Twenty Euros and an Auction
The column rests on a single example. Mas's acquaintance bought a lot on eBay, the largest international auction with private sellers, and sold it off piece by piece through ZhZh, that is, LiveJournal, a blogging platform that in 2012 remained one of the main Russian-language venues. She started with twenty euros and a blog. Over time, the one-off deal turned into a steady accessories business that runs without an office, warehouse, marketing budget, or even a website. Advertising costs in such a scenario are almost unnecessary, because the customers themselves do the advertising.
Mas found the most telling proof in his own experience. He told the heroine's story at a startup training session, and a third of the audience recognized her by sight because they had already bought from her. For the column, this matters more than any statistic: the audience was already working for the business, it was just that no one had appointed it to that role.
The Consumer as Part of the Business
From this episode Mas derives the main thesis of the column:
"Consumers began to be listened to, the consumer became part of the business"
The thesis unfolds in three practical ideas. First: "Make users advertise their products." This is viral marketing, in which the buyer himself becomes a sales channel. Second: the blog works as a free newspaper for the business, in which clients read company news and discuss products. Third: the office can be distributed, meaning work and communication are not tied to a single premises. For a small business that starts without money and without rented square meters, this approach looks natural.
Next, Mas offers the heroine three paths for growth. The first, website and brand, means moving from selling through others' platforms to one's own storefront and a recognizable name. The second, staying small and flexible, means preserving the current model, which has neither office nor warehouse, and not spending energy on maintaining infrastructure. The third, going offline, means opening a salon, that is, a physical location where the product can be seen and bought. Each scenario comes with its own price, and the column does not choose any of them for the heroine.
Mas himself has long worked with internet projects. He was born in 1974 and in 1991 entered the radio physics faculty of KSU without exams, on the basis of physics olympiad results. In 1999, together with Ruslan Dmitrakovich, he launched the Ukrainian Banner Network: the project was written in Perl, they worked on it for three weeks, and expenses amounted to about $100. On March 7, 2000, Mas became director of the Ukrainian Portal (UAPortal). Experience working with audiences since the early years of the Ukrainian internet explains why the theme of the consumer occupies a central place in the column.
Mail Service and Forum
In 2008, Mas served as architect of Mail.ua. The service entered closed testing on August 22, 2008, supported by the Internet Invest group, with investments exceeding $1 million. In 2009, on April 1, the first Ukrainian Internet Professionals Forum, the future iForum, was held, timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the Ukrainian Banner Network. The forum gathered 1,280 participants, and Mas took part in its organization.
In July and August 2012, Mail.ua passed to Mail.ru Group. The deal was confirmed by the group's vice president, Anna Artamonova. According to unofficial data, the sum was about $500,000, and the service had about 300,000 users.
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