Startups Should I be worried? |
- Should I be worried?
- Am I a Confused Mess?? Developer and Business mind are Duking it out!!
- Recently called lawyer (Ontario) looking to pivot into working for a startup. Where to Start?
- How do you treat employees? And how do you motivate them?
- Should I file TWO LLCs or just ONE and then do separate work in each?
- Should my LLC name be the same of the website
- Market validation when copying existing business?
- Anyone ever do a mailer or coupon book? This is my plan to do it.
- I have a website concept that I have written a narrative for which includes market info, purpose, and the problem it solves. Not knowing anything about building a complex website, what is my next step?
- Looking for advice
- How did you get your first 100 paying users?
- The Art of Entrepreneurship
| Posted: 06 Sep 2018 10:49 AM PDT So my friend (actually my ex-Boss) and I decided to work on a startup. He came up with the idea, which I think is brilliant, and he's made it clear that he wants to be the CEO. I'm ok with that, as he's already working as a Sr. Director at a Fortune 500 company, and he has exec and upper management experience under his belt. Lastly, he also helped me get my current job, so he is a great friend. Unlike my friend, I have an MBA+Product Management+some dev experience. The problem is, I'm doing all the work (wireframing, business reports, user validation, market research), while he states that his strategy must be followed, he will make all the decisions, (from where to find the devs to what to name the company), he's stated he will never quit his job (evenings and weekend project only), and I am only allowed 30% equity. I've tried explaining the concept of Slicing the pie, fair equity for work put in, the need to work on the startup every night, random user validation tests (which he is afraid of doing, and has asked me to stop). Again, it seems like I am doing all the work, while he is living the Wantrapreneur lifestyle, basing his philosophy on the HBO show Silicon Valley. I have to admit, his idea is brilliant, but my gut feeling is that I shouldn't work with him. I don't want to pull a Zuck, by stealing the idea and losing a friend. I'd appreciate any thoughts from the community? [link] [comments]  |
| Am I a Confused Mess?? Developer and Business mind are Duking it out!! Posted: 06 Sep 2018 07:18 PM PDT So, I have a dilemma and it's really killing me. Some might think it's a good problem to have and I actually agree but my brain is confused. Here it is... I'm a developer and also a business minded person. I'd like to do a software startup like so many of you all. My problem is that I'm splitting my time between software development and business activities trying to ramp up and I feel I'm not getting anything done because my brain is just a confused mess doing 2 things. I'm trying to become a better developer so I can build my software and trying to ramp up on digital marketing and CEO type stuff. I'm not retaining anything, actually, and my skills are suffering. What would you do? I need to do less and focus on one thing right now. Which one should it be? I understand the choice is up to me but I'd like to hear your personal stories and opinions. [link] [comments]  |
| Recently called lawyer (Ontario) looking to pivot into working for a startup. Where to Start? Posted: 06 Sep 2018 01:40 PM PDT Long time lurker here. I'm a late 20s recently called lawyer in Ontario. I previously articled, and worked, in litigation, and strongly disliked the work atmosphere and its utter lack of innovation. Other than law and my other academic pursuits, however, one thing has remained constant in my life – my love for innovation and technology. In fact, I actually ran a small contracting business prior to law school that provided app and website development services which allowed me to travel for much of the year. About six months ago, I was fortunate to go to a local talk from a fast-growing startup from the US. I was enamoured at the talk, I was on the edge of my seat, and there I realized that my real passion is the combination of law and technology is in my future in some way or another. The atmosphere I felt from that startup made me feel so much more at home than the dour firms I have worked to present. I felt that I could really contribute and have the will to work hard for the betterment of the company and feel fulfilled professionally. Anyway, I was wondering where I can start looking for startup positions specifically for lawyers and/or legal esque opportunities. I've tried AngelList and other startup job websites, but they appear to be focused more on technical and/or marketing jobs. Also, most of the In-House counsel positions seem to be at more established non-startup companies. I've taken to sending emails directly to the management of various startups to get my foot in the door. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| How do you treat employees? And how do you motivate them? Posted: 06 Sep 2018 03:28 AM PDT Just a talk on how and why. To get some inspiration. At my startup we give this one developer 3 days a week where he can work from home. I have become "friends" with him as much as you can in a boss/employee way. I try to see our employees as "family" and want them to be happy. We can't afford the biggest paychecks, so we try to motivate them with freedom and quality of life. (Food, fruit, soda, dinners, days out of office etc.) But of course we have people who need to be at the office, so want to have some inspiration. What do you do? [link] [comments]  |
| Should I file TWO LLCs or just ONE and then do separate work in each? Posted: 06 Sep 2018 06:09 PM PDT Hello everyone, I have two separate ideas in mind and I won't to work on both at the same time. I have two options to go, 1: to file on LLC with a very general name that I can launch two websites under it, or to launch two separate LLCs, which one do you recommend? How about the legal ramifications? For example, if one of them goes bankrupt then will I be more secure to have separate llc's so that no one can sue both? On the other hand, I"m thinking that if I file only one llc then it will be easier to handle tax and other duties. Which way is more reasonable to pursue? [link] [comments]  |
| Should my LLC name be the same of the website Posted: 06 Sep 2018 04:42 PM PDT Hey Guys, I'm in the process of launching a startup that sells antiques and I have bought some cool domain name for it. But the thing is that the domain name is too specific and it does not make sense for me to name my llc the same thing. Can I register my llc with a more general name such as (just for the sake of our example) antique seller and then in my website down the main page I write something like [websitename] is a product of [llcname]? How unusual this will be? I'm very new to filing a startup so please keep that in mind :) THanks [link] [comments]  |
| Market validation when copying existing business? Posted: 06 Sep 2018 07:17 AM PDT Hi there, I'm currently in progress of copying other successful business from another continent. Im not an insider of that business, but it just happens this product has not been released in my country yet. The business is not a first ofc and has several other competitors in other countries around the globe. It's an IT product related to gig/freelancing economy. My roadmap: I'l spend around 4-6 months building the technology which is going to be more than just a MVP but rather a fully minimum working product with key features - as there are only two of us and probably it would take 1-2 years to fully develop with all possible features. When I say 4-6 months I mean we are already on steroids how fast and lean we are developing everything, obviously there is always space for improvement, but I'd say we are 70-80% efficient of whats possible to us. Until technology is finished we will take no investment. After the initial technology is build growth hacking roadmap will jump in to scale as quick as possible in the country and beyond. The only market validation Ive done for my country was to find any possible competitors. Found none direct, but several indirect ones which one way or another way proved that demand exists and its been there for years ( its labour market which is always on demand). I'm feeling a bit anxious as I've heard/read hundred of times "validate first", but in this scenario would you validate the market even more? [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone ever do a mailer or coupon book? This is my plan to do it. Posted: 06 Sep 2018 12:14 PM PDT Hi Everyone! I'm looking to create a coupon book or mailers that would go out 4 times a year. I am going to have a local print shop make the flyers for me with 4-6 business on the flyer with coupons for like $5 off of $20 or more. Or similar type coupons. I'm wondering how to convince local businesses to pay me to send mailers out to the area. Any tips? I'm thinking if I get 5 business I can charge them $400 for 1 flyer $750 to be on the first and the 2nd flyer. They would be sent to about 5000 local addresses. How would you go about convincing local businesses to pay? What are your thoughts on this? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2018 11:31 AM PDT My professional background is accounting (public audit) so developing a business on paper was pretty natural for me. Now I am at the point where I need to make a MVP which would be my website. I know almost nothing about code. I need to at least build a website that would serve as a functional example to how my website solves a problem. Does anyone have any suggestions? Additional note: I just attended Amazon Webservices Startup Day. It was way too technical for me to get any benefit out of it. Kind of disappointing. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2018 06:25 AM PDT Hello! This is my first time posting here and I'm wondering if you guys can give me some advice. Im 20 years old and I'm currently working part time. I want to start my own food business but don't have much experience starting a business. My end goal is to own a small restaurant within the next 10 years, but I want to build up to that by working weekend faires and festivals to get my food product known and then get a good customer base. I was wondering if anyone who has experience starting a food business could give me some advice on what are some good actions I can take now for the future of my business. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How did you get your first 100 paying users? Posted: 06 Sep 2018 08:36 AM PDT We are about to launch our app mid October and I have been researching ideas around how to target early users. Our target audience is primarily immigrants who practise informal savings and I have been walking around immigrant neighborhoods getting folks to sign up but thats been a no go. (I am probably a good UX person and a bad sales person!). Should I be looking into paid FB ads this early? Anyone else have experience with a difficult market? Any advice on the paid acquisition route or any other traction route would be great! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2018 11:57 AM PDT To me, being an entrepreneur is like MacGyvre, an 80s action TV show where the main character would always use the things around him to escape from his enemies. He's the type of character that would turn a dildo into a grenade launcher to blow a hole out of the prison wall, then use the bricks as body armor to protect himself from the onslaught of 100+ police officers shooting at him and actually survive. The art of entrepreneurship is the ability to use the limited resources around you to build something greater than you could've ever imagined. Whether it's leveraging Facebook, Reddit, or Youtube, if you provide something of true value, your business will speak for itself. In this article, I specifically want to discuss how to start with no money andstill manage to build wealth in the right way. This formula will allow you to earn the money you've always wanted to earn and use it to fulfill your greatest dreams and beyond. I will explain my points by using my personal experiences. By the way, I'm never going to sell a book (I'll only give them away for free). Phase I: Starting Out with $0 When I dropped out of high school, I had $10,000 saved up (it was entirely money I made myself) from some methods that, while they didn't really harm anyone, were not completely legitimate. Now, the goal of this article is to focus on building legitimate businesses, therefore I will save the experiences I did to earn this initial $10,000 for another post. With that being said, I didn't spend any of my savings to start my first legitimate business, Appsitude. I was afraid to invest any significant amount of money in any business idea because I was worried the $10,000 I saved up would disappear quickly. As the story goes, I dropped out of high school in December 2014 and posted craigslist ads offering app development services (with no knowledge of how to code). Within 2 weeks of posting my first ad I'd gotten my first client for $16,500, with $7,500 paid upfront. I used some of this initial $7,500 to pay for developers in India and a designer. They completed the project and within three months I had around $100,000 worth of contracts (that were paid out over the course of the year and early 2016). When you start any business idea, I highly recommend you do something that costs very little to start. If you can make it succeed organically on its own (without paying money for ads, etc.), then you have a great potential business. Now when I say don't spend any money, if you feel the need to have a website landing page or the sorts, it's okay to spend that $50 (or more) to get it going. I'm not saying refrain from spending any money. My only point is that you should spend as little as possible to validate the concept. My point is that you should test the idea by offering the service/product to others as if it's already been made to test their reactions. A friend of mine told me that he "pretended" to have a painting company and ended up getting £300 painting gig for 2 hours of work. This is a great example of a test on a small scale. Now imagine that my friend began marketing his services on Craigslist and other relevant sites. He could then start getting more gigs and begin contracting them out to other painters while making a nice margin (without doing the painting himself). This is the exact model I had for Appsitude. I started an app development company because it was a validated market where I knew I could get contracts that were almost risk-free for me (since I only had to spend money if I earned money). I didn't want to build my own app and try to make it viral because I knew that it'd be expensive (relative to the $10,000 I had saved up) and very difficult to do since I felt that it wasn't my path. If you have a lot of money saved up, it does not mean you should spend a lot of money just to get a business going. I've found that the most successful businesses are the ones that originally started with minimum capital. For example, you may look at certain video game companies announcing their skyrocketing sales and all of a sudden everyone assumes it means the company is doing well. At the end of the day, profit is the only thing that matters (if you want to make it succeed). It doesn't matter if you sold $50m copies of your video game if you spent $65m to build it. Another example is of the many startups that have raised ridiculous sums of money (which often lie about how much they raised) and focus on gaining users rather than profit. At the end of the day, receiving investments in your company is still considered a profit if it means you have earned new money to accomplish what you want. Despite what I just said, I do plan to start a video game company at the end of the year and I want to make all of the games completely free (although extremely amazing and high-quality). I will "lose" millions of dollars but I'm willing to make the sacrifice in order to bring amazing fun for everyone and myself. So, as I'm saying, do Phase II: Now You Have MoneyOnce you've started your first business that has been reasonably profitable, you will likely start thinking of ways to make your business grow larger or pursue other ideas. When Appsitude starting making hundreds of thousands of dollars, I began realizing that, while it was a profitable business, I wanted to follow my passion. This turned out to be Cazza, my 3D printing construction startup. I used the leftover funds from Appsitude to invest in designing our new technology for Cazza. In March 2017 we'd started really running out of money (since I stopped working on Appsitude at the time) and thankfully we received our first 100k investment. Since I'd already made money before starting Cazza, it allowed me to understand the principles I needed to follow for any potential business I wanted to start. I always spent as little as I could on Cazza to maximize our results and not run out of money. As you may know, I ended up losing most of the funding after my ex-business partner stole it, but that isn't a big deal because I always bounce back. The main point of Phase II is that once you have some experience and feel confident enough to invest your hard-earned money into a new idea (that requires money to get it going), you should do so. I've heard so many stories of people earning a lot of money in a random field, whether investment banking or something else, and they go invest a lot of their money in a shitty idea. They waste millions of dollars on a business concept that could've been validated for $1,000. You cannot lie to yourself if your business model is not going to work. You must also remember that just because your business hasn't taken off yet, it doesn't mean it never will. It is up to you to decide whether or not your business idea will eventually succeed. I launched the first version of Kelsey Coin in January and it had almost no users. Even as of writing this article today, we only have 51 users. The total investment was around $25,000 for building all of the platforms I want, and I still have not yet made a profit. The thing is, I don't care because I know that this business model requires certain things to be achieved before it will take off. Kelsey Coin alone, while amazing, depends on Black Market World and World Home (which gives more places to use Kelsey Coin) in order to gain a larger following. Until these two other platforms are launched, Kelsey Coin will not become the massive success that it will soon become. There are also certain industries that are a lot harder to get into than others. Unless you feel really confident in your ability to market music and make money from it, entering the music industry (even as a label) is very difficult. The reason I say this is because it is very possible to do well, but there are far more things you must do in order to make a profit. I look at the music industry as this: the artist will get paid for shows, endorsements, and a cut from the amount of people that listen to the artist's music on places like Spotify. Now, unless you manage to make massively viral videos like 6ix9ine, it will be very hard to make a lot of money in the music industry. 6ix9ine is a 6-figure artist who does well for himself although it can be hard to stay at the top without doing certain things for attention. I have a lot of respect for 6ix9ine and I fully support everything he's said on the news, even if it was for trolling/attention. Why? Because I've done the same. Now keep in mind, the other issue with the music industry is that you have to continuously make hit songs that justify people paying you $30,000 for one show. Of course you can leave a legacy where old songs you made 10 years ago bring money in today, but it's not the best way to depend on remaining financially successful. At the same time, the music industry is filled with leeches who want to take a cut of every dollar you make. This is the same as other industries, but in my personal experience, the music and movie industries are quite vicious. I'm entering the music industry (and soon film industry) but I'm doing it out of my passion rather than trying to make money. When I say this, of course I'm not saying it's bad to make money from the music industry, I am just specifically saying that I personally don't care to make money from it. The thing is, once my music does take off, it will help my other businesses earn more money, so it always positively affects me in other ways even if I don't earn money from Spotify plays or shows. Although, if someone is adamant they want to pay me for a show, I won't say no. At the end of the day, you must always face the realities of the business you are in. You should always keep a positive attitude, but don't blind yourself from the truth. One of my friends has a million-dollar revenue "blockchain" company. He knows that the hype of blockchain will soon disappear. Instead of lying to himself that the business will always continue to make the same amount of money it does now, he is already preparing himself for the next stage of his business and other ideas along the way (because he's smart). Phase III: The World Is YoursOnce you have all of the money you could've ever wanted and more, it's time to give back (and even before then it's nice to give back). I never realized how much money can make people happy. In November 2017 I went out with my friends from Canada and we talked to random homeless people in Hollywood. We listened to their stories and gave them help if they needed. It completely changed my life. I realized that a lot (not all) of homeless people are more normal than I thought. It gave me a very positive outlook on the world because I realized that very soon we will be able to completely end poverty. When I first began Cazza, I knew we'd be able to reduce construction costs and help build proper housing for everyone in the world. The difference is that I didn't realize how big of an impact it would be until I met the actual people I'd soon be helping. There will be a certain stage in your life where you will begin to see beyond money. A lot of broke people like to say that my life is surrounded by money but this is an ignorant statement. They assume that because I've become financially successful, my life only revolves around my net worth. The irony is that I am one of the least materialistic people on the planet and I could lose every material thing to day and not have a care. As I said on another post, I know this to be true because it has already happened to me. I won't go into details of the things I've done for people even after I lost it all, but I know one day they will tell others what occurred. I don't care about having my name as the person who is "oh so generous," I simply want people to know that if I can be generous while on my last dime, so can they. At the end of the day we are all humans and we have to work together to continue bringing a beautiful future for the world. There will be a day where people no longer feel the need to screw other people over because they won't feel desperate for money. I believe, this day will come sooner than any of us imagine. [link] [comments]  |
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