Startups Advice From a 24-Year-Old Immigrant Founder |
- Advice From a 24-Year-Old Immigrant Founder
- How do I protect myself during a “restructuring”
- I want to test my idea, but also scared others may steal it
- Cold Emails - What's been your experience?
- Bootstrapping a startup with a friend - questions about equity and expenses
- How do you guys not burnout?
- Using Open Source to Grow Business. Month #6
- Some tips, cautions and advise about stepping into "co-foundership".
- Couple of questions regarding a tech startup mainly to do with MVP and bringing on a cofounder
- Banks that open business accounts for foreign companies?
- Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, subject of Startup.com documentary, convicted at fraud trial
- LOYALTY PROGRAMS: Important for the Launchpad or leave it for later?
| Advice From a 24-Year-Old Immigrant Founder Posted: 11 Jan 2018 01:30 PM PST I don't wake up at 5:00 am or have a meditation-juicing-exercise routine, I definitely don't apply the 80/20 rule and struggle to read one book a month. I'm just an extraordinarily unsatisfied and curious person. The BeginningMoving from Colombia to Australia taught me two things: never settle for sh*t jobs and create your own happiness. Being from a middle-class family allowed me to move to the other side of the world when I was 19 and experience a new culture for which I will be forever grateful. As a university student in a foreign country, I had to support myself while studying and my job options were limited based on what other immigrants and international students did. Some of the most popular jobs were something like cleaner, waiter, or retail-assistant. Not satisfied with these options I applied for an internship at a financial services company and after three months of unpaid work, I managed to secure a part-time position. However, the finance world just wasn't for me, the whole getting money for the sake of getting money didn't resonate as a lifetime commitment. After careful consideration, I had a career change and decided to venture into a new industry by joining a startup. At this point, my life was far from similar to the average immigrant or international student, and yet it still wasn't enough. I wanted to achieve something more significant, I wanted to be obsessed with my job, but I needed to find my "what" first. My goal was to find a project to put 110% of my efforts; I didn't want to settle for mediocrity. While working at this startup for almost a year my biggest "aha" moment happened — businesses hire people who solve problems they don't have time to address themselves or just don't know how to. It's a simple statement, but my naive-self thought businesses only hired the top search on Google, to which, I was wrong. The one thing I have always been passionate about is tech and efficiency, so naturally, I thought maybe some businesses would be interested in automating tasks to scale without increasing operational costs. With a lot of hesitation, I decided to start an automation agency. Luck may be involved, but offering help for free was the key to find my first clients. Fast forward to today I'm now working with award-winning startups and leading the launch of a disruptive SaaS platform. But how do you get there?Don't SettleEarly last year I realised the primary trigger of deteriorating mental health was unhappiness with my job. Fear of failure always stopped me from going on my own, but we spend so much time working I'd much rather be happy and fail than unhappy and yet still fail. To find your "what" you need input to get an output, you need to live as many experiences as possible and wonder with endless curiosity until you find it.
Leave Your Ego at The Door and Never Stop LearningMy own ego was blinding me. Empathising with other people hasn't been one of my strengths. Not allowing other people to empower ideas by being shallow minded was slowing my growth. Opportunities come from putting your ego aside and acknowledging your abilities but also other people's as well. The potential to find your "why" may be behind the limitations of your ego.
Ask More Questions and Sale LessYou may know someone that needs a service or product, but they don't know you or your company. Just ask questions. Build a relationship with people, demonstrate you know what you are talking about and build trust. Once trust is established you can offer to solve their problem and exchange time for money. When you make a booking at a restaurant the bill doesn't arrive before you get there. You visit the venue, read a menu, interact with someone, then you order and have your food, and the last thing you get is the bill. Deliver value at every touch point, and the financial reward will follow. Break Stereotypes and PersevereAnother fear at the time of going on my own was being too young to add value. Once again I was wrong, my value proposition is my semi-obsession with startups and tech and not my age. Ironically enough many people in tech are quite young, and some people in business are still biased about young people. Break all the stereotypes necessary to achieve your goals. Don't let anything create self-doubt.
Just Give it a Solid GoYou don't need to be a super-human to start your own business. Don't get me wrong morning routines, exercise and healthy eating are great habits, but we don't need to be everything at the same time. You don't need to be a successful founder with a six pack while saving the world and writing a book. That being said thrive on the one thing you want to focus. My mum once told me: "If you want to be a delivery guy just be the best delivery guy out there.".
There is no secret formula or seven steps to success. Aim to find your balance put in the work and add value.If you want to read the full blog post and other startup posts you can find it here [link] [comments]  |
| How do I protect myself during a “restructuring” Posted: 11 Jan 2018 07:58 PM PST This is going to be an interesting experience. The last company I worked for where I have equity (around 4% after dilution between and seed and series a round, initially it was 15% or so) is currently doing an initial coin offering (ico) from which they plan on restructuring the company as they raise money. Now I'm not sure how it works but I've only received one shareholders agreement from 2016 which I find odd but that's another story. In the event that they restructure and change equity pools or cut out early employees completely how can i protect myself or still have access to the equity I've earned? Am I completely misinformed in thinking the founders can and will write me out? [link] [comments]  |
| I want to test my idea, but also scared others may steal it Posted: 11 Jan 2018 10:45 PM PST so I recently had this business idea (I know, many people are going to roll their eye) and I think it could become something very niche, however there're some key assumption/hypothesis I want to validate before start building on it. I'm thinking about a survey via FB or Linkedin, but also at the same time I'm concerned people would see the questions I ask, and then start stealing my idea. Am I doing it wrong? Should I build first to get a head-start, and then start validating midway? Or, am I thinking too much? Did anyone ever steal ideas from you in a similar situation? Thanks in advance for a great discussion [link] [comments]  |
| Cold Emails - What's been your experience? Posted: 11 Jan 2018 06:57 PM PST I'm debating how to begin marketing my product while I'm working on finishing up my website. Cold emailing comes to mind as a great way to burst out of the vacuum of solidarity. Although my experience with cold emails has always been on the receiving end. I always treat it as spam. If it comes into a personal inbox, I don't even bother reading it. The exception has been at work. I find that it can be amusing to read "spam" emails at work in the mornings, whether it's the ol' Nigerian prince tactic, or a legitimate service somebody is offering. Finding myself on the other end of the spectrum now, I'm rather torn on if I should pursue it as my first marketing campaign. To give a bit of background, my product is online data visualizations. I'd be targeting anybody that uses business intelligence software, or even smaller companies/businesses that want custom interactive visuals for their website. What has been your experience with cold calling from the sending side, and do you believe it is right for my product? [link] [comments]  |
| Bootstrapping a startup with a friend - questions about equity and expenses Posted: 11 Jan 2018 08:33 PM PST So right now a friend and I are working on bootstrapping a startup and there's ongoing discussion about equity and expenses. We're trying to get this going with zero outside investment so somehow between us we will be funding this ourselves. Now the question is about equity and expenses - how does a startup duo usually work out paying expenses? I assume if one person is footing the bill that person would take a larger portion of equity. One thing that's also being considered is an even split and splitting the bills. But if one person does foot the bill, what is a general rule of thumb for $x of bills/personal funding is equivalent to Y percentage? If one person foots the bill initially, how does that translate once the company starts becoming profitable? Are the bills taken out of the income first and then the profit split according to the equity agreement? Does the person that foot the bill (or both of us) get back-paid for expenses before income was generated? This is a software startup and we are both working together on equity and neither taking a salary/income to start with so the bills will be absolutely minimal until we start generating income. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 Jan 2018 12:13 AM PST So I'm broke and everything I got is tied into this. I've been developing something for more than a year (It's taken so long because of breaks for health). I'm maybe like 80% done my project, so I'm past the point of getting a cofounder, but not past the point of being able to go to VC. I'm trying to get a grant from the government, so I have so money to leverage. But the truth is, I'm at a point where I don't even want to look at the thing. I'm all things to this company: I've written the entire business plan on my own. If there's something that I have to learn code wise, I do. I'm not getting paid, I'm in my parents house, driving their car, and just trying to scrape enough together to survive day to day, so I can't even take time away. I can't even afford a video game, or something to play. I'm feeling a little imprisoned by my own project. When I work on it I'm irritated, when I'm not I'm restless and bored. I try coming on Reddit with other accounts, but usually end up on areas that just hate entrepreneurs all together. How do you all deal with burnout? Bonus story: Anyone got some I was burned out and then made some money stories as motivation? [link] [comments]  |
| Using Open Source to Grow Business. Month #6 Posted: 11 Jan 2018 04:25 AM PST Original article can be found here Today my team has 2 popular open source products launched, and we're ready to share our experince. We founded our company 6 month ago and we had literally nothing. Nothing except an unfinished vue.js admin dashboard template that was no more than another hobby project, a nice UpWork profile and money that was hardly enough to pay a month's salary. Quite a risky situation, I'd say. Still, we had a feeling that an unfinished admin template must be the key. We've put all our efforts into making it a complete open source product. We started as a team of five and had one month to either make it and get clients or fail and start looking for a bit less exciting jobs for bigger companies. Then, a little miracle happened — a couple of days after we gathered, one of my UpWork clients asked for help, so a teammate of mine started to handle the project. Suddenly, our financial situation turned out to be less desperate and the rest of the team continued developing the admin template. In the beginning of August, the template was complete. We were exhausted and excited at the same time. And then, the launch started… It was fantastic! The template became GitHub trending repo №4 and got lots of positive feedback — a reward from the community we are really thankful for. How the template helped us? In my previous article, I stated that for a web-development company having nice open source products may be more effective in attracting clients than writing tons of cold letters and submitting numerous UpWork proposals. Well… I'm still using UpWork and writing cold letters. And I still hate it. But anyway, everything is much better now. With an open source portfolio we've got way more responses. All our current clients have some tech background and they were really impressed by the product (the template was the main reason why they started working with us). Moreover, recruitment comes easier now. We are located in Belarus, and the IT sphere really stands out here. Most of the other spheres are experiencing stagnation while software development companies are flourishing. As a young company, it is really difficult to stand out in the eyes of developers. In the very beginning, nobody wanted to join (and they were right — we started from the very bottom). But now people we're talking with look at out GitHub profile and get excited. A new teammate joined us in December and one of the main reasons for that was our open source activity. Putting hands on the next open source product Our first project was really massive and expensive for us. Once we finished it, we concentrated on looking for new clients and finally making at least some money. Also, to be honest, the product took lots of our energy, so we were not ready to start something new. By the end of autumn, we felt ourselves safer and refreshed and decided that we were ready. But ready for something smaller than an admin dashboard. After browsing tons of articles and GitHub repos, we finally came up with an idea — a collection of cool html/css loading spinners available both as html/css code snippets and as customizable vue.js components. There are lots of similar libs on GitHub. Our main focus was on the ease of usage. If you want to check the spinner inside your app, just click to copy the code and you're ready to go. So, in the middle of December, we launched the spinners lib. People liked it, we got into GitHub trends and received 1200+ stars in a month. By Christmas, we were happy and a bit tired. What's next? January 2018. We started with one unfinished product and no resources. We are still a team of five. But now we have two popular opens source products, traffic on GitHub and a couple of happy clients. We feel better and ready to grow. We believe in the power of open source. We have no exact plans but a feeling that 2018 will be an important year for us with the achievements we will be proud of. [link] [comments]  |
| Some tips, cautions and advise about stepping into "co-foundership". Posted: 11 Jan 2018 01:39 PM PST Hi, i would like to leave some simple & silly but important tips and advice here about how to handle early chats/e-meetings for whom search for their cofounder through the internet (reddit,angellist,linkedin etc) and specially in case that you are not the idea guy or the initiator + some cautions. 1 . During the first impressions If the person seems to be more interested to know about your thoughts than you and your background, in this case if it's a video call or face to face meeting, show your middle finger and walk away as what they are looking for is free feedback not a cofounder. 2 . Always start to identify the characteristic of the person first and before anything else. ask about what their goal is, what they value most, try to realize what are their dark side and bright side. If your personalities don't match no force in the world would help you to succeed in the business even if it's the next next next big thing that is going to happen. Never jump in because there are no better options at the moment. 3 . Do not show extreme interest about their idea & plan on early talks as it would give them false confident that they got a diamond which everybody is looking for, so they will go picky about the person they wanna partner with and chances are they easily move on as you guys just met. So keep it moderated and remember the law of nature, when you run after something it runs as well 4 . If you came up with some good ideas or solutions around the original one during the introduction stage, keep it to yourself for now. there is no string attached and no guarantee that you guys are going to work together for now and chances are high you will be going to regret what you contributed, If you came up with something that would take the original plan to the next level, only share it with them when you got to know each other better or had your contracts signed or equity allocated etc. When the plan/idea will be taken to the next level, or more values gets added to the plan everything can change, they might now start to revisit the options. thinking out loud: "i thought i just had an idea to give it a shot, now that it's like a million dollar plan with actual potentials and lower risks why would i give away 50% of my company to someone i just met over the internet instead of gathering some fund and hire somebody to build it for me or turn to friends !" - well it happens, not all the people in the world are loyal as you are, so keep it smart. If the job is something that you can do very well, only try to give them confidence not actual contribution. 5 . At least have 3 or 4 chats/e-meetings before making the final decision whether you're in or not. At first stage, briefly get to know each other and the plan At second, talk about the idea and plan in depth At third, when you are certain that this is the thing you want to do and predict it gonna work out well, time to get to know each other in depth, personality & characteristic plus life interests and background At fourth, talk about every little or big things about the partnership in depth, responsibilities, partnership terms, ownership, authorities, vision and goals, and every possible scenarios that you may face in the future, what happens if you wanted to sell the company after a while and i wanted to keep it? who can have access to the fund if we raised capital? who will have the final say when there is a dispute? 6 . If it's not their first startup try to know and understand what happened between them and the previous cofounders. 7 . Watch out for red flags and never move on easily, don't push too hard to make it work. leave it for the best, if you guys are meant for each other it will work out. 8 . If it was going well further, make an agreement to always document everything during the partnership, who came up with what? who came up with the name for the company? who came up with that putting that call to action button on the app to the right will give users a better experience. Even if the partner is your childhood friend, document them. Believe me it will save you a lot of headache. 9 . Always speak your mind and ask your partners intent to do the same. specially in remote cooperation. if they did something wrong, talk about it, don't assume they are going to *** you in the *** and then you plan to *** back harder. And lastly Look for cofounder, only if A. You are aware of what it takes to maintain a healthy partnership otherwise there are tons of resources around to get started alone and many investors that will beg you to take their money if your idea and plan looks good. B. You can trust in people. C. You are sure you never gonna regret sharing your pie with others. D. Do it for the sake of cofoudership not lack of resources. Thank you for taking the time to read this shit! [link] [comments]  |
| Couple of questions regarding a tech startup mainly to do with MVP and bringing on a cofounder Posted: 11 Jan 2018 08:39 AM PST Couple of questions regarding an app I am working on. I have a tech background but also have knack for learning the business side. My mvp is almost finished, but I am not happy with it in the sense I know the tech needs a lot of refining. 1) Do I launch this product and fix things as they come (it should work fine in the first city I launch at - may need tweaking after) ? 2) I have started looking for a tech founder- and may have found someone much smarter than me tech wise. What is the good percentage to give? I am close to having a finished product in two weeks ( website, android and ios app) 3) What more can I do when my tech expertise is so limited. Not limited - I don't write good looking code sometimes, comment and may have to re write everything. Once its released. What does my future look like in a company that I started - if it goes big? Thank you [link] [comments]  |
| Banks that open business accounts for foreign companies? Posted: 11 Jan 2018 06:23 AM PST Are there any banks that open business accounts for foreign companies, that fulfill the following criteria:
Till now I have two banks in my list:
I would really appreciate if someone could expand this list with more banks and services. [link] [comments]  |
| Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, subject of Startup.com documentary, convicted at fraud trial Posted: 11 Jan 2018 02:37 PM PST Article from December 26, 2017: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-26/ex-kit-ceo-tuzman-socialite-amanat-convicted-at-fraud-trial Wikipedia article on GovWorks, the dot-com era startup Tuzman cofounded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GovWorks Watch the documentary on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuiUXOTE4M For anyone who has seen the documentary, does he remind you of any other startup personalities, fraud convictions aside? He definitely reminds me of a founder or two I know, and the way the employees in the documentary talk to each other make me think not a whole lot has changed since 2001. [link] [comments]  |
| LOYALTY PROGRAMS: Important for the Launchpad or leave it for later? Posted: 11 Jan 2018 12:36 PM PST It has come to our attention that currently, we are trying to acquire users and keep growing our user base that we might need to implement some sort of loyalty program. We're doing good tests here and there with new sets of users every time so they become our sort of user base. The data we have on them is what we use to improve and announce new stuff. My question is, we're fairly new and have only past the testing phase but we're getting a good figure for users. Do we already implement a loyalty program or can we just keep acquiring and do it later on? [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