The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
A lot of businesses dream of users switching on the ads themselves, Lazy Robin – the startup of the day – came up with such a mechanism for real. The startup is a plugin to a desktop browser. It inserts additional spaces with its own banners into the web pages, and donates 80% of its revenue to charity. For the user to have more sense of affiliation, their personal displays are counted in their profile page, and they get to choose a fund from a short list, where they send the money they ‘earn.’
Basic maths says the person doesn’t benefit from installing the plugin: even with an excellent CPM of 50 RUR and a very good 50 page views per day, the funds will get 2 RUR per day. Correspondingly, Robin’s offer will technically sound like ‘let’s screw up your internet for 50 RUR per month to charity’. Naturally, it makes more sense to decline, leave the browser alone, and adjust a regular donation through [email protected], for example.
However, if we look in general and not at an individual, we get a different picture. People are irrational and they barely ever calculate things like this. Lazy Robin helps to facilitate charity with ease, without any additional effort or spendings – one might suggest that this way is much easier than any other for many people. If the suggestion justifies itself, the world will become a better place.
As for Robin, it doesn’t have any spendings other than onboarding, any commission is welcome, and marketing can be made cheap, viral distribution ideas are self-apparent. The startup is at a very early stage at the moment, the product has just been launched, the conversions aren’t well-adjusted, the first investments are coming in.
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So this is a Saturday rerun from 2017. It looks like they didn’t find any investments, and even if they did, it didn’t help. The project shut down pretty quickly. Alas
Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.
