1) What is exactly that you do, and what is your start-up about?
Our startup helps employees log working hours; this is Time Tracker.
2) What is the problem that your start-up is trying to resolve?
AS Time solves the problem of working time for the accounting by having a user-friendly interface that allows you to easily and quickly use it in any area: an IT Company, a development company, a logistics company or any hourly job. We already have customers from different areas.
3) When was your start-up founded? What stage is your start-up currently at?
Our startup was founded in 2021. And now our startup is in the “A” stage.
4) Are you the sole founder? If not, how did your team meet? Who does what on your team?
Yes, I am the sole founder of my team. For development, AStime includes two back-end developers, one front-end developer, a project manager, a business analyst, a product owner, two testers and one architect developer.
5) What is your start-up business model, and how does it work?
The user enters the platform to log in and checks the functionality of the platform, which has 10 free users. Then, he can increase the subscription to Lite or Pro for one full month to make sure that our tool works well and decide to buy it and become a paid subscriber.
6) What exactly differentiates you from your competitor in the marketplace? Can you name a few?
What differentiates us from our competitors is:
User-friendly UI/UX, and everything is at hand,
Users will quickly be able to figure out where to add a user, create the project, create the task, go to get the desired report to save the manager’s time 10-30%, etc.
7) At what stage is your start-up currently at? (Early- stage, Growth stage, Established)
Stage “A” with real users who gradually begin to fill our time tracker with a greater number of users.
8) Can you discuss any significant milestones that your start-up has achieved so far?
Today, we have integrated with the company Atlassian Jira and are on their marketplace.
For us, this is an achievement.
9) Can you provide some information about your target market and its size?
The time tracker market has more than 100 million users (1% of the total market). We have a plan for achieving it: 1,000,000 users.
10) How do you acquire customers or users, and what is your customer acquisition strategy?
We use AdWords, SEO Marketing, email Sender and LinkedIn. We approach decision-makers to collaborate with us.
11) What are your main revenue streams?
I think this question is incorrect.
12) Have you received any funding or investment for your start-up? If yes, can you share details?
I didn’t receive any funding.
13) How do you plan to scale your business in the future?
Attract more users, reach self-sufficiency due to self-sufficiency, advertise in different sources, target different countries, switch to communication with large companies and offer our service to large companies with 1000+ employees to 10,000+ employees.
14) What are the biggest challenges you have faced so far, and how did you overcome them?
There was a difficult moment putting our application on the Jira marketplace. It took a lot of time and effort. In fact, we have a very close-knit team and a sufficient number of engineers who can overcome any difficulties.
15) How will you measure success for your start up or the achievements that your startup has reached?
When our APP has 1 million users, it will be a success for our startup.
16) How do you prioritize and manage your resources, such as time and budget?
I understand the budget I have and am using it to develop a Startup AS time.
17) What is your marketing and branding strategy?
I am ready to share my marketing-branding strategy at the meeting with the decision-maker to issue a Grant.
18) How did customers/users find out about you?
We use AdWords, SEO Marketing, email Sender and LinkedIn. We do approach decision-makers to collaborate with us.
19) What is your target audience?
My target audience is IT Companies, logicistic companies, house cleaning companies, service station companies, accounting companies, legal companies, construction companies, CEOs, project managers, scrum masters, and delivery managers.
19) Regarding your marketing strategy, do you use social media? If so, is it in-house or outsourced?
We use a different model.
20) Have you faced any regulatory challenges?
We regularly encounter various problems and always solve them very quickly.
21) Can you discuss any partnerships or collaborations you have established?
Yes, we became partners with Atlassian Jira and will continue to become partners with Asana, Trello, Monday.com, Clickup, Zapier, etc.
22) What are the key things about your industry that outsiders don’t understand or misperceive?
There are no such problems. Everyone understands us correctly.
23) How do you handle feedback and incorporate it into your product or service development?
This is what we have on the stream. Each piece of feedback is processed and discussed, and only the most popular features are included.
24) What is the biggest missing feature, meaning the one thing that customers/users keep asking for?
Our customers are completely satisfied.
25) Are you going to internationalize? If so, how are you planning to expand internationally?
Today, we already have customers from Europe, the US, and Asia. We also plan to expand with the help of our Network through advertising and participation in international exhibitions.
26) Can you share any testimonials or success stories from your customers or users?
Nowadays no. We got on Marketplace Jira a month ago, and now our users are becoming more
27) How do you ensure the security and privacy of users’ data?
We follow the next rules from a development perspective:
Input Validation: Always validate and sanitize user input to prevent common security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and cross-site request forgery (CSRF). Use appropriate PHP functions like mysqli_real_escape_string or prepared statements to prevent SQL injection, and htmlspecialchars to prevent XSS attacks.
Password Storage: Never store passwords in plain text. Instead, use strong one-way hashing algorithms, such as bcrypt or Argon2, to securely store passwords. These algorithms ensure that even if the database is compromised, the passwords cannot be easily reversed.
Secure Communication: Utilize secure communication protocols such as HTTPS/SSL/TLS to encrypt data transmitted between the client and the server. This helps protect sensitive information, including passwords, personal details, and financial data, from interception or tampering.
Role-Based Access Control: Implement role-based access control (RBAC) to restrict user access to specific functionalities and resources based on their roles and permissions. This prevents unauthorized access and reduces the risk of data breaches.
Data Sanitization: Ensure that any data displayed to users is properly sanitized to prevent XSS attacks. Use PHP functions like htmlspecialchars or frameworks that automatically handle output escaping.
Secure Session Management: Properly manage user sessions by using secure session handling techniques. Generate strong session IDs, store them securely (e.g., in a database or encrypted cookie), and validate them with each user request to prevent session hijacking or session fixation attacks.
Secure File Uploads: Implement strict validation and filtering when allowing users to upload files. Restrict the file types, validate the file size, and consider utilizing a separate storage system outside of the web root directory to prevent the execution of malicious files.
Regular Updates and Patching: Keep your PHP version, web server, database, and other software dependencies up to date with the latest security patches. Regularly check for security advisories and apply relevant updates to protect against known vulnerabilities.
Data Encryption: If you store sensitive information, such as credit card details or personal identification numbers (PINs), consider encrypting that data both at rest and in transit. Encryption helps ensure that even if the data is accessed without authorization, it remains unreadable.
Logging and Monitoring: Implement comprehensive logging and monitoring mechanisms to track and detect any suspicious activities. Monitor access logs, error logs, and server logs to identify potential security breaches or unauthorized access attempts.
Finally. Security is an ongoing process, and it’s important to stay informed about the latest security best practices and regularly review and update your security measures as new threats emerge.
28) How do you stay updated on industry trends and adapt your strategies?
We are constantly studying such resources as G2, Сaptera and feedback left by the user on the Marketplace Jira under each tracker, in addition to different reviews from Forbes and other sources.
29) Are there any patents or trademarks associated with your start-ups?
Yes, I have a company and a patent for AStime.
30) Can you discuss your pricing strategy and how you determine your product’s value?
I determine the pricing of my product relative to competitors. In fact, competitors have much higher prices, much worse quality and much less convenient UI/UX. Moreover, the necessary features are hidden, which is very difficult to find. Otherwise, we have everything at hand.
But they are already known, and we are still unknown, so we have the prices below. Every Company and every user will win!
31) How do you plan to build and maintain customer loyalty?
We have a plan to build and maintain customer loyalty! We build customer support with guys who very much like our product.
32) What are your plans for expanding your team in the future?
Yes, we have a plan to extend our team to 100+, 200+ and 1000+ employees.
33) Can you provide examples of any social or environmental initiatives your startup is involved in?
Not yet, but we are ready to do it.
34) How Do you approach customer support and handle any issues or complaints?
By eliminating bugs that interfere with our users.
35) What have you learned so far from launching your start-up, and what pointers would you give a person reading this blog who is interested in having a start-up of his own?
I am ready to share my ideas and my workflow with others.
For that, I need to raise this startup AStime on the world Market.
For this, I need to get grants to participate in exhibitions and help my startup. After which I will get real experience, which I am ready to share with others starting their own startups.
36) Six months from now, what will be the biggest problem?
I don’t know.
37) Are you looking to hire new employees on your team? If so, what job openings do you currently have?
Yes, I want to involve my team of marketers, content managers, SEO and teaching staff specialists, frontend and backend developers, testers, Project Managers, Product Managers, PR managers, and BDM, from around the world, from more than 20 countries.
38) How did COVID affect your start-up?
Yes, I can consider funding.
In general, and basically, I am interested in various public or private funds that issue grants for the development of start-ups.
39) How is Artificial Intelligence (AI) affecting your industry and your company?
We plan to write some features based on AI.
40) Why should we feature you on our blog?
In fact, you will be helping us, which will eventually lead to helping many people on this planet improve their workplace and make it easy and convenient for them to do their work. In addition to that, we will help them deliver projects on time, give jobs to many good specialists who need them and embrace the youth of a different generation by giving them an opportunity and an interesting specialty in the field of IT and AI.
41) How did you hear about our blog?
One guy, Bob Debbas texted me on WhatsApp.
