Isminar, the story of an entrepreneur’s stubbornness

Manuel Ohanjanians is one of the faces that many active people in Startup ecosystem They know him. Manuel has been working as a mentor in the startup space for a long time, but he has not limited his efforts to this. He is a service under the title Isminar has developed that we sat down to talk with him to learn more about it.

Tell us about yourself and what you did before the seminar.

I am Manuel Ohanjanians, born in 1967, a graduate of industrial engineering at the undergraduate level and eMBA at the graduate level. I started blogging in 1985, and in 1987, I was working in a consulting management company, around consulting at the organization level; But besides that, I was still active in the web field, I learned to work with CMS and WordPress. Currently also as mentor Startup I work as an accelerator and workshop instructor.

What service does Isminar offer?

I need to explain a little about the webinar. Webinar stands for Web-Based Seminar; It means a class or an event that is held live on a specific day and time. The instructor shares audio and video and all his educational facilities, and any number of users can enter the room through the webinar platform and ask their questions by writing or sending voice. Its difference from other video trainings is that it is live, and we also have an on-demand webinar, so that when the webinar ends, users can watch the recorded video on the site.
In some cases, customers can hold a webinar by themselves and record it and sell it on the video sales platform. These features have been added to our service in recent years. Before that, we presented a large number of articles in the field of webinars, management and holding, and produced more content than anyone else in the world. At the end of 1996, we advanced the service delivery model to a three-sided platform with three sides: organizer, participant and service providers. At the time of providing the software to the customers, we provided other services such as the banking portal, registration form, website, etc., under the name of value-added webinar services.

How did you come across the idea of ​​ISMINAR?

In 1992, I was working in a company whose CEO was studying in the virtual classes of Azad University, and sometimes I attended the class instead of him, then the online class system attracted me and I thought why use Should this system be limited to academic environments? I researched and found that there is no site for online and distance education, and on the other hand, the online classes were not of good quality, and I thought of holding quality classes, along with sharing PowerPoint, etc. a website, Product MVP I developed and on October 21st, the first webinar called time management was presented, it was very well received and I got good feedback. I was covering the support, marketing management and everything by myself.

Why didn’t you get help from someone?

At that time thirst Startup It wasn’t like it is now and no one was willing to spend time and work as a co-founder; On the other hand, I had experiences in both technical and business fields. By the way, a few weeks ago, I also wrote an article on the site, the topic of which was “not forming a team until reaching the MVP”; Because you don’t have a specific market in this period of time, and it is better to conclude whether your idea will work or not after getting feedback! The reception was beyond my expectations and in 1993, I was contacted by Sharif University of Technology, World Economy and other centers, and the system gradually became known.

In 1994, I decided to work more seriously and hire employees. In the first 6 months, one person was added, but due to some reasons, we stopped cooperating after some time. At the end of 1993, we started working with one of my friends named Farid Kabir, who helped us a lot, but he left the team in 1995. After that, from the second half of 1994, my sister Marina Ohanjanians was added to the team as a co-founder.
In the first 6 months of 1996, Isminar was completely abandoned and no one was giving time for it; But in the next 6 months, my sister and wife and I worked full time on updating the site and changing the logo and promoting it, and we had a 6-fold increase in income. We started rejuvenating the brand from January, which helped to increase our market share. Until now, except for the Samsung Technology Center – Amirkabir (in this technology center, the facilities and support needed by a startup are provided), we did not enter any accelerator or growth center and we did not attract capital; But we are currently negotiating to get capital.

Currently, our team is incomplete and we are in the process of completing it. I myself work as the founder and team manager, Maria Ohanjanians as the co-founder and content manager, Adrine Khodabakhshian (my wife) is the operations and SEO manager, and Mr. Yazdan Baghestani is the sales manager. In the field of marketing and… there has been no cooperation yet.

When did you reach MVP? How was the reception of the product?

Since May this year, MVP platform Setting up And now, in this very short period of time, we have almost two webinar requests every day.

In 1995, about 9% of events registered on event information websites were webinars or online, which rose to 12% in 1996, and we predict it will reach 16% by the end of this year; That means we will reach 6000 webinars in 1997. On the other hand, the number of participants will increase due to the positive characteristics of the webinars, such as not needing to travel back and forth and not being stuck in traffic, and we even had speakers from abroad.

From the first three months of 1992, our income exceeded our expenses; But this does not mean having a high income, but it means that the costs are low and not serious. Currently, income is still higher than expenses; But overall, compared to last year, our income experienced a 600% growth.

How competitive is your market?

At first, our site was an online training site of webinar type. At that time, our competitors were limited to Franesh, Faradars, Teaching Cafe, etc.; But since the beginning of 1997, with the change of the business model, we went towards the blue ocean, and in this situation, our previous competitors were considered our customers; Because they promote video and we were complementary and no longer considered a competitor. By changing the system to a management platform and holding webinars and online events, the competitors also changed and currently our competitor is Evend; But Evand is not our direct competitor either; Because in the event, face-to-face events are held and a webinar plugin has been added to it, and this has caused us to compare each other, which of course is true.

Our competitive advantage is our absolute focus on webinars. The second competitive advantage is that we are not dependent on the webinar software, and instead of facing the webinar software developers, we stand next to them and put the software they offer on the site so that customers can use it in order to make the webinar more attractive. Our main competitive advantage is our familiar and old brand name, which gives the user a sense of confidence.

How do you see the future of Isminar?

We are active under the title of “webinar management platform”, so there is no end to its development. But our main plan is to enter new markets, both regional and international.

The word that is left

Unfortunately, due to the fact that some startups have stronger media support, startups that work hard and have little capital are seen less. In general, in this ecosystem, some startups are more interesting. Isminar is one of those startups that have been seen less; But we try to move forward despite these conditions and be seen.

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