Startups Question relating to people asking for free stuff |
- Question relating to people asking for free stuff
- Blog post - Why pitching “We’re the Uber for X” is a double-edged sword
- Uncollateralized loan for a small business acquisition
- Question: How are Virtual Cards made?
- CoFounder or Adviser and tips on finding one
- (Retarded question) Is it true that you have to cross ethical lines in business?
| Question relating to people asking for free stuff Posted: 28 Jan 2018 06:56 PM PST I run an online women's clothing website, and I'm very active on social media. I don't know about you guys but I get a LOT of people dming me saying that they love my stuff and would love it if I would send them a "care package " and in exchange they would take photos of themselves in my clothes ( two things to keep in mind here, my company is way too small for me to be giving or free stuff and normally the people asking me have around 900-1000 followers) It does get frustrating at times because I feel like if you really loved it you would buy it but that's besides the point. My question is, how would you turn this into a positive to drive your business forward? [link] [comments]  |
| Blog post - Why pitching “We’re the Uber for X” is a double-edged sword Posted: 28 Jan 2018 10:19 AM PST A common early need for new companies (and products) is the "Elevator Pitch". If you've never heard of the term, it stems from the following hypothetical situation: you're a startup founder, and you find yourself in a confined space (e.g. an elevator) with a powerful investor. You have to quickly explain to this investor what your company does, in a way that would get her excited, and you must accomplish this before the elevator dings open and the opportunity is lost forever. When my company Smore went through TechStars, they taught us to practice and re-practice this elevator pitch until we knew it by heart. The goal is to get it so polished that you can say the exact same words — perfectly — each and every time, and get the best possible reaction. Naturally, this is very hard to do. The biggest challenge, in my opinion, is not only distilling what you're going to do over the next 5–7 years into what's essentially the length of a couple of tweets, but to do so in a way that gets your desired message across (without any misunderstandings) the vast majority of the time. Your worst enemy is saying something that might be clear to you, but is confusing or can be easily misinterpreted by a meaningful subset of people. The most important part of the elevator pitch is the opening sentence. A mentor told our TechStars class that a perfect elevator pitch should be 'collapsible,' that is, you can stop pitching at any time and the first N sentences you've said so far constitute your best possible pitch up to that point. It's tough enough to summarize your vision into a tweet, but into a single sentence (and the shorter, the better)? One common way founders deal with this problem is to use shortcuts. Usually I'm a fan of shortcuts, but one of my least favorite ones is the dreaded "We're {Company} for {Use case}" comparison. We can generalize this specific case to include any form of describing your company, using a well-known other company as a starting point, with a side note of how you're different from them. At a first glance, it seems like a great idea. You can say one sentence, only a few words long, and everyone instantly "gets it." What could be better? Well, let's refer to this as the "Uber for X" shortcut, and discuss why using it is a almost always a bad idea. 1) Not everyone will be familiar with your comparison point While this can be somewhat mitigated by using a super-well-known company like Uber, Google, Amazon, I often see companies like Kayak, Slack, Reddit, Github, Bloomberg, and others used as a base point. Well, what if your target audience doesn't know what Kayak is? What if they 'kind of' know what it is, but they're remembering wrong? Do you want to take that risk? 2) The specific meaning of "Uber for X" can be ambiguous What does "we want to be like Uber" mean? Does it mean you want to be as convenient as Uber? As ubiquitous? As aggressive? Something else? Even if you think that in your case it seems obvious, I guarantee that over enough time, you're going to hit the "what? that doesn't make any sense" wall, or even worse, the "I get it (they don't) but it doesn't seem interesting" wall. Figuring out the cause of an offhand rejection is tough, and as they say, you can only make one first impression. 3) The "Uber" brand has different associations for different people You may like "Uber" and think it's a great experience or solution to a problem. Your investor might think that "Uber" is unethical, greedy, failing or some other negative adjective. When you say "we're Uber for X," you might be attempting to communicate one thing, while achieving quite another. This is especially problematic when used in a branding context: is Nike or Starbucks good or bad? Well, it depends on the person. So what should you do? Don't be lazy, and remember to practice. Roll up your proverbial sleeves and do the homework of figuring out how to describe your company as clearly as you can, while relying on as little context as possible. Using shortcuts like "Uber for X" may seem like a good idea at first, but it's the easy way out and has some serious disadvantages. The worst thing you can do is make a bad (or indifferent) first impression, especially inadvertently. Once you find an opening sentence that seems to work, practice it as often a you can, using real-world people that don't already know what your company is doing (I'm talking bartenders, baristas, cab drivers, the works). If you're brave, ask them immediately after you're done for their reaction. Ask them to describe what the company does back to you. Listen to their questions and see where they misunderstood you. Take note of these and improve. Find what people react to positively to and what makes them cringe. Over time (oh, and it does take time), you're going to be surprised both by how eloquently and effortlessly you're able to pitch, and by how much of a difference it makes to be saying the right words. Also on my Medium [link] [comments]  |
| Uncollateralized loan for a small business acquisition Posted: 28 Jan 2018 04:01 PM PST Does anyone know of a reputable institution that will provide uncollateralized lending for a small business acquisition? Loan amount of approximately $300,000. Business and personal cash flow can support the loan assuming a 5 year amortization. Although this is not a true startup loan, most lending institutions view it as such since I would be the new owner of this small business. This loan does not qualify as an SBA loan because I would be buying 75% of the business and the SBA requires 100% ownership. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Question: How are Virtual Cards made? Posted: 28 Jan 2018 06:51 AM PST Hello everyone, I've been doing a bit of research on virtual credit cards and their benefits, however I'm unable to find any information regarding how they are created and what technologies are used to create them. Companies such as Privacy(https://privacy.com) and Citi (https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-Account-Numbers) offer the service to users free of charge. I've been searching the internet for a while looking for answers but wasn't able to find anything so any information or resources about the subject would be of great help on my quest for knowledge. Thanks, [link] [comments]  |
| CoFounder or Adviser and tips on finding one Posted: 28 Jan 2018 08:44 PM PST My start up is focusing on developing some of the tech in our IP portfolio for the near future. It's some pretty heavy industrial equipment, and while our team has quite a bit of experience in IP, product design, and the space the equipment is for, we don't have any engineers on staff. The equipment itself is fairly complicated, and even building a small version for proof of concept will likely take a significant amount of time and work. We are debating outsourcing the engineering to a firm vs bringing on a CTO as a co-founder. Here's how I see it: Benefits of Outsourcing: - Simple and easy - Allows our current team to focus on Biz Dev and fundraising - Multiple experts in diff fields on the team - None of us have any clue how to find an engineer with their own shop willing to work on a start up salary Drawbacks: - More expensive - No one in house to help talk technical details with investors or partners - We might not get access to innovative insights an in-house engineer would have (we are a IP focused company so this is important to us) Benefits of CTO: - Innovation in-house means more IP - Makes team look more impressive - We have someone in house to talk tech when needed - Cheaper at least for MVP/prototyping stage Drawbacks of CTO: - Possibility of unreliability - Would only get us one engineer, not a team working on our project - Very, very difficult to find So what do you think /r/startups? Should we outsource or recruit our own, and if the latter how the hell do we find a qualified CTO? CoFounderslab does not have a lot of strong engineers. [link] [comments]  |
| (Retarded question) Is it true that you have to cross ethical lines in business? Posted: 28 Jan 2018 10:11 AM PST I'm not a person who knows much about business, but this is my attempt at fixing that. Do you have to screw over someone if you want to become successful in business? Lots of people think being successful in business requires you to emotionally or mentally damage a person. I get that you need to an imposing and powerful figure to be a strong leader for your staff. But actually damaging someone emotionally in order to move higher on the ladder, do you really need to do this to be successful? And I'm not talking about office politics where the competing employees go behind eachother's backs and tell the boss of the flaws of their competitior. I'm talking about House of Cards level stuff, I mean, actually causing mental or financial harm to someone. Ruining another person's spirit or financial situation. I know you have to overcome your competition. There's nothing wrong with that. But attacking your competition emotionally and breaking them, do you truly have to do this? Any response will be appreciated [link] [comments]  |
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