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    Home Unlabelled Here are the results from asking 180 YouTubers to do an unboxing video. Entrepreneur

    Here are the results from asking 180 YouTubers to do an unboxing video. Entrepreneur

    October 27, 2018

    Here are the results from asking 180 YouTubers to do an unboxing video. Entrepreneur

    Here are the results from asking 180 YouTubers to do an unboxing video.

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 05:34 AM PDT

    I also made this available as a Halloween-themed blog post here.    

       

    I run a site called Candy Japan, which ships boxes of Japanese surprise candy to subscribers around the world, twice a month. I've been trying to find an approach to promote the site effectively through YouTube, as it could be a great way to reach a lot of people looking for new things to try. Earlier I tried YouTube ads. When that didn't work, many commented that instead of burning money on ads, I should just send YouTubers free samples instead.

    I had already done this before with some YouTubers. One unboxing video ended up getting millions of views, but didn't result in any sales. I still believed that if I just tried different approaches, eventually something would work.

    Sending samples to a lot of tiny channels

    Here's what my thinking was for the current experiment. Huge channels may occasionally agree to feature Candy Japan, but it will be a bumpy ride with a small number of videos, some not working out at all. Doubling down on the ones that do work (if they exist) would be hard, as there are only so many big yet relevant YouTube channels out there.

    On the other hand there are probably thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of channels out there in the 1-10k subscriber range. If each just brought in two customers on average, there are so many of them out there that scaling would be straightforward. I would get a stream of sweet sweet data to analyze, enabling me to improve the approach over time.

    Starting with a small-scale test

    180 channels contacted

    Since I had no idea if this would work, I wanted to start small, but still big enough to learn something. I decided 180 channels to contact would be a decent number. I could at the very least get a pretty good idea of the response rate, maybe even run a split test.

    I wanted to pick a category where I could find a lot of channels related to it, and one that might have an audience interested in Japan. I decided to go for cosplayers. I found some websites where cosplayers could upload their costume photos, and many users linked to their YouTube channels from their profiles. I gathered all the channels I could find into a spreadsheet.

    Then I manually visited each channel to make sure I knew how to address the YouTuber properly by their name or the name of their team, and to find out how to contact them. This turned out to be quite time-consuming, someone might only link to Tumblr from their channel, then from Tumblr would link to their DeviantArt page, which might then finally have their contact information.

    50 channels agreed

    After I had a large list of people to contact, I wasn't sure what to say in my email, so I wrote a bunch of different versions and tested them many approaches. I learned that to get someone to agree to an unboxing, it is best not to ask for their shipping address up front. First explain the service briefly, then ask if they are interested. If they say yes, then ask for shipping address.

    Asking for the address in the initial mail seemed to be off-putting and resulted in less people agreeing. I tested other things as well, but that one had the biggest impact.

    In the end 50 channels (28%) out of the 180 contacted agreed to make a video and gave me their shipping address. A much higher rate than I had anticipated, with my personal guess being that only 10% would agree.

    42 samples shipped

    For various reasons I ended up not shipping to everyone. Some responded so slowly that I considered the whole experiment over by the time I received their shipping address, for others I may messed up with communication, such as noticing Facebook messages too late.

    33 boxes reached destination

    Well, maybe more, but I found that international package tracking does not actually work 24% of the time, so it is impossible to be sure. Four boxes were returned to me as the recipient was not available or decided not to accept the shipment, and for 5 I am not sure what happened because of the tracking issue.

    On average it took 2 weeks for an airmailed package to be delivered, shipping time ranging from 4 to 42 days.

    17 videos made

    After the boxes were delivered, I waited 2 months before tallying up how many people actually made a video. While waiting I also periodically nagged people to ask how their video was coming.

    From getting the box, it took on average 20 days for a YouTuber to make a video. The fastest person made it in 1 day, slowest after 2 months. Since only a fourth of people actually made a video, if I want one video made I need to send 2.5 boxes out. That more than doubles the cost of goods and shipping.

    You can see all the videos here.

    Results

    Zero sales.

    After videos had been out for about two months, each only averaged 166 views, for a grand total of 2826 views. This would have been OK if these small channels had such a devoted subscriber base that each would have resulted in a sale or two, but that did not happen. No noticeable change in traffic from YouTube or an uptick in sales, no-one mentioned buying because of the channels (I ask everyone), and not a single claim of the 10% off coupons I gave to the YouTubers.

    Conclusion

    The entire process of finding YouTubers to contact, figuring out how to contact them and actually sending the messages, then having back-and-forth to discover their shipping address and answer any questions they had, preparing and shipping the boxes, nagging people to make the videos, and finally compiling the results was very time-consuming.

    Buying all of the goods and shipping all the packages cost about $1000 in total. Buying the same number of views with YouTube ads would have cost less than $10. On a CPM basis this was ten times more expensive than advertising on prime-time TV.

    Considering the results, I am becoming pretty reluctant to send out free samples for unboxing videos. I would love to be proven wrong though, so if you run a decent sized channel that you believe could be a good match, feel free to PM me.

    submitted by /u/bemmu
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    two devs looking for project

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 02:50 AM PDT

    Who are we?

    ​

    I'm 26 and have a masters degree in mobile computing. My friend is 28 years old and has a bachelors in computer science. We both live in Europe. And have a wide skillset(backend development, frontend development, mobile development, …) and have about 1-10 hours each every week to devote to a project we want to do after work.

    ​

    Why are we here?

    ​

    We both want to do something more with our dev skills than just do our 9-5 job but we have struggles coming up with a good idea or a problem that needs to be solved. We know there are a lot of people who have great ideas but don't have the technical skills to fulfil them.

    ​

    What are we looking for?

    ​

    We are looking for a project that has no pressure to be released within the next few weeks. Like i said above we have about 1-10 hours each a week to work on the project meaning a really big project will take it's time and we have no plan to quit our jobs for now.

    ​

    What we expect from you?

    ​

    An idea we can get behind and believe in that we think is feasible. If the idea is something to big to achieve and needs a 10 man dev team to make we are not your guys. We expect you to complement us. We are not the most creative types so you should at least bring something to the table besides the idea like marketing, design, sales background or anything we can't do. and last but not least we do not expect to be paid all we are looking for is equity.

    ​

    If all of this sounds right to you or you have more questions send me a PM and we can talk.

    submitted by /u/kyosuki
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    The hardest close you will ever have (Do you agree?)

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 11:44 AM PDT

    If you're in this subreddit and are thinking about owning a business, I want to help you understand what you should be really thinking about.

    ​

    First, there's a misconception I would like to highlight here. We have the idea that a successful business owner / entrepreneur has to be incredible at selling a product to be successful.

    ​

    Although that may be valid, we must first understand a true salesperson / entrepreneur is extremely gifted at selling multiple things to multiple people in multiple capacities. Let me break it down for you.

    ​

    Yes, we know the entrepreneur / salesperson has to sell a product. However, that same entrepreneur sales person has much more to sell to be truly successful in all facets of his/her life.

    For example...

    He may have to sell his family/significant other on why he needs to spend time working on that product,

    his employees as to why they need to help him make/produce the product,

    his vendors on why needs them to give him a lower price on the materials to produce the product,

    his clients on why his product is better than the competitors product,

    And the absolute most important of them all, the extremely gifted salesperson must: Sell himself on why it's worth pushing forward and bringing about the resources he needs to be successful.

    ​

    Your hardest close is going to be yourself. Do not let anyone fool you. If you can't sell yourself on your ability to grow, run, operate a business than you've failed at the starting gate. If you don't learn how to wake up everyday and sell yourself that your idea/product/business is going to be successful - I've got news for you - no one else will believe you.

    ​

    Selling someone something is based on a feeling. An emotion. The most successful salespeople carry with them an emotion of enthusiasm! They have confidence imbedded in them that goes deeper than giving yourself a 5 minute pep talk before you walk in the door, and blasting a sad drake song as soon as you leave before you go to the next prospect.

    ​

    Enthusiasm and confidence needs to be embedded in yourself through repetition.

    ​

    But, this principle is so much deeper than sales. It's the secret to happiness. Any of these resonate with you?

    ​

    Hard times? Sell yourself on why you need to push forward.

    Struggling to sell your product or service? Sell yourself on why you need to change your approach

    Wanting to start a business? Sell yourself on taking the leap and quitting your job to do so

    Not happy where you work? Sell yourself on why you're more valuable and would be better off elsewhere

    Overweight? Sell yourself on the benefits of working out and eating right

    Single? Sell yourself on how you deserve to find someone worthwhile

    ​

    As you can see, your life can change dramatically, you just have to sell yourself on the idea that it can.

    ​

    So, where am I coming up with this?

    ​

    Two years ago I was miserable. I worked a 9-5, slaved away at a bank dreaming, wishing and not doing. I knew I had what it took to be an entrepreneur. I would read business insider, entrepreneur websites, and anything that talked about owning/starting a business. "One day" was my mantra.

    ​

    Until enough was enough. I had to sell myself that if hard times fell on me, I knew I would find my way out.

    ​

    That was two years ago. Here I am now, and I own a Residential House Painting We have over 150 5-star reviews, and my company brings in about $55,000 per month. I never would have done this had I not "sold" myself on the idea that it was possible.

    ​

    I first learned to sell myself to take the leap, and then sold my employees on why I was the best company to work for. I took that same idea and sold my vendors on giving me the best prices, and sell my customers daily on why we're the best fit for them. It starts with you!

    ​

    In short, start selling yourself on all areas that need improvement in your life... just as I did above, write down things you're unhappy with. Next to it, write your strategy for how you're going to sell yourself. It's simple, but very effective!

    ​

    Thanks for reading. Best of luck out there!

    submitted by /u/Byobcoach
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    Lessons learned from starting and shutting down a $1.3M-a-year business

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 01:37 PM PDT

    Hey r/Entrepreneur! I started a company a few years back that sold meal subscriptions online. We made $1.3M in annual revenue, but almost no profit and eventually had to shut down. I was recently interviewed by Rich at Failory.com. I thought I'd share the interview here with you guys!

    Hi Steve! What's your background, and what are you currently working on? 🧑

    Hi! My name is Steve and I'm a 28-year-old entrepreneur from Toronto, Canada. Though at the moment I'm "digital nomad"-ing in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Before I jumped headfirst into the world of entrepreneurship at 24, I was a management consultant at Oliver Wyman. I co-founded Chowdy with a childhood friend and ex-housemate in order to solve the problem we both personally had, which was that we were spending way too much money eating out. To solve that, Chowdy offered subscription-based prepared meals plans to Toronto's young professionals at a flat $7.99 per meal, with plans ranging from 6 meals per week to 14 meals per week. In terms of how we divided up responsibilities, I was in charge of operations, technology, and finance while my partner was responsible for customer service, marketing, and outreach. In reality, we both did whatever was needed. We had some success with this setup for a while. We grew Chowdy to $1.3M in annual revenue in 2 years, a team of 8 staff, and successfully pitched on CBC's Dragon's Den (though we turned down the funding offer). A big reason for the success was an innovation we created that no other prepared meal companies were doing: we didn't deliver. Rather, we had our customers pick up their meals from one of our partner cafes in downtown Toronto. These "hubs", as we called it, were independent local cafes at prime downtown locations; the cafes would provide both the space for the fridge and the staff to track customer pickups. In return, we paid them a relatively small fee of $500-$800 per month, plus all the foot traffic from our customer base. The reason this model worked so well was that it solved one of the biggest problems meal delivery companies face: the extremely high cost of last-mile delivery. It allowed us to cut distribution cost per meal to less than $1, compared to $5-$8 for a typical meal delivery company (which, by the way, is why none of them are profitable). The hub system allowed us to scale up very quickly. Looking back at the 2.5 years we ran Chowdy, its eventual failure was the confluence of many factors from unsustainable business model to cobbled-together operations, but the straw the broke camel's back was regulatory (and ironically, related to our hub system). This experience was ultimately very educational for me from both the successes we had and the causes of its end, and I'm applying a lot of what I learned to the project I'm currently working on - The Travel Brief - which is a crowdsourced travel guide to off-the-beaten-path destinations around the world. While these two businesses are so different, I think a lot of tactics are the same, like how to acquire customers, how to improve visibility, how to find a sustainable model, and how to deal with the emotional rollercoaster as a founder. While we're still on the very early stages of The Travel Brief, having just launched it 3 months ago, we're already seeing some promising growth and at the moment we have ~200 users (~100 monthly active), 2000 monthly views, and 20-30 new pieces of content generated by our users every week, and most metrics are trending positively.‍  

    What motivated you to start Chowdy? 💡

    I've always known that I want to be my own boss at some point. By 2014, I started to seriously think about starting something, anything. I was getting antsy because I knew that it'd take me multiple years and attempts to build something successful, so I needed to get started ASAP. It seems silly in hindsight, but I wanted to "make it" by the age of 30. So, I quit my job as soon as I got my bonus that year. I didn't have any business ideas when I quit, but I figured quitting the job would give me the motivation and time figure it out. The idea for Chowdy came about in a random conversation I had with my housemate and soon-to-be business partner complaining about how food was so expensive in Toronto. Since neither of us knew how to cook we should just hire a chef to make our food for us. I applied my consulting modeling skills and quickly realized that it'd be too expensive to cook for just the two of us. Then we wondered what if we could have a chef make food for 10-20 of our friends, and for multiple days at a time. With that, we decided to just try it out. My partner knew a cook personally. We pitched the idea to him and he loved it. We messaged 30 friends we thought might be interested and got 20 of them to agree to try it for a month. 2 weeks later we made our first batch of meals. After the trial period of 1 month, we were pleasantly surprised to find that most of our friends wanted us to keep going. We did and opened it up to the public, and that's how Chowdy came into being. By the way, we weren't called Chowdy in the beginning. We thought our target demographic was the fitness/gym crowd, so we called ourselves "FuelBite". As I'll explain below, we were forced to change our name a few months in and we came up with "Chowdy". Full credit goes to my partner for this name, which he came up at 3am in the morning after we thought off and tossed out what felt like 1000 ideas. We both loved it instantly because it sounded food-related, friendly, and gender-neutral (it was important for us to not sound either too masculine or feminine).  

    How did you build it? 🛠

    Piece by piece, and continuously. Within 2 weeks of discussing the initial idea, we agreed on the basic business model, the key marketing message, and the price. My partner and I both believed in the agile approaches to startup, so we never spent too much time trying to figure out the "right" answer. We agreed to just try everything we could and see what sticks. We initially wanted to do a revenue-sharing model with cooks who would get compensated by how many meals they made. But when we pitched it to our first cook (who was a friend of my business partner's), we basically learned that there was zero appetite for something like. People in the food industry have a very traditional mindset and they wanted guaranteed hourly rate. Once the cook was onboard, we got 20 of our friends to partake in a 1-month trial at $5.99 a meal. 2 weeks later, the cook was making the first ever batch of Chowdy meals at his home kitchen. Over the course of following one year period, we one by one put together most of the key foundations of Chowdy: First was the kitchen, we learned that we couldn't use a home kitchen for commercially sold food. So, we went out and found an hourly-rental commercial kitchen. Next, we couldn't use our apartment for distribution anymore because the volume was growing and strangers started to use the service, so we conjured up this "hub" idea, cold-called a bunch of cafes to pitch them, and was able to get one of them to give it a try. As the volume kept growing, we couldn't keep using email and Google Spreadsheet for order management anymore because my partner was spending an ungodly amount of time on these admin tasks. So I built a web app that automated all order-taking and order management tasks with Ruby on Rails. Shortly after that, we could not personally do all the ingredient shopping anymore because the volume was too large for the two of us to handle. So we learned how restaurants get their ingredients from national distributors like Sysco and GFS, so we went out and signed up with one of these distributors. So on and so on. I'm describing all these milestones in a linear way, but there was a LOT of running in circles and setbacks along the way. I remember how on the Christmas of the year we started, we got a Cease and Desist letter from a lawyer representing this company called Fuel Foods because they thought our name was too similar to them (we were called FuelBite at the time). We panicked because neither of us knew how to deal with it and we were scared of getting sued. So we "lawyered up" but was actually advised to change our name. My partner at 3am in the morning came up with "Chowdy", and that's what we were called ever since. I think the main thing I'm trying to say here is that we never stopped building Chowdy over the course of 2.5 years. There were always new initiatives we were trying out. Most of them fizzled out but the ones that did work allowed us to achieve what we did.  

    Which were your marketing strategies to grow your business? 📊

    Marketing was one of those areas in which we tried a lot of different tactics. Eventually, it solidified to four main marketing strategies, which generated almost all of our customers. First and foremost was Facebook advertising. I never used Facebook advertising before Chowdy and I was skeptical of how effective it would be. But within days of setting it up, it was generating a steady flow of sign-ups. The acquisition cost was also very low, averaging no more than a few dollars per conversion, making this channel extremely critical to our growth. I would say Facebook ads gave us around 50% of our customers over the lifetime of Chowdy. We tried advertising on other platforms, notably Google Adwords and LinkedIn, but they were not very effective for us and we gave up on them after a while. The second most important strategy was customer referral. We copied what Uber did and gave each customer a referral code, and gave both the referrer and referral $10 off their purchase. This accounted for around 25% of the customers. Even though it was a very expensive marketing channel at $20 per acquisition, we felt we had to do it simply because it has become such a standard practice. The third strategy was Search Engine Optimization. Through various efforts (many of which were frankly accidental, like getting featured on a national newspaper), we eventually ranked within the top 3 Google results for "Toronto meal delivery" and "Toronto food delivery". This allowed us to get a steady source of sign ups from people who were looking specifically for services like ours. This accounted for around 20% of the customers. The last strategy was seasonal discount. We would offer a discount code on our website, Facebook ads, as well as our social media accounts on average once every other month. Every time we put up a discount, we saw a noticeable increase in sign-ups. This accounted for around 5% of our customers. We also tried a bunch of strategies that did not work. Notably: - Giving out sample meals at local gyms: extremely expensive and did not generate a single customer. - Physical cards with discount codes at our hubs: expensive to create and did not generate that many sign ups. - Sponsoring sporting events: to be fair we didn't spend a lot of money doing this, but we sponsored an athlete (who was a friend) for a while and did not get any sign ups from that.  

    Which were the causes of Chowdy failure? 💀

    If marketing was the rocket fuel for Chowdy that allowed us to grow 10-20% every week the first 2 years, we crashed because this rocket just wasn't built to last. Looking back, there were a number of fundamental issues that we never quite figured out. First, our margins were extremely slim. We had this idealistic vision that since we didn't have the real estate and seating area overhead that restaurants have, we can charge a low price and still get good margins. I modeled everything out and things looked great in Excel. But costs always turned out higher than planned and were always increasing (inflation). But because we fixed our price as part of our core brand message, we were always struggling to make enough money. If there were any hiccups in the process, we would lose a lot of money. The second problem was high customer churn. The average lifetime of a subscriber was 9 weeks, with almost half quitting after the first week. Once they quit, it was also extremely unlikely for them to come back (we tried to entice them back with discounts but less than 1% of them came back). This wasn't a burning issue for us because we were still small and the untapped market was large, but it cast doubt on the long-term sustainability of the business. The third issue was that our business model wasn't scalable. Our model relied on having 3rd party hubs, and the hubs all had to possess certain characteristics: independently-owned and beverage-only. There was only a limited number of them, getting them on board was not a repeatable process, and most critically, they were not very stable. For example, we had one hub go out of business because their landlord sold the entire complex to a condo developer. This event was extremely disruptive for our operations, as we had to find another hub in the same neighborhood to replace it in a very short timeframe, and having any downtime meant losing tons of hard-earned customers. While these three issues were something that we had to overcome sooner or later, they didn't stop us from growing. The thing that led us to shut down Chowdy turned out to be regulation. Basically, the Toronto health department did not approve of our distribution model. They looked at how we were storing our meals at 3rd party hubs - who did not own these meals - for anywhere between 8 hours to 36 hours, they deemed the process too risky and lacking sufficient oversight. In August 2016, with a single report, they ordered us to shut down our pickup business. They were fine with our suburban delivery business, but that made up less than 20% of our volume and there was simply no growth potential in that because we had no cost advantage compared to the myriad of other food delivery businesses in Toronto, some of which were very well funded (like UberEATS). After they ordered us to shut down the pickup business, we tried to switch our customers over to delivery, but almost no one converted since we charged an $8 delivery fee (the breakeven delivery cost). Additionally, most of the pickup customers actually prefer the pickup system, because it gave them the flexibility to get the meals whenever they want, instead of having to wait for the delivery driver to show up. We went back and forth with the city for about 1 month, during which time we lost pretty much all the money we made in 2015 and 2016 because we kept most of our staff on payroll and still had to pay rent on the production facility. We also had to write off about $10,000 worth of ingredients that we purchased but could not use when the city ordered us to shut down the pickup business. Eventually, we just couldn't figure out a way to compete in delivery and get back the volume we lost. And because we had essentially no retained earnings to keep the business going, and no outside investors, we simply did not have the resources to keep it going any longer. The shutdown process wasn't very orderly. Because the city had ordered us to stop the pickup business abruptly, we couldn't even give 80% of our customers proper notice. It was literally an email a day before the scheduled pickup date telling them they couldn't pick up their meals anymore. Predictably this led to a lot of angry emails and cancellations. Over the following month, while we were negotiating with the city, we kept our staff but cut back on their hours to try to save money and attempted to salvage any pickup customers to delivery instead. When it became obvious that this won't work, we gave the head chef 2 weeks notice, everyone else was let go immediately. We informed the landlord, with whom we had a 2-year lease but she ended up not pursuing us for it (because I personally helped her find another tenant). Every piece of equipment we owned was written off. The entire month felt like an out-of-body experience, like I was watching someone else perform these tasks. Chowdy became such a normal part of my life by that and it was hard imagining what life would be like without it. But I was also relieved, to be honest. I was pretty much constantly stressed the two and half years we ran Chowdy and all of sudden I wasn't, it was a big weight off my shoulder. It helped that we didn't take on any debt building the business.  

    Which were your biggest mistakes and challenges you had to overcome? ❌

    I think the single biggest mistake we made from which we did not recover was the "Uber mentality", which was growth at all cost and ignore any regulations. In building up our food production and distribution process, we should have consulted with the health department early on. We should have paid a private consultant to come in and do an audit for us. Early warning on this would have provided us with ample time to try different distribution models and adjust accordingly. Instead, we were hit with an abrupt shutdown order and as the result could not muster any resources in the short term to make operational changes. But we didn't consult anyone. Because we were inspired by Uber and Airbnb to just ignore the regulators. On top of this, there were a bunch of other mistakes in hindsight; which, although did not directly cause Chowdy's demise, all contributed to it: Our pricing was way too low. So low that we basically made no profit over the 2 and half years we ran Chowdy. So low that we didn't have any resources in reserve to help us deal with unexpected emergencies. Not getting funding. This again relates to the question of resource. When the health department issue came up, we literally had no money to deal with it. If we had outside funding this may have turned out differently. Not having contingency plans for a lot of situations. It wasn't just the health department issue - we were constantly going from one emergency to another. I barely devoted any time on growing the business after the 2nd year because there were so figurative fires I had to put out, from water getting cut off in our facility, to hub shutting down, to employees walking out. No risk management. I never sat down and analyzed what were the major risk areas our business faced, partly because I spent all my time in the weeds of running the operations and handling the emergencies. In retrospect, there were so many parts of our business that were very fragile and would break at the slightest disruption. The health department issue that led us to shut down was really just a manifestation of this. ‍ In terms of the challenges we faced along the way but eventually overcome, there were so many. I'll give 3 examples: The first challenge was ingredient sourcing. We started with buying ingredients ourselves from local supermarkets. We would rent a car on production days, drive to cheap Chinese supermarkets, and buy 1-2 shopping carts worth of ingredients. After about 3 months our volume became way too big for us to shop for ourselves. Additionally, I realized we were not taking advantage of our volume to get discounts on the ingredients. That's when someone explained to me how restaurants get their ingredients from national distributors like Sysco and GFS. With that, I reached out to a bunch of these suppliers through their websites. Initially, I didn't get any response back. I then called them directly and was able to meet with some of their reps to figure out how we can buy ingredients from them. The next problem was the facility. We were using our cook's home kitchen in the beginning. But very quickly that became unfeasible as we learned that it's illegal to use home kitchen for commercially sold food. Also, home kitchens are simply not equipped with all the specialized and expensive equipment that commercial restaurants use for volume production (like a convection oven and tilt skillet). So we looked around for any commercial kitchens we can rent for cheap. At one point we had the idea to partner up with nightclubs, which are all legally required to have commercial kitchens but they rarely use them. We were able to get a couple of nightclubs to agree to let us use their kitchens for cheap, but this turned out to be a big mistake as we found out that these kitchens were woefully under-equipped and not very clean (we had 2 hires walk out on us because of it). Eventually, we found a newly-started hourly rental kitchen that was clean and had everything we needed. We stayed there for 2 years until we eventually took over a restaurants space and converted it to a dedicated kitchen space. The biggest problem, though, was staff. I learned pretty quickly that the type of people I was hiring was so different from the corporate type I used to work with at the consulting firm. In the food industry, every one job hops every few months and it was extremely tough to retain good and reliable people. We offered above-market hourly wages, yet we were not able to keep anyone for longer than a few weeks. And because our production team was so small, losing even a single person caused significant disruptions for us. There were so many days when my partner and I had to personally jump in to help with dishwashing and deliveries because we were so short staffed. This problem never fully went away, but we eventually grew to a scale that we were able to have a full-time head chef, who basically managed all the hiring for us.  

    Which were your expenses? Did you achieve some revenue? In the end, how much money did you lose? 💵

    When we started with our 20 friends, we had a weekly revenue of around $300. By the time we shut down, we were doing weekly revenues of around $25,000, or $100,000-$125,000 per month (our ordering cycle was in week so it's easier for me to think in weeks). In terms of expenses, almost all were operational related to food production. Ingredients accounted for the single largest piece, around 40% of revenue. Industry recommendation is that no more than 33% of revenue should be ingredients, but our prices were just so low. Then it was staff. We had a team of 8 people, consisting of 6 cooks, 1 driver and 1 customer service rep. Aside from 1 head chef, there was no other management personnel. Collectively accounted for around 35% of revenue. Then it was advertising, where we spent probably around 10% of revenue. Another 10-15% on things like rent and admin expenses and emergency expenses (like all the losses from the health department episode). Remaining 0-5% was basically the money my and my partner's salary. So, all in all, we basically made no profit.  

    If you had to start over, what would you do differently? 🕓

    Honestly, I probably would avoid food business! There have been so many food startups over the years, including some that raised tens of millions of dollars, but most of them went out of business (SpoonRocket, Sprig, Maple) or drastically shrunk in size (Munchery). There are very little barriers to entry in this space so price is ultimately what everyone competes on. At the same time, consumers have no loyalty to food brands; they will happily try a bunch and switch to another service if they can get a better deal. But if I have to do Chowdy again, I would try to raise money as soon as we hit $1M in annual revenue. At this point, it becomes relatively easy to raise money, and with the money I would hire a team to manage all the day-to-day operations so I can focus on the big picture; specifically, growth, risk assessment, and contingency planning. Related to this but a much more significant strategic change I would make is to find a strategic partner and/or acquirer as early as we could. I was starting to toy with this idea in my head by the time we had to shut down but I never got around to implementing it. The idea is to partner up with a large company that can get a lot of synergy (I know I hate this word too) from our business model. I was specifically thinking about grocery chains. I think grocery stores would've loved to partner with us because we could help them acquire a fast-growing segment of the market that they don't already own: people who don't cook. This arrangement would solve our distribution problem once and for all because grocery chains already have a large and stable real estate network. I'm not quite sure if this would solve our regulatory issue, but I have a hunch that if our distribution partners were large grocery chains instead of mom-and-pop cafes, the health department would've treated it very differently. In fact, a year after we shut down, I read about a meal kit startup in Montreal being acquired by Metro, one of the largest grocery chains in Canada. It's obviously too late at that point, but it made me regret that we didn't reach out to one of them sooner.  

    Which are your favorite entrepreneurial resources? 📚

    I don't specifically seek out business advice, but I really enjoy listening to the founding stories of other entrepreneurs, especially small entrepreneurs. There's this podcast by this Australian entrepreneur Nathan Chan, who interviews a lot of mostly small founders on his show, which I both enjoy and find helpful. Other than that, I use this app called Flipboard for most of my reading. I follow "Startup" and "Business" interests on it, and from time to time it suggests very insightful articles on various topics from growth to managing staff. I realized that it's almost impossible make any generalized true statement about how to successfully start and grow a business. Every entrepreneur faces a different set of circumstance and what worked for one entrepreneur might not work for another. What comes to mind right now is regarding hiring people. I've heard some successful business people (I think it was either Eric Schmidt or Paul Graham) insist that you need to hire the best and the brightest even if they are terrible people; and others argue that they focused on hiring people who played nice with others on the team even though they weren't A players. I think both of these approaches are true, but in different circumstances and times. My only advice is to take any business advice with a grain of salt. None of them are universal laws and they are all context-dependent.  

    Where can we go to learn more? 🔎

    I'm currently working on my next startup project, The Travel Brief, which is a platform that crowdsources useful travel information. You can follow our progress here! Other than that, I'm not a prolific social media poster, but you can always follow me on Instagram or Twitter.

    submitted by /u/sexy_balloon
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    Danger! The 7 deadly sins of startups: Premature scaling

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 09:09 AM PDT

    Premature scaling is one of the leading causes behind startup failures. According to a report published by Startup Genome, premature scaling accounts for 70% percent of all tech startup failures. If your business isn't growing, it's dying. But can growing too fast kill your business? Read our article to find out!

    https://medium.com/@superteam/1d2a976e2540

    submitted by /u/BoomLegion
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    Is the shipping times clear for my customers?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 04:53 AM PDT

    Hey guys, I've an online store and would like to get some feedback before I start launching ads. My product page currently looks like this:

    https://imgur.com/a/zhfpBEW

    When people click on shipping information, they get to see this:

    https://imgur.com/a/rw0Z5aQ

    Do you guys think that I've done my part good enough of informing my customers about the shipping times? Would they actually go and click on shipping information and read the info or would they just straight order it? I really don't want to get chargebacks on PayPal, that's why I'm asking.

    submitted by /u/Fotonenboer
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    I have written out what I believe to be the process of getting my app idea to market… Please help me correct, improve or add to it!

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 09:17 AM PDT

    I am a hobbyist Wordpress developer, so apps are completely out my league.

    I might have gotten some stuff in this post completely wrong/in the wrong order etc, so if I have, please tell me. I have scraped most this off different sources online and am just trying to figure this all out so I welcome any help and advice!

    Its a game app I want to create.

    Step by step process to publishing:

    1) Create visual draft: Draft of every page. Good icon. Good title. Short unique, interesting, optimized description under 25 characters using main keywords.

    2) Study and learn from competitors/similar apps: Know what their ratings are saying, what keywords they are using, and read their user feedback. Study their terms/privacy policy.

    3) Decide versions/platforms: Paid and free/ad supported versions. App Store and Google Play. So 4 versions in my case.

    4) Ad types/placements: Interstitial/full screen ads – Placed at natural pause points, like when completed a level or moving between menus. Because these aren't actually interrupting the experience of using the app. Banner ads at the bottom of pages also.

    5) Find a developer/team: Make sure they list the relevant skills you need (iOS development/Swift. Android/Java). Only consider those who have done past work very similar to what you want. Test their past work (download the apps and use them). Ask if they are willing to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). Ask if they would consider a 3 month bug fixing/support window once completed/published. Ask if willing to work on it in future (paid of course) for updates etc (to keep it up to date with new versions of iOS and Android for example). Make sure you will own/be able to claim copyright on the code. When a time frame is calculated and agreed upon, offer a bonus to be paid if it's completed within the time frame. Possibly implement a daily deduction for each day after the agreed time frame. Make sure they are clear on your drafts, version and ad type/placement requirements.

    6) Development: Make sure you are available for communication at all times whilst the build is in progress. Whilst the development team are taking care of the app, set up the social media pages and build a website so you have an online presence other than on app platforms. The website should be simple. Press contact, terms, privacy etc. Links to download the app from the App Store and Google Play. Also set up your hosting... Whilst I need to investigate some more, I have been recommended Amazon Web Hosting. I have seen on their site: "only charge you for the resources you use/offer pay-as-you-go pricing" So I am hoping this would be sufficient whether the app flops or completely blows up). Set up on chosen ad/ analytics platform and get it ready to integrate your app. I am thinking of going with Flurry.

    7) On handover from the developer: Do vigorous testing (different devices/operating systems). Try to get another developer(s) to check it over (quality, back doors etc). Integrate with your ad platform.

    8) Upload/publish: Upload it to the App Store and Google Play.

    9) Marketing: Share it with everyone you know. Try to get bloggers excited and talking about it. Try to create a social media buzz.

    10) Maintenance: Keep an eye on ratings/feedback/what people are saying about it. Consider changes commonly mentioned.

    I am up to step 5 (finding a developer) so things are getting important now.

    A few concerns I still have:

    • Native vs Hybrid? Thoughts? Should you insist on the versions of this app be "native"?

    • Do you think Is it worth bothering with other app platforms other than the App Store and Google Play? I have come across the following alternatives but it's the first time I have ever hear of them: appia, getjar, applib, appchina, slideme, mobango, Amazon and android pit.

    • Also, when the developers complete the updates in the future, I am guessing they would do them locally and then pass on the updated version to me to upload to the app platforms. Is this correct?

    Thanks for reading and any help! Hopefully other wills find it useful too

    submitted by /u/nitrodildo
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    Starting an L3C

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 09:11 AM PDT

    It All Started With A Wish.

    So I have always had this silly wish to have new socks every day....forever..... About a month ago I attended the Art of Charm Bootcamp which was geared at breaking me out of my introverted bubble. What it really did was open my eyes to the possibilities and got me thinking a lot about how much I hate my job (Production Supervisor) hate where I live (Indiana) and am just overall unhappy.

    Anyway I got back from my experience in LA with so much to think about and such a positive outlook on life and then of course I fell back into the mindless routine I left. I finally decided that what I was doing was not working and in order to create my own life I needed to get my shit together and take action. That's when I once again thought about my silly wish.

    I started my fall semester and am taking 2 entrepreneurship courses and 1 has a final project of building a business plan, this could be my chance! I started working things up and piecing things together and a company was born! So I have been doing market research and created a survey (I will post a link to and would be super appreciative if anyone wants to take it, takes less than 3 min) that I will use to base my financial numbers on in the end. I have been talking with manufacturers overseas about getting samples to compare quality and even started my own Wix website that is still under construction.

    SURVEY: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/C5QYDRC

    The Idea Explained

    The concept is simple, a monthly subscription that provides 30 socks a month, and you can choose between the styles of Dress, Crew, Ankle, No Show and finally a Mix 'n Match option. 3 tiers to provide more appealing options and to help give the middle tier option more appeal (marketing and all that jazz). This however, would cause so much waste that is unnecessary because throwing away the socks would be just silly. So my company will partner with charities and other not for profit organizations to help re-purpose the 1 time used socks to help the homeless, disaster relief, and third world countries. We would do this by providing a free return label that can be used in the same package to return the socks. To make this option more appealing we will be providing a discount applied towards the next months subscription price based on the pairs of socks returned. This will help us retain subscribers, keep donations rolling, and provide a tax break to the company so that we can keep our prices as low as possible.

    Marketing

    For marketing I am working with a friend who says he knows multiple Instagram and Facebook personalities that have substantial followings and he said If I offer them their own promo code that they will jump at the opportunity to advertise for me in return for a commission based on the use of their promo code. I also have a friend who can connect me with a radio show host in Michigan that would be willing to do an interview since the company looks to help homeless and such. Finally, I am a veteran and I have a couple friends that think just by communicating with larger veteran groups on facebook, IG, and a few other social medias, that I will be able to get a shout out or two.

    Now, I know there are a few companies that do similar things like bombas for example, however only 1 company I have found so far offers a reasonable price for new socks every day and I believe that company was established early to mid 2018.

    I would like to hear what you guys all think about my idea and actions so far. This is technically the second LLC I have formed and the first one failed miserably because I gave up after being knocked down early. Iv always wanted to help society and Iv always had that silly wish that so many people have agreed with me on. Any comments, tips or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I plan to keep posting as time goes by.

    submitted by /u/kjducati
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    What is so difficult about building a decent voting machine?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 06:59 AM PDT

    Reading a lot about voting machines "flipping votes" or counties posting signs that voters have to be mir patient with the machine's UI, I am wondering what stops us from building something better. Why not use an Open Source approach for the world's biggest audit, for instance?

    submitted by /u/blueskies0206
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    Signed non-compete agreement with employer, legal ramifications of competing?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 01:47 PM PDT

    I work at an e-commerce consulting agency, and I've signed a generic non-compete agreement (can't compete in e-commerce, while I work and for a year after I leave the company) with my employer and I'm wondering how risky it is to do some part-time side gigs on my own. The employer I work for specializes in e-commerce development, and considering that's where my experience lies, if I started creating e-commerce websites for clients as a side hustle, could I get sued by my employer? Obviously, I could try another field to freelance, but I have many years of experience and expertise in e-commerce development...

    I realized recently that the agency I work for charges over 150$/hour for the work that I do, and I get paid about 40$/hour. I understand that obviously there's overhead costs the company has for employees, so I'm sure the margin is smaller but it's probably still decent for every employee they have. If I could do my own sales, and client acquisition, I'm sure I could make decent change on the side. Just wondering if anyone has experience to share related to this and what the legal ramifications may be.

    submitted by /u/fighterzacc
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    open source health care (emotional health care)

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 01:33 PM PDT

    Create group of retired / semi retired nurses in the us that offer on demand phone support / diagnosese / comfort for individuals experiencing medical issues or emotional distress.

    Make it super affordable and accessable so that users can use it as much as they want or need.

    Independent contractors give people in the US the option for a part time job that is work from home (or full time)

    submitted by /u/ultisquatter
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    Injection molding vs 3D printing vs CNC? Help!

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 01:25 PM PDT

    Hey everyone. I'm not sure if this is the appropriate thread (feel free to delete if not allowed).

    Ever since I can remember I have been interested in making my own inventions/custom electronics/creations. One of the things that always held me back was having some sort of nice plastic case to put it in (for example a video game console is in a custom shell. An alarm clock in in a plastic casing).

    Do any of you have experience with manufacturing these types of things? My younger brother is an engineer and i know that he would be more than happy to help me design a model in google sketch up or a similar CAD program.

    I have been looking into and I'm absolutely amazed. I feel like this is kind of the missing link that I have been looking for for years. I have seen some manufacturers on Alibaba but to be honest I just don't have confidence in the overall quality of these factories. I'm hesitant to use a domestic manufacturer because of the higher cost. I've also looked into 3d printing but it's been difficult to find the cost of making a small part (Maybe 1 inch by 1/2 an inch). Does anyone have any advice or resources?

    Thanks for your help. I do appreciate it.

    submitted by /u/spaceagewhizkidd
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    Feeling overwhelmed! Appropriate platform/service to use for landing page, digital downloads, and email lists?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 12:37 PM PDT

    Doing some research and already feeling overwhelmed with the available platforms and functionality/features available.

    I'm working on a website (via Squarespace) to offer services that can be offered in-person and/or remotely, and eventually scale that out to larger audiences in different product/service form.

    I just started up an instagram and will be expanding to the other social platforms for custom content distribution and posting (eventually).

    I'm looking into landing page services that I can use for CTAs to build up an email list of leads as well as provide (for the time being, free) digital downloads of custom content. Email lists are obviously important as it will take 5-7 touchpoints before any leads turn into prospects or customers/clients.

    Since it's being bootstrapped I'm looking for a cost-effectively and relatively easy-to-use service that can easily integrate with Squarespace or get feedback on how good the analytics portion is/isn't for CTA, CTR, downloads, drip campaigns, etc.

    As of right now the website is up, and is very bare bones. There's no content e.g. blog posts or any social connected to it, and it hasn't been given the SEO rundown (that's a whole other beast in of itself), I'm just concerned with finding the best and most appropriate platform that integrate easily with Squarespace, can seamlessly link to any services, digital product offerings (and maybe eventually physical products) via the landing page, and create/manage an email list.

    I've looked at MailChimp, DPD, Leadpages, Unbounce as other potential platforms.

    Thanks in advance!

    submitted by /u/PHC_Tech_Recruiter
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    Finance Question About Using Accounts Receivable to Buy a Business

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 12:32 PM PDT

    I have now heard two people suggest factoring the target business's A/R to raise cash for the downpayment on the business. Their logic is that this makes sense because "you never have to pay that money back because you just keep factoring month after month." One explained that this is so because it's an "evergreen form of financing."

    Here's the problem I see: Suppose that the company has $100K in A/R and I factor it to raise $85K for the downpayment to the seller. That $85K has now been sucked out of the working capital and is gone forever. So the following month after I assume control of the business I will have a $85K working capital shortfall to fill up somehow.

    What am I missing here?

    submitted by /u/manbunsmagee
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    I have this amazing idea, but I cannot develop it on my own. What should I do?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 12:26 PM PDT

    I have this amazing idea, but I cannot develop it on my own. I need more people. I don't have many friends, and of the few I do have, either I don't trust them very much, or think they might not be able to do the stuff required & screw up. What should I do?

    submitted by /u/d_mmmy
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    Fighting Chargebacks

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 11:09 AM PDT

    Hey all - I know chargebacks are a part of doing business, but I find myself fighting generally 1 - 2 a week (in the neighborhood of 1500 sales a week, so trust me, I know it's not a ton). It doesn't hurt my bottom line, but it does hurt my ego :)

    The most recent one was on Thursday afternoon - a customer who responded to an automated "how do you like your product" email, which is sent five or so days after the product was scheduled to arrive. She claims she never received her item. Okay, great, no worries. I check the tracking (which was emailed to her when the product shipped) and her item was sitting on a FedEx truck, scheduled to be delivered that day. Here you go, here's the tracking number again, apologies, but our warehouse is in the Florida panhandle and was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Michael (which we informed you of before you placed the order), sorry for the delay, please let me know what you think when you have a chance to try it out, please let me know if it doesn't come today and I'll get on the phone with FedEx and ask them what the hell is going on.

    Friday night I receive an email from the customer saying it still hasn't arrived. It's still sitting on a FedEx truck, and I'm not getting a lot of feedback from FedEx as to why. She says "I'm going to dispute this with my credit card company."

    I think this is more than a little ridiculous.

    First, am I right? I feel like I didn't even get a chance to resolve it with her or FedEx.

    Second, assuming I am right, what can I do to increase the likelihood of winning this chargeback?

    Finally, neither I nor my ego love the idea of her filing a chargeback and the package arriving today, finding me both out the money and with a customer suddenly with no incentive to return it. We have an extremely generous return policy, in my mind (30 days no questions asked money back), and it seems to be total bullshit that we can still get hit with a chargeback here. Any advice?

    submitted by /u/JeerermeererGrayng
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    Integrate a blog into my business site, or make separate?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 10:59 AM PDT

    This is more of a long term situation, but I just wanted some opinions on the subject.

    ​

    I have a website for my local small business that offers a service. Suppose I wanted to eventually start a blog related to my service, how-tos, product reviews, etc. Would it be a better decision to integrate the blog into my business' website, or to have it as a separate website where my clients don't see what I'm blogging about?

    ​

    The reason I ask is because I'm not selling products online, and the blog posts would be more related to how I perform my services and with what products. Is it ideal to let my clients see every step of the service I'm providing them? I feel like it can be a double edged sword, but I don't have much knowledge on the subject so let me know what you guys think.

    submitted by /u/alanalan123
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    Difference between a brand and a product?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 10:47 AM PDT

    Title says it all. I'm a complete beginner to drop shipping, and I'm doing it as a hobby right now during HS. I want to know the difference so I can avoid getting in trouble with brands if I drop-ship those items. I don't think I will get in trouble, since my store focuses around sound systems, but I would like to avoid the possibility. Let me know if my question doesn't really make any sense, thanks!

    submitted by /u/JojoMasterofDojo
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    How do you generate leads for B2B SaaS company?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 06:31 AM PDT

    Can you share some of your actionable items to generate leads for B2B SaaS product? The product is technical recruitment software? I am not sure about cost per lead for US demographics.

    submitted by /u/Raj7k
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    So many ideas.....where to start?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 09:54 AM PDT

    I had an aha moment. I realized I'm trying to solve too many problems for too many people at once. Definitely intend to tackle them all.....but where do I start?

    submitted by /u/DeionNayA
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    How do brick and mortar businesses reduce costs as they expand?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 07:37 AM PDT

    Here are a couple things we have negotiated at our B&M business as we've grown to more locations:

    • Payment processing - now paying interchange + 2 basis points

    • Liability insurance - Consolidated contracts

    • Payroll/Marketing - Fewer people needed and no longer outsource

    • IT - Currently have one support agent outsourced but want to bring them inhouse

    • Managed print services - looking to see if we can inhouse.

    • Postage - Negotiated rates to ~50% off list.

    Anything else you guys can think of?

    submitted by /u/OPINION_IS_UNPOPULAR
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    Is getting more competitive quotes from vendors better?

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 06:26 AM PDT

    Is there any data showing that getting more competitive quotes from vendors will actually bring your price on material down over time? I am doing a study on the purchasing of material in the construction industry and want to see how getting more competitive bids can help you. I am looking for something concrete where this discussion might had been studied already.

    submitted by /u/bender1227
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    Question about advertising in UK for profit.

    Posted: 27 Oct 2018 05:37 AM PDT

    Would it be legal to buy/ rent a field next to say the A1 or some other major road and then sell advertising space on signs to big companies, because they will get thousands of views a day, I really don't know if this is legal, but I feel it would make a profit. Any help is much appreciated.

    submitted by /u/j__knight638
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