Startups Weekly Feedback and Support Thread |
- Weekly Feedback and Support Thread
- I worked for a Scam Startup
- Need advice on small startup beverage company.
- [Advice] Small startup handle frictions between research and product teams
- Founder motivation
- What's a fair percentage to give an investor that puts up $200k for startup capital?
- How Silicon Valley stops Innovation
- How basic can my MVP be?
- SaaS Startup Interview Questions
- Looking for a marketing co-founder in the UK?
- Thinking about leaving , need advices
| Weekly Feedback and Support Thread Posted: 09 Jul 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
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| Posted: 09 Jul 2018 10:42 AM PDT Before we begin, just some background information, I'm a Malaysian and the start up in question is based in Malaysia (although they do some operations in Singapore). Also I originally written this article in a local forum in Malaysia so apologies in advance if I'm using some terms which may not be familiar with the international community. I did quickly glanced through the article to clarify any local references. So in February 2018 I took up the job as a Finance Manager in a start up which I shall call The Firm (or in short, TF). Prior to that I research about TF and they had a decent website and good coverage from some fintech sites, so I thought it's a legit company. Furthermore it has 1 year+ full operations and even participated in some Sandbox program with Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) which adds to the confidence of the company's legitimacy. However once I joined things started to take a lousy turn. The red flags were desperately waving at me right from the first week but I was too naive and giving too much benefit of the doubt to the founder. The founder is an Estonian guy who had another business in Malaysia prior to TF which I admit made some money but the business isn't really on the ethical side. Either way he say the biggest role he would need me to do when joining the company is to prepare the budget and financial forecast to be shown to investors. So the first thing I did was looking at the accounts, thinking that by having a grasp of the previous years financials I can use it to support my assumptions and calculations when doing the projection and budget for the investors. To my horror there were no accounting in place. The company has been opened since 2014 and only the 2015 year end account was audited. The 2016 and 2017 account was not audited and hence there were no filing of annual return to SSM (Malaysia Companies Commission). That would've triggered the first red flag. Secondly throughout the rest of my employment I've been receiving calls from the company's vendor requesting for payment for the various service provided to the company. When I brought these notice to the chairman, he scoffs off these claims saying that everyone is out there trying to take money from him. He say all these people chasing payments are overcharging the company and so on. On my first week I'd actually believe his claim but the moment he delayed in paying the office cleaner her pay for 2 months citing her service is too expensive (after agreeing initially) I knew this chairman was simply not an honest person. Speaking about the Chairman, he really really talks alot, and spend a lot of the conversation just beating around the bush and talking about his past achievement. More important he boast about all his network and how he has good relations with people of power from around the world. Funny thing that despite all his connections and his so called wealth he can't even get a bank account opened under the company's name. Previously he convinced a young staff to take up directorship of the company so he can open the bank account and subsequently refused to change the company director back to the chairman's name, citing admin issues. I knew this was bullshit but didn't give much thought until he asked me to take up the directorship of the company, citing that "it's time for you to take up an important role and this is the proof of my commitment to you". That's when I knew it's time to leave. Part 2 - Weird job scope and goals So back to preparing the budget and projection for the Chairman, he's starting to make request that doesn't make any business sense. Now normally for any budget forecast you're suppose to get as many supporting documents or historical data to support your figures and back any assumption you made with solid facts. When I prepared my first draft of the budget the chairman told me that first year projection is too low. I told him naturally it's low because it's a startup and it will require some time by marketing before our sales will pick up to a profitable level. He then explain that I shouldn't make the budget too realistic. He claims he wants to get Euro 4-6million in funding in first year so I should prepare the budget based on 20 million and then subsequently revise it down to 10 million like that before settling for his targetted amount. He then commented on the visual aspect of my budget and I should consider preparing my budget in Keynote format to be more "presentable" rather than just throwing excel figures with my basis of calculation and assumption. He say that most investors are not interested in details but will throw their money based on "what looks good". I knew he wasn't interested in a serious proper budgeting but rather something with fancy graphs and infographics to make it look good. I then approached the marketing department on their marketing plan so I can do my revenue projections properly and to my horror I was informed by marketing that the chairman is not interested with actual revenue figures. He's more interested with the app downloads, Facebook likes, LinkedIn, Instagram reach and likes. Basically he's focusing on giving the company a good online image when someone search for the company's name, a habit which I see in all his actions. The chairman says that investors is not interested in pass financial figures or will NOT actually conduct proper due diligence on our business plan or projections. They will just throw money to whatever that 'looks nice'. I brought my doubt about how our lack of audited financial statements will lead to many problem in convincing investors but he went to his usual name dropping about how he knows some powerful guy in Europe who has access to billions of euro in funds. Part 3 - Ever Changing Office Location When I attended my 2nd interview I realize TF office is quite hard to find. The website merely states the building of the office but not exactly which floor or which unit number it is. Moreover the only number available in the website is a Singapore number. Thankfully the HR lady did call me and explained to me the exact location of the office. It was those SOHO building near Jalan Ampang. When I joined TF they just moved into this building in Binjai 8. Previously in 2017 they were in Troika and before that in this KLCC Soho suites. Since the company's inception in 2014 it has moved office 4 times, from Menara Citibank, to Soho Suites KLCC, Troika and now currentlyin Binjai 8. Previously in 2017 they were also falsely using Menara Ilham as their company location despite not having an actual office there at all. After some scandal and some reporters queried the Menara Ilham management did TF change their address in the web after being threatened to legal action by Menara Ilham management. Furthermore a property agent told me that the Chairman has a bad record in his database for having history of late payments. The Chairman is super insecure about revealing the office location to any outsider. Whenever any of the staff were to organize a meeting with a potential vendor or partner the chairman will strictly warn us not to disclose the office location. The company has 4 to 5 different business location depending on where you extract the information from. Heck the Chairman even used another different address when it comes to dealing with banks. The Chairman's business card features a different building from where we were actually working and as usual, didn't mention any unit number or even floor. Dodgy. This guy just simply doesn't want people to know where his exact location is. Without being too detailed his residential address registered in the SSM differs greatly from his actual residence address as well. Needless to say the chairman isn't keen on letting people know where he lives. Part 4 - Chairman made a fool out of himself with the authorities When I joined TF back in Feb 2018 there was this Operations Manager whose sole purpose is to develop the business plan for TF to obtain a certain license from Bank Negara Malaysia. I still recall the Chairman instruct the operations manager not to put too much details in the business plan. The Operations manager disagreed and within 1 month he quit his position as operations manager because he cannot agree with the chairman's sense of direction. After the operations manager left I took over his function and started to work on the business plan. At this time I receive the same ridiculous instruction from the chairman; Make it look beautiful, don't talk too much about the operations, rig the income projections. Just tell a nice story but whatever that happens just get the license first then figure out the compliance issue later. I was quite frustrated working on the business plan because I knew BNM (The Central Bank of Malaysia, which issues license for Money Service Businesses) will scrutinize our figures and drill us with questions in detail. There's no point hiding any details from them, however the chairman scoff off my concerns as usual and go back to him boasting his past achievements and connections. Heck at one point he even say he will get his Estonian ambasaddor to write to the deputy governor of BNM if he couldn't get the license. Either way the PA managed to arrange a meeting with BNM and TF. Can you imagine the Chairman scolded the PA for not preparing him for the meeting. By preparing for meeting the Chairman asked "What is the race, seniority and years of experience of the people we are meeting in BNM". Useless preparation i would say. In BNM itself the people there drill him with questions and the chairman as usual just "goreng" (local term for bullshit some facts in hope that it sounds convincing) some fact and figures and boasted about his non existense experience. BNM either way is unimpressed and insist that he produce physical documents and proof to back him claim. In fact BNM ask him if he can produce a 99.99% confidence level on some e-KYC verification in which the chairman happily said yes (in theory a 99.99% confidence level is impossible and BNM was asking him a trick question). The chairman realize things went sour in the negotiation and for a moment I thought he finally learnt his lesson and will take this BNM application seriously. I thought he will finally hire the right people, clear the company accounts for audit and prepare the business plan properly. Then back in the office he called me to a meeting. He started scheming a new plan to open a new company, asked me to become the director so he can open a few bank accounts, and say I'm paranoid about BNM and I should trust him in handling this BNM license issue. I tendered my resignation 2 days later. Bonus Episode -Weird Hiring DecisionsNow every hiring decisions goes through the Chairman. Naturally when briefly asked about his hiring principal he mention he only want the best. At first this chairman has TWO Personal Assistants! (PA). Heck word from the HR person is initially he has 3 candidate whom he thinks suitable for PA role but decided he wants ALL 3. Thankfully one rejected the offer so he only have two PAs now. Personally observing the mundane task given to the PA it seems he doesn't even need a PA in the first place. Further more two months later he decided his two PA useless because in his word "They're not doing anything and as a PA they should know my needs and act accordingly". Next was the way he conducted the interview. He keep on boasting about the need to get good stuff but is dumbfounded when candidates refuse to join because the company offer no EPF and SOCSO. He thinks these statutory contribution shouldn't matter so much and candidates are not looking at the big picture. Finally he totally judge a person totally by the looks. Too many times he rejected candidate without viewing their detailed resume on the basis on their photo posted is not interesting. Telltale sign this guy isn't really thinking about getting capable candidates to meet the company goals. All he wants is people who look nice. Final Part - Late Salary, mass resignation I left within 1 week after tendering my resignation. The Chairman seems oblivious about why I would tender my resignation as he believes "Things are moving". I told him what is wrong with his whole way of doing things and he refuse to believe he's in any wrong. that cemented my decision to leave. I still wonder back then whether this Estonian chairman is a scammer or simply a terrible terrible businessman. However when I read this two articles about scam startups, I knew, this guy is a scammer. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/295304https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-got-scam...up-574ced8acdff It's quite disturbing how I share a similar experience with Penny Kim and her experience with WrkRiot, from the over talkative and constant name dropping founder to the late payments. I believe that TF is now at the verge of dying as the chairman will not be able to get any investors (after witnessing his "business pitch" in BNM I really doubt someone is gonna throw to him millions). Company now has 3 full time staff and 3 interns, down from 13 when I first joined. With property agent and intern providers blacklisting him I doubt he can ever run operations again. Not to mention TF hasn't been providing EPF,SOCSO,EIS (these are provident funds contribution and employee insurance which is compulsory to provide in Malaysia by the employers) or Tax for the employees it's only a matter of time before they die. Still it was a refreshing experience for me. I guess I don't have family commitment so I didn't come out bad from this. Can't say for the other employees who quit their stable job to work for this scam start up. [link] [comments]  |
| Need advice on small startup beverage company. Posted: 09 Jul 2018 07:44 PM PDT I am currently thinking about starting up a small beverage business making non-alcoholic drinks that would probably fall under Sports or hydration. My market would be co-op markets and such, more of a hipster drink. I do not have a product name yet registered, I do have a great product recipe and approval from a lot of friends, and yes I am aware that I need more than just approval from friends. I need advice as to what I need to start this company from the ground up, everything from bottling, marketing, labeling Etc.....where to start Any advice would be greatly appreciated PS I'm on the west coast in California [link] [comments]  |
| [Advice] Small startup handle frictions between research and product teams Posted: 09 Jul 2018 09:24 PM PDT Hi all, First time posting here. I work for a small startups (<15 people) doing awesome things with Computer Vision. Most of the team is made up of researchers (Research Engs, Deep Learning Engs) with a small subset being full stack and software engineers. During the first year of the company there was a very strong focus on the research side of things (hence the big research team) but as the need for deploying and having a prototype and then a product arose a lot of the focus has shifted towards production and packaging parts of the research into something usable and sellable. Now, the problem that we are facing is that there is friction between the teams. On one side the research guys are only interested in doing more experiments and generating new ideas while the product team some times has a hard time to package everything and deploy the code since it is not in a very usable, readable, testable way. We have been trying to converge into a mix of R&D where the research team needs to be aware of how their code will be deployed in order to attempt to minimize friction and delays. Have any of you faced similar things? Is this normal? Thanks :D [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Jul 2018 06:44 PM PDT Many words spilled this week about founders' motivation to start companies, mostly by people who aren't founders. I start companies because I want to control my destiny. The corporate world is as insane as feudal Europe sometimes, and some of us don't want to be someone's court jester or kiss a brass ring. I don't know if it's a noble motivation but I do know that I'd rather achieve that level of independence alongside team members I appreciate and who enjoy that same sensation (co-founders and employees) and that if you're lucky, like I am with TrueAccord, it aligns with a business that actually makes a social difference and will be huge. Given the above, it's clear that exit calculations at Seed or D make little sense because an exit is never the goal. I don't think of companies as solely a mechanism for transfer of wealth. Naturally, it's easier for me to write this after I've had an exit. It's also clear that the title "serial entrepreneur" is as silly as "serially failing to achieve independence". You don't get married hoping to get divorced in two years, or at least I hope you don't. You get married for the happily ever after. Company founding also isn't, for me, about being right once and going the angel investor to VC route. My company isn't a pet project to show that I can qualify for the next level in the distributed corporate world that a part of Silicon Valley has become. There's nothing wrong with the above approaches. They're just not my thing. I respect other people and their choices and frankly, many of them are smarter than starting and scaling a company because they are less painful. I'm the one who'll be chugging away ten years from now, running a three thousands person company worth a significant amount, fighting unhealthy routines and putting out ever larger fires and whatever else you need to do at that scale (hopefully not playing golf. I dislike golf). That's just my thing. [link] [comments]  |
| What's a fair percentage to give an investor that puts up $200k for startup capital? Posted: 09 Jul 2018 12:37 PM PDT Hi All -- If I'm asking an investor for $200,000 and our sales forecast is $2,000,000 by the third year of business, what would be a fair percentage to give an investor? Some people have said 10%, 15% or 20%. Our first year sales forecast is $200,000, the second year is $1,000,000 and the third year being $2,000,000. We have a meeting with an investor at the end of July so I want to make sure I'm pitching the right number. I know negotiation is always on the table. Thank you in advance!!!!!!! [link] [comments]  |
| How Silicon Valley stops Innovation Posted: 09 Jul 2018 09:52 PM PDT Silicon Valley promotes their amazing ability to build innovative products and services that change the world. The reality is that this is for the most part a lie. The most "innovative" companies have actually done very simple things that for the most part aren't very special. This isn't usually fault of the founders, rather, the ignorant "investment" community whose real purpose is to hold back amazing people. Uber should've released self-driving cars in 2012. Google Fiber should've been in the USA everywhere by 2010 and global by 2011. Apple's products are absolutely trash considering the amount of bugs they have, yet they have "all the money in the world" for development. This isn't the fault of Travis Kalanick (he's a fucking smart person, and people that call him arrogant are jealous) or every team member at Fiber. It's more the lack of imagination and creativity (along with jealousy) that many "wealthy" individuals have regarding the future. I've found that in Silicon Valley, you will develop an up and coming world-changing technology (or have a full idea and plan for it), and jealous investors will take control of the company and screw it over (this is just one example). There is so much fraud with products (MagicQueef being one of them) and the announcements made in general. Snapchat is a joke that I will not even bother discussing. God forbid an actual self-made teen (as I was) comes along and tries to make a name for himself. Almost INSTANTLY I was ousted by frauds such as Vinod Khosla (who is an ignorant, broke, and sad person) whose life depends on his false billionaire title. Tesla cars are made in China, their mileage is about 1/3 of what is advertised (sorry unless you drive like an ignorant Tesla driver), and you're not saving the world by driving the car. I've lived in China and there's nothing wrong with having cars made in China, but you can't make it such a selling point (I know that "made in USA" is not the main reason people buy Teslas). I've found the general rule of thumb to be that Silicon Valley will do nothing but hold you back from actually releasing your world-changing technology. The ignorant VC community (or even employees of their corporations) will talk about how expensive it will be to develop a new technology. They're either lying, or they're just ignorant (which is unfortunate, although I have no patience for ignorance). Beyond that, there is the basic level fraud from organizations such as Startup Grind, which is largely filled with aspiring sanitation engineers. Basically you will run into a circle of crap events with toolbag "founders" that have nothing but crap advice. I've spoken at one of their events, am I a tool now? :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Jul 2018 12:40 PM PDT I've got an app idea and want to give it a go on a basic python shell (just lines of text being produced when something happens). I reckon i could mock up a working prototype, though it would have no design features or anything, literally would be your bog standard 'hello world' style shell. Is this enough for an MVP, alongside me creating some screenshots of what i would wan amy app to look like? Thanks PS: What are the most basic MVP's you've seen? i've heard Dropbox just had a video before getting investment, but surely they had some sort of functions software before that? FYI: I am not a coder, I just did a GCSE in Computer Science where we learnt a bit of python and reckon i could crack out a basic code [link] [comments]  |
| SaaS Startup Interview Questions Posted: 09 Jul 2018 11:33 AM PDT Hi all, I'm in the process of interviewing for a director of sales position at a SaaS startup. All of my experience up until this point is in Sales Enablement so I feel like I'm lacking when it comes to looking at SaaS metrics as I've never had to do any forecasting or anything similar to that. The company gave me an excel spreadsheet with the following categories and I'm supposed to talk about what I noticed was missing. They also are asking for me to talk about what comes to mind with the individual numbers for each rep. Rep Name - $ Cost of Paying Rep - # new deals - # of current customers upsold - MRR Net New Revenue Ex: Joe Smith - $3000 - 60 new deals - 70 upsells - $4500 MRR Net New Would be grateful for any insight about which metrics are missing here and what I should be looking out for in terms of the individual reps. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for a marketing co-founder in the UK? Posted: 09 Jul 2018 11:55 AM PDT Hi, I recently launched my service a few days ago and I realised that I'm not good at marketing and I don't like it. So I was recommended to find a co-founder that is good at marketing. I did searches around and I'm not really sure how to start find one. I'm in my early twenties and new to this field. Where would you start? Are there any marketing focussed people who is interested? Although he should be marketing driven, he should know the basics of the technical side or willing to learn this field. About My Service So my service is a platform where people can review software project by exchanging feedback with each other. The problem I'm solving is allowing project owners to get valuable feedback on their projects and improve their quality overall. There isn't really any competition with this platform. I launched this service a few days ago and I got a few sign ups with no budget. I'm on a low budget and I don't have the experience/skills to market this service properly. [link] [comments]  |
| Thinking about leaving , need advices Posted: 09 Jul 2018 03:05 AM PDT Hello, developer here , I got approached by a friend to make an application for him , his project had potential so i asked him to make it a startup and that I'll take care of all the technical if I have a cut, now we still didn't incorporated but I'm already working on the app , we didn't discuss the cut yet for each , but he is getting more than 60% for sure , even tho I'm still working on the mvp of the app , I joined him because he has an audience already on social media that is very active , but the guy is very inexperienced as a startup CEO . Also I feel he doesn't treat me as a cofounder , what cut should be fair for me , isn't 50% 50% the normal one ? I wonder what decisions he will take , he has been thinking a lot about taxes and his will to incorporate in some far not known country so he doesn't pay the big tax here in Europe , I'm really in doubt , what do you think about that ? sorry for the bad english [link] [comments]  |
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