The co-founder of the startup Dos Bakytzhan gave an interview about this to Forbes.kz. The Adapt Shop startup, operating in the USA, Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean, was founded by Kazakh entrepreneurs Dos Bakytzhan and Yerbol Kopzhasar in the summer of 2021.

Their goal is to help small online stores. The development of a trading platform is expensive and time–consuming for online stores. Adapt Shop is an ecommerce platform for small and medium–sized businesses that trade through social networks. You can launch your online store through the Adapt Shop mobile app in a couple of minutes.

As Bakytzhan notes, his team has created a product that would fully satisfy the needs of small businesses. So, for just $24 per month, the user receives a full-fledged online store with a CRM system, warehouse accounting, payment acceptance, inventory, customer database, cashier's office, manager, etc. in their smartphone.

Here users can edit their online store, connect their domain, upload a full product description with photos and videos.

–"We developed the product-market-fit version of the Adapt Shop in December 2022. But we keep developing it for greater user convenience, because product development is an iterative process. During the development , we negotiated with potential users, identified their problems and set ourselves the task of solving their "headaches", says Dos.

But why does a small business need its own online store when marketplaces exist? Because big platforms charge big commissions. If the owner of a small online store wants to create his own trading platform, it will cost him at least five million tenge. But there is no guarantee that it will be efficient.

–"Businesses are learning to diversify their sales channels. In the Western world, the concept of DTC (sales directly to customers without intermediaries) is now actively developing. Marketplaces are an opportunity for small businesses to find their first customers, and then drive traffic directly, monetize without intermediaries. Our platform allows this. Your own sales channel gives you the opportunity to develop your brand. Small business is always about storytelling and service. Besides, its servicing is much cheaper than trading on a large marketplace, which asks for a share in your profit," the co–founder of Adapt Shop notes.

Adapt has already established itself and gained a foothold in the USA, Mexico, Brazil and the Caribbean. We have Kaszakh users. However, their number is only 1,500 out of all 12.5 thousand. Perhaps, this is due to the small market and the popularity of marketplaces.

As the founder of Adapt notes, they did not plan to enter the New World. A year ago, when the app was launched, the company planned to enter the Russian market.

–"We planned to attract 15 thousand clients in SMEs in Russia and make good profit on it. We were already actively forming a pool of users, but in February 2022, we had to stop. We just lost access to monetization. Of course, it would be possible to come up with different schemes for accepting payments from Russian users, but this is not how you operate a serious business. We also started to lose money. Therefore, by the end of the summer of 2022, we completely withdrew from Russia, removed our app from the Russian AppStore and Google Play," says Dos.

Legally, Adapt is registered in the USA and the head office is there, so it was easier to get investments. The startups received their first money – $250 thousand – from the American venture fund 500 Global. In addition, in the fall of 2022, the Adapt Shop attracted $ 500 thousand from Kazakhstani investors – Murat Abdrakhmanov and Most Ventures.

–"I first wrote to Abdrakhmanov a year and a half ago, and then he was not interested in our project. But already in 2022, he decided to enter the project. Murat is a man with business experience and a real venture investor. He asked all the right questions.  We liked his engineering approach and in this regard we are on the same page with him.

I have experience of both bad and good investments. A bad investment is when an amateur investor invests their last money, constantly asks the wrong questions and very often gives advice that leads the company nowhere. The success of the startup also depends on early investors, so we approached this issue very carefully. And a venture is always a high risk," says Dos.

As Abdrakhmanov told Forbes.kz he liked the startup because of the motivated and competent team. Adapt solves a real problem in the market, shows good initial traction (how successfully the startup team translates the idea into real business) and high growth potential in developed markets.

Today, the main global competitors of Adapt Shop are American Shopify (with revenue of $2.9 billion) and Squarespace (revenue of $700 million). However, according to Dos, his startup is stronger in the niche precisely due to a more convenient mobile app and a focus on social commerce.

–"Yes, competitors are stronger on the desktop. However, we understand that our users are representatives of small businesses, and their average age is 30 years. This is a generation that grew up with smartphones in their hands. That is why we developed the most user-friendly mobile app a user can imagine," says Dos.

The market that the Adapt Shop has entered is staggering in size. According to Dos, there are about 150 million representatives of small businesses in the world, and only a small part of them, 2-3%, have gone online. However, they are moving there more and more rapidly.

–"We are still probing all the opportunities that this giant market can give us. Perhaps that is why our growth is not so fast now. In general, this market has a feature – a large turnover. Small businesses are constantly closing, new ones appear, and this is normal.

We are also trying to switch the focus to more stable middle-tier business, with lower "mortality" and stable monetization. A startup is always about "bridling the abyss" for tenfold growth, which, in fact, is what we are doing now," he founder of the startup jokes.

TikTok is also planning to take control of this market – yes, one of the most popular social networks in the world is launching the opportunity to open stores, and Adapt Shop has become one of the five global partners of the global network.

–"ByteDance Ltd. Holding (which includes TikTok and several other Internet companies) always looks ahead and is not afraid to actively monetize its audience. The company is conducting beta testing of its online store in six countries. They selected partners very carefully through long negotiations, and at the end of 2022 they signed an agreement with them and began integrating platforms," Dos notes.

When asked why TikTok will not create its own platform for online stores, Dos replied that they need an Adapt Shop "because they understand that it is long and expensive to set up their ecommerce platform, and it is more convenient for them to work with companies that already have expertise in this." Cooperation with TikTok is a good opportunity for a startup to build presence in Latin America and, possibly, in Asia. By the way, TikTok will launch online stores around the world in the summer of 2023.

The team also managed to work in Africa, but was confused by the fact that local sellers tried to sell "not quite legal goods" through the platform… In general, expansion in Africa is on halt until better times.

When asked why the startup does not develop its delivery service (then the company would provide the entire range of services), Dos replied that Adapt Shop is a global company, and each market already has its own delivery leaders – you can't do it cheaper and better.

–"Delivery is a complicated business, math is very complex, it needs to be dealt with separately. In delivery, the local player always wins. Just like, for example, in a taxi business, this is an operation-intense business, and you should not underestimate the power of cartels," he said.

As of now, the company plans to develop existing markets, enter new ones and bring the Adapt Shop to perfection, which, as you know, has no limit. Therefore, for example, the team is now actively testing artificial intelligence (Ai), which will write posts for social networks and create websites for SMEs.

–"We noticed that most of our customers do not generate their own content and do not write posts that would help them increase sales. Therefore, we decided to create a service inside the startup that would do it for them by keywords," Dos notes. 

The Adapt team monthly tests dozens of hypotheses, experiments and constantly tries something new - in a word, washes gold out of the sand. According to Dos, Amazon tests hundreds of ideas every month, and only a few reach the end user. Adapt is testing dozens, and this is what helps the team to be sustainable and adapt to new markets and conditions.

It is clear that you cannot achieve this without a team. It is noteworthy that all code writers in Adapt are seniors.

-"We have only eight code writers. I believe that it is a small company that can succeed. After all, responsibility dilutes in large teams, where everyone hides behind each other. A well-known story: when Netflix laid off 50% of its staff, the company began to work more efficiently. In any company there are only several people who do their best, the rest are not needed. Another well-known example: Instagram had 56 employees before it had 100 million users. Rather than inflating staff, we are searching for skills," Dos sums up.

Forbes.kz