Startups How to make a pitch deck: Follow along as I recreate a famous Airbnb pitch deck, slide by slide, using the pitch deck formula created by a legendary Venture Capital firm. |
- How to make a pitch deck: Follow along as I recreate a famous Airbnb pitch deck, slide by slide, using the pitch deck formula created by a legendary Venture Capital firm.
- How Startups Can Land Enterprise Customers
- Need some advice on writing emails as a dyslexic
- “Anti-venture” or “Post-investing” projects financing methodology
- Equity vs Employee Stock Options for a Biotech Startup
- How do I get a sales / marketing partner
- 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff. Then what?
- Where to find door-to-door salespeople
- This is the year I do it! Creating competition for weather safety and data in Kentucky. And funding question.
- Push beyond comfort zone
- Using Facebook to start my business
- Finding someone to code my idea?
- Drew Houston on himself, the original Dropbox launch plans and sweating the details
- What considerations need to be made when setting up a hosting service
- How do you scale a service without compromising quality?
- Pricing an app that is designed for universities
- Naming Advice
- Creating a personal email hosting service (a la Gmail) for a niche audience
- Challenged myself to build and launch an app in a week
| Posted: 27 Mar 2018 08:15 AM PDT Hi Guys, I've been designing pitch presentations all my (professional) life and have cringed so many times watching shark tank. Most pitches there flat out stink with people falling into two categories:
That's a shame because making a pitch is not that hard. You just need to know the formula. And that formula is well known, because: It is the format recommended by the legendary venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. So today, I'm going to use that format and re-design a famous Airbnb pitch. I'm goinggoing to improve the original pitch (at least I like to think so...) in every way, based on the Sequioa guidelines. And in other good news, the deck is only 10 slides long (+ one extra slide)... So, let's dive in! Note: If you want to read the article with (much) better formatting you can also find it here: Anatomy of a Perfect Startup Pitch Deck – 11 Critical Pages Before we begin: Each section is formatted the same way.
Slide #1: What is the purpose and mission of the company?On the first page of your slide deck, you should simply write the mission of your company in a single sentence. To us, this concept can be quite high-flying so let's look at some company purpose examples from their early investor presentations: Facebook: "Making the world more open and connected", (which was changed to "Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together" in 2017) Airbnb: "The mission is to live in this world where one day you can feel like you're home anywhere and not in a home, but truly home, where you belong" YouTube: "To become the primary outlet of user-generated video content on the Internet, and to allow anyone to upload, share, and browse this content." As such, the first slide is quite simple, we have just a headline and a purpose statement. However, it is very important and showing your passion for the product or service you. After all, if you can't be passionate about it how are you going to convince others it's so great? https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-2.jpg Slide #2: The problem you are trying to solve or the "nod your head" phaseNext up, you are going to describe the problem your product is trying to solve. We have also coined this "The Head-Nod Phase" because if your potential investors aren't nodding their heads at this point… well, chances are they'll not invest in you. On the slide, you should describe the problem in a simple way investors can easily understand and here are some key pointers to have in mind: Is at a must-solve problem or a nice-to solve problem? In short, how painful is this for customers?
Now, that doesn't sound so hard so let's look at what Airbnb did: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Airbnb-pitch-slide-2.jpg
Now, you'll likely be nodding your head: Before Airbnb, this was an extremely common problem that most if not all people had experienced when traveling. Also, notice that this opens several reasons why you should use Airbnb:
Having the latter angle ensured Airbnb got a lot of love from digital nomads and it became cool to use it – if they only had the budget angle, this probably wouldn't have happened. Now, this is one thing Airbnb postponed until later in their slide deck. In line with Sequoia, we recommend also outlining how the customer addresses the issue today. Airbnb waited until later in their presentation. They didn't do that directly, instead, they implicitly stated that people were using CouchSurfing.com and Craigslist to offer temporary housing. Here's what we would have done. Today people are forced into one of two solutions for user-to-user housing:
And here's the final slide we would have put together for Airbnb: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-3.jpg Note that this slide addresses all our bullets from the beginning:
To sum up, slide #2 should address the following:
Slide #3: The solution you offer (or the let's get excited slide!)By this time, you should already have the attention of your audience – now it's time to get them excited. To do that, you need to blow them away with the solution you offer to the particular problem from slide #2. Here's how Airbnb did it: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Airbnb-pitch-slide-3.jpg What do you think of the slide? Before you make up your mind here is our take:
So, what would make it better? Well, for starters let's look at the Sequoia guidelines again. For the solution slide they are:
As you can see, Airbnb only did the first and that's why it becomes underwhelming. Now, in our example, we would naturally include the two others on the slide as well and here's the solution slide we would have made for Airbnb. https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-4.jpg At least we're excited by the idea now and it just shows how vital the information on where the company sits and especially the use cases are important. In our mind, a solution is good, but providing case examples is even better. Summing up slide 3, here's what it should contain:
Slide #4: The then and now slide, aka the why now slideOn slide #4, there's probably a bit more digging to do, and this is where storytelling comes in. Basically, the investor wants to know two things:
How has the market developed over time?In saying how this market has developed over time there are two options:
Naturally, I prefer going with option 2, where you can also bring some humor and edge into the presentation. This increases the chances of the investor's remembering you. Now, Airbnb didn't have this slide in their presentation, but if they did, the historical evolution of the market could have been something like this:
Recent trends that have made this possibleMoving on from that, we now need to define the recent trends that have made this possible. Again, this serves as a double chance to also demonstrate pain points that demonstrate, why the timing is so great. I would set this up with a few "then and now columns". This highlights the pain points that have previously been associated with the industry and shows why now is such a great time for Airbnb to become a major hit. https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-5.jpg A few comments on the then and now boxes:
Summing up slide #4, here's what you need in it:
Slide #5: The prospective buyer and the size of the marketWe are now getting to the slide in the deck you have the least control over: The size of the market. And unfortunately, the size of the market is also a huge determinant in "how rich you can get". Naturally, the larger the market you can serve, the higher a return the investor can get and the more they'll pay for your company. Let's again start by seeing how Airbnb did this: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Airbnb-pitch-slide-5.jpg Again, a slide where the message gets across, however, several things are lacking. But first off, let's start with something Airbnb totally skipped: The typical customer. Here's our take on the initial (early adopter) of Airbnb:
This should be relatively simple for most companies and believe us: If you don't know your typical customer you won't raise any money. Market sizing: What is TAM, SAM, and SOM?Next up we get to the size of the market. This section should include three things:
Now, a lot of start-ups struggle with this so let's take a step back to explain these. First off, here's a graphical interpretation of the three: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/TAM-SAM-and-SOM-300x300.jpg Still confused? No worry, and let's again take Airbnb as an example: Total addressable marketThe TAM of Airbnb would be the worldwide hotel and bnb market. Basically, if you could only book any kind of stay through Airbnb the revenue of the company would be equal to TAM… … which is not going to happen. Serviceable addressable marketLet's be more realistic instead. As Airbnb was named Air Bed and Breakfast when it started, it would be more natural to say the SAM would be equal to the entire Bed and Breakfast market. Now some of you might say this is too small a market because some hotel users will (and have) shifted to Airbnb – and you are right. But meeting investors, it is a good idea to err on the side of caution if (for no other reason) than the fact that they have seen so many pitches where the market sizing is completely off (if you watch Shark Tank you've probably seen this and seen, how angry the sharks get at unrealistic expectations). For TAM and SAM, you'll probably have to find market reports or similar, to get a feel for the size of the market. The bottom-up market sizing approach:A lot of people struggle with the bottom-up approach of the SAM so here's how we do it: The approach uses simple math to estimate the size of the market, combined with some market statistics. Investors love to see this as they can easily track your assumptions. Be aware, that these assumptions can also be a trap, as investors will judge you hard if you are too optimistic about your assumptions. Here's how to do it:
Serviceable Obtainable MarketThe SOM is more forgiving. This is usually represented as a percentage of the SAM. This could, for example, be capturing 20% of the bed and breakfast market. Now you might think you're done, but investors love to see a growing market. For that, it's a good idea to include the annual growth rate of the market ("CAGR") – this will typically be included in the market reports where you have found your data. Putting it all together, here's how our final market slide would look for Airbnb. https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-6.jpg To sum up, the market slide should contain:
Slide #6: Detailing competition and showing why you're superiorThis is one slide where Airbnb did a good job, so let's start with their example: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Airbnb-pitch-slide-9.jpg There are many ways to visualize the market, but the one Airbnb used is by far our favorite: The "Gartner Magic Quadrant". In this 2x2 matrix, you define the two most important points of differentiation in your industry and plot your competitors on this – and Airbnb did that well. Airbnb highlights all transactions are online and that they are more affordable than their competitors which is easy to understand. They also didn't fall into one of the traps that many startups fall into: Not identifying any competitors. They had already used Couchsurfing and Craigslist previously in the deck to show social proof, so naturally, these two are on the slide. They also addressed both Hostels.com and Hotels.com as clear competitors. This is genius as it shows that their market could be much larger than just Couchsurfing and Craigslist and instead compete with the wider Hostel and Hotel markets as well. Now, one thing that Airbnb didn't have on their slide is listing their competitive advantages. This can be shown in a number of ways, but we like to set up a simple matrix highlighting the advantages over our product compared to each of our competitors. Putting it all together, here's how we would have made the Airbnb competition slide. https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-7.jpg Summing up, here the two things your competition slide should contain:
Slide #7: Showcasing your superior product to get investors talkingHere's how Airbnb described their product: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Airbnb-pitch-slide-6.jpg We think their product presentation is bad, and we would seriously enhance this page. Here's why we think it fails:
Now, it's easy to criticize, so here's how we would fix these things:
Especially the latter is very important, as it highlights the switching costs. Airbnb (to our knowledge) is not protected by intellectual property rights – instead, they are protected by their market power: People post homes on Airbnb because that's where the customers are. If they switch to another provider chances are, they'll lose money as there are fewer customers. Here's our product slide for Airbnb: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-8.jpg Summing up, here's what the product page should contain:
Slide #8: Let's make some money also known as your business model slideAnd now to the really fun part: Making money! Here's how Airbnb rakes in the dough: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Airbnb-pitch-slide-7.jpg The Airbnb slide gets the message across and also shows significant proof of concept with revenue of USD 200m from 2008-2011. We would keep this information on the slide. However, the slide also has some shortcomings. While they are correct in stating that their business model is "taking a 10% commission on each transaction", they fail to show how this plays out in practice. We would break the information down in a different way, so you end up with a slide like below: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-9.jpg Now, let's take a step back and highlight some things investors look for in the business model slide. Here are some things they like:
To sum up, here's what your business model slide should contain and how we addressed it in our Airbnb presentation:
Slide #9: The team slide and demonstrating why this team is superiorThe team slide is one of the simplest slides in the deck but also one of the most important ones – and often one of the slides, that does not get the love it deserves. The slide is all about limiting execution risk and the smaller the execution risk, the larger the price an investor is willing to pay. This makes perfect sense: If you were to invest in a coffee shop would you rather invest in some guy off the street or Jerry Baldwin (one of the founders of Starbucks)?... So, here's what investors look for in the team:
On the team slide, you should include the executive management of the firm as well as your Board of Directors / Board of Advisors. Now, most people just list the names of people and where they've worked before. However, they fail to address the issues of diversity and how long they've worked together before. Unfortunately, Airbnb didn't include the team section in their slide package, but here's how we would do it for a random business: https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-10.jpg Notice a few things here:
Slide #10: Financials including forecasted revenue for the next three yearsOn to the last slide of the deck: The financials of the firm, and what you are going to do if you get funding. There are quite a few ways to do this and there is no exact recipe – you can make very simple or very elaborate models showing the forecasted revenue and profitability of the company. Here at BlueTieSlides, we like to err on the side of caution and keep things simple, rather than getting lost in the intricate details of a model. We typically build a model based on assumptions about revenue, gross margin and cost levels going forward and work our way down to EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Tax Payments). The other part is what we all came for: The capital you're looking to raise and what it should be used forThis ties in with the three-year model you've made: What are you actually going to use the money for? Here you should be very precise and list it in 3-4 bullets, and it should tie in with the forecast you've made in your model. I like to use the following format: We are seeking $xxx in a Series A:
So we can:
This is very concise, and investors know exactly what the money's for. Putting it all together, here's how we would have made the financial slide for Airbnb (numbers are made up): https://bluetieslides.com/wp-content/uploads//2018/03/Startup-pitch-deck-slide-11.jpg OutroNow, Airbnb obviously did raise money so who am I to tell them their presentation was bad? No one, however, I do think the presentation left a lot to the imagination of the reader and I do think Sequoias guidelines are great. And finally, I see so many people struggle with their presentation when all they need is an outline to follow. Whether you follow the outline I have given or not, I hope there's a lot you can take from the above :) [link] [comments]  |
| How Startups Can Land Enterprise Customers Posted: 27 Mar 2018 06:45 AM PDT Understanding NeedsIn 2010, a company called TigerText introduced a revolutionary new service. They wanted to help healthcare providers step into the modern age with a secure, mobile messaging platform capable of keeping staff, patients, and other stakeholders in the loop. It seems like an obvious and clear win for everyone involved. Time is one of the most important factors in providing effective healthcare. But it didn't work. TigerText struggled to get traction. They pitched and pitched and pitched. But no one was buying. Why? Because everyone in healthcare was still using pagers. Pagers. Yes, in the year 2010, the healthcare system was run predominantly on the messaging technology first patented in 1949. In order to get traction — and make some sales — TigerText had to take a step back. They had to forget about the newest, fastest, and most secure technology. Instead, they had to focus on what hospitals and clinics were already using. And they had to build a product that would provide the value of their platform without the need to switch to updated hardware. Needless to say, this was probably frustrating. But it's the reality for many startups trying to enter into the enterprise market. We've all heard horror stories about the reluctance of corporate firms to adopt new solutions or even take a step forward at all. Despite these setbacks, many startups succeed by selling to the enterprise. How? The first thing to know is that the process of selling to enterprise customers is generally backward from what we expect to see in the world of startups. When it comes to building a startup, the first, critical step is achieving product-market fit. In other words, startups want to build a product that is tightly connected to a specific need in an existing market. The idea here is that if you introduce a solution and put it in front of the right people, they'll jump at the opportunity to buy. But, enterprise customers almost never buy new things off the shelf. This is because they need and expect whatever product they are buying to be custom-fit to work within whatever systems they are already using. The cost of them changing their existing structure or process to accommodate a single new product is generally a non-starter. So what does this mean for startups? Rather than focusing on product-market fit, startups looking to land enterprise customers will want to work backward — starting with the specific customer and understanding their very unique needs and how your product can be built or adapted to meet their needs. In the enterprise this typically means satisfying the needs of multiple "customers" at once — the user, buyer, advocates, etc. Let's call that product-money fit.
Catching ElephantsThe appeal of enterprise clients is not surprising. Signing even one or two customers can make an entire business — and it only takes a few hundred to build a $1 billion unicorn company. In a post on building a $100MM business, investor Christoph Janz introduced 5 specific paths to this level of revenue. At the tip-top is the enterprise sales strategy. It involves selling to just 1,000 total customers, each one representing $100,000 ARPA. This, of course, is radically different from the path that many startups pursue — searching for 10,000 or 100,000 customers that are worth $1,000–10,000 per year. Although enterprise sales require a lower volume of actual sales, it should not be surprising to learn that each sale is orders of magnitude more difficult to close. Enterprise deals have notoriously long sales cycles, with negotiations taking months or years and having to pass through multiple layers of bureaucracy. But that isn't even a factor unless you're able to get a foot in the door in the first place. When it comes to large-scale deals, the entire process starts with the enterprise. The sales process begins gaining access and knowledge about a specific firm and their unique circumstances and needs. In other words: It's all about relationships. The prerequisite to winning at enterprise sales is simple. Meet corporate decision makers. Once you have a foot in the door, then it's about developing a framework for understanding their specific needs and how (or if) your product can be used, modified, or built to meet them.
Achieving Product-Money FitThe reason that most startups fail to land enterprise customers is simple. They don't have this concept of product-money fit. Yes, they have a product. It may even be a great product. And it likely fills some need in the market — maybe even solves a specific problem that a potential enterprise customer is facing. But, they are unable or unwilling to do the extra work in order to meet the needs of a larger firm. Enterprise sales start with the enterprise and end with a product. In other words, the process of selling to an enterprise customer often looks more like a service transaction — understanding specific needs, developing solutions, defining scope, etc — than product sales. Product-market fit is broadly defined as the intersection of viability, desirability, and feasibility of a specific solution within a market or industry. But, enterprise sales layer in an additional set of requirements. Each enterprise stakeholder may have a different idea of what is desirable, viable, and feasible. The needs of the user of the product in the enterprise may differ greatly from what the buyer of the product needs in the enterprise. We're calling this multi-market challenge "Enterprise Stakeholder Constraints" and these requirements can encompass all kinds of specific needs and come from any number of enterprise stakeholders. In order to achieve product-money fit with enterprise customers, you must meet all of these criteria in some manner, and sometimes simultaneously. This may seem like a difficult or frustrating proposition. And that is undoubtedly why many companies fail at enterprise sales — or just give up on them. But let's break it down. No enterprise company is willing to sink a small fortune into your startup (that is what you want after all — right?) without knowing that the product itself has been crafted to meet the specific needs of their firm. Enterprise sales can present a giant windfall for a young startup. But there are strings attached. Enterprise customers expect products to be built for them. They often refuse to adapt to a product that is already built. (And for good reason — that process would likely have enormous costs for a company of 5,000++ employees.) But this ultimately brings us back to the key importance of relationships. If enterprise sales end with the product — in other words, if the product must be custom-tailored to meet the needs of the buyer, user, and other stakeholders — then it stands to reason that the first step in successful enterprise sales is a discussion with the customer about their needs. Remember, product-money fit all starts with meeting the right people.
Original article found on Medium [link] [comments]  |
| Need some advice on writing emails as a dyslexic Posted: 27 Mar 2018 10:11 PM PDT I've been running the emails I send by my girlfriend to make sure I'm not making errors. She says that I am being too direct. I'm pretty I'm just use to writing on stackexchange, and my whole life I have it drilled into me get to the point. The people I have usually worked with are direct as well. I've been using that in my emails when I raise concerns, or am talking to contract workers that I am hiring. It's not really been a problem, even with clients. Where I'm having a problem is talking to government officials and tech hubs. I'm not really great at padding my emails with the same fluff to boost someone up. In person I tend to be well liked and considered charismatic, and can get away with body language and tone of voice to be direct without coming off as insulting. It's actually really hard for me to write emails as well and takes me a longtime. I'm just wondering what you guys like as business owners. Do you like padded emails, or do you like people just getting to the point? Is it common for people to just get to the point in most tech firms? [link] [comments]  |
| “Anti-venture” or “Post-investing” projects financing methodology Posted: 28 Mar 2018 01:05 AM PDT Hi, all! We successfully developed DARFChain — Distributed Accounting/Administering Resource with Fidelity on blockchain! And we have new ideas! Currently, we are developing the software and methodology that can dramatically change the Impact Investing. We call it 'post-investing'. It can provide a full avoid of in-project risks for investors. It is a combination of the Agile Kanban development process with the release funding mechanism based on the actual deliverables/completed user stories. The proposal looks at the high level as the following steps:
This is ready-to work solution that extents DAICO conception by Vitalik Buterin It works using our geniue proof-of-accounting technology About system architecture there MVP test suite: Needs registration with email, Ask for more user's rights in our Telegram channel. If you wants to join this round of ICO, which starts on April 30 and lasts 42 days, sign up for the whitelist. [link] [comments]  |
| Equity vs Employee Stock Options for a Biotech Startup Posted: 27 Mar 2018 02:19 PM PDT Hello, I'm graduating with a PhD in biomed engineering in Canada and have a CEO of a recent startup very interested in hiring me. He's offering 65k for a scientific officer position with employee stock options (where I get to purchase the stock at a discounted price). The company's focus is on using CBD (active ingredient of marijuana) for pain relief. I asked him to provide documents for the evaluation of the company, or for funding sources, but he hasn't provided these yet. As I will be developing the products that he thinks of, I feel like I should receive equity in the company. Is this correct thinking? Moreover, as the company (to my current knowledge) can only be evaluated after sales occur (in a couple months), are the stock options that he offers a disadvantage to me. Could you please let me know how to approach this question with him? [link] [comments]  |
| How do I get a sales / marketing partner Posted: 27 Mar 2018 03:07 PM PDT I have a software product idea. Product Development:I am a software architect, so I am very clear on how the technical aspects will work. I am doing the design but not building the product myself (which I can). I have outsourced the development of the product to another company. I provide them the design and what technologies to use and I do the code and design reviews to make sure that it is being done correctly. The product is not that complex. Funding: I am self funding the venture. I have the money for the development of the product. I also have the money for sales/marketing of the product. Sales/Marketing:I need help with sales/marketing of the product. Ideally, I would have a partner who would be equally vested with me and would have some equity. Alternatively, I can use the same strategy I used for development and get help. I would like to get suggestions on how do I get help with Sales/Marketing of the product or have someone to partner with me for equity. I don't have enough money to hire a full time Sales employee. [link] [comments]  |
| 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff. Then what? Posted: 27 Mar 2018 07:00 AM PDT I'm working at a startup where the equity vesting schedule is 4 years with a 1 year cliff. I just finished my second year. My question is: what happens after 4 years? Do the options manifest themselves in any way, or do I only experience the effects of them if the company gets bought or goes public? Until then, I suppose I have the option to buy those shares out of pocket, but do I reap any befits from that, or is it still only when the company goes public or is sold? How does it work at larger more established companies? I.e. If you get a job at google with a similar vesting schedule? [link] [comments]  |
| Where to find door-to-door salespeople Posted: 27 Mar 2018 09:57 AM PDT Hi guys, wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction. I have an app that requires sign-ups from the restaurant industry in NYC. I have been personally going door to door to pitch to managers etc to try and increase our numbers, but its not very sustainable for me to do this alone. Does anyone know of any services, apps, websites etc where i can maybe find and recruit experienced door to door outreach people? How did Seamless / GrubHub / Eat24 do it pre-investments? Is there a taskrabbit for salesmen? I dont think Craigslist would really yield much for me, I dont want someone that will bill me for the day and go smoke a joint in the park. Yes i can set incentives per sign up to fight that but I was wondering if there is a more concrete way of going about this. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Mar 2018 09:13 AM PDT This is my first time posting here, so I'll do my best to not bore you all. In Kentucky, and across the US is a project called the MesoNet, which provides the following data to media and the weather service: Temperature, Humidity, Dewpoint, Windspeed, Rainfall, and Soil Moisture. They cost nearly $15,000-$20,000 a piece to install. And this year in our state were given funding by the state of $750,000 for upkeep. There are roughly 40 stations spread amongst over 100 counties. For the last 2 years, I have been working with a partner to get our idea up and running, with the end goal to save lives. After several severe flooding incidents in Eastern Kentucky and across the nation, I set my sights to develop a cost effective device to warn residents of emergencies. I'm pleased to say that we now have 2 devices mounted that now report data to us and is viewable online for free. It's still a work in progress, but here's what ours are capable of, and the anticipated costs: Sonar Water Level, Temperature, Humidity, Dew Point, Windspeed, Rainfall, Hail Size Sensors, Tornado Detection, Lightning Detection, Soil Moisture, and optionally I can easily equip them to detect forest fires in the vicinity, toxic gasses, fog density, and earthquakes and more as I design new sensors! They are also equipped with a 120db siren which in the event a rapid rise in water and rain conditions poses a flash flood event, or a tornado is detected, can sound to warn nearby residents to evacuate. I can also trigger the sirens remotely for testing or to warn of incoming threats (similar to the tornado sirens you probably see everywhere if you live in the US - part of the old civil defense system.) At present, it will cost about $750 -$1,000 a piece to build and install these depending on the features of each. We can even make smaller ones that only monitor one or two conditions for much cheaper. I just wanted to share our success(ish), and I also wanted to ask about funding... At the moment, we're looking for monthly or yearly sponsors for each station, where when data is viewed for a specific location, a banner is shown at the top linking back to the sponsor (such as a news station.) We want the data to remain free, so we're not sure if it's best to seek sponsors as mentioned, ask for donations (which we have but has proved ineffective since our main target area is poorer communities,) or I'd even consider grants but have no idea where to even start. Also with the funding cuts to weather lately I don't think there would be much opportunity there. Thanks for your time! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Mar 2018 09:25 AM PDT Few days ago, I watched Whiplash which was recommended to me by someone. What an amazing movie with a lot of wisdom. One of the amazing conversation from the movie: Andrew: But is there a line? You know, maybe you go too far, and you discourage the next Charlie Parker from ever becoming Charlie Parker? Terence Fletcher: No, man, no. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged. Terence Fletcher: There are no two words in the English language more harmful than "good job". Terence Fletcher: I was there to push people beyond what's expected of them. I believe that's an absolute necessity. I was corelating events of the movie with some real life events. Imagine, what would have happened if Ramakant Achrekar would have told Sachin Tendulkar after some reasonably good innings. Hey, Good job Sachin, you have done well. Sachin might have felt good about himself and might have found satisfaction playing domestic cricket. The world would not have got to see Sachin and neither anyone would have knew who Ramakant Achrekar was. In real life, there are many such mentees out there who just stop and feel good after achieving above average performance in their field. They would never unravel their true potential. It's like you don't even know what you are capable of. You yourself don't know what is the limiting factor in your absolute performance? Its worthwhile to think how organizations and the managers in those organizations push their employees beyond what's expected of them. In big organizations, this activity is usually gets performed in the name of performance appraisals. From my experience, even the highest performance in the organizations is usually just above average performance. As per bell curve, 70% of employees in any organization are anyway "average" performers. Those who slightly performan above average are bucketed in 20% "high performers". Do managers consciously push even more to uncover the next Sachin, Charlie Parker in their field? I doubt so. Why? Because such "push" can lead to anxiety, mental breakdown in most (if not all). And these behaviours go outside the usual norm of buzzwords like work life balance, family benefits etc etc which organizations use to attract and retain talent. Such push would actually risk the attrition of high performing talent. What's the conclusion? If you strive to become next Sachin in your field, no big / medium size organization can help you do that. You are better off finding a mentor like Fletcher who would push you way beyond your comfort zone. PS: Some people might not like the methodology of Fletcher to eke out the best performance. It might not work for all performers. I believe the point is not that. The point is that extraordinary performance requires extraordinary practice and methods. If you go via what is "standard" OR "average" OR what most people or organizations do, you would end up having average results. Extraordinary results in any field requires enduring pain, whichever method it comes through. No pain, no gain [link] [comments]  |
| Using Facebook to start my business Posted: 27 Mar 2018 12:39 PM PDT Hi! So I'm looking to minimise costs by using a Facebook page as the front of my peer-to-peer marketplace, taking payment and orders through Facebook messenger and then myself dealing with the seller, who will send the goods to the buyer by me giving them an address. However, i was wondering how id deal with payment, is there an inbuilt function of Facebook allowing me to receive payment through card or paypal and then send the money to the seller (taking a percentage cut)? Obviously, once I've gained significant traction i will reinvest tinto producing my own website - though Facebook feels like the best option for doing business considering its free and gives analytics that you'd usually have to pay for [link] [comments]  |
| Finding someone to code my idea? Posted: 27 Mar 2018 08:43 AM PDT Hi! I am interested in creating a peer-to-peer marketplace startup (though obviously with a USP), though have limited coding experience (i can get as far as tkinter on python). Would a company such as RubyGarage be a viable option for creating my peer-to-peer marketplace in terms of allowing for a fully customised marketplace, or should i instead look to using a service that would let me create the marketplace quickly and easily but sacrificing originality. For the record, this would be to create an MVP from which i would use to pitch to investors and such Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Drew Houston on himself, the original Dropbox launch plans and sweating the details Posted: 27 Mar 2018 11:29 AM PDT On Himself The most charitable thing you could have said about me is, I'm an engineer, I'm not a marketer but I read some books on amazon. That's about it. You have no idea how to raise money. I maybe directly managed people for 3 months in my life, I never built a team before. Your life as a founder CEO changes so dramatically every 6 to 9 months. That's the exciting thing about it but also the very hard part about it. I spent the bulk of my 20s figuring out that cross-platform scalable cross-storage is a really hard thing to build. On Marketing The problem with the Segway is not that the thing didn't work, it's that you look like a douche when you're riding one. They spent millions of dollars to figure that out. We'd love to make Paul [Graham] happy and launch as early as possible, but what we're doing already has 100 competitors out there.. None of them were really that great. Part of my personal frustration is that I tried everything out there. You give something a shot, you go to the forums and see all these angry people because the thing works 99% of the time but 1% of the time it doesn't work. The key is to find the early audience people that all talk to each other so you can get that initial boost. On launch plans Let's go find a really good search consultant, he'll help us get a ton of adwords and get people to sign up. We did all this work. We had to hide our free product from the people coming from google, and all these shenanigans. We did all these things, everything kind of worked, except the cost to acquire a paying customer was $400 for something that cost $100. Not exactly sustainable, a total disaster. The funny thing is, after all these things that we were putting all this effort into and totally screwing up, we were still crushing it: we hit 1 million users in 7 months, we had this really enthusiastic community. What is going on? We were almost all engineers. we didn't do any mainstream PR. Partnerships all were disastrous. We launched our referral program, the next day sign-ups increased 60% and they stayed up. Not bad. […] More than half of our growth is from word of mouth and viral features of the product (if I share a folder with you, you can't get to it unless you install dropbox). Sweating the details For us, it's sweating the details. We take a very scientific approach to identifying problems, you have to be 4 or 5 standard deviations out before you run into something where dropbox is hanging or missing something. We do hundreds of little things. We reverse-engineered the Finder on macOS X on Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, 32-bit, 64-bit, messing around under hthe hood without source code just so we could put a little sync icon. Nobody else went through those lengths. We did usability tests, brought people off craigslist. You sit down in the conference room, play what they are doing live, grab a 12-pack of beer and just watch. It's going to be the most painful experience in your life. 0 of 5 people realized we had a little tray icon. People were clicking the screenshot. It was ridiculous, devastating. We built an excel spreadsheet with 70 things that were totally broken with the way people engage with the product. And we just fixed them. We cranked through 70 of those things. When people say the product is simple or elegant it's really the result of micro-maniacal focus on sweating the details. Full article and video: https://thestartupconference.com/2018/03/25/10-words-of-advice-from-drew-houston-at-the-first-startup-conference/ [link] [comments]  |
| What considerations need to be made when setting up a hosting service Posted: 27 Mar 2018 07:42 AM PDT I'm doing some conceptualizing and research for a possible image hosting service I'd like to launch, but i've never launched this type of service before so I wanted to get some considerations from people that have worked with this kind of project before. The biggest consideration I see is monetisation offsetting hosting costs. Ideally i'd also want some sort of free-tier to encourage signups and new users. What other sort of things need to be considered that might not be immediately apparent to someone new to this type of project? [link] [comments]  |
| How do you scale a service without compromising quality? Posted: 27 Mar 2018 10:23 AM PDT Scaling a service, especially one that is bespoke and requires manpower, seems to be significantly harder than scaling a product. What are some of the other problems and pitfalls involved with scaling a service, and more importantly the solutions? I can only think of automation, but this would take away from the bespoke nature of a service itself... I'm in the pre-launch stage of creating my own business, which I envision having one primary free product/platform, and a monetized service on the side. However, while the product can garner me lots of exposure, it won't bring in much money, whereas the service brings in lots of $$$ but seems to me would be harder to scale. Any ideas? [link] [comments]  |
| Pricing an app that is designed for universities Posted: 27 Mar 2018 10:00 AM PDT I have recently built an iOS and Android app for a university that is designed for both the students and alumni and it is doing pretty well, everyone is pleased with the way it looks/works and I am getting a steady growth of users every week. Although I built this solution for free, I am now getting interest from other Universities that want this solution implemented for their school. While I have the programming skills to accomplish this, I lack the expertise as to what I should be pricing my solution at and what to include in the price. If you guys don't mind taking the time, I would really appreciate your input on the following questions: 1) What would you recommend the base price of the app I have already created be if I had sold it to the school instead of designing it for free? (features include iOS & Android platforms, ~20 unique screens, ~10 database instances, api hookups, geolocation, maps, chats, hourly updates - the school is also around 20k students with ~4k graduating seniors each year) 2) How should i price future implementations? Schools will probably want new features and customizations so should I charge a flat rate plus an additional charge per new feature? Is it better to charge a one time fee or an annual fee for the app? (this is probably the most important thing i'd like to know since it involves so much) 3) How should I address support? I work a 9-5 job on weekdays so I wont be able to provide support during business hours, is this something that will greatly detract from the price that I could sell this for? 4) How should I handle ownership? I would prefer to keep all of the application code with me instead of selling the unbundled solution to the university, is this a common thing in app development? Would most schools want the code to the solution or would they just be happy with being able to download the app in the stores while I handle any issues or updates they may want? Thanks so much for taking the time to read through this, I would appreciate any feedback or input you guys have on this matter. This is a great community so i'm really looking forward as to what you all have to say. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Mar 2018 09:01 AM PDT Hi Everyone, I am sure there have been threads similar to this before, but me and my partner are nearing the end of our development process for Version 1 of our app.. that we plan to put out very soon. We found however, that our app name is Trademarked and is also some sort of software. (Not the same thing but in a similar market). We thought about simply changing the spelling of our name, but are unsure if that legally covers us. It stinks because its a pretty generic name and fits the theme of our application very well. Does anyone have any advice as how to combat this? could we just change the spelling and be okay? [link] [comments]  |
| Creating a personal email hosting service (a la Gmail) for a niche audience Posted: 27 Mar 2018 08:53 AM PDT |
| Challenged myself to build and launch an app in a week Posted: 27 Mar 2018 01:35 AM PDT I have a lot of side-projects, but I never managed to launch any. I was getting lost in details about features, architecture and all this stuff that gets any developer excited. So I said, that's it. I'm going to develop something and give myself little time to do it so I can focus better on the task at hand. So I developed an app that lets you hum songs for other people to guess. Very simple, but took a bit of energy to develop in just a week. I also decided to start writing about my side-projects and the hurdles I go through when I try to build and launch them. I find it that it helps me with my motivation and I can reflect on the things I've done to better understand my experiences. What are some good ways you use to motivate yourself to launch projects and then go through the process of showing them to your target market? [link] [comments]  |
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