Startups 60+ Most Asked Questions by Entrepreneurs on Quora and Reddit. I have provided the answers as well. AMA |
- 60+ Most Asked Questions by Entrepreneurs on Quora and Reddit. I have provided the answers as well. AMA
- [Re-domiciliaiton into Delaware] Offshore company raised equity by issuing shares advertising to (among others) non accredited investors, does re-domiciliation imply a retroactive breach of US laws with regards to said equity raise?
- I miss having bugs in my apps
- How should we incentivize early adopters for our SaaS Product
- Call from a background check company about a startup I was a Cofounder of. How to respond?
- How important is the TLD? (domain.io vs yourdomain.com)
- Front end for IOS and Android $5500?
| Posted: 12 Nov 2018 02:25 AM PST I have compiled a list of 60+ most asked questions on Quora and Reddit and written my action oriented answers. Here are 20 questions. Q1: How Reddit And Quora Got Past The Chicken And Egg Problem Of Having No Content/Users? Topic – Scaling Quora and Reddit solved the "empty site = no users/no users = empty site" problem in similar ways. The founders of both services spent the first months filling them with content themselves. On Quora, the founders simply answered and asked lots of questions under their own profiles. But the reddit approach was a bit more interesting. Instead of just using their own accounts, the founders would create fake users to make it look like there were multiple people submitting links. Their 'submit link' form featured a third slot: "Username". According to Steve Huffman, reddit co-founder, it took several months until they didn't have to submit content themselves to fill up the front page. They also focused on keeping everybody in the same place in the beginning. reddit had no subreddits, and Quora was mostly focused on technology. Instead of having users spread out, everyone was in the same place, making the community feel bigger than it was. Q2: How Do I Research My Competitors? Topic – marketing A quick Google search will show your so many things. But, the only bulletproof way to research your competitor is to ask their customers. Talk to their customer that how is your competitor serving them. After talking to multiple customers, you'll get all the insights of your competitors. Q3: How Do I Build An Audience On Social Media? Topic – marketing If you don't have money to buy ads, there are only two ways that can significantly gain you followers. These are following other accounts and shoutout for shoutout. Start following people who might be interested in your product. In return, many of them will follow back. To follow those relevant people, open your competitors' accounts and start following them. Once you have around 500 followers, start doing shoutout for shoutout. This means that you ask your followers to follow someone else's account and in return, that account will also share a related post to their followers. Q4: How Do I Evaluate Social Media Marketing? Topic – marketing There are two methods. One is ongoing analytics, and another is Campaign analytics. Ongoing analytics are necessary for keeping up with the overall pulse of general conversation about your brand and company. Once your brand tracking is set up, you can just let it run and check in regularly to see how everything is going. Campaign-focused metrics, on the other hand, help you understand the impact of targeted marketing initiatives and will vary from campaign to campaign, depending on your goals for each. An effective social media measurement program will likely include both ongoing and campaign-specific measurement. Original source - https://iinnovatemag.com/blog/techniques/67-most-asked-questions-by-entrepreneurs/ Q5: How Does A New Business Get Its First Client? Topic – marketing Most people say that you need to build a website, set up a store, buy a hotline number before starting a business. The exact opposite is what you should do. You first need to get a client and then spend time on these activities. You can get your first client by asking your friends and family. Your very customers will be your friends, friends of friends, local neighbors, or even your family. Q6: How Do I Find Investors For My Startup? Topic – funding One of the deciding points for an investor to fund a startup is to see the x-factor. It should be positive and high.u(T) = u(0)e(xT)u(t) = user at time T=Tu(0) = user at time T=0x = x factor If you have an idea only, then it's unlikely that you'll get any funding. You need to start getting customers to get funding, and customers will only come when you have a working product or prototype. Q7: Why Do Venture Capitalist Say No And How Do I Make Them Say Yes Topic – funding There are two ways to measure a startup traction. One is increasing in revenue over a period of a week. If a startup is offering its services for free then the measure would be the increase in active users. If you see that the rate of growth is just 1% over a week which means that startup would grow only 1.7x over a year. If the rate of growth is 5% per week then startup would grow around 8x in a year. Venture capitalists pay a lot of attention over this growth. If the growth per week is 1-2% they say No because they can invest money in some other startup where they can get a better return on their investment. To make them say Yes, increase the growth to at least 5% per week. Q8: How To Know If Your Startup Idea Already Exists? Topic – Getting a startup idea If your idea consists of having something over a website, you can use Google hacks to search if your idea already exists or not. Make a list of 2-3 phrases that perfectly describe your product. Enclose those keywords within the quotation mark and search on Google. Google will show only those results where it finds the exact phrase. For ex, if your idea is having an online store for a pen with light, just google "pen with light", "light pen", "luminescence pen". Don't forget to use quotation mark. Q9: What Should I Do If I Have An Idea For A Startup, But I Have No Money Or Resources Whatsoever? Topic – Getting a startup idea First, you need to use the money in your bank account. The next point of contact would be family and friends. Make sure that you give a share of your company to them so that they'll be more interested. The third point of contact is the bank. Take a loan that is enough to build and validate a prototype. Once you've built the prototype, show it to your potential customers and note down their feedback. Get customers rapidly. Then show the feedback to investors and you'll have the funding. Q10: I Have An Invention Idea. What Do I Do To Check That Someone Hasn't Already Invented This Idea? Topic – Getting a startup idea Do a quick google search and check if it's already taken or not. Go to the US Patents and Trademark site (http://www.uspto.gov/) and then search. Q11: What Are The First 5 Hires Should I Make? Topic – Hiring In a startup, it's not like that cofounders don't work on bottom rated tasks like replying to someone's comment on Instagram. Cofounders do the same things that employees do. There's no hierarchy present. Hiring depends on the skills of co-founders. In I Innovate, we have three co-founders. One is good at marketing, one is good at sales, and one is good at finance. So, the spots left are product development, designers, editors, and engineers. So, we'll be hiring based on these skills. Q12: How Big Should A Stock Option Pool For Employees Be? Topic – Hiring 15-20%. Standard vesting for options is 4 years, with a one-year "cliff vesting" and monthly vesting after that. "Cliff vesting" in this context means the employee must be employed by the company for a minimum of one year before the employee earns any of the options. Q13: Should I Form My Company As C Corporation, An S Corporation, An LLC, A Partnership Or A Sole Proprietorship? Topic – Legal Start it as an S corporation. If you have to issue both common stock and preferred stock then start it as a C corporation. An S corporation can easily be converted later into a C corporation. LLCs are popular but are equally complicated. Partnerships and sole proprietorships are to be avoided because of the potential personal liability to the owners of the business. Q14: How Should Equity Be Divided Among Co-Founders Of A Start-Up? Topic – Legal The most common method is based on the money each co-founder is putting in a month over the next 12 months. For example, if one co-founder is putting $400 per month and another is putting $600 per month then the first cofounder gets 40% and another gets 60%. Q15: My Clients Pay My Invoices After Months. What Should I Do? Topic – Payment Get paid upfront. If you think that having a contract will solve the problem, it won't. Problem is, contract just means that you can try to go through court to get the court to order them to pay you. Even if you win in court it does not mean you'll be able to collect. Have some samples/portfolio, show them that as proof of your ability to do the work, then get the money and only after that make them their stuff. Q16: I Want To Quit My Job And Open A Startup. Is This A Good Idea? Topic – Miscellaneous Quitting a job to start a company is always a good idea. However, before taking this risk, I recommend you to keep everything ready like a business plan, model, idea validation, etc. It's better to figure out that something is wrong in your idea when you have a job than when you don't. Q17: Do I Need A Business Plan To Be A Successful Entrepreneur? Topic – Miscellaneous No, it's not mandatory. But having it gives you so much deeper knowledge of the business. I remember that I also refused to create a business plan for the first 4 months. I thought that I knew almost everything about my business but I was not completely correct. When I created a 12-page business plan, I realized that I learned so many things about I Innovate magazine that I didn't know earlier. Q18: What Is The Proper Definition Of A Startup? Topic – Miscellaneous A startup is a temporary organization used to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. "Temporary" is emphasized because a startup's goal is to cease being a startup, to graduate up to be a large business or to fail and move on to another opportunity. An early-stage venture that isn't capable of this type of rapid scale-up is a small business, not a startup. Q19: Which Is More Important – Idea Or Execution? Topic – Miscellaneous An idea is just a multiplier but the execution is what matters. A good idea means a high multiplier. So, If execution is good then having a great idea means it'll be multiplied by a high number and will result in more revenue. Q20: What Should Be A Startup's Top Priority In Its Early Age? Topic – Miscellaneous There are only two priorities for a startup in its early age. One is customer acquisition and another is product development. You can find rest of the questions here - https://iinnovatemag.com/blog/techniques/67-most-asked-questions-by-entrepreneurs/ Ask my anything that you want to know. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2018 03:29 PM PST As per the title I would like to know if anybody knows what happens if a foreign non -- U.S. company ( offshore ) raises equity by advertising and soliciting investors included but not limited to people who are not accredited investors per U.S. definition . Raising equity by issuing shares to non-accredited investors is not a violation in the offshore Jurisdiction as it isn't advertising and soliciting to investors . My question is : what happens if the aforementioned offshore company re-domiciliates to U.S. , specifically Delaware ? Does re-domiciliation imply a retroactive breach of US laws with regards to said equity raise ? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Nov 2018 10:11 PM PST Does anyone have this similar experience? I launched a web app and got bunch of signups, but we launched early and there were bugs. Thankfully people reported those bugs and we'd have a chat or phone call and I'd fix the bugs right away. This gave me the the incredible opportunity to talk to my users. I developed some amazing relationships and learnt so much and frankly changed a lot based on feedback. Fast forward 3 months, we're not bug free but most users don't get bugs, now its impossible to actually talk to anyone. Very rarely do users respond to chats, they just build and do what they gotta do without needing to talk to me which is great for scaling, but I miss the bugs which was such an integral part of development. My point is sometime you wanna launch but you still have bugs so keep in mind the right bugs can be the best thing for your app. It certainly was for me. [link] [comments]  |
| How should we incentivize early adopters for our SaaS Product Posted: 12 Nov 2018 12:11 AM PST We are a SaaS startup and we have launched our product in beta a month ago. We have got some really good early adopters whose feedback helped us improve the product faster. We are just evaluating different means by which we can incentivize these early adopters
Any other thoughts on incentivizing the early adopters are welcome [link] [comments]  |
| Call from a background check company about a startup I was a Cofounder of. How to respond? Posted: 12 Nov 2018 01:39 AM PST I was in this startup several years ago. I only worked there the first year, and then went on to do other things. The startup itself existed for a couple of years. It closed/shut down like 2 years ago. However the website is still online, and the number listed is one I have access to. It's not my personal number, but it's under an app. Anyways. So I accepted an offer, and currently undergoing the background check phase. Someone called the number and left a voicemail... So how do I answer? "hi yes I'm the cofounder and yes I did work here"? Lol idk it just feels awkward? Advice appreciated... [link] [comments]  |
| How important is the TLD? (domain.io vs yourdomain.com) Posted: 11 Nov 2018 10:38 AM PST This question has been asked several times but the threads are old and wanted a fresh opinion. I'm a Software Engineer building out a SaaS project on the side. My target demographic is small business owners in a specific niche, that aren't necessarily tech savvy. The .com isn't available. Was purchased by a company in the early 90's. Company is still active but it's not their main domain and currently sits unused. I've contacted them about purchasing the domain but it's about 6 figures outside of my budget, so... I currently own the .io and several variations of the .com (i.e. yourdomain.com, mydomain.com, getdomain.com, etc). Personally I'm a fan of the .io, but I'm not sure if I'm just in my own echo chamber and use to .io as TLD. So what is the popular opinion? [link] [comments]  |
| Front end for IOS and Android $5500? Posted: 11 Nov 2018 08:29 PM PST (Edit Update: he is offering $6000 to be done both in 2 weeks with him and his friend) I have a app in the works. And I just finished a solid design of how it would look AND work. (I designed in Figma) I want to get started by hiring a front end developer to get it going while I find a backend developer. But the Front end Developer that worked on bigger apps is charging me $5500 just for front end? And on top of that it's not even as complicated as it look I could try to do it myself but I have buy a mac to get IOS version going. The design is Very VERY plain! No animations, barley color, almost all pages are static. (28) pages in total. Does this seem fair? I don't know what do you guys think? Have you guys hired an app developer? It's seems like I'm complaining but I'm not just very shocked. I was expecting $2500 - $3000 [link] [comments]  |
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