Startups Weekly Feedback and Support Thread |
- Weekly Feedback and Support Thread
- Just landed my first ever investment! Any advice for a young entrepreneur from this point on?
- Microsoft to acquire GitHub
- How to improve brand awareness?
- Why Microsoft might be acquiring Github
- Need some help on finding investors and a co-developer for my app(NYC)
- How would you turn a non-startup web agency into a SaaS startup for building websites?
- How to properly budget the next raise (Seed)
- Whats the best way to become the "marketing/sales" side of the coveted programmer / marketer team?
- How are SaaS startups able to generate customers through mobile without going though in app purchases?
- Had my first day at a startup today. They won't give me a w2? Help!
- What is a reasonable sample cost from Alibaba?
- What it takes to start a hardware based business from scratch?
- Insight on Marketing to Influence Groups
- Getting back vague answers from a target group
- Help with finding the right kind of lawyer
| Weekly Feedback and Support Thread Posted: 04 Jun 2018 04:07 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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| Just landed my first ever investment! Any advice for a young entrepreneur from this point on? Posted: 04 Jun 2018 05:33 PM PDT I'm 22, a college Comp Sci drop out, and yesterday I landed my very first investment! This might sound silly, but as a solo-founder I'm honestly really proud of myself. I've been told no countless times and having finally convinced someone that I am worth the risk is an incredible feeling. I've always been very poor at school and because of that I ended up dropping out of a sub-par university. I thought that would hold me back and I'd never succeed as an entrepreneur, and while I still haven't, I feel so much more confident in myself. Despite being a poor student, I've always been very passionate about coding and a hard worker. I'm raising a $50k seed round, and now I've got $20k secured. It's honestly a huge relief. $20k gives me a 6 month runway without taking a salary, so I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm honestly ecstatic. I can't put it into words. For anyone who's been there what advice can you give me from this point forward? I feel like I just hit a new level and I have to prove myself even more now. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Jun 2018 08:58 AM PDT Let's talk about this, what do you think? I can see both good and bad, but awesome for the startup community... maybe? I think it is good from the perspective of seeing an acquisition. Thomas Preston-Werner (founder of GitHub) envisioned his company changing the world, and it has. This is an excellent "exit" for him. We hope Microsoft does its best to maintain, and enhance the community of GitHub. I for one, have many projects on there. so, being a customer, I'd expect benefit from this acquisition, but should I? What does this mean for privacy on Github? Should I fear the government/intelligence community scanning my private projects source code through partnership with Microsoft? This isn't unprecedented when you think about the social media mining occurring on that scale. So much to think about... If my code isn't "guaranteed" privacy.. what would be the purpose of using github with serious, private projects. If it is open sourced, or public then this doesn't apply, I'd say. This may be more so a testament to the developer community/culture. GIT/version control changed many of our lives, this acquisition says something about the usefulness of version control, in conjunction with a hardcore, very well maintained culture. I blindly use github as a tool.... like a hammer. Granted it isn't the only version control platform. Many others are thriving, such as bitbucket by Atlassian, etc etc. From another perspective, I can see Microsoft's benefit, by not only the inherent developer culture, but from a potential internal analytics perspective. I can see Microsoft forming teams around JUST analyzing trends within github private projects, assuming they legally can... which I'm sure they can. It is, or will probably be written somewhere (ASSUMPTION) in the terms of service. Imagine if Microsoft could get a feel for "trends" within private developer source code.... maybe libraries used, language of use, etc... this may require a tin foil hat to think about.. So many thoughts... even more if github remains "separate" from Microsoft... From a cyber security perspective, Microsoft may have more man power to preemptively handle the open sourced malware projects that seem to end up on github — as malicious developers like to share their tooling on there. So many thoughts.... what are your thoughts on this stream of consciousness... pardon typos [link] [comments]  |
| How to improve brand awareness? Posted: 05 Jun 2018 02:06 AM PDT Which way do you choose to make users to recognize your brand? Each startup spends hours developing a good strategy to make your brand recognizable through the world. It includes UI/UX development, lots of partnership, attending conferences and shows. Besides, we need to make consumers confident about our product and ask all their questions about it. We always should communicate with similar projects and the target audience. In addition, we should not forget about the quality of the product because it must meet all users' needs and provide it with a high level of security and anonymity (speaking of crypto wallet namely). What purposes and ideas you can name more? [link] [comments]  |
| Why Microsoft might be acquiring Github Posted: 05 Jun 2018 01:53 AM PDT To understand this acquisition, one needs to understand Microsoft's structure and it's different operating segments. As of now as per the annual report of 2017, they have 3 operating segments :
Acquisitions Ever since, Nadella's appointment as CEO in 2014, he's made 3 acquisitions in each of the divisions mentioned above including Github, which I believe lies within Intelligent Cloud. To make space and re-align the organisation, a series of layoffs happened : 2014(18000), 2015(8,500) and 2016(1,850). Recently two new divisions have been created as part of the process : Experiences & Devices along with Cloud + AI. Open Source They also have actively contributing towards open source being one of largest contributors on Github as of 2017 report : Dot Net was open sourced in 2014 along with lots of ML frameworks, VS code and several other tools. Story Microsoft under Nadella are a different beast and their game plan since Nadella has been totally opposite of Ballmer. Contrary to other opinions, this acquisitions is very much in line with what Microsoft has been upto internally some time & the results have been encouraging. They are playing a game between productivity, cloud and leveraging ML wherever possible. Just the access to the data regarding languages, merge histories, commits etc will be incredibly useful to understand and make possible something like commit assist from Ubisoft available on larger scale. [link] [comments]  |
| Need some help on finding investors and a co-developer for my app(NYC) Posted: 04 Jun 2018 09:31 PM PDT Hi. I'm a software developer who graduated from university in 2017, living in NYC. I'm currently on the fence about a few things. I'm developing a MVP for this application that I'm working on that I believe has some potential. It will take me a few more months to finish building it and testing it. In the meantime I was wondering how a normal guy like me could meet potential investors for this product? I have connected with my alumni network and I talk to them regularly, some of them have worked in Series A's and B's and have started a company of their own at some point(not in software). Another issue I have is I need a co-developer. For the application I'm building, would be ideal if their was a mobile application as well. However, I'm not an android or ios guy myself, more of a MERN stack/java/databases guy. And I wouldn't want to learn it myself, 1)I don't have enough time and 2)I want to have someone experienced in mobile apps development. so I'm not sure what to do here. Could I try to find a co-developer at a meetup or something, or finish my app, potentially get funding(however long that would take) and then find a mobile apps developer? The issue I have is that I work full time, I also got accepted to a top CS school next spring so I really want to focus the rest of my time too, so I might even put the project on hold to pursue the MS degree. I do have quite a bit of time until then of course, so I can make up my mind then. I do want to finish my application, potentially try to get an investment by the end of the year and maybe have a co-developer. Is this even feasible to do before I have a working product? I do live in a great city after all. What should I do, what are your thoughts? Cheers. [link] [comments]  |
| How would you turn a non-startup web agency into a SaaS startup for building websites? Posted: 04 Jun 2018 02:12 PM PDT Or if you want to go even more generalized, how would you turn a non-startup small business into a startup ready to grow more quickly? If you were the person behind the business. This is largely a thought experiment. As someone who has worked at web agencies as a software engineer for years before, it has made me curious how they usually are content with not seeking beyond small/medium business clients, as they seem to "plateau" in scale and revenue around the small/medium biz market. Generally speaking, web agencies are not disruptive companies. I might seem them grow gradually over the years, from 10 to 100 people. And get higher dollar clients. But their growth is largely limited by their inability to amass more customers, or not getting a rapid increase in revenue. How would you turn such an company into a faster growing company that does SaaS for creating websites? The goal would be to be able to scale up acquiring customers, to the thousands, so you will need to automate the website building process. No longer are your web developers making websites directly for clients, they are making the website building tools which is then to be marketed towards a broader audience. At some point the majority of your clients will use your online tools to create their website, rather than have custom work sourced out to your developers. What would be your strategy to change the company? [link] [comments]  |
| How to properly budget the next raise (Seed) Posted: 04 Jun 2018 07:01 PM PDT So I'm going to be raising our company's seed round in the next number of months and I'm beginning the process now - updating the data room, deck, executive summary, etc. Given our stage and other similar companies that have raised in our space, we feel that a $2m raise on a $8m pre with a 20-24 month runway is reasonable given our objectives. That allows me to budget $100k per month. Currently - we're trending 41k per month on payroll. Include employee raises after the raise, that turns to 45k, approximately. We're spending about 14k per month in expenses. 45 + 14 = 59 I'm trying to determine two things with the remaining 41k/month. 1) If our priority is product, how is it best to divy this up between design/eng/prod mdmgt? Right now our eng team is 3, and we're hiring a 4th. I know we need another designer for sure, but I'm unsure how to prioritize outside of that. 2) I don't expect our monthly expenditure outside of payroll to increase significantly after the raise from the 14k we're currently trending - is a budget bump to 20 playing it safe for a team of 11-13? Feedback and input are most welcome. [link] [comments]  |
| Whats the best way to become the "marketing/sales" side of the coveted programmer / marketer team? Posted: 04 Jun 2018 03:21 AM PDT Hi, So I'm a programmer by trade, but soon I'll be teaming up with another technical founder to build our startup. I really want to expand my skillset to become knowledgeable about marketing, distribution strategies, sales, on-boarding etc. This has been my reading list (About halfway through):
Some of these have great practical advice, some are more abstract. Are there other things I should be looking at? I understand good design, effectiveness of A/B testing, etc. I'm looking for real, great learning resources. Can be books, videos, articles, anything. Cheers! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Jun 2018 03:58 PM PDT As the title suggests, I'm wondering if anyone has created (or seen) a SaaS startup that has been able to get around the in app requirements that the mobile app stores force - or at least work within those confines appropriately. Our startup is B2B, so the business purchaser would be tied to the entire company account, which doesn't seem to fit the bill of in app purchases. We want to encourage people to sign up and enjoy the free trial on their mobile devices, but we can't do that unless we specially allow in app purchases. Id love some feedback and guidance from others who have maneuvered in this area. If you weren't able to bypass in app purchases, how did you compromise? Did you include links to sign up that were totally different than a regular sign up page? [link] [comments]  |
| Had my first day at a startup today. They won't give me a w2? Help! Posted: 04 Jun 2018 03:16 PM PDT Hello guys! I started working as a full-time worker at a startup today. I work Mo-Fr 9-5pm, they bought me software and office supplies and I do not work for anymore else. According to the IRS website these are all reasons to count as an employee. However, when I asked for documents to sign all they gave me was an NDA. I asked for a w2 and they told me they do not have an established HR yet so I will have to withhold my own taxes until they do get HR at which time I will sign a w2. Do I count as an independent contractor until the HR stuff is sorted out with them? I read up on this and would have to pay 15% additional taxes. Would you if you were in my shoes ask for 15% more income to offset this? TLDR: feeling screwed cause startup doesn't give me a w2. What are my options? [link] [comments]  |
| What is a reasonable sample cost from Alibaba? Posted: 04 Jun 2018 09:35 AM PDT I've researched a product and some suppliers from Alibaba. Their listings show price range of $9-15USD per unit depending on order size etc. I'd really like to order a sample and am willing to pay for the sample and shipping from China. However, when I messaged the supplier and asked, they quoted me $150USD for a single sample. Is this a reasonable cost for a single sample? I'm not asking for any modifications, just a single sample shipped from China to Canada. We haven't even discussed shipping options (sea vs air). To me it seems super expensive for a sample. I was expecting $40 or so, but not $150. Does anyone have experience with getting samples? Are the prices always this high? [link] [comments]  |
| What it takes to start a hardware based business from scratch? Posted: 04 Jun 2018 01:20 PM PDT Hello, /r/startups Me and my best friend have been planning to start our own business from a year or so, and we've stumbled across many ideas, but nothing really inspired us to get out of our echo chamber and scratch that itch, until we ran into this IOT product. This product is a game changer if marketed properly. It is going to be very beneficial for business owners since it is targeted towards businesses. We have a business model, and contacts, but no prototype. That being said, there's already a company in this segment who are doing okayish, and we have a plan where we can do better than those guys. The only thing that has been bothering us that we don't have a prototype, but i can ask around a few friends of mine to put together a working prototype. Now that the prototype and the software that goes with is ready, do you think it's the right time to raise some money which is going to be exclusively used to manufacture the hardware? We don't have contacts with hardware manufacturers, but instead have with investors and a state run accelerator. How much money do you think goes into the manufacturing the machine? Since the machine is going to have probably a small processor followed by a few sensors. Should we get in touch with manufacturers/just build the machines in-house? It's going to take a lot of time if there are customers waiting in the line for the product. How to work out this whole ordeal? P.S :- Sorry if the title and the post don't match - My brain is swamped so i ain't thinkin straight. [link] [comments]  |
| Insight on Marketing to Influence Groups Posted: 04 Jun 2018 11:50 AM PDT |
| Getting back vague answers from a target group Posted: 04 Jun 2018 04:57 AM PDT I'm fairly new to market research. I did a survey with high level questions (with good results). Now I've sent out a survey with some more detailed questions to some of my potential users, but I'm getting quick and flat responses. I understand people don't want to spend 30minutes thinking and providing feedback for a stranger.. But I don't see another way to validate my idea then to talk with unbiased strangers that are in my target group. What would be your next step as to solve the problem of getting blaint answers that don't go in detail enough. Ideally I would really 'discuss' the idea with my target group but convincing strangers to make time for skype calls sounds even more difficult to do. Looking forward to your insights! [link] [comments]  |
| Help with finding the right kind of lawyer Posted: 04 Jun 2018 04:53 AM PDT Hi All, Before I begin the stage of developing my product, I very much need to get a legal opinion and understanding to see if my business plan/IP is, well, legal (not just in my country but globally). This being a start-up forum, I was hoping to hear people's experiences with legal opinions and recommendations especially in relation to start-ups. Even though we all want the best legal opinions, I can't imagine going to a "Magic Circle" firm would be the best use of resources. Not only do I need a legal opinion on the business plan but I need solid documentation for things like NDAs, Non-Compete (if applicable) and also protection from the legal firm itself if by chance they have a rogue employee who decides to use my IP. Also, as I'm looking to employ an outside development team/company to build the technology for me. Is there such a thing as a global NDA that covers all juridictions and employees (as these development firms have offices all around the world)? Can these types of firms be trusted (based in India, Ukraine etc.)? To date, this is the biggest hurdle for me to overcome. Any advice would be greatly apprecaited. Thank you [link] [comments]  |
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