, you need to understand where and how the market is moving, including to facilitate the search for an investor: both experienced funds and business angels invest more often not in what is popular today, but in what will be the future tomorrow.

Speaking of recent trends, I will try to avoid specific (database analysis) and very competitive (online commerce), as well as obvious and understandable (online education). I would like to draw your attention to those trends that are just emerging, even though high-profile projects already exist in them. The most remarkable thing about them is that entrepreneurs do not have to wait for the appearance of new developments - the technological platform is completely ready, that is, all that is listed below can be dealt with today.

Internet of Things

In the summer of 2021, Apple patented a car tuning control system. Every time you rent a car, the pre-set settings for mirrors, seats, climate control can be applied at the touch of a button. It is unlikely that Apple will be able to keep the exclusive, but the global giant understands that the main thing is to start development first, since this is the trend of the future.

Along with the appearance of the new product, Apple is one of the world's leading accelerators of technology projects, Techstars. om has created a separate acceleration program for IoT startups - Connected Devices.

Mobile applications and modern technologies will seriously change the things around a person, making them not only smart, but also convenient. Dynamic control of lighting, thermostats, smart timers, geolocation service that allows you to determine the optimal settings depending on changing weather conditions with control from anywhere in the world. The application will notify you of an unplugged iron, an escaped pet or uninvited guests. Even having arrived at the hotel, you can make the temperature of the air and water in the bath "like at home" by pressing one button.

Some things, such as a refrigerator, ordering food via the Internet, were available before, but so far these are technologies for the sake of technology or things that had to be spent a fortune. Accessibility and compatibility are the main characteristics of the new trend. Falling prices for ever more powerful devices, the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets, the development of high-speed wireless and mobile Internet - all this will ensure explosive growth of projects in the field of Internet of Things.

Health informatics

This group includes startups that use software to diagnose and treat diseases (we are not talking about biotech, but about information technologies). As a rule, these are non-invasive techniques. For example, the neuralanalytics project. om allows you to determine the level of intracranial pressure based on the analysis of an array of patient data. Technologies will help to avoid expensive and dangerous procedures: instead of an operation, you just need to bring the device to your temple.

All kinds of fitness apps have already filled the market. Applications that assess sleep status and help wake up at the most favorable moment, assess the quality and calorie content, as well as the allergenicity of food consumed, are also not uncommon. More and more people are tracking their daily activities with bracelets and heart rate sensors - steps taken, calories burned, heart rate, sleep and stress levels.

Startups for rapid response and the use of medical alarm devices, such as the American project Amulyte - a graduate of the 2021 summer recruitment of the Y Combinator accelerator or one of the winners of the 2021 Forbes Startup Competition "Life Button" are just the beginning of the journey. which the industry has embarked on. But a real revolution will be made by a system that combines data from sensors and sensors of the state of the body with genetic information. The supplements will enable you to influence your physical condition by recommending an appropriate lifestyle, prescribing a specific diet, supplements and medications.

To illustrate the trend, suffice it to say that health informatics has been called the new megatrend by Sean Parker's Founders Fund (creator of Napster and investor of Facebook and PayPal) SV Angel by Ron Conway (investor in Google and Twitter) and are already making their first investments in such projects ...

Smart Consumption - Shared Consumption

2021 has been a very unpleasant year for the international economy in many ways. Due to the current situation in the world, most areas of business stagnate, some lose their relevance completely and suffer losses, but any crisis is always an opportunity for someone, for someone a final stop. In this article, we would like to consider the IT industry, for which a crisis that no one foresaw has become a period of opportunity. The IT sphere has been developing in its own way for a long time: if you are a good and experienced specialist, you will receive good offers; remote work practice; going beyond the templates of office "etiquette" - all these principles have long become the norm. In view of this, the quarantine had the least impact on people who are already accustomed to working at home, where it is convenient for them, and not in the office. Considering the increased demand for everything that is done online (games, online cinemas, online stores and other Internet projects), the IT sector, which serves all this, has even more work to do.

Where is the best place to start an IT company / startup in 2021? Let's take a closer look. Consider the following countries as good options for IT business:

• United Kingdom ;
• Cyprus;
• Estonia;
• Ireland;
• USA ;
• Canada.

Comparative tax overview of jurisdictions below:

CountryUnited KingdomIrelandCyprusEstoniaUSA CanadaCorporate tax 19% 25% (on services) 12.5% ​​0% (if dividends are not distributed) 0% (if structured correctly and do not work with reporting entities) From 15% and more (depending on provinces, the rate can be optimized) VAT20% with proper organization of business processes usually does not arise 23% arises depending on the residence of partners 19% arises depending on the residence of partners 20% arises depending on the residence of partners 10% for goods and services sold domestically. % for goods and services sold domestically. Accounting Simple accounting if business is not carried out domestically Audit / accounting Audit Accounting accounting Simple accounting Withholding tax 20% 25% 10% 20% 30% 25% , you always need to analyze your scheme as a whole and evaluate all the nuances and all taxes as a whole.

When structuring your business model, in addition to the general country information provided in this overview, the following current trends should be considered:

• the international economy strives for transparency. Therefore, the use of a nominee service should be justified only by legal norms (there are such business situations), and not just by your desire. If your business model allows, then it is optimal for you not to use a nominee service at all. This increases the likelihood that the option chosen for the business will work longer and more banks will be able to open an account for such a company;
• IT business specialists must create a history of their projects and works, so it should be white and transparent; <
• since 2021, a multilateral agreement on the Automatic Exchange of Tax Information has begun to work in many countries;
• On May 21, 2021, CFC legislation entered into force in Ukraine. Accordingly, a tax rate below 13% in the country of registration of your company in the future will lead to additional taxation for large business owners in Ukraine.

Let's consider the main features of each jurisdiction separately:

UK IT company

One of the simplest jurisdictions in the context of management, but at the same time one of the most respectable. A highly developed, politically, legally and economically stable country that suits almost any type of IT business, be it a grocery company, traffic arbitrage or marketing. Suitable for a startup.

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