Every person is born to do something

Modern humans are born. It means that they have stepped into this world after passing a certain period in their mother’s pregnancy. Undoubtedly, pregnancy is an important period in the life of every human being. Maybe mothers believe that this period was different and more strange for them than other periods of life. As in many fields, technology has helped health, in this case too Stork application It is supposed to help mothers in the pregnancy process. Follow Ecomotive’s conversation with Stork:

Please introduce yourself and tell about your past activities:

Salar Esadi is a graduate of Master’s degree in software engineering from Shahid Beheshti University. In 1992, when I finished my studies, I started the work related to the admission of Simon Fraser University in Canada. But in the meantime, one of my friends suggested cooperation in the field of entrepreneurship to implement his concern in the form of a platform; Therefore, from the same time, we entered into startup discussions (of course, at that time, this type of activity was not under the title of “startup”). In the following, we also launched projects, some of which failed; Until we launched Stork. The stork was dealing with a concern that I was willing to spend an important part of my life on.

What does the stork app do?

Our personal belief is that every person is born to do something. Everyone touches on a subject; We also entered the field of “women” with this argument, although at first I did not intend to enter this field and only intended to be active in the media discussion; Because media controls culture and culture is a symbol of social capital in society and many problems of our society are related to the issue of “culture”. Honestly, in my opinion, there is no fair media in the world. As a result, we decided to create a media based on education and culture; Unlike the existing media, therefore, in this regard, we created Stork. On the other hand, we know that the major part of “culture” is related to women, because women make up 50% of the society and the other 50% are under the education of women. To prevent the repetition of the wrong cultural cycle, we put our hands on a scientific and educational social network in the field of body and mind for women. Stork trainings are for women in all periods of their lives, but at first, we started work specifically from pregnancy and after research, we came to the conclusion that the best source of training for women is themselves, because women are very willing to share their experience. have their own According to the statistics that came to us recently, we noticed that new users in Stork answer questions more than they have questions; So Stork is a platform where women raise their questions and some other women answer their questions, and this “common concern” becomes the basis for the formation of communication between them.

Where did the spark of the stork business come from?

First, we designed a website for Ibn Sina Hospital in the form of a software project, and according to the feedback we received from it, we realized that people are more interested in the question and answer section than reading the article; For this reason, we focused on the question and answer section and we saw that even many questions are not medical in nature, or sometimes those who ask questions know the answer, but they are just looking to find someone with a similar problem. to share the ways they have gone to solve that problem; This is where the idea of ​​the stork was born.

What is the stork’s revenue model?

Currently we are focusing on SEO; Stork has a section where users can refer to it to get a specialized answer from an expert and to communicate with experts they have to pay for the consultation fee. Currently, this section is only active for midwifery. On the other hand, Stork, as a social network, is a platform for selling high-use goods such as underwear, etc. Therefore, by developing this section, Stork has invited sellers to offer their products.

What specialties does the stork team include?

Stork has been operating for about 4 years, and during this period, the Stork team has changed 3 times due to various reasons, including migration, etc. Currently, Lark has a team of 7 people, in which there are 4 midwifery specialists. These people help us in the fields of marketing and customer relations, etc.; People are also active in the field of development and design.

What challenges did you face in forming the team?

When we first got together to start a business, we didn’t know the difference between a business and a software project. Therefore, we did not know that management requires skills and we thought that someone who is a better manager is a better programmer; The lack of a manager and not having a business perspective led to prolonged processes and unresolved concerns, and of course, our team began to change, and at that time we realized that it was not necessary to launch a powerful software application, but to A concern should be solved by it. These were the reasons why we changed the team, following which the management knowledge also improved.

Who are the stork’s audience?

In the first place, the stork decides to attract female audiences, of course, men may also enter to disturb, but the women immediately hinder their goals by reporting them. Therefore, we don’t have much concern about men entering the stork. The main persona of the stork are pregnant women or women who have decided to get pregnant but have encountered problems. Geographically, its graph is not inclined to Shahristan-Tehran and is completely 50-50; But in terms of age, it is very different, and sometimes there are women in Tabriz, Shiraz, Mazandaran, etc. at the age of 14 or 15 who have their first pregnancy, and there are also those who have a higher pregnancy age. Most of these people are those who live in the city and have higher education.

Sometimes the husbands of women who face problems are also involved in finding answers to questions; Is there no place for the wives of these women in the stork?

No; Although we do not deny that men should also be trained, but according to the research we have done, we have come to the conclusion that in this process, men are expected to play a supporting role and follow most of the psychological and educational teachings; But allowing men to enter the stork space is a little troublesome and may compromise security, but if I ever want to solve this problem, I invite those who are active in the field of counseling to share content with women so that introduce those contents to their spouses.

Apart from midwifery and psychology, in what other fields do you offer consulting services?

Of course, we are just a social network and we do not provide consulting services; Stork is like the Instagram social network. For example, you follow a page in this field to do sports. Our goal is to gather people who are experts in different fields. Stork is different from Instagram; On Instagram, people who provide services and advice in private fields, may not be very experts and have only collected high followers, but this does not happen in Stork and they use people as influencers in various fields such as psychology, nutrition. And… it attracts people who are approved and of course we don’t prevent people who don’t act professionally, but we don’t support them either; Because our goal is to create a media with valuable content.

How many audiences does Stork currently have and what plans do you have in terms of marketing?

Stork has a website and an application that are completely separate; Because we needed to get different feedbacks from both of them from a business point of view. In the future, we will combine these two together. The site currently has about 240,000 users and about 400,000 visits per month. About 120,000 people have installed the application to date, and since they leave the application after the end of pregnancy, currently, the stork application has about 8,000 active users in the market; We have not done any special marketing and users got to know us only through the “market”. In the future, we plan to unify the platforms to do our marketing through the web.

Do you not have a user return after pregnancy?

The return of the user is subject to the provision of post-pregnancy content; Content such as education, postpartum depression, etc., of course, the question and answer section still answers the problems of this section, but in order to increase awareness, there is a need for content, and in this regard, to publish the content of these sections, active and expert people in We invite you to this area.

What are the biggest problems Stork audiences are dealing with?

The biggest problem in Stork is that most women don’t know that they have to go to a counselor to solve their problems and this culture has not been formed yet and they just think that these problems exist naturally in everyone’s life.

What was the biggest challenge you had in launching this platform?

We had the biggest challenges in business and management concepts; It is a fact that 4% of the science in the world is available to the public, and in my opinion, the other 96% that is not available to the public is in the management sector; Because there are many management challenges and business concepts that you can’t find the answer to even on the Internet, while some people who are just “game changers” start different businesses and never have basic knowledge. The construction of those businesses has not been leaked anywhere; Therefore, if we think that a good idea, team and market lead to success, we are wrong; Because there is a fourth factor called “management” which is very important but is rarely talked about.

How to solve this “management” challenge?

Although counseling can also help in this field, but at first we have to explore the challenges on our own and then compare with the suggestions of counselors or by reading books and find their point of view. In this regard, I read books and got help from people who are professionals in this field or from foreign collections.

What advice do you have for people who are at a crossroads between immigrating or developing their business here?

I cannot give a clear answer to this question, but in my opinion, everyone should follow their interest and if they are concerned about immigration and are interested in it, do it; Because concerned people everywhere in the world are busy implementing their concerns and find their own way.