世界初・分散型スマートホームデバイスをローンチ・成長させる（800億ドル市場）
月商 — · 創業者1人 · 従業員6人 · —
Dmitriy Lukin（Founder, Qubiot）· 創業 January 2016 · 記事掲載 — · qubiot.com · 元の記事
初期はガレージで手作業で梱包し、友人や家族の紹介を通じて徐々に市場を拡大。集客の中心は、東欧を中心に構築した5,000人規模のコミュニティとロイヤルユーザーの口コミ・紹介。顧客に電話してフィードバックを収集し、顧客が顔の見えるブランドとして信頼する関係を構築した。売上高は非公開だが、月間売上は前年比1.8倍で成長中（記事執筆時点）。
売値の出典: 公式サイトに接続できず確認不可（2026-10-14 取得）
It's important that before trying to build a sales machine, you build a community around your idea and your product first.
Qubiot is the world's first universal infrared remote for decentralized smart homes, which provides users with direct control over all of their devices. I am mainly focused on the emerging smart home devices market, which is currently valued at $80 billion. Before Qubiot in 2011, I was the head of an online music store, and, in 2013, when the company went through a rebranding, I became the CIO of the company. Under my leadership, the firm launched a product that became one of the largest stock image search engines, being widely used by designers and creators from 120 countries. In addition to this, I was responsible for launching a photo bank and an online content distribution service. The idea for the product came to me during a business trip, when my wife called me late at night because she couldn't turn on the lights using the smart house’s system. After finding out that the smart home’s main control panel was broken, I decided to create a decentralized smart home remote, one that allowed me to control every device directly and independently. Together with my team which I hired based on mutual interest in the industry, I designed and implemented the whole original IT infrastructure, organized the remote production, and went from idea to realization.
When we initially started this product, we thought that everything would be fast and simple. As it turned out, we were wrong. The main problem was in the body of the product. We tried casting it in silicone, but the cost of doing so for only one remote turned out to be very high. Then we began to look at mass production, and fortunately, we found an excellent contractor who still casts our hulls. Another difficult challenge we faced was finding the right material for the device’s black cover. We needed a type of material that IR rays could pass seamlessly through, but at the same time, the material needed to be strong enough and suitable for our partner's equipment. After several months of trial and error, we were finally able to find the right material after testing the product and reaching the results we had envisioned from day one.
Initially, it was the typical story of a business starting out in our garage. We packed the first versions of the device by hand, and we didn’t even have any branded boxes, so we packed the devices in beautiful gift boxes from the nearest store. Over time, demand increased, and friends and family began testing our product and then they referred us to other members in their circle slowly we began to enter new markets, each of them came with certain requirements - from the need for certification to packaging parameters, so we began to engage third parties in Europe in our production process. So, step by step, our production process changed and our business grew.
Our main source of traffic and sales is our loyal users who are satisfied with what we have to offer. We have tried to advertise and raise awareness about our product, but still, our main flow of customers comes from our community which we built to be over 5,000 people throughout Eastern Europe. Users who are happy with our product recommend us and encourage others to try us out, and in this way, a virtuous circle is formed. It's important that before trying to build a sales machine, you build a community around your idea and your product first. Our main goal is to create genuinely useful devices that people will use. This defines our marketing strategy. Instead of trying to "push" products onto customers, we strive to be helpful to those customers that our products are designed for. For example, year after year, we develop a community around our product and answer their questions. This is a way of staying close to our customers. Typically, when people buy a device, and something goes wrong, they are forced to write letters to the manufacturer, and they rarely receive a prompt response. We took the opposite approach. Since we started, we called every customer and gathered feedback, and we discovered that this process works for us. Because of this, our customers see not just a faceless brand, but a company whose CEO can, with their consent, call a customer and help resolve any issues. To promote our campaign on Kickstarter for the smart remote LOOKin Remote2, we prepared texts that explained how the technology works clearly and transparently. This strategy resulted in both upvotes and increased traffic and led to the successful launch of our first Kickstarter campaign. In this screenshot, you can see spikes in analytics after each article was released, and the same happened when we launched the PR campaign and shared news with journalists. So, we're not just manufacturing devices; we are a part of the community, albeit from the manufacturer's perspective.
At the moment we have two separate projects - the IoT platform LOOKin.ai and our own devices under the Qubiot brand. The platform is growing, We already have one manufacturer using the platform and before the end of the year, there will be more devices that will work on the platform. The Qubiot brand is also growing, and this year, at least two devices will see the light of day under this brand. We don't disclose sales figures, but our monthly sales have grown year-over-year by a factor of 1.8. One of them is the smart remote control Qubiot Remote Pro, for which we are about to launch a Kickstarter campaign. We have ambitious plans, and at the same time, we have a team that is ready to implement them.
Doing business is always exciting and interesting. And when you do what you love, it doesn’t feel like work, it feels more like a hobby.
We use AWS EC2 in our work, it is an excellent scalable hosting platform that always helps us. As for the tools, we rely on products from JetBrains, which allow us to make first-class software. For task management, we use ClickUp, and for internal team communication, we primarily use Discord, with occasional use of Telegram.
Something that spoke to me was Steve Jobs’ famous commencement speech at Stanford University, especially the part about connecting the dots. As he said, indeed, we never know how something we are doing now or learning about now will help us in the future. We just need to trust that it will and that we are doing it for a reason. Then, we will be able to connect the dots backward. So, this speech is something that I resort to every time I need to learn something new or tackle a difficult challenge. It helps me to remind myself that there is a reason for this and that sometimes, it will all make sense. It gives me the motivation to keep going.
I think it's important that before trying to build a sales machine, you build a community around your idea and your product first. This will help you to better understand the needs of your potential customers and to make a great product based on the feedback you receive, which will then be much easier to sell.
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