Startups Weekly Feedback and Support Thread |
- Weekly Feedback and Support Thread
- Co-founder or just a high level employee?
- Struggling to find my "X Factor" that makes me stand out from competitors
- Minority Owners possibly buying out Majority Owner
- Where to focus development pre-funding?
- Talking about your idea with other developers to get them on board but worried about them stealing the idea
- Should I Turn my Personal Project into a Startup?
- LFH: How do you go from having a great product to actually selling it online? (Kind of a 'I have failed but I want to learn' post)
- What are the pros and cons of paying a development firm to build my cloud business?
- How do you motivate yourself after finding a new competitor?
- How to decide on which Early Adopter segment to focus when building a solution for multiple industries?
- Where to get qualified legal advice for an early stage start up?
- Sam Altman and co often talk about how starting your career at a start-up is smarter than at a big firm (Google etc.). Does the same apply for non-technical graduates? Advice needed!
- Should I learn to code to start my startup or hire someone who knows how to do it?
- Am I too inexperienced to start a consulting business?
- Identifying customers that are worth your time, energy and resources
- No experience with NDA's and needing help.
- Trademark/ branding vs international (Ireland) business with same name
- Where to go from here...how do startups first get off the ground?
| Weekly Feedback and Support Thread Posted: 26 Mar 2018 04:08 AM PDT 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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| Co-founder or just a high level employee? Posted: 26 Mar 2018 05:55 PM PDT I was hired to start up an ecommerce business. The owner tracks the expenses and profits but that's about it. I make all executive decisions, including but not limited to web development, product development, marketing & advertising, customer service, R&D, pricing, trouble shooting, IT, Hiring & Firing, etc. We're incorporated and ship our products all over the US and may expand internationally on the next couple years. We don't currently advertise or market other than social media but that will change once we finish developing our production production lines with scalability in mind. In my opinion I'm the CEO, COO, CTO, VP, CMO and co-founder. I'm the original and first employee. The intention was for me to take the business and run with it. I've done that and now we're on track to do $500k in sales this year, assuming the rest of the year turns out equally as strong. The owner doesn't mind my self titles but seems to have an issue with co-founder. I have no shares in the company and feel like I'm being used a little. Am I investing a little too much of myself into this business venture? I'm salary and work 60+ hours on average. Some weeks 80+, while others are always 50+. I feel like I'm wasting my career here without any guarantee other than the owners word. He's a good guy and I don't think he'd do me wrong but I have to look out for myself. [link] [comments]  |
| Struggling to find my "X Factor" that makes me stand out from competitors Posted: 26 Mar 2018 01:40 PM PDT Hello all you business owners. I own a very very young systems integrator. Basically I make custom PCs. I already tried to broaden my audience by not just doing gaming PCs but Professional ones as well. But Im just not finding that oof that sticks me out from others. Im working with my local metal worker to prototype my logo onto side and front panels, but other than that, nothing. Also I run a IT consulter, so I never had to deal with this next issue. But when it comes down to describing the PC in the online store, Im tiptoeing hard because some of the features of other manufactures, I want to use as selling points. Case in point I only build with ASUS boards. So I want to be sble to say "Use ASUS Aura Sync!" But Aura Sync is trademarked. I have my reseller licsense, is that covered? Also trying to save money wherever. Ive never actually directly reached out to part manuafactures, but I stay brand loyal to ASUS for mobo and GPU, G.Skill for memory, and NZXT for cases and coolers. Will reaching out to them give me a discount if I only sell their products in my machines? Also I'm pretty sure I need special permission to engrave my logo into NZXT cases, correct? Sorry for all the questions. [link] [comments]  |
| Minority Owners possibly buying out Majority Owner Posted: 26 Mar 2018 10:16 PM PDT I'm looking for some advice. I'm a minority owner of a company, 2nd highest shares of 5 total partners, and the majority owner (he owns about 2/3 of the company) is willing to sell his shares. He was our investor - putting the initial capital in and I was sweat equity, we gained the other 3 strategic partners along the way. The company has a decent cash position and could buy his shares but I was wondering if we could offer him a royalty of gross income (for x years or in perpetuity) instead of paying out the cash. Is that something you can do? Any suggestions? If the company were to buy his shares I would be the majority owner with over 50% of the remaining shares. Thanks for the help, J [link] [comments]  |
| Where to focus development pre-funding? Posted: 26 Mar 2018 07:37 PM PDT Hi, I have been working on my first SaaS business for a few months now on the side from my full-time job. Completing an MVP is likely still several more full-time man months of development away though. Obviously getting some seed level funding so that I can work full time and maybe even hire another employee would accelerate things. If my goal is to get a small round of funding to work full time on the business, how should I be spending my time to most impress investors? What sort of stage are most seed-stage funded companies at? Should I build out e-commerce? Work on the MVP? Build out a marketing plan? Business plan? Try and find potential customers? I'd greatly appreciate any advice from people with some more experience in the area. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2018 03:29 PM PDT I've had an idea for a SaaS product, which I believe will help many developers and I want to get another 1 or 2 developers involved as I'm not the best at coding, it's more of a hobby for me and I've only recently gone back to it and learned new languages. I know that my idea could easily be duplicated by other developers with relative ease so I am a little paranoid about having my idea stolen by some developer who can get an MVP done quicker than me. How have any of you gone about this? Have you had an MVP already before approaching others to work on your startup? I'm aware that this paranoia about ideas being stolen is also why a lot of startups fail, as they don't get the right amount of user feedback before launching or just after. [link] [comments]  |
| Should I Turn my Personal Project into a Startup? Posted: 26 Mar 2018 08:37 PM PDT I created this app for my college fraternity a few months ago and had pretty good success with it. Enough success that it's making me consider trying to turn it into a startup but I have no idea how to promote something like this. How would I go on to promoting a startup on other college campuses for students? Is it even possible without an advertising budget? Any advice would be much appreciated, I'm still trying to gauge whether trying to spread my app is worth all of the effort and if it's practical. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Mar 2018 01:52 AM PDT It's a pretty open question, so let me fill it in with some information, my degree is in entrepreneurship, I know about how to start a business, planning, researching, designing, branding, how to place products, how to describe products, how to market (with money) and most financial aspects of starting a business. Where I seem to lack knowledge is taking this knowledge, applying it to a real business model and trying to sell that object is what I find tough. Actually getting enough coverage to make a good number of sales. I am starting to believe the only way to start a business is to have a large amount of capital behind you to actually do, if not how can you get the name and brand out there? I am going to start a new venture very soon, it's reasonably niche, the market size is still into the millions of people, I know there's a good market from a competitor analysis, this said I somewhat admire my competitors so don't overly want to cause a rift between their business and my business, there is an ocean between us. Ideas I try and take for any of my previous and soon to be ventures are: •Social media, mostly insta but I struggle to maintain and grow a following •Forum spam, post on various accounts a question then answer it with another promoting the business (it's kind of foul play but I don't have £10,000 to pay the publishers nor is it as effective) •Good minimal product descriptions and photos •Trying to engage with my target population in any way I can Even with months of this I fail, and I understand I am doing something wrong and want it to work, I don't want to work for someone my whole life. TL;DR I keep failing with my Ecom business models, my products have been great all small numbers of customers have returned but I am simply not getting enough people to see or buy the product to keep continuing the costs of operating, please help if you can. [link] [comments]  |
| What are the pros and cons of paying a development firm to build my cloud business? Posted: 26 Mar 2018 03:51 PM PDT I've been unsuccessfully trying for a while to find a competent programmer to partner with to develop an app idea I've been entertaining for quite some time. I've done the research and there's nobody out there doing quite what I'm trying to do, there's a definite vacancy in the market, and I am connected to the potential user base and know how to effectively market to them. I've got a decently detailed business plan and know where the revenue will come from, but also know with a good degree of certainty that it will take over a year to get from MVP to revenue, if not much longer. I want to build this app primarily because I want to use it. I am willing to lose a good deal of money on it and if I end up with a usable product that makes no money I will consider that a modest success. I know I could keep looking for a technical partner, but after so many people have expressed initial interest and then faded out on me, I'm losing hope for that. At this point I'm ready to start soliciting bids for fee-based development shops to build the platform for me, so that I can deploy it and start developing the user base before investing more to staff up and start developing the revenue stream (targeted ads and premium services to the users). Anyway my question is, what is the general consensus on hiring someone to build an app versus hiring staff to develop it in-house? The latter just isn't feasible for me right now; I don't think I'm likely to get any investors without an MVP and a user base, and my pockets aren't deep enough to fund a full-time staff for long enough to build the company and wait for revenue. I can afford to invest/lose maybe around $50,000 out of my own pocket over the course of the next year before I would need to solicit investments or start selling ads, and I think that should probably be enough to get the bare-bones version of the app frontend and cloud backend built. What pitfalls should I be looking at, and/or are there inherent problems with hiring essentially a contractor to build for me? [link] [comments]  |
| How do you motivate yourself after finding a new competitor? Posted: 26 Mar 2018 09:04 PM PDT I know I'm not the only one that has stumbled across a competitor that may not have an advantage, but is ahead in the process and you become instantly de-motivated. I accidentally ran across a competitor today and I felt my drive instantly sink. I've done a fair amount of competitor research, and found only 2 comparable companies. Finding a third was a surprise. I know my service has an "it" factor that the rival doesn't, so the de-motivation isn't feasibility-based, rather just 'got-a-later-start-based'. Anyway, has anyone else experienced this? How do you guys get your fire back? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2018 11:27 AM PDT We're almost one year in the making of project management tool. Our core values: - Flexibility - Multiple tools in one Last week we finally announced early beta access and managed to get 500 subscribers in the last few days. We promoted our startup in early adopter tech communities like Betalist and ProductHunt Upcoming, as well as some Facebook ads. These are great news, but lot's of people started coming in with ideas and expectations. Until now, we were basically building a solution solving the problems we were facing and did no prior customer development. To get you into the core of the problem, project management solutions vary throughout different industries.
We've spoke with 50 subscribers in the last week and learned that they operate across multiple industries and have a different workflow problems but they all see solution in our product. We might have a flexible core system that can work for many, but we're lacking the feature complexity and integrations. For example, software people need integration with Github and version control, while marketing people need integration with Buffer to track social media campaigns. With limited resources, this is a problem for us. We're close to launch a beta, but we need to narrow our focus to a certain market and tailor messaging, onboarding and features towards them. A good advice would mean a lot. Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Where to get qualified legal advice for an early stage start up? Posted: 26 Mar 2018 08:42 PM PDT I have a legal question that I'd like answered for my startup. Basically I just want to know if I can freely use a certain thing on my website or if the thing is legitimately copyrighted. Seems like a simple enough question but I need a lawyer's verification of the answer so that I can be confident I'm not at risk of losing in court later on. I just wanted to get some recommendations for where a small, bootstrapped startup (really side project at this point) should go to get qualified business legal advice for a simple question like this. The two options seem to be:
If anybody has experience with this I'd love to know. Obviously I'd like to keep it somewhat cheap, but not at the expense getting unqualified or incorrect advice. How much would getting an answer for such a question usually cost? Edit: this is for USA [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2018 08:13 PM PDT Hi y'all, As the title says, it's often said that beginning your career at a start-up is a decent/greater chance of wealth, and more interesting work. Does the same apply for non-technical graduates who would be working more on the business side? The pros seem quite obvious to me - a huge amount of responsibility such that you sink or swim, and no clear, defined role, thus offering experience in many areas of the business - sales, marketing, strategy, HR/people management etc. If you do well, the world is really your oyster. But there are also cons - not much structure to how you will learn, and the fear of finding it harder to join a larger company in the far future. What's everyone's opinion? Once I receive an offer I'd like to settle my nerves [link] [comments]  |
| Should I learn to code to start my startup or hire someone who knows how to do it? Posted: 26 Mar 2018 01:22 PM PDT I want to start a startup, I´m thinking of creating and developing apps or websites, for example a website that can help people learn more about every topic that interests them, and having into consideration the level that they start at (I know that there are sites and forums like reddit who are made for this, but I think that it is possible to do better) and apps that help people gain/lose habits (the same thing, there are apps for this, but I think that it is possible to do better) ´ So far I´m on this alone, reading about the ins and outs of economics/ finances and businesses (I know that I will learn a lot by doing it, but I want to know the basics before I start). I want to learn to code but is it worth it just focusing on the business part and hired a coder or should I learn both? [link] [comments]  |
| Am I too inexperienced to start a consulting business? Posted: 26 Mar 2018 05:33 AM PDT I am 22 years old, but have spent 8 years building a creative freelancer brand. I have also been attaining significant knowledge in business, and quite a lot of experience in digital marketing and am now experimenting with business ideas (I am working on my own eCommerce startup now). I do think I am somewhat equipped to run a consulting agency for branding or marketing, as I have gained practical experience here, just not very successful at this point due to lack of financial resources. So, I want to go into that if my eCommerce startup fails. Thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| Identifying customers that are worth your time, energy and resources Posted: 26 Mar 2018 02:59 AM PDT Most humans, unfortunately, are naturally selfish. The conversation in our minds is dominated by 'what's in it for me?, what do I want?" Someone said 'People don't just buy from you because you understand them. People buy from you because they feel understood." The customer you understand the best is your highest value customer. The minute that customer feels that you are the one who understands them the most, you become their highest perceived source of value." Perception and Empathy matter more than most people know. In your market, I'm sure you know of some shady businesses that seem to be prospering. This is partly because customers perceive them to be a good source of value. Let's talk about your market. We are focusing on your customers and the goods and services you sell. Which kind of customer in your market do you understand the most? The person who "gets you", is the one who wins your approval. Does your customer think you understand her? Defining the best customer The best customer is someone who is actively looking for what you are selling, has the ability to pay for it and has a recent purchase history of something similar to what you provide or even the same thing. The last part is important because a prospect who has already bought from your competitor in the past already understands the benefits of your product. He may not know what makes you different but it's easier to convert a prospect who already understands the value of your offer. One of the most important things to note is that your ideal customer has to have the willingness, ability and desire to pay for your product whether B2B or B2C. A few years ago I run a branding and web development firm. I found out that clients who had already dealt with a competitor in the past were easier to convert. They already know the benefits of the service and they were just looking for the best. Today much of my work involves building marketing systems and I've noticed that the same rules apply. I first find out if the prospect spends any money on advertising or is familiar with direct response campaigns and sales processes. If they don't, then that means they won't have a good way of knowing my worth. I can then decide whether this person is teachable enough to work with or if I should respectfully decline their application to work with me. You can do the same in your business whether you're selling to consumers or corporations. On the other hand, clients who needed education and explanation were usually tougher to convert. One strategy I teach my students and clients on growing their businesses exponentially is this. Find out the inactive clients of your competitor's and offer them your goods and services. It would surprise you how many of them are probably looking for someone like you. Part of the reason this works is that it's likely that your competitors have poor follow-up sequences. You can take advantage of their sloppiness and become the dominant player in your field. Here are some questions you should sit with your team and answer today. Which customers in your market are looking for what you can provide? Are there prospects out there who urgently want what I'm selling? Are there prospects eagerly looking for my product? Which of them have bought from a competitor in the last 18 months? Do they perceive the current alternatives are few or inadequate? [link] [comments]  |
| No experience with NDA's and needing help. Posted: 26 Mar 2018 01:34 PM PDT I'm a fullstack developer from Canada that is contracting a better UI/UX developer than I am from the EU (France specifically). I'm wondering if there are any templates, or services I can use to get a NDA that will apply internationally, or at minimum to Canada, the United States, and the EU? One of my thoughts is getting a 99designs account and hiring the designer through there to use their NDA system, and I think upwork also has NDAs involved as well: https://www.upwork.com/hiring/legal/intellectual-property-protection-non-disclosure-agreements/ Is this good enough? Criticism is welcomed as well. [link] [comments]  |
| Trademark/ branding vs international (Ireland) business with same name Posted: 26 Mar 2018 04:10 PM PDT A company in Ireland uses the same name I intend to launch with, in the same industry. They're a very budget looking online storefront. No Trademarks registered in Canada or the United States. I really like the name, it suits the brand and marries well with the mission statement. Should I rethink my brand? Very early stages, so there is no money on the line aside from a relatively cheap domain I've purchased We aren't even remotely targeting the same geographic market, and they appear to be a low volume business. For these reasons I'm inclined to think I'm probably safe to stay the course. Thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| Where to go from here...how do startups first get off the ground? Posted: 26 Mar 2018 07:54 AM PDT Hi all, wonder if anyone might have some thoughts or advice. I've started a few businesses in the past, but they've been pretty 'traditional' in the sense that we could grow them slowly and organically, had a local market and didn't need any financing. I've now developed an app that has a wide market, is functional and working well for a variety of clients (it's an app for small businesses and bookkeepers/accountants to streamline their bookkeeping), and I think it's got serious legs, but the cashflow just isn't there yet to give it a boost. It needs some more development work (£££) to get it fully functional and marketable to a large client base, but therein lies the rub: I ain't gots lots of moolah left. Have invested £20k personally, and I feel it's at a standstill, and it's frustrating. There's a giant gap in the market for this software, and I'm desperate to fill that gap before anyone else, but don't really know where to go from here. Approach friends and family for loans? Angel investors? How do startups get off the ground, before they're actually 'startups'? [link] [comments]  |
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