How Russian creators of Coub have attracted $ 3,5 million in investment and are now teaching Americans how to creative

The founders Coub Igor (left) and Anton (right) Gladkoborovy. Photo: Julia Bunyak

Not a video, not a photo or gif. Three Russians in 2012 created a new format - kouba. During this time, funny looped videos for an endless soundtrack, probably, saw every user of the Runet. The startup attracted 3,5 million dollars of investments and spent in Russia advertising campaigns in partnership with Walt Disney and 20th Century Fox. Now the Russians are facing a new ambitious goal - to make Koubas popular in the USA. To this end, the project opened an office in San Francisco, and two of the three co-founders settled in Silicon Valley.

Life before koubov

Cob Founders Anton and Igor Gladkoborodov, brothers from the Russian Severodvinsk, fit perfectly into the entourage of the intellectual-progressive Silicon Valley - young, creative, eager for global success. We meet with them in one of the cafes of Stanford University.

“Five years ago I couldn’t even imagine that we would have Coub with 50 million users,” says Igor Gladkoborodov. He has been living and working in the Valley since August last year, and has already brought his family here. His older brother Anton spends several months in America, and several months in Moscow. Third co-founder Coub Mikhail Tabunov resides in Russia.

For 35-year-old Anton and 33-year-old Igor, this is not the first joint project. Back in the late 1990s they had a design studio Nimbler Even then, the brothers shared the roles: Anton was more involved in design, Igor - programming.

"MSince childhood, Anton and I have been remaking computer games, redrawing graphics, rewriting codes, inserting jokes about our friends,” recalls Igor. And he admits with a laugh: he was kicked out of his third year at the Moscow Aviation Institute for poor academic performance, where he studied at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics. The irony of fate is that now he is one of the few from the course who works in his specialty.

Igor Gladkoborodov expelled from the Moscow Aviation Institute. Photo: Julia Bunyak

In the brothers background there is also work on the famous Russian Internet publication on culture and technology. Look at me, overgrown with time in the publishing house. Coming out of this project, the Gladkoborodovs were carried away by a new educational startup. "Theories and Practices"whose idea was born to their friends, Danila Perushev and Askar Ramazanov.

As part of the Theories and Practices, public lectures were held in Moscow in a wide variety of subjects, from linguistics and literature to astronomy and astrophysics. Thanks to the Gladkoborod brothers, it became fashionable to attend lectures.

“When we started working on this project, about 30 lectures a month were held in Moscow. And two years later there were already 50 of them a day,” recalls Anton Gladkoborodov.

The brothers launched all their projects with their own money without outside investments. What helped was that they could do almost everything themselves. “When we launched Theories and Practices, we did not raise money and were able to make the project generate money. It was the “right” project, and there were a lot of people around who were ready to help us at the initial stage. We were able to launch it with virtually no money. The same thing happened with Look at me – we had no investment, but we launched,” says Anton.

Igor immediately writes a few “mundane” details into the rosy picture: “At the same time, we lived from hand to mouth. I remember how all founders sat and counted rubles, so that was enough for shawarma and “no-brainer”. That was all, of course. Making media is quite difficult: uneasy relations with advertisers, with authors, with the community. But with a strong desire, everything can be done without investment. ”

In parallel with the Theories and Practices, Anton founded the company Piston Games, which was engaged in the development of games for the iPhone and other mobile platforms. In 2011, the company worked on the game. Gemibears, the main characters of which were animated bears. Anton scrupulously ensured that their movements looked natural. When they sent him another half-second-long piece of a video game, he put it on repeat in a special program - otherwise it was impossible to see everything. And here - Eureka! – and the idea of ​​the coub was born. “I realized that this was a large format,” says Anton. – I ran to the guys with whom we founded “Theories and Practices” and told them the idea. Of course, no one supported.”

The idea was born Coub Anton Gladkoborodova. Photo: Julia Bunyak

“It was one of the thousands of crazy ideas we always have. Everyone listened, said that yes, this is a cool idea, and continued to do their own thing,” recalls Igor.

Coub could have remained just an idea, but just at that moment the paths of the Gladkoborodov brothers and the Theories and Practices diverged. The guys concentrated on Сoub, having invested their own savings in its development.

Kubism

A cob is better to show once than to talk about what it is.

For example, here is one of the first koubs that was virally sold online. On him Nikita Mikhalkov in the image of General Pozharsky from the State Counselor is dancing to the composition of rapper Kendrick Lamar Backseat. Koub scored almost 5,5 of millions of views and launched the “Nikita Sergeevich Lamar” Mem.

Here is the feline version of Mission Impossible, which has collected more than 2,5 million views.

A trendy coupe from Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscars with a subtle allusion to the film Inception. By the way, it was thanks to the hero Leo from this film that the coubs were called coubs. Coincidentally, one of the startup’s internal blogs was called Cobb, the same name as DiCaprio’s character in Inception. When it came time to give a name to the format created by the guys, they chose a consonant name - “coub”.

But cob and with the founder of Coub Anton Gladkoborodov.

About one hundred thousand Koubs are being loaded onto the site per month. The main audience is Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Hungary. About 2 millions of users come from the USA. The total number of users exceeds 50 million per month, and the number of views - 500 million.

However, in 2012, when the startup had just launched, the picture did not look so optimistic. “In the first few months he developed rather sluggishly,” recalls Igor. — In previous projects it was simpler: you did everything well and everything works. And this startup requires a short period of training for people who need to understand what this format is and how to use it.”

However, over time, Koubas "came out in people" and began to spread virally. The founders of the startup could only regularly record new records of attendance.

More koubas good and different

Anton and Igor are active cockers themselves. “It's a very addictive thing. When you make coubs, you start watching YouTube videos, movies, and TV series in a different way. You notice places that can be looped well and that can make a good coub,” admits Igor.

Creativity is the main feature of any coach. This is a feature of the project, and its Achilles heel. In Coub, it’s not enough to repose a photo of what you ate for breakfast, as on Instagram, or to put a thoughtful quote from someone known as Facebook. You have to create your intellectual product - and create it with talent and, preferably, with humor. Then your cock will be popular. There are not so few such creative people, but significantly fewer than the potential audience of currently popular social networks.

The founders of Coub have not yet set themselves the task of starting to immediately make money on the project. Photo: Julia Bunyak

Therefore, the founders of a startup their main task, above all, see the way to a wide coverage of users around the world. The editorial staff of community managers motivates people to create more and more koubas, promotes the most interesting ones, popularizes new genres and memes.

Earn right here and now the project does not seek.

“It makes no sense to monetize when you have conventionally 100 thousand users, and you plan that there will be 100 million of them. With 100 thousand, you cannot sell advertising like Facebook - due to insufficient audience coverage, it is impossible to earn normal money. Therefore, we will monetize the project when we occupy a sufficient market share,” explains Anton Gladkoborodov.

In fact, Facebook had a similar approach - the social network first made a profit in 2009, when the number of users exceeded 300 millions.

However, the founders of Coub are already trying different monetization models. Igor briefly formulates their essence: “Coub is the perfect platform for viral content. This is what we monetize – to provide brands with the tools to create and distribute viral videos.”

Thus, in Russia, the startup launched several joint projects with Walt Disney Studios Motion and 20th Century Fox as part of the advertising campaigns for their latest blockbusters “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Deadpool.” Coub users were involved in creating videos based on films. “It turns out that it is not companies that create content, but people themselves. Hired SMM managers may not come up with some jokes, but the people will. And such things go super viral,” says Anton.

Here is one of the examples of folk art on the subject “Deadpool” ...

... and the seventh episode of the Star Wars space saga.

In addition, Coub can be an effective discovery platform for searching and buying music or movies that have interested the user after watching a koub.

Investors believe in the success of Coub. In the 2013 year, a year after the launch, a startup raised $ 1 a million dollars from a Russian foundation Brothers Ventures. In 2015, another $ 2,5 million dollars was invested in a startup by co-founders and former VKontakte shareholders Lev Leviev and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, who now own the Russian foundation Vaizra Capital. With raised funds, the project improves the technical component and enters the American market.

Once in America

Coub has no geographic barriers - it was originally created in English with an eye to world expansion.

In 2015, a startup opened an office in New York to get closer to the American media get-together and tell her about the possibilities of the new format. In Russia, many media outlets already use koubas to illustrate texts or ironic thinking about events. Koubas are also popular in Hungary, where about 40% of network users use them. And all thanks to the Hungarian news sites, which have begun to use Koub in materials - for example, there they like to give quotes to politicians in the form of Koub. However, in the USA they only master the new format of koubs.

After some time working in New York, the Gladkoborodovs realized that they needed to move closer to the center of the IT industry. They moved their American office to San Francisco and began to settle in Silicon Valley. “You can still do a limited amount of work in New York. And in San Francisco there is access to the media, to the IT community, which is very important, and to investments,” explains Anton.

“What we do here in a month would be done at home in six months. Here you see all the trends, meet cool specialists, exchange experiences with them,” adds Igor.

Anton and Igor Gladkoborovy at Stanford University. Photo: Julia Bunyak

Now the working day of the brothers, to a greater extent, consists of meetings and consultations. The product is developed by the Moscow office headed by CTO. Mikhail Tabunov. From a small team in 6-7, when a startup was launched, it grew to three dozen employees.

However, it is difficult to develop an international project from Moscow, the founders of Coub admit. There is no start-up industry, a large time difference makes it difficult to communicate with American colleagues, and the economic and political situation in Russia does not inspire hopes for quick changes.

“The situation in Russia motivated us to speed up the move. Relying on the Russian market is a rather futile endeavor. It’s hard there now and it will be even harder soon. What will happen to the economy is unknown, the ruble is falling, everything is being curtailed. Earnings in rubles two years ago and now are two different amounts. This forces us to quickly look for new markets. The political situation is also unstable and not entirely pleasant. In this regard, it is, of course, much better and calmer here,” admits Igor.

Now the Gladkoborodov brothers are engaged in the development of the project and the search for new investments. They want - no less - to collect all the short looped videos on their platform. And they believe that they are only at the very beginning of their journey.

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