Startups Intern with no mentor at startup, struggling with decision to quit? |
- Intern with no mentor at startup, struggling with decision to quit?
- to my entrepreneur homies (pour one out with me)
- Is it a bad idea to work on two products at the same time?
- What is the best way to get sales in the early going?
- Delivery Drones Startups
- What kind of data should be collected from a social media like app?
- How to negotiate payment when partnering with an established founder?
- How do you monetize social media startup in its intial stages, without effecting user experience? Or should I even consider monetization?
| Intern with no mentor at startup, struggling with decision to quit? Posted: 06 Jan 2019 07:27 PM PST Edit: Wow, thank you all for your advice, experience, and corrections. I didn't expect this level of support, thank you. Hey guys, hope this is the right place to post this. I've been an intern at a small tech startup (about 10 people) for 6 months, bootstrapped, funded 100% by CEO's second job, who's gone 1-2 weeks a month to fund the startup. Leadership is poor, CEO is non-technical and doesn't understand my position nor how a tech startup is run, and mentorship is zilch. CEO claims "this is going to go big" but I have seen nothing concrete to prove so. For example, clients have to be onboarded by hand because the software product is so confusing. Our servers are prepared to handle large loads, but business itself is not. I was hired on to make the software easier for users, but was so lost by the lack of vision and by the position as a whole (doing UX/UI for the first time on a live product made me feel pressure to deliver perfectly, something I've learned to push aside) that I stagnated quite a bit. Most/all of it could have been mitigated by guidance, but I received none. The CEO would explicitly give me space bc he "trusted me", but felt more like he had no idea what I was doing. I went to UX meetups, talked to outside designers, but just couldn't find my footing. Learned my lesson, but now the CEO has confronted me about possibly letting me go for reasons stated above. When do you know that it's a good time to leave a startup? I have no faith in the product vision nor in management, they have not promised any of us equity in the company, I'm on contractor pay expected to do a senior level full-time job in 10-20 hrs/week, and I don't look forward to going to work. Doesn't even feel like a startup, really, just a couple people who founded tech startups to be shiny and fun and hired out a bunch of students and their own family to save money. Only like 3 of the employees in the company are salaried, and they don't have benefits. The founders are good people, but the company is just odd. I've never quit a job for personal reasons and want input if possible. My main concern is leaving without having a chance to prove myself to them of my abilities, but at this point, I wonder if I should really care about that. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| to my entrepreneur homies (pour one out with me) Posted: 06 Jan 2019 10:20 PM PST I'm craving honest, difficult, raw speak about how hard startup life can be. It's a beautiful, wonderful challenge, but damn....its a challenge. Its so real, so raw, so uncertain, so full of ups and downs and turbulent times. You are attempting to create life through a business venture, give birth to a thing which simply does not exist. You are fighting, clawing, reading, writing, researching, and pushing constantly to create something that matters. Something people care about, benefit from, something people need... And all the while, you must constantly strive to separate your self-worth and self-image from the success or failings of your fledgling company. The self-doubt must be pushed outside your mental picture, leaving room for growth and opportunity. The constant thought "Am I doing enough? Should I be doing this instead? Should I stop doing that? How can I accelerate or validate progress?" plays in the brain like a banner ad in time square: over and over and over again. You must fight this fight, and often fight it alone. The entrepreneur's choice is that of Neo, choosing to explore the dark side of the moon with Morpheus. Yet we often are isolated, separated from those others who also chose the red pill..... ALL THAT TO SAY.... fuck all the "success" talk. Let's discuss the pain, turmoil, challenge, difficulty, mehhh, urckkky ugly lonely difficulties that we face. Cuz life is short, and we are all fighting the good fight together. Na mean? [link] [comments]  |
| Is it a bad idea to work on two products at the same time? Posted: 06 Jan 2019 03:28 AM PST We're at MVP stage with idea 1. I've built the team by selling them this idea. I've been working on this for 4 months now. We are launching in a few weeks.I was thinking of what could be done if Idea 1 doesn't take off. I came up with the idea of pivoting into Idea 2 if Idea 1 doesn't work. Idea 2 uses the exact same technology that we've built for Idea 1. It requires slight modification and some re-branding to turn into Idea 2. I've talked to a few potential users and people seem to like the idea. Idea 1 & Idea 2 are radically different at what they do. However, both of them fit in with our mission of why we do what we do. After some introspection, I realised that I am personally more excited by Idea 2 than Idea 1. I may actually be 'wanting' Idea 1 to fail just so that I can pivot to Idea 2. This is a scary thought. I do not want to confuse the team or jeopardise the product development momentum, so I haven't told the team about Idea 2. I feel like working on two products at the same time may be a recipe for disaster. This is because focus is the most important tool for us. Paying attention to two different types of products can make us fail at both. Here are my options:
What do you think? What do you do when you get exciting new ideas while you're working on a product for months? Do you let them sit in a diary even if your gut says this new idea could actually be more successful and the one you are working on right now may fail? [link] [comments]  |
| What is the best way to get sales in the early going? Posted: 06 Jan 2019 08:46 PM PST I recently started a clothing company which utilizes the print-on-demand concept. I sell Philadelphia sports apparel, and it's all hand-drawn, custom-made stuff. People have told me my designs are really sweet, and personally, I think they are, the problem though is that these compliments aren't converting to sales. My website, admittedly, could afford to look a little bit more professional, but with only two designs currently, there's not much I can really do. I've setup an Instagram page, and have about ~200 followers. I've been DMing people who follow me and asking if they're interested, in most cases even offering a 15-20% discount. However, it's still not converting to sales. I've done marketing campaigns through Instagram (not Facebook), and they've reached a couple thousand people. I've setup what I believe to be a pretty strong target audience, being my location is Philly, the interest are Philadelphia sports related, the age is in an adequate bracket, etc. So, I feel pretty defeated. I'm not sure what I'm really doing wrong, and I'm contemplating quitting before I spend too much money without return. Any advice or insight would be welcomed. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2019 11:08 AM PST Hello Reddit first time posting here It's 2019 and we haven't seen any drone delivery startup yet, (or is there any? ) Is it mainly because of the regulations? Or is it really hard to take such a technology mainstream ? I live in a country where food delivery market is huge and expanding with over 7 competing apps including Uber eats and drone regulations are not there yet but expected to work well with innovators and startups. What would be the best operation model ? and how to ensure safety and ease of use and minimize labor dependence ? What would be the biggest challenges other than regulations? Thank You [link] [comments]  |
| What kind of data should be collected from a social media like app? Posted: 06 Jan 2019 08:36 AM PST So I am working on a mobile app. It's an app that will be a resource base for knowledge on a wide range of topics. So users can learn and share. The content on there is community led. So think of Ted Talks meets Reddit. My question is, what kind of data should I collect on users? I won't be able to afford data scientists right from the start to do all the big data analytics. Should I just store EVERY interaction the users have from likes, shares, comments, searches etc and then later when I have the money the data people can do their thing? Edit: I should probably add that my main source of income will be subscription based. So my focus will not be to put advertisers in front of people but put content that brings value to them so they stay subscribed for longer. [link] [comments]  |
| How to negotiate payment when partnering with an established founder? Posted: 06 Jan 2019 01:40 PM PST Background: I've recently connected with a woman who runs an entrepreneurship education business (geared towards high-school students) and I reached out to her about expanding the organization to my city with my help (I'm fairly well connected with the student entrepreneurship scene here). I really like the idea of working with her and she seems eager to expand the organization and has kept up communication. We both are looking to move forward in expanding the organization - which is just her (as the founder) and various hired help during each training session. We also want to adapt it for different audiences here, maybe college students or younger junior-high/middle school ages. I'm going to be putting in a lot of work, sales and also running shorter "test" training sessions to gauge how we can best serve this community, hone in on the demographic we can serve best. I'm excited to be doing this work, especially since it involves having an active hand in growth and testing out different ideas. At the end of the day, this is the stuff I love to do and would do for free if money wasn't a necessary resource. Issue: I want to be paid somehow if I'm going to be essentially a co-founder in the expansion. How do I navigate this? I don't know very much about how well the organization is doing financially now in it's home city, and my actual position (as in the case of many new endeavors) isn't concrete. It could be all the work I'm assuming or it could just end up being help connecting people. Questions: How does compensation work in early team formation at startups? What information should I know and what should I ask for? I want to have as much cooperation and collaboration as possible, but I want my value to be compensated. I've launched projects before with co-founders where we could split everything 50/50, but here, I'm joining as a partner, so what's appropriate? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2019 05:37 AM PST Hi all, What are your thoughts on monetization for social media startup that is in its initial stages... Assume that the startup is bootstrapped and has little to no money, and just able to pay bills to run the server and other development related cost. -What should be the prime focus areas for an Early stage Social Media Startup?! -Should he/she even consider monetization so that it keeps running or raise capital from somewhere else(probably angel funding, crowdsourcing). -Do you monetize it immediately, even though you know you might be directly impacting the user growth and experience? -Do you wait till there are good number of loyal users and then monetize it? -What are the different strategies that might help in monetization, without impacting user growth and experience? -How do you know when its right time to monetize? Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
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