Startups Share your startup - February 2018 |
- Share your startup - February 2018
- Blog Post - You Don't Need a Co-Founder, Simplify your MVP
- Shutting down one business to join another - how to negotiate?
- Single Founder planning for the future.
- Art Gallery Startup Looking for Guerrilla Marketing Tactics to Bring Buyers and Artists to the Site
- Can I include future/frequent collaborators in a business plan? It's a sole proprietorship.
- RSU equity at a new startup - question about vesting
| Share your startup - February 2018 Posted: 01 Feb 2018 03:08 AM PST Tell us about your startup! /r/startups wants to hear what you're working on! Contest mode is on, so remember to select 'Show All' to see all the replies. If you don't see your post, you probably need to load more comments at the bottom. Also, all posts are sorted randomly, so the sort function doesn't seem to work.
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| Blog Post - You Don't Need a Co-Founder, Simplify your MVP Posted: 01 Feb 2018 03:40 PM PST For your side project, why do you need a co-founder? This Hacker News comment reflects the conventional wisdom:
While the primary developer co-founder is working on the app, the co-founder focuses on the ancillary features necessary to get an app launched. User git-pull is right: when building a web or mobile app, often the core functionality is only 60-70% of the work required. You have to develop several features and modules that have nothing to do with the core feature set of your app. Most of these features are common to all online SAAS businesses:
There is no open source framework covering all of these functions. But, there is a series of best practices that allow a solo developer to focus most of their limited time on coding the main app and launch these extra services with minimal effort. Logos and UX/UI It is easy to spend a lot of money on graphic design at the start of a project. Often, the screenshots and logo render you get back from a designer are the first tangible elements that make your project feel real. In reality, this is often wasted money, especially if you are just trying to build an MVP. You can prove a product has a customer base that will pay without paying for expensive UI/UX. Improving your UI will come later — when you are trying to improve your conversion and engagement, not when trying to prove product/market fit. Use FIVERR to get a logo for $15 or less. Find a graphic designer in the logo section that has 500 or more positive feedbacks with a perfect 5-star rating. Send them some logos you like, and you will get back a similar logo with your project name. It won't be fancy or particularly original, but it will work. Instead of paying for UI, just use the popular Bootstrap framework. Make sure you study the documentation and then use the classes correctly in your page renders. Spend your time making an easy, simple layout. The Bootstrap framework is so common, that if you do it right, your users will find your app to be familiar and simple to use. It won't be fancy or visually beautiful, but it will prove your MVP. Homepage and Brochure Website For your web or mobile app, you need a website to promote it. This brochure for your app or service is the landing page for all your marketing efforts, it sells (and upsells) your customers, funnels them to the conversion pages (sign up forms, app downloads, etc.) and acts as an ambassador for your product. Some developers are tempted to run this brochure website as they are running their app: as another set of code on their app servers. But, that is a mistake. The fastest, easiest and cheapest way to build your homepage and brochure website is with WordPress. WordPress is a wildly popular content management system that is:
You can run WordPress for free on any server or select a dedicated host. I am hosting DNDEmail.com on wpgengine.com – a dedicated WordPress host that prioritizes updates and stability. I pay a little more, but I never worry that my WordPress installation is out of date or unstable. WordPress' sizeable plug-in ecosystem is a powerful tool when you start marketing your project. Need a cheap landing page generator? A popup maker? A/B Testing? You can add all those features to WordPress with low-cost plug-ins (without recurring fees). It is easy to run your brochure/Wordpress site on one host and your app on another — just use a subdomain or different domain for each. For example, your WordPress site can be https://tryfancyapp.com, and your app itself can live at https://app.fancyapp.com. Be sure to check out ThemeForest — this is a marketplace of WordPress themes. For under $100, you can buy a theme that will give your website a distinctive look. Dashboard and Metrics We have all seen the fancy backend dashboards many startups built to visualize their data and users. In my opinion, these are a colossal waste of time. You can use Google Analytics and its native Events capability to dashboard any activity in your app for free and with minimal effort. The key is to send any action you want to track as an Event to Analytics. You can do this any number of ways including as Javascript or pixel tracking on the front end, or via HTTP GET on the back end. I built a function in my app that I could call from anywhere to send an event via the HTTP GET method supported by Events. You need to track EVERYTHING. Every click, action, interaction, and impression. Sign-up? Record it as an event. Upgrade? Record it as an event. Account closed? Record it as an event. Clicked a button? Record it as an event. Used a feature? Record it as an event. You want 100% of the user interactions with your app sent as Events to Google Analytics so you can look at the data to see what is working and what is not. What is popular and what is not. By the way: Are you offering an API or did you build a microservice? Track their usage by merely recording events to Analytics on each request. Be sure to implement USERID tracking for your logged in users so you can track their sessions and usage in Analytics. You can then build fancy dashboards in Analytics, have real-time data and email reports. You can also export events to Google Sheets and full the data in Google Data Studio for more in-depth analysis. Billing System Beating Stripe for ease of implementation is hard. Most subscription type Saas offerings can merely implement their HTML buy buttons and a single webhook to handle all subscriptions. You will also need to support coupons and have a simple way to upgrade/downgrade users without running them through Stripe. I spent about 10 hours of coding integrating Stripe billing into my subscription web app. As above, no need to build a dashboard or complicated user management system — you can log in to Stripe's Dashboard to view everything and handle most tasks. Customer Service The number one thing you can do to improve customer service is work on your app to make it easy and intuitive to use. Number 2: Build a quality help section on your WordPress site. Every time you get a new question, reply to the sender and post the answer on your support pages. To start, I recommend just using a support page in the WordPress site and Gmail. Later, as you grow and have multiple customer service agents, you can implement a help desk solution like Zendesk. If you want to succeed as a solo software developer, you need to get your MVP out to the public as quickly and cheaply as possible. You can do this without a co-founder by focusing on the core feature set of your product and minimizing the time you spend on the app overhead. Once you set your project live, your work is just beginning — now you start climbing the mountain of marketing your product and finding those initial customers.[link] [comments]  |
| Shutting down one business to join another - how to negotiate? Posted: 01 Feb 2018 09:33 PM PST I own a small software development business in the Bay Area with one other partner and no employees. Together we have a unique skill set that makes us uniquely valuable within a couple specific industries. Over the past four years we've become stable and self-sufficient, but have chosen not to grow and generally to remain cash flow neutral in exchange for time to work on our personal projects. We live cheaply and can break even by working 2.5 days per week. One of our small clients (also consisting of two partners and no employees) has entered a pre-seed round and is trying to convince us to join their company. We like the work, and 100% of their projects have been built by us. It seems essential that they keep us around; the work they need done will be difficult to hire for, and we've effectively established their entire production process. During a recent meeting we expected them to ask us to come onboard as partners. What they offered, instead, was to bring us on as early employees with a 65% pay cut and 4% equity. They've proposed titles for us that imply that we would be in director-level positions. They've claimed that even an early startup CTO would be offered <1% equity, so our 4% is ostensibly a sweet deal. We were expecting a less severe pay cut and much more equity, perhaps 15-20% combined. This feels like a major lowball across the board, but I have no experience dealing with early startups. Am I off base? We're not certain how to counter. tldr: Currently running a stable software business in SF and have a pre-seed client who wants us to come onboard as employees with a 65% pay cut for 4% equity. Feels like a raw deal, but not certain how to proceed. [link] [comments]  |
| Single Founder planning for the future. Posted: 01 Feb 2018 07:49 AM PST When is the best time to give the C-Corp my seed money and how should I do it in a fair way for future co-founders? Single founder in the middle of the incorporation process using [Clerky](www.clerky.com) u/darbywong (DE C-Corp, all standard settings). I know that I will want to bring on more cofounders after I actually get the MVP developed. I am in an area where there is a lot of of tech talent, but not a lot of startups. Most of the tech talent works for large Fortune 100 companies and are risk averse about joining a startup. With two kids, I can understand where they are coming from. I decided that it will be easier to find someone once I have an MVP or v1, so I am just going to forge ahead alone for right now. I personally have the seed money to get the app developed without taking an initial outside seed investment. I want to give co-founder status to a tech CF and a design CF and really run it like a partnership, but with me having the final say on things we can't agree on. I should say that I was part of a team that grew a non-tech business from $20m to $100m very quickly and in a business where "employees and executives" are more the norm than founders, co-founders, and partners. So this is kind of new territory for me and I want to get it right and fair. My question is around what makes the most sense from an equity point of view since I am doing the initial work and putting in the seed money. I feel like if I put $50,000-$100,000 in and develop the initial version it shouldn't be equal. There are 4 options I have come up with.
I don't know what to do. Am I wrong that if I incorp on Clerky the standard way, buy the shares, then invest the seed money, that the cap table, valuation will get out of whack? Like 15% equity post seed will be worth more than 15% pre-seed. What makes the most sense from a tax and fairness standpoint? Single founder, personally investing the seed money, wanting to leave shares for future co-founders and employees in a fair way. [link] [comments]  |
| Art Gallery Startup Looking for Guerrilla Marketing Tactics to Bring Buyers and Artists to the Site Posted: 01 Feb 2018 10:33 AM PST I'm working with a startup who has flipped the online art gallery paradigm on its head and we need to drive buyers and artists to the site (obviously). I would love some guerrilla ideas on how to do this:
Thank you for your help. [link] [comments]  |
| Can I include future/frequent collaborators in a business plan? It's a sole proprietorship. Posted: 01 Feb 2018 12:52 PM PST I'm starting a one-woman consulting firm, but I have a list of people with skills and titles that I plan to collaborate on projects with. They will not be employees, nor partners, but invisible subcontractors through me for my clients. Can I put them on my "team" in my business plan, or is it better not to? I also write in my plan that I plan to expand aggressively and will make hires in the first twelve months - some of the same people. I'm not sure how much to write starting out vs. growth plans. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| RSU equity at a new startup - question about vesting Posted: 01 Feb 2018 10:37 AM PST Hello all, I just began working at a startup, and have some questions about an equity agreement I am in the process of signing. I have had the agreements reviewed by an attorney, but would like to see if I can get any additional insight on my situation before going back for another session. In the process of discussing the agreement further with my employer, I am being told some things that sound unusual to me, and I want to ensure that the agreements are written properly, and get some second opinions on this. The agreement is in the form of an RSU award agreement. I understand this is common and the usual scenario is that the RSUs are vested according to the preset schedule in the agreement, and that the employee is responsible for paying taxes on the vested RSUs (unless the company agrees to pay the taxes). However, the proposal I am given is that the RSUs will be "accrued" according to schedule, but only vesting when there is a "change in control" with the company. I have some concerns with this. If I am terminated just prior to the change in control, how can I ensure that I still receive the vested RSUs? It seems to me that this is being proposed to avoid having the company pay the taxes on the vested RSUs. Is this a common scenario among tech startups? Are there specific areas of emphasis that I should ensure are written into the agreement to ensure I actually receive the vested RSUs? If anyone is familiar with this, or has been in this situation, I would appreciate any additional insight. [link] [comments]  |
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