Startups Co-Founders Debate: How do you know when you have product market fit? |
- Co-Founders Debate: How do you know when you have product market fit?
- Advice Calculating Subscription Model for Businesses
- Big company wants to beat me to market
- How true is this - "If growth sucks, that usually means product is not good enough"
- What is the biggest struggle you faced when starting up?
- Please help evaluating a job offer from a startup.
- Is it possible to enter a high risk market out of college?
- How to prototype moulded plastic parts
- WebApp idea, build Alpha/MVP product or test market validity first?
- Is creating a tech startup REALLY a good idea while in college?
- Any advice for conducting market research?
- Need advice from experienced dev
- Sales strategies for Baseball Bats
- A.I use cases on a bitcoin blockchain data set (Our project)
| Co-Founders Debate: How do you know when you have product market fit? Posted: 06 Jul 2018 08:08 PM PDT My co-founders and I don't agree if we have product market fit. They want to keep adding features to our existing, live product. I want to market the product and get it some exposure. How do we settle this? Background: We built an e-commerce app. Our model is to sell only item a day (similar to Woot). We released it in the app store about 2 months ago. We've done very little marketing. We have about 800 downloads (400 from day 1, I assume most of those are friends and family). We have about 50 daily active users and a ~1.3% conversion rate. [link] [comments]  |
| Advice Calculating Subscription Model for Businesses Posted: 06 Jul 2018 09:17 AM PDT Hey guys, I'm looking at getting into the business of offering companies a subscription model to help expand their business however I am struggling when developing a suitable model which scales appropriate for various businesses. Are there any rules when it comes to estimating how much to charge businesses on a monthly basis? Currently I am looking at working with both small startups and larger international corporations. However, if I charge a small amount of $30/m which might be suitable for a smaller business, a larger business which earns millions would have the same benefits for $30/m. Is there a way to fairly set out a subscription model which factors in the size of company and how much my service may benefit them when estimating subscription charges? [link] [comments]  |
| Big company wants to beat me to market Posted: 06 Jul 2018 04:18 PM PDT Hey guys, I just wanted to share this with someone. I've been building this online platform oriented for students in EU for couple months now and I'm really close to the version 1. Then, today, I read news that certain multimillion dollar company will be launching the exact same product in couple months in the exact same region as me and they already have deals with some big student associations in my country... I feel so devastated and bad. I've spent months building this, finding the perfect design and user experience, making sure every v1 feature works perfectly and that it's really userfriendly, I've spent countless nights coding and I'm really proud of the product and I believe it had some great potential and then some rich company comes in and beats me to market and makes my product useless. How can I compete with them? I can still probably man up, finish the platform by pulling couple more allnighters and manage to launch before them, but my budget as a student is barely affording servers while they can spend millions just on marketing. Thanks for listening, good night! [link] [comments]  |
| How true is this - "If growth sucks, that usually means product is not good enough" Posted: 06 Jul 2018 04:52 PM PDT So the Y Combinator/Altman/Graham opinion on growth is that if growth sucks, most likely your product is just not good enough. To fix this, you should go out and talk to your users, and focus on improving product. Altman/Graham opinion - "If growth sucks, go talk to users and improve product" On the other hand, Thiel focuses more on distribution. He states that a company with great distribution and an undifferentiated product can build a monopoly, while the converse cannot. His belief seems to be that while a great product is very important to building a great company, great distribution is more important. Thiel's opinion - "Product is important, but spending time finding unique distribution channels is more important" My startup's growth is mediocre, I'd say probably 2-3% a week at the moment. I want to get 7-10% weekly growth rate. Which side are you on? [link] [comments]  |
| What is the biggest struggle you faced when starting up? Posted: 06 Jul 2018 01:27 PM PDT That is to say - what did you wish you knew before starting up? Anything from funding, hiring, laws, website development, to work-life, or marketing, etc. I am just trying to get a gasp of all the challenges that come along with starting a company, and this certainly seems like the right place to ask! I always find it encouraging to hear the battle stories of other in that way. For bonus points - how did you overcome those challenges? Luck, research, friends, mentors, tools / software, just having enough money to fix it, etc? Or did you not overcome it? What was the end result? Thank you all! I hope to learn a lot from this post! [link] [comments]  |
| Please help evaluating a job offer from a startup. Posted: 06 Jul 2018 11:10 AM PDT I currently am a senior SME for a 175 person analytics firm. Prior to joining the company, I worked in my vertical for 15 years. I recently received an offer from an analytics startup. Besides the CEO, the other 5 of the employees are in dev/data science. I would be employee #7 and would run/be sales, marketing, and serve as SME as my vertical is the one they are initially targeting. This company would be an ancillary competitor to my current company. The offer is $100K base, 3% commission, 0.3% equity grant. My 1st year sales goal would be $1M so total comp of $130K year one. The CEO told me that he already has interest in companies wanting to acquire the company if we can meet our sales targets with an estimation of a $20M valuation which would equate to $60K if that were to happen. So, roughly $200K total upside give or take if all this happens in the next 12-18 months (which is the CEO's projection). I currently make $130K base and my average bonus has been $15K per year. I also have stock options but since we aren't publicly traded, I have no idea what they're worth, if anything at all. Finally, the last consideration I have is the threat of litigation against me personally. I consulted an attorney who is experienced in these matters who stated that there is a real threat of an injunction being filed against me once they realize that they are losing market share and could allege that I stole IP (which I didn't/wouldn't - but there would be a lengthy discovery process to prove that). My current inclination is that the upside is not materially more than my current situation and given the threat of litigation for a relatively unproven product that it isn't worth the risk. I should say that if the product does prove itself, it could be an absolute game changer for my vertical. Do you all agree? Is there anything I'm not considering (which is a very real possibility since I've never dealt with a company at this stage)? If you agree that it's not worth it, what kind of compensation package do you feel would be? Thanks in advance for your help. [link] [comments]  |
| Is it possible to enter a high risk market out of college? Posted: 06 Jul 2018 02:05 PM PDT Hello reddit. I was hesitant to post here since I usually try to work around problems on my own but I have a question. I am about to finish my undergraduate career and have thought long and hard about starting my own business. Unfortunately, I would like to take a dive for some high risk sectors that may require high upfront capital and significant knowledge, think biotech or physical tech products. My initial plan was to start smaller ventures first, grow them, then either sell them off or use my returns to enter new markets. Recently however, I've had a strong passion to just go for what I truly wish to take on but I'm unsure if it's a wise thing to do. I think that even if everything works out, given my age and experience, I wouldn't be taken seriously as a potential founder entering a serious market. My last resort is to pursue a graduate degree and try to R&D any prototypes under my research. So I guess I'm looking for anyone who dove off the deep end and can give me feedback whether to take things slow or do it the startup way and "build my parachute on the way down." [link] [comments]  |
| How to prototype moulded plastic parts Posted: 06 Jul 2018 06:26 AM PDT I'm working on the design of a physical product which will include a component to be made of moulded plastic. I've had successful proof of concept but now it's time to actually create/test various potential designs of this part. To simplify it, it's essentially a modified zip-loc seal. I'm racking my brain to think of ways to create prototypes of moulded LDPE with such tiny features without breaking the bank. I did try 3D printing scaled up versions of the design but couldn't capture the inherent material properties of LDPE. Would there be any way to prototype something like this reasonably cheaply and simply? Maybe something from silicone? Or is it a case of biting the bullet and investing in moulds and the production of thousands of parts? Any ideas would be appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| WebApp idea, build Alpha/MVP product or test market validity first? Posted: 06 Jul 2018 04:53 AM PDT Hey all, I recently left a "very memorable" position in a company and am desperate to start my own business. I have a few ideas and one that stuck was a webapp. Me and my S.O. are web developers and can build the project ourselves with help from a friend if anything, and I was wondering if I should just roll my sleeves up and get shit built or start by asking around and checking if people are even interested first. I read a post here about another developer who spent a year or two developing a product he found no one wanted, and while I know anything is possible I'd like to take necessary steps to be prepared without being over cautious and missing out on opportunities. Briefly running through the development process in my head, I imagine we can build out the MVP in under about 3ish months which is fairly long in our current situation and a lot of energy that will be dedicated away from other projects. [link] [comments]  |
| Is creating a tech startup REALLY a good idea while in college? Posted: 06 Jul 2018 10:48 AM PDT For clarification: our startup revolves around college students and an emarketplace-like app for college students in particular, so the niche is right, and test demand seems okay. But is it actually practical to start the startup now and here? For clarification: I am not technically the developer of our group, although we do have two. I serve as project manager and, in the short-run, product marketer. Since the app is aimed specifically towards college students with a purpose of making college students lives easier, I would suppose that the aim and purpose of our app is well justified. If anything, this question would be more posed for the long run: none of us have had either successful OR failed ventures yet, so would it be difficult to attain angel investments or VC even if we manage to gain early traction and decent success on our own campus? After all, if we do succeed on our own campus, we would likely need SOME money to expand to other schools. Or would that money need to be bootstrapped or loaned from friends/family? If anyone has any experience with app-based startups that revolve around youth in particular, that would be ideal for responses, but I'll take any recommendations seriously of course. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Any advice for conducting market research? Posted: 06 Jul 2018 10:38 AM PDT I am going through the steps of developing my business plan and have been trying to conduct some market research to find out information like: current state of the market, other existing companies, marketable applications, etc. I don't have much experience, so I have been hitting google with an onslaught of keywords and seeing what hits. This has given a couple good results, but feel as though I could be using other methods or resources. Does anyone have any recommendations for a more efficient approach to conducting market research? [link] [comments]  |
| Need advice from experienced dev Posted: 06 Jul 2018 08:56 AM PDT So I joined a very early stage startup as the only mobile developer. There is one other dev on the team but I will be primarily responsible for the ios and android side of things. I have made Android apps in the past but not like the one we are planning. I am a recent grad with some industry experience and I am very confident in my programming abilities. But I just want to get up to speed on things I should know when starting app development for what we hope will be a decent sized company. Initially it will be just us 2 devs working on the app, but we hope to grow the team. My plan right now is to: -Create a fleshed out mock up -Lock down the structure of the app -Set up cloud backend -Start implementing basic functionality (hopefully we have more devs by this point) -Create MVP -Refine and redesign I want to follow standards and best practices when doing all this. A lot of my personal projects follow the idea of 'just get it done' but this time I want to make sure we have a solid base from which to grow. We are also developing a website with similar capabilities that we want to have a shared cloud backend with the app. So we will kind of be developing the web and mobile areas side by side. I will not be too involved with the web side but will be heavily involved in the structure of our cloud backend for both. I don't want to create a shaky foundation and have other devs come in and wonder what is going on. I need help with high level planning and maybe some more experienced startup devs to give some general advice. A good question might be, if you were in my shoes. How would you approach this project at a high level? Thank you for your time. TLDR: Explain to a recent CS grad the best roadmap for mobile app development in a startup setting. [link] [comments]  |
| Sales strategies for Baseball Bats Posted: 06 Jul 2018 08:06 AM PDT I am in the process of starting a business selling baseball bats that are twice the size as a normal bat, perfectly scaled. I'm customizing them for businesses, little leagues, kids, mancaves as a display piece. They are fairly pricy (3-4 hundred dollars) I know I'm not creating a product that will be in every household or business, but I don't need that to be successful. I have a background playing professional baseball for 10 years (recently retired), live in Scottsdale, and have MLB players that are willing to promote and possibly do their own line of autographed bat. My question is, how do I convince people to spend 3-4 hundred dollars on this? I'm sure I can get some sales, but I need an angle/strategy to really close deals and make people think they need this or their kid does. They really do draw interest and your eye gravitates to it. I'm a few days away from some MVP's and they'll look good! Do I just start going into businesses? Online advertising? I only have 20 bats now and I have a follow up order of 100 Ready to be ordered if I can sell these 20. Keep in mind too, that kids use $3-500 on little league bats and most kids here have multiple and get new ones every year. I don't think the price will deter the people I am going after initially. If they want it, they will buy it. I have to make them want it. [link] [comments]  |
| A.I use cases on a bitcoin blockchain data set (Our project) Posted: 06 Jul 2018 05:24 AM PDT We are working on a project where we take the bitcoin blockchain data set (170+ GB) and use A.I (machine learning) for prediction and classification. We are halfway through the project and wanted to get some feedback from the community on how should we proceed with our A.I use case. We dont want to force A.I in it. But rather define A.I usecases which we can be used on a blockchain dataset. We are trying to do the following,
Do you have any suggestions on how can we use A.I on this kind of data set ? P.S: This is an experiment, hobby project. [link] [comments]  |
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