Social Networks in Russia

In last several years the difference between Russian internet (Ru-net) and Internet became minimal. There are all general kinds of Web 2.0 services: Mash-ups, AJAX Applications, web-services, "youtube-clones" and, of course, Social Networks. There are more then 10 well-known social networks with 100.000 users and more. And they double their network every month! Most of the users are students, graduated student and IT persons. Now, you can encounter with girl in cafe, that provides Wi-Fi services, which is sitting in one of this network.

Most global services has announced about its IPO. And about the half has been bought by Leaders of Ru-net. e.g. yandex bought moikrug few days ago.

here is a list of most popular:
vkontakte
moikrug
fakultet
etc.

Also, Social networks is the one of popular topic in russian blogs for several weeks.

SW Development Industry in Russia and in other countries

I was very wondered that Chinese internet has more then 200 mln of your users, and about 400 mln of Chinese citizen know Enlish at lease on the basic level. For comparison: In Russia, there is about 20 mln of internet users, and english-speaking citizen about 25 mln (by my opinion). I always thought that China is a very big village, where peasants live. I am very worried about India and China, because i am not sure that a few of Russian brilliant-mind IT employers can engage in competition with cheap and educated employers from this countries.

And about the salaries in Russia and China:
University-graduated employer earn 1200$ and 350$ per month in this countries!
But 1200$ in Russia - it's not a very big salary (the common level is about 450$, but most part of salary is "tax free", so it should be about 800-900$).
In opposite, in China 350$ - it's a very high salary, that provides a good level of live.

So: IMHO software outsourcing is not a very perspective in Russia environment, and Russian companies has only one change to survive: build products and sold them to the end-customers all over the world, like their colleagues from West Europe, USA and Australia.


Also, i am sure that everyone must think about success not only today, but tomorrow too.

Ruby in large project.

Today I had the first experience with Ruby in the large project with 10 developers.
I was very impressed by code, because it's very messy. Yes, Ruby is very laconic. Yes, It's easier to write on ruby then Java or C#. BUT: It's very difficult to support large projects, because the is no strict layer separation (Why this code "<%=User.find(session[:id]).name%>" can't been written in view?), something like ASP.NET's code-behind practice, Java's and .NET's Data Layer.

Of course, it possible to write the understable code using it, but it's not easy to do in outsourcing environment, especially if the project is written by few geo-distributed teams.

I am sure the the most important part of ruby project is Agile development. So the first milestone of every Ruby project is "Apply Agile development practice in the team".

The second ruby "benefit" example:
Currently, the company where I am working, provides the testing services for Polish outsourcing company on the ERP system development.
This project is been writing using Ruby on rails framework. Only Ruby experts work on it. It has been developed very fast. But it contains a lot of bugs.

I have already started a development of small eCommerce site using Ruby and i am sure that it's a good choice. But i am not sure about the large projects.

Russian Startups on the internal market

I found that some web startups are trying to sell theirs self immediately after the start. That means, "the entrepreneur" created the nice site, had found the idea and then he likes to sell all the business to someone else. I can't understand that. I know that performing of the idea is the most difficult part, but it's wrong to sell business without any implementation.

I am sure that idea cost much less then realization.

Example:
Initial investments: 2000$ (very much)
Investments to be added: 20000$
ROI: 300%

I can't imagine how it possible to calculate the ROI (a very big ROI) at the start of business without the real results.


I think this is not a good practice.

How To Start

At first, I have to decide what business I'd like to start at first. I have one - "OBS Group" and now i am going to start an other one. I am sure that the most perspective business is e-Commerce and Web 2.0 Application designed for the end-user. What are the difference between investments to them:
- e-Commerce requires for much investments at the start of business.
- Web Application requires much fewer investments at the start, but then it will require much and much more.

Also i decided that i must select the idea not by first time investments, but by the ROI
(ROI - return of investments, some venture capitalists have ROI more then 1000%), That's i the most important criteria. At first, Entrepreneur have to think about the win and the feedback not about the possible losses.

As known, in 10 start ups:
2-3 - return money and generate some positive cash flow
3-4 - only return money
3-4 - loss money of investor.

No one shouldn't forget about that, every one must think about possibility of the win.