Startups Weekly Feedback and Support Thread |
- Weekly Feedback and Support Thread
- Finally Launched my First Company and am Freaking-Out About Getting Users
- What's your opinion on Airbnb's attempt at restricting user-to-user side deals by restricting the sharing of personal information?
- What is the *real* likelihood of getting start-up capital?
- How does receiving start-up capital actually work?
- Just built an app, now what...
- Struggling with marketing for various reasons could use advice.
- How can I become invaluable to this startup?
- When do you know you should adjust pricing? (Up or down)
- Pre-seed funding: is it worth the effort?
- 1 Tomorrow, we will pitch on stage at a startup event. What's the No. 1 advise we should follow?
- What information does my client need to wire me a payment?
- Question about package shipments - both receiving and sending
- User and data encryption?
- What to do about customers only answering to school email and not business email?
- Advice on building an email list before revealing my Startup Brand?
- How did you move from idea to inception?
- Web applications with Adobe digital signatures, how did you do it?
| Weekly Feedback and Support Thread Posted: 26 Feb 2018 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
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| Finally Launched my First Company and am Freaking-Out About Getting Users Posted: 26 Feb 2018 10:09 AM PST After several years of learning to code, and a starting then stopping half-way through projects I finally have something online that I am proud of, something I think is a unique and viable product that solves a real problem. However it has been up for just about a month and I am seriously freaking out about getting users or hell, just getting people to visit my site. I literally have no idea where to start or what to do here. My site is geared towards freelancers and small businesses, however none of my family/friends are in this category so that puts a dent in getting the word out. Any advice would be deeply appreciated, thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2018 08:24 PM PST So in an attempt to keep the users using their platform, SaaS like airbnb have to figure out clever ways to censor things like phone numbers and emails so that users don't simply use Airbnb as a platform to meet, and then arrange their own private meet-up to evade paying airbnb their cut. Still, people find a way to get around this. Given that, it's surprising to me how it's still worked out for Airbnb. From a financial perspective, what's your opinion on SaaS built on this premise? One that relies on their ability to keep users using their platform from beginning to end(platform usage to payment on site) and not merely as a means to contact other people. Did airbnb get lucky? Is this a risk at all? Is it even worth censoring out things like phone number/email? [link] [comments]  |
| What is the *real* likelihood of getting start-up capital? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 10:57 AM PST I know the first answer that comes to anyone's mind is: That depends on how good your business plan is. Right? So let's assume, just for the sake of this question, that the business plan is for a rock-solid product or service and outlines a perfectly viable plan to market it. What are the chances of actually getting seed capital in the realm of, say, $300K? If someone has a rock-solid business plan, but a checking account balance that looks more like a grocery store receipt, does he/she have anything like a chance of getting funded, or are the various investors (VC, Angel, whatever) going to take a perfunctory glance at the business plan and then turn to the company principle and ask that one dreaded question: "How much of your own money are you putting into this?" That's what happens in real estate — there are multitudes of investors out there for real estate projects, but you're not getting a dime out of any of them unless you have around 5-10% or more of the money you're asking for already sitting in your account ready to throw at it. I assume it's not much different in the business world, but I keep seeing/hearing/reading stories about 23 year old kids with great ideas getting showered in startup capital. So ... can anyone venture an educated answer to this? Much appreciated in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| How does receiving start-up capital actually work? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 09:09 PM PST Say you found someone to invest into your project. They've offered a sum of money--something like one hundred thousand. What next? Is this simply your money to do with as you please? What I'm thinking is you won't receive the money in the first place without a solid business plan and outline to follow through. So essentially, are you receiving money in order to start your own company and be the CEO? Apologies for the elementary questions--I'm quite new to all this. [link] [comments]  |
| Just built an app, now what... Posted: 26 Feb 2018 04:39 PM PST Hey everyone, So the past few months I, and a team of developers, have created an app that I am pretty excited about. The only thing is, I have no clue what to do right now. Do I market the app? Do I first share it with a small group of people to make sure it is a well run app? Do I get someone with a business background to help me manage the app and the business around it. I'm hoping to be able to talk to some of you to get your opinions and maybe even show you the app to see how much you love/hate it. I thought developing it would be the hard part haha [link] [comments]  |
| Struggling with marketing for various reasons could use advice. Posted: 26 Feb 2018 11:17 AM PST I started my company and built a site, now I'm ready to market. I am a marketer, which is probably why I'm struggling because I know so many ways to do this. My biggest problem is I'm selling a $27 course. In the past I've sold Business software subscriptions so sales were easily in the $3000+ range. It feels like many of the marketing strategies I have are all useless for a small dollar item. I've considered FB ads but at $1 a click (likely up to $4 a click) it just doesn't make sense. If my course converts at 2-3% I'm spending $100-$400 for $54-$81 in revenue. I'm a writer and have done a lot of content marketing in the past but it's drastically slow and needs a lot of promotion/distribution. This won't help with testing anything for improvement because it will take so long to see traffic. And finally, I've done cold email before as well, but again it will take a long time, and isn't likely to be fruitful since it is just a $27 product. Advice? Do I just go with content because it's cheaper and if so, any suggestions for making it bring results quicker? The business I've started is in personal development. [link] [comments]  |
| How can I become invaluable to this startup? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 10:21 PM PST Burner account bc NDA TL;DR: I got a research internship at a research lab that I believe will be worth billions. Because I have a business background I have been instead put on the business side of things and am the only employee or intern working on this. I gained the owners trust and have practically unlimited access to the financials which are incredible. I love the direction of the company and the owner has already taken two undergrad students and made them integral parts of the company and is very generous. I believe if I can continue impressing him on the business side of things, he may bring me along with him. I've made some typical managerial analyses on excel which impressed him but need to keep it up and stay useful meaning I can't run out of impressive things to do (otherwise I'm expendable). What can I do to really shine? Background Info: In an extraordinary series of events, I stumbled upon and got an internship at a biotech start-up I knew very little about. This company has a lab at my university. I already have a BS in business and am working on a second degree so when I told him that, he had me begin looking over financials and interpreting spreadsheets and cleaning things up. It seems I hit it off with the owner, and on the first day, upon signing the NDA, he gave me pretty much uninhibited access to their financials, projections, financial structure, etc. I was absolutely blown away not just by the financials, but by the potential and generosity of the founder. I am so excited about the direction of this company and their direction they are going and want to become a bigger part of it! Think Nobel prize cure cancer type stuff (I know, you probably think its too good to be true but just humor me here). The company has maybe 3-6 employees and all of them are scientists (2 are undergrads). There are several undergrad lab interns. The owner has an uncanny natural ability for fine aspects of business but mostly just goes off his billionaire (yes, with a B) friend's and board members advice. They have the resources and structuring to make the leap. They are just finishing the R&D phase and will be going to the implementation phase soon. When I looked at the business plan spreadsheets there is a lot of good relevant data and estimates but they weren't put together in ways that gave him the valuable information he needs. I spent the first few days re-working the numbers and making the spreadsheets much more valuable, clean and calculating key managerial info that will help them out big time. As with most bio-med companies that make it out of the R&D phase, profitability is hardly a challenge, their financials are incredible. The owner was impressed and appreciated my insights. Here's the deal: I want to make myself invaluable so that the owner will keep me on and offer me a job and allow me to invest in the company. He has literally given away about 6% of his company (that I honestly believe will one day be a household name worth billions) to his 2 undergrad students who have worked for him for years, that's the kind of person he is (is it the best business move? Not, but he's already rich and as they move more and more towards monetizing their research they will tighten up). He is very generous, so I am confident that if I can really impress him (using the limited business background provided by a BS in business mgmt) he may allow me to invest in the next round of funding and bring me with him on the incredible journey that lies ahead. I am the only person currently working on the business aspect of things right now. What can I do to make myself standout and be invaluable? [link] [comments]  |
| When do you know you should adjust pricing? (Up or down) Posted: 26 Feb 2018 10:06 AM PST I have a fresh B2B SaaS application that I've been working to build traction on. It's pretty simple - password manager for agencies. I am largely addressing the problems with how teams are handling client information and providing an organized way to store info based on a standard workflow within an agency work environment. During our initial buildup, we received a lot of positive remarks and feedback about how it fills a void some agency owners didn't know they had. Or it provided an option to get away from stricter password managers that didn't fit the mold and were more business focuses versus client focused. We took all of that as a win and have seen positive engagement with cold email leads and general interactions with people. The problem now - I can see the web traffic and I know that people are interested based on them moving throughout the pages on the site (versus a total bounce). The large majority of the people bounce at the pricing page. I've had very few signups to trial the software (offer a 14 day trial). All of that said - How do you tell if pricing is an issue? Is it too high and people don't see the value and bounce? Or is pricing not even an issue, but that was the final factor? I've seen a lot of people talk about raising prices after the initial takeoff and how difficult that is - do I need to lower my prices instead to find the ideal price point and go from there? Perspective - Our plan is $25/mo, no caps on users, info, clients, etc. Base price with no extras needed. EDIT: We do have a freemium version right now that is targeting freelancers and the single users. One user with one client account (grouping mechanism), with all of the other features. Basically the full plan but without the collaboration piece. We felt this put people at the level of a standard password manager and still make it easy and scale-able to move up in the event they want to pay for the software. [link] [comments]  |
| Pre-seed funding: is it worth the effort? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 01:45 PM PST Hey gang, I was hoping to start a discussion on the cost/benefit of a pre-seed funding round. I'm considering one for a start-up of mine and I wanted to get feedback from the armchair VC's here on /r/startups. We're about to finish building our MVP: a software suite that helps users build habits and gradually change their behavior. Users can hire licensed fitness, nutrition, & mental health professionals, invite their loved ones to help them stay accountable, and track their progress and overall improvement. We've partnered with 5 clinics to help refer this product to their patients, with the idea being that the doctor assigns an overall goal and recommends the professionals a user needs to hire. The users then download the app and hire the recommended professionals, and then The doctors like the idea a lot, since they can now have some sort of input on what a patient should be doing outside the clinic other than the standard recommendation of exercising more and eating less. Patients/users like the idea since it provides a way to improve their habits and connect with all the necessary parties through a single app. And the professionals love it because they get a way to monetize their skillset while being able to practice more effectively. We make money by taking a portion of the transactions that go across our marketplace, 10% at this stage. To be clear, we don't pay the professionals on our site, we just offer the digital infrastructure for both parties to meet, communicate, and exchange compensation. We need basically $100K. And we're planning on raising $114,000 worth of funds for roughly 10% of the company's equity. These funds basically give us a year of runway to prove our business model, with about a month and a half of wiggle room. We are pitching to angels, pre-seed investment firms, and doctors who will be recommending our product. Each of these groups has pro's and con's associated with them, but doctors are particularly interesting since they are referring the product for us. So if they have an indirect financial incentive for the company to succeed they will put more effort into referring our product. This is legal btw, we can't directly compensate doctors, but we can do so indirectly. So, what does the great Reddit hivemind think? Are we too early for even pre-seed stage investors? Is $100K asking for too much? Should we focus on a single big investor or split it out amongst dozens of smaller commitments? Should we focus on pitching the big picture or showcase the current MVP? [link] [comments]  |
| 1 Tomorrow, we will pitch on stage at a startup event. What's the No. 1 advise we should follow? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 05:19 PM PST Pitching on stage about your startup is to some people the greatest thing to tell their story. To us it is more the necessary evil that you just have to do to get the word out. What should we make sure we do during the pitch? I believe we've got all the common topics covered with a slide for each. So I guess my question is more in the behavioral nature, I guess. Any suggestion would be great. Note: I'm not quite sure why I am required to write at least 500 characters in this post. My question is a rather simple and quick one and it would have been great to just simply ask it and get some great feedback from the community here. [link] [comments]  |
| What information does my client need to wire me a payment? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 10:42 AM PST How does an ACH payment work? What information is needed on the senders side? I have an US bank account with an US based bank and I would like to receive funds via ACH or Wire Transfer. Which information does the sender need to be able to pay me? There is a lot of conflicting information online. 1) my name 2) the name of my bank 3) ACH routing number 4) Wire transfer routing number 5) bank account number 6) and then address. It unclear to me what is needed here. Is it my personal address? Or the address of the recipient bank? Is my personal address? Not the address of the recipient bank? [link] [comments]  |
| Question about package shipments - both receiving and sending Posted: 26 Feb 2018 04:32 PM PST Hi everyone! I'm going to be receiving a large amount of packages/mail/parcels per day (or at least I'm foreseeing such), where I will be shipping those packages back out once again; and want to use the most cost productive and efficient solution possible. Right now I'm stuck between these two options: use a warehouse fulfillment service, or a private mailbox - which in your experience do you think would be the most suitable? I'm also going to be using the shipping carrier which offers the best rates, so for example I don't think it makes much sense to use something like the UPS Store if I need to ship via USPS, FedEx, DHL, etc. Thanks! PS: This is not a drop shipping business, nor does it involve drop shipping. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2018 03:22 PM PST Hello Reddit, If I were to start a tech enabled business, how did you go about encrypting the data, whether it be user or company data? Do you outsource the encryption service? Are there any providers that you recommend? Can you do it in-house? (There is some superfluous words in this post in order for me to achieve the required 500 character limit that this sub-Reddit requires, so please disregard this sentence as I'm simply trying to get your opinions and experiences on how you managed to encrypt your user data.) Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| What to do about customers only answering to school email and not business email? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 10:32 AM PST Hello! I have an interesting problem here. I am currently a junior in university, and I launched a SaaS company a few months ago whose target audience is professors. Professors love the product/are interested once they understand what it is, however I am having trouble in the first stage of contact (cold email/outbound email). When I email professors using my student email, everything is great, but when I experimented emailing professors with my business email, I have a 0% response rate. After some research, I realized that the schools email system treats outside emails as suspicious and displays a scary banner to the professor asking if they are sure that they trust this person (my school uses google for email). While this isn't a problem at my school because I can use my student email address, I have great concerns for the future if/when I start expanding to other schools. How does one contact professors/organizations with a business email? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Advice on building an email list before revealing my Startup Brand? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 06:18 AM PST I am just about to launch a Brand that I have been dreaming about for 20+ years. I want to start building an email list and I am looking for ideas on how to do it. I have reached out to some Sports Companies to see if they were able to provide me with a prize at a discounted rate, and I am waiting to hear back on that. If I can get some equipment I plan on doing a give-away draw for people that submit their email address. I want to build the email list without revealing the brand itself though, because it's not ready for public launch..... Any ideas? [link] [comments]  |
| How did you move from idea to inception? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 10:53 AM PST Hi people! I was wondering how you all go from the idea stage to the inception? I have had a couple of ideas on my mind for sometime, but I could never really start working on them. There always seems to be some roadblock. Also, most of the ideas need a website, so did you all learn to code to get that website built, or just paid a dev for it? Is there another step that I'm missing, between the ideation stage and launching the website? (assuming all the brainstorming has been done, but no talks have been held with the potential customers yet) Thanks for your inputs, in advance! Have a great week! [link] [comments]  |
| Web applications with Adobe digital signatures, how did you do it? Posted: 26 Feb 2018 03:27 AM PST Hello there /r/startups! To anyone who might remember, I am the guy who had a small startup in Lisbon about an industrial niche that had some small but acceptable numbers, and I asked a question about credit cards. Now I have a new challenge, which I already am investigating but would like to see what your opinions are on this subject! So, one of my software's biggest value propositions deals with certification of personnel and companies. Essentially my clients upload their certificates to our cloud, with all the materials' parameters (thicknesses, diameters, voltages, amperages, it's quite a number of variables), and our software allows them to do quick searches and keeping track of all these documents, which is better than having a big file or an excel spreadsheet. These certificates (owned by my clients) are qualified by an external entity (an inspection agency). Every 2 years my clients need to send them back to the inspection agency for revalidation. The inspection agency signs them and then send them back through regular mail. If my clients do not do this, this certificate will expire, and money goes down the drain. Recently I have had some feedback that some of these inspection agencies are using adobe digital signatures to do this work. So my clients would then send the PDF's and the inspection agencies would use an electronic signature to revalidate them for another 2 years. My clients want these inspection agencies to access my software, and do the revalidation for my clients' certificates right there. Does anyone have experience with something like this? Integrating Adobe Sign with your own software through their API? Also, what are some expected costs for doing something like this? I'm just trying to understand a little better how something like this could go. And /r/startups feedback is, in my opinion, the best I've encountered here on reddit, so I wanna see what you guys have to say. [link] [comments]  |
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