Startups Weekly Feedback and Support Thread |
- Weekly Feedback and Support Thread
- Creating a pre MVP Startup as the sole developer with business associates, how do I not get screwed?
- At what point do we form an LLC?
- Let's Build a Deck
- Do you work with outsourcing company from Ukraine?
- Recurring Tasks Tracker
- SaaS founders, how do you hire marketers?
- Braintree rejected my startup over alleged "high risk"
- Legal Question Regarding Vesting/Share Startup
- Playing the long game with VCs... structure of "intro" meetings?
- 3 companies, 3 options - Need Advice
- Where to begin with website development
- Sales Strategy For New Product
- Getting a co-founder CTO, or hiring a lead software engineer
- Doubt when launching a client’s mobile app.
- Best quality/price for startup-branded hoodie?
| Weekly Feedback and Support Thread Posted: 04 Dec 2017 03:08 AM PST Create something? Let's see it! Feedback or Support RequesterPlease use the following format:
Post your site along with your stack and technologies used and receive feedback from the community. Please refrain from just posting a link and instead give us a bit of a background about your creation. Feel free to request general feedback or specific feedback in a certain area like user experience, usability, design, or code review. Feel free to request support with hiring talent, finding a job/clients, recruiting a co-founder, getting your pitch deck made, or anything objective based that is specific to your startup. You can also receive advice and feedback in instant chat using the /r/startups discord. Feedback Providers
Support Providers
[link] [comments]  |
| Creating a pre MVP Startup as the sole developer with business associates, how do I not get screwed? Posted: 04 Dec 2017 08:34 PM PST So I have 3 business associates, I am the only developer. We are at the pre-MVP stage. However, my 3 associates are all cordial with each other and have known each other for quite a long time. As the newest member of the startup and the only developer/engineer, I don't want to get screwed by possibilities from the business end. What are the most important aspects on the business side, I should know/cover. And what are the best resources for understanding them? When it comes to determining equity, and other things such as options within the company, what are the most important things I should know, and how should I express my need to be able to freely exit the company(potentially) and keep my equity? Besides equity what are some of the other things that can be split or decided upon by members? [link] [comments]  |
| At what point do we form an LLC? Posted: 04 Dec 2017 07:42 AM PST I know this may sound dumb but I am very green when it comes to this. My wife and I recently started a business in the woodworking realm. We make wooden signs, home decor and furniture. For now it exists via word of mouth locally and on Etsy. We have had 5 sales thus far. The hope for the future is that my wife can run some of this from home if she is ever a stay at home mother. At what point do we need to form an LLC? I know this is probably a dumb question and I am assuming ASAP, but I am confused about some of it so thats why I am here. Also, I probably should clarify that an LLC is even the best choice for this. Based on my research that is what I landed on. Appreciate any insight! Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Dec 2017 06:16 PM PST I'm just about to hit my first year mark at a startup that's got good prospects. I started hourly and am now in a salary ops position. This is my first startup job. We live in the google-sphere (Sheets, Slides, ect.) One of the skills I want to master, is building a great deck. Pitch deck, project deck, planning deck, it seems to be one of those 5 startup skills that really can get you places. How have you mastered this? Experience? A course? High level review of the presentstion content? Reading it off the slides or using it as a reminder/bullet point system? What are your big tips? I'm happy to listen to whatever your thoughts are on this admittedly pretty broad topic. [link] [comments]  |
| Do you work with outsourcing company from Ukraine? Posted: 05 Dec 2017 02:10 AM PST I have an idea for a startup, it's a mobile application for business, I don't want to go into details. I don't programming, so I decided to hire an outsourcing company from Ukraine. Someone worked with programmers from Ukraine and Russia. I read a lot of articles about outsourcing. The salary in these countries is much low than in America and the application comes out much cheaper. But how about the quality? Have experience? Tell me about your experience, or advise another outsourcing company. Thank you for your responses. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Dec 2017 11:07 PM PST So we are on the hunt for a decent and cheapish piece of software that can manage and track recurring tasks. Basically something where I can assign a weekly, monthly task to someone, then as a manager be able to see all of the staff's (5 at the moment) tasks in a calendar type format as well as receive notifications when the tasks are complete or overdue. At the moment I've signed up for Trello, Bitrix24 and todoist. But getting my head around all of the features of each different format and how they work is quite time consuming, and we'd like to make a decision and start using whichever we choose fairly soon. So was basically wondering if anyone had advice for something as simple as outlined above. So far it seems trello is very project based and might be overkill, bitrix24 looks good but isn't discussed much online and todoist's trial version doesn't really have much functionality, everything is in the premium version (not much point of a trial if you ask me). We have been running with a combination of google calendar and google sheets, but the accountability and overview just isn't really there. [link] [comments]  |
| SaaS founders, how do you hire marketers? Posted: 04 Dec 2017 07:39 AM PST I am really curious how founders hire their marketers.
Could you share some interesting stories on how you hired your marketers or how would you tried to hire one today? Any particular channels where you'd ask for marketers? [link] [comments]  |
| Braintree rejected my startup over alleged "high risk" Posted: 04 Dec 2017 08:09 AM PST I founded a SaaS company that offers secure (blockchain-inspired) audit trail as a service. I have some pricing options, and I wanted to handle the payments through Braintree. However, after reviewing my application, they said that the business is too risky and they are rejecting me. Without any indication of what exactly is a high risk. I then followed that up with clarification that although there's "blockchain" in the startup, it is NOT about cryptocurrency trading at all, and also that we have secured funding, are registered EU company, etc. They didn't change their decision. What do you think is the risk that they identified? Am I missing something, as this is just a regular SaaS business with monthly subscription I saw other posts in this subreddit complaining about Braintree rejections, so I hope I can get some insight. [link] [comments]  |
| Legal Question Regarding Vesting/Share Startup Posted: 04 Dec 2017 07:07 PM PST Hello, I've a few questions regarding my shares in a company. Basically, I came into a LLC Partnership startup and they added me as a third member without officially redoing the legal docs because we genuinely couldn't afford it at the time. Well fast forward a year and I'm still here. However we've basically lucked our way into a 7 figure investment, this is great but I don't think the CEO is going to guide the company in the right direction. I've drawn up a new business idea (non-compete) and I'd like to pursue it, however I want to know if I have any shot at keeping any of my shares from this company if before or after we restructure for the investment. When I joined the owner said: "As for vesting or dilution it's not applicable at the moment because we're only an LLC as a partnership" However, since I will dilute for the investment and we will be restructured. The owner has said "An LLC can be structured just link an S Corp in terms of shares and such" Because of issues in regards to an offshore investor in an S corp. Is there any specifics on how the vesting period would also change? Can they make it whatever they want? Can I be fired at will and lose all shares? I just want to better understand this, I joined the company as a college student and don't have the money to pour into a lawyer because it's basically only paid a few hundred dollars per month thus far. In terms of the current LLC OA here is what it states: https://i.gyazo.com/271af81289cbb37674ac3b9789c4f0fa.png Any help would be appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Playing the long game with VCs... structure of "intro" meetings? Posted: 04 Dec 2017 08:24 AM PST I've read over and over to start laying groundwork with VCs before you are officially raising a round. My bootstrapped startup is likely to begin raising a seed round in Q1 and we've had multiple offers for investor intros, however we are not ready to officially begin fundraising quite yet and I'm not sure how these "informal" meetings are structured. The folks offering to intro have said it would be "just for coffee," but I suppose I'm not sure how useful that is if we don't have a stated ask for the meeting. That said, I know it's important for both us and the VC to vet each other in advance of entering into a business relationship. What I don't want to do is go to a "casual coffee" meeting totally unprepared. Any advice? (we are US based in a major tech city, if that matters.) [link] [comments]  |
| 3 companies, 3 options - Need Advice Posted: 04 Dec 2017 05:02 PM PST Hi r/startup friends, I come to you again with another career dilemma. I'm in a great place in my career where I have options (3 companies). Quick background on me, I've been able to build and scale enterprise sales teams with a lot of success (doing sales ops, sales engineer, manager, & closer). I recently joined a new company as an individual contributor with a path to management. I've only been here for about 3 months, and during this time - I've received 2 different offers with other companies in management positions. My goal is to get into management or some type of product role as I previously managed about 15 people at my previous company. I left because I was sick of the company and took the first good offer I could to relocate. Here are my options.
The offer deadline for #3 is on friday and I'm wondering how I can approach my current employer without offending them. I don't expect the offer to fast-track me into management at company #2 but I would like to see some extra $$ to show good faith. Should I let him/her know which company it is or keep it close to my chest? I'd love to hear your advice or suggestions. There's no right or wrong and ultimately I'll do what feels right but it always helps to hear your opinions and experience. Thank you! TL:DR: I have 3 options . 1. Stay with current company with great work life balance , 2. Join a huge corporate company with way more pay but know it will be soul crushing with poor work/life balance, 3. Join a small startup with some good friends and making a bit more money than I am now (this is the most appealing for me with the great amount of risk / i'm okay w/ risk) [link] [comments]  |
| Where to begin with website development Posted: 04 Dec 2017 03:27 PM PST Hello everyone! I've been a lurker here for quite a while and I've been making a bit of progress as I learn from here. I've begun developing my website but I'm running into some issues and a few quick google searches haven't given me anything to work with. An extremely brief and I guess a vague way to describe what it is the website would be used for is a couple of products that I have developed, so basic eCommerce is essential for my website. I also need a way for a customer to "customize" a product, for example, the way you can customize a Nike shoe using the NikeId, and that is what my biggest issue figuring out how to do it. Having all of those different options to change how the product looks. I'm also going to running a blog to work with my eCommerce website and would like a way to link the two without spamming my blog all over the website. Any extra information, which I'm sure I missed some important information that is necessary to assist me with my problem I can give. If there is a better place to look for this information I'd be happy to hear it. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Sales Strategy For New Product Posted: 04 Dec 2017 12:40 PM PST My product was successfully funded on a crowdfunding platform about 6 months ago. I'm finally done with production, have the product and I've shipped to all customers. What would you do next in my situation? I have a patent pending fitness product that is the first of its kind. This has been a difficult challenge, spreading product awareness for something new to the market. Im intrigued by selling to retailers but I have a plain brown box with my logo and don't include instructions right now on my first order to save on costs. I personally email every person that orders online and tell them to watch our explainer videos and workouts on YouTube with links. I do this to guarantee that the customer will know how to use it. That makes it tough in the short term for display purposes in stores. I was contacted to audition for Shark Tank but feel it's way too early. I'd like more sales, better packaging and more expert advise/experience. Right now, I'm going direct to customers by running ads. This can get expensive quickly, especially since I've financed everything from the beginning and have built up debt. It will be worth it in the end but it sucks now. What would you do? If anyone else has run into something similar to this, I'd love to hear your story. I've searched Reddit and basically come up with drop shipping advise and apparel companies. Would love to find resources/strategies for newer products to the market! Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Getting a co-founder CTO, or hiring a lead software engineer Posted: 04 Dec 2017 09:48 AM PST Hi, I'm wondering what would be the best option here. The concept I have is based on two phases, with the second phase being built upon the first. As a result, I'm wondering if I should use some of the capital I have to hire a developer to build the core first phase product, get funding from outside investors, then use that funding to build the second phase of the project. Or the second option is I could find a co-founder (easier said than done) willing to work for equity. After the first phase is complete, I could use my capital to push into the second phase without trying to get funded. This has the advantage of not wasting time on trying to get funded, plus the equity will be retained with the co-founders longer than the previous option. Plus, I will be able to retain someone who has the overarching needs of the business in mind, and isn't going to do shitty work. This is important because I don't have a technical background, and having a partner who brings another viewpoint to the business could be very valuable. Regardless of which option is chosen, I have to go about determining who to bring on board, and this is difficult without a technical background. What is the best way to go about this for either option? A little of what I bring to the table (I'm not just another "idea guy"): I have 4 years of experience in a management role in my industry, key industry contacts, a growing network of potential customers willing to give feedback, and extensive knowledge of finance, financial modeling, and business strategy (this is in addition to experience in my industry which isn't finance-related). I also have a business plan that has the potential to disrupt a maturing industry that has seen quite a bit of consolidation in recent years. That means when we become successful, we'll have lots of options either to sell the company, or grow very large very fast. The business model centers on becoming a low cost producer for a product in an industry where the low-cost producer wins. But the problem for most of the players is they all have certain handicaps preventing them from becoming the true low cost producer. tl;dr: Considering this is a multi-phased business plan, which is better: bringing a technical co-founder on board, or hiring a developer? And what is the best way to evaluate applicants for a technical role considering I'm non-technical? [link] [comments]  |
| Doubt when launching a client’s mobile app. Posted: 04 Dec 2017 09:07 AM PST Hi everyone, not sure if this is the proper channel to ask this, but hope it is. Anyway, it turns out that I started a software development agency (mobile apps) a couple of months ago and I got my first "big" client. We have to develope an app that has in-app purchases and it's here when I'm not sure about how to proceed. The app is going to be launch on App Store and Google Play with our enterprise dev account. I've read that there can only be one bank account for each dev account so, what should I do with the payments? All the payments that take place in the app (if there's any) are going to be charged to my bank account and then I'm going to have to transfer them to the client's bank account? This sound pretty inefficient (and weird), I'm just the developer, this is not my business. How's this normally done? Anyone knows something? Thx a lot! [link] [comments]  |
| Best quality/price for startup-branded hoodie? Posted: 04 Dec 2017 08:58 AM PST My colleagues have decided that our company has reached the point that we need our own fancy startup-branded hoodies. Personally, I live in San Francisco and think this is passé, so I wouldn't be caught dead in one in public, but I promised I'd look into this for them. Their plan was to get Uniqlo hoodies and custom print these, but they cost $40 base, without the additional printing costs. I'm looking for something about half the cost, maybe more, that is a fashionable, well-fitting, good-looking hoodie. What are other companies doing? [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Startups - Finding problems and solving them!. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment