NooB Monday! - (February 25, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- NooB Monday! - (February 25, 2019)
- I make $7K Mo. repainting used cars and flipping them back on Craigslist.
- How do you not get frustrated at people?
- Lesson learned: Never let 1 client be more than 15% of revenue
- How did you start teaching yourself about properly paying taxes?
- How did you escape the 9-5?
- I need serious help legitimizing my business! (Artist)
- Website for selling locally?
- Anyone used Adwords for Book Marketing?
- How do I get a prototype manufactured?
- Whats would be the best way to make money as a 17yo?
- Bootstrapping SaaS startups - getting them faster to the market
- Serious question, where can I obtain 400,000 32GB flash drives?
- Looking to market to small businesses (any suggestions?)
- We're the creators of Newscoop, an AI powered (tech) news summary app for Android
- Struggling to hire my first employee. Any business owners who can help me?
- Looking for a credit card for a startup! Does anybody know a "startup-friendly" bank?
- Looking for an artist.
- How did you get comfortable accepting money?
- Startup Cemetery: Learn why 100+ startups have failed
- too good to be true - absentee convenience store listed on one of thsoe business resell sites
- CBD and Credit Cards
- Starting a website agency as a student.
- Does anyone have an in with someone at Facebook that can help up with ad account bans / white listing.
- MBA users, what did you learn from your MBA?
| NooB Monday! - (February 25, 2019) Posted: 25 Feb 2019 05:16 AM PST If you don't have enough comment karma here's where we can help. Everyone starts somewhere and to post in /r/Entrepreneur this is the best place. Subscribers please understand these are new posters and not familiar with our sub. Newcomers welcome! Be sure to vote on things that help you. Search the sub a bit before you post. The answers may already be here. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| I make $7K Mo. repainting used cars and flipping them back on Craigslist. Posted: 24 Feb 2019 07:31 PM PST I use to work at my dads repair shop. Now I flip cars full time. I do about 7 cars month. I look for cars 15 - 20 yrs. old Mostly BMW's. I paint them myself and flip them back Craigslist. Average profit is $1,200 to $1,500 per car. My dad looks over every car before I buy it so I don't end up with a lemon. AMA [link] [comments]  |
| How do you not get frustrated at people? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 10:55 AM PST People who do not regard transparency and prompt communication as priorities frustrate me to no end, especially in a professional setting. It's coming from multiple angles, from tech partners saying stuff like "it will be ready within two weeks" then I have to pull teeth to get anyone to even give me a status update and whoops it's gonna be another "couple weeks" now, to people on LinkedIn who have time to like my comments but not respond to the messenger conversation THEY started, to people not responding to emails or Slack for weeks in regards to ongoing projects of mutual benefit. Sorry for the rant post, but we live in a time where it literally takes 5 seconds to respond to someone. Even a "sorry I'm really slammed right now, can I get back to you later?" is better than nothing. Why do people chose to communicate this way when it's so easy to quickly and openly communicate? Are people actually that much more busy than me that they don't have 10 seconds to 5 minutes to create a response? How do you deal with the frustrations of flaky people or people who constantly underestimate their results? [link] [comments]  |
| Lesson learned: Never let 1 client be more than 15% of revenue Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:25 AM PST Hi all, So this was something pretty basic lesson that I had read and heard from others before - but sometimes things don't really "stick" until you experience it first hand. We are a services start-up (coming up on our 1 yr anniversary next month!) that is bootstrapped with no debt. We are currently at 4 full time employees. Last year, we signed a big client that was paying us about $100k/yr (we were at $450k ARR) which meant this client was a SUBSTANTIAL portion of our revenues. The client was great to work with, but the margins were TERRIBLE on the work due to a variety of reasons. After meeting with the team, we decided to cut the client which had a DRAMATIC negative impact on our cash flow. Our gross profit went from 40% to -25% in a matter of a month. Ultimately, cutting them was the right choice because now we can take on clients that have much better margins, but losing that amount of money so quickly was a big shock to the system. So if it is any advice I could give fellow business owners ... say NO to a client that would be giving you more than 15% of your total company revenue. You never want to be in a position where someone could 'have you by the balls' and make you bend over backwards in order to keep them. And also: Sometimes cutting a client that is paying you a lot but has relatively low margins is WORTH IT because it will free up your capacity for those higher margin clients :). [link] [comments]  |
| How did you start teaching yourself about properly paying taxes? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 06:29 AM PST |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2019 01:05 AM PST Just curious to hear some real stories from people that either side-hustled or straight up quit their day job to go after their ventures. I'm sure this type of post has probably been done before, but hopefully we can get a big discussion and some idea sharing going on here. And yes if you're wondering I absolutely hate my day job, I'm not aiming to steal anyone's ideas, just looking for some inspiration on how to get started, and managing a 10-12hr/day job and trying to side hustle at the same time. Playing with the idea of SMMA or starting a 3D printing based business, since both aren't big in my local area. Look forward to hearing how some of you made it out! [link] [comments]  |
| I need serious help legitimizing my business! (Artist) Posted: 25 Feb 2019 10:29 AM PST Using a throwaway account so my identity remains hidden. I am a street artist who started street art in 2015 as a hobby while I was in college. I go by an alias and over the years I've developed a fairly large local following on social media. People see my work on the streets of my city and want to own it on canvas. I will paint my pieces on canvas and sell it to those individuals through a PayPal business account. Using a PayPal business account, I am able to keep my personal information hidden and have only my alias name show up on transactions. 2016 was when I really started to make money off of my work. I made about ~$5,000 that year and never worried about filing taxes. However, in recent years I've seen my numbers nearly double each year. In 2017 I brought in ~$10,000. In 2018 I brought in ~20,000. From my estimates, I'm on course to earn ~$30,000 in 2019. When I started this whole street art thing I was in college working part time minimum wage jobs. Back then I wasn't even earning enough to file taxes. That being said, I've never filed taxes. Obviously with me making the amount of money I am now off of my art, I seriously need and want to start filing and legitimizing my business. My biggest issue is that I have no idea where to even begin. The work I do isn't exactly legal (displaying my work on the streets) so I've always worried about linking my art and my real name together by filing or setting up an LLC. As my work has grown more popular, I have begun to get more legitimate jobs working with businesses and companies across my city collaborating on projects. Some of these job offers I've gotten have required me to submit a W2 in order to be paid but I've had to reject them because of my filing situation. I'm coming here in hopes that someone could at least point me in the right direction of where I should begin in terms of legitimizing my career as a freelance artist. Should I record all of my spending + earnings? I tried to save all of my receipts I've gotten from purchasing supplies in 2018. I have literally hundreds of receipts that it's very difficult to keep track of all of them. I also sold tons of art last year. Some that were purchased through PayPal and others that were paid by cash in person. How do I keep track of everything? Is there someone like a financial advisor I can go to to help me figure all of this out? I'm still in my early 20's so I apologize for my ignorance. I just really need help and I have no one to turn to. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.**** [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2019 01:53 PM PST I sell locally only (using Craigslist/OfferUp, etc.), my product niche is larger items which aren't ideal for shipping. What kind of website should I use? I mostly get paid in cash when buyers come for pickup. Should I just have something basic that shows what I have, or do a Shopify-type site? I doubt I'll get paid much through the site, but I'm interested in what you guys have to say. And hey, maybe I'll get paid a lot more via the site, I just don't know as I haven't gotten to that point yet. Tldr; What kind of site should I use for selling only to locals? Portfolio-style site, or eCommerce? [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone used Adwords for Book Marketing? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 07:53 AM PST I recently packaged my Stanford course in Lean Startup Marketing, and put 2 of the 3 workbooks up on Amazon (and Smashwords). https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732543100. I want to run some ads with Adwords. Book marketing is different from other product marketing, in that the cost to purchase is nominal, but the time investment in reading it, is a real commitment. I read somewhere that just putting up ads with Adwords won't get any traction unless you "know what you're doing." I don't! I'd love to hear about what Adwords campaigns you've run, especially in book marketing, and the results--what worked, what didn't, and why. And if anyone has run Amazon campaigns for their books through KDP, please tell us about that as well. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How do I get a prototype manufactured? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 01:44 PM PST Hi all! Starting off, I think I have a cool product idea and I have the means to make a (shitty) prototype. I know which types of circuits to use, can use SolidWorks, can test tolerances for the 3D printer I'm using. I can figure out PCB making. My issue: how would I get a professional prototype made? The first one is for functionality. A prototype for a pitch or a video should be better, in my opinion. In other words, where can I access manufacturers, and how would I get them to make 1 prototype with minimal starting capital (a few hundred bucks)? [link] [comments]  |
| Whats would be the best way to make money as a 17yo? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 01:43 PM PST No, I dont want to go and work at fast food,restaurants,etc. And I cant cuz i can only work if im 18 in my country. I want to learn something or do something to make money, tons of it not just like 5$. I want to be able to buy things,to help my parents, to be financially independent. I want to learn or do something. I just know i want to make money and be independent [link] [comments]  |
| Bootstrapping SaaS startups - getting them faster to the market Posted: 25 Feb 2019 12:59 PM PST Hi everyone :) I'm a software developer working in the outsourcing as technical team lead. If I'm not working for fortune 500 companies, I usually deliver software for SaaS. Apart from customer specific code, I usually make things over and over again. It's getting dead boring. So, I got to this idea by looking how software usually gets developed and it just makes me sick. When working for SaaS, time to market is everything. This means cutting corners. If every SaaS startup developed each feature completely, with a satisfying degree of good engineering practices (like, I don't know, having automated tests, clean code, good software design, nice and clean architecture), I bet over 95% of them would never reach the market, because they would run out of money. What if a business does not have to spend tens of thousands of dollars developing a feature, then even more maintaining it, when they can buy it off the shelf, for a fraction of the cost? But, what features all SaaS applications need? The list is quite long. From user account management, over reporting to payment integrations. There are services provided by the big players, like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, but on the long run, they get really expensive. And you have what is know as vendor lock-in. Apart from price, my software would be also breaking this lock, allowing you to pick another vendor if you are not pleased. Don't like Amazon SNS for sending SMS-s? Here's Twillio. Don't like Mailgun? Here's AWS SES. No need to re-integrate; I do this for you. The reason why I'm posting this here: I'm afraid that I am wasting my time, as I program it like I would like someone to program for me, with highest care and zero tolerance for bugs, and all this time I spend for this undertake, is borrowed from my family. I speculate it is going to be awesome, but I really need some insight from more experienced entrepreneurs. What do you think? Is there a market for this? [link] [comments]  |
| Serious question, where can I obtain 400,000 32GB flash drives? Posted: 24 Feb 2019 06:35 PM PST This post is not a joke. Although I can't share any more details, I would like to get in contact with a supplier that can provide this amount of reliable flash drives. Edit: I am not interested in anyone that is not directly connected to a manufacturer. I need quality assurance and real quotes. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking to market to small businesses (any suggestions?) Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:54 AM PST I have begun to develop a packaging/kitting business to serve small and medium sized businesses with packaging and kitting solutions. We offer a variety of packaging methods such as poly-bagging, shrink wrapping, band sealing and coding, labeling and barcode solutions, custom kitting per customer requirements, cartoning, etc. Any suggestions on marketing strategies to grow clientele? Cold calling is in progress, but I figured I would pose the question here and see what everyone else has to say. I have never been exposed to B2B marketing. [link] [comments]  |
| We're the creators of Newscoop, an AI powered (tech) news summary app for Android Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:50 AM PST Fellow Entrepreneurs, We're the creators of Newscoop, an app that summarizes the latest events in tech. We launched our Alpha two weeks ago, and thought people could benefit from an app that would provide them the gist of what's going on in the tech world. Unfortunately, we love coding more than anything so while waiting for Alpha and Beta feedback, we decided to start working on some AI models. Now, using these models all our summaries are automatic and powered with a smart algorithm. On top of all that, you will never read news older than 48 hours, as we only report the latest events. We'd love for you to see if the app is something that will provide value in your daily life... and we'd love to hear what you have to say; good or bad. Check us out at on the Google Play Store. [link] [comments]  |
| Struggling to hire my first employee. Any business owners who can help me? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:42 AM PST Hey redditors, how is it going? I came for an advice and also to write down what goes through my head. I started a moving company about 14 months ago in the UK and quickly hit my first target which was get my calendar full for the whole week. This gives me a solid income with plenty of energy and hard work involved. I have reached my limits and can't take more bookings, I'm constantly full all week,which is great but I would like to get more income. Throughout the past months I realised that there is a massive demand for furniture removals among my clients. I started to plan that I will buy another van, get an insurance and a license and hire a person to do this for me. I just can't figure how to proceed from here. I'm struggling to break through at this stage. I find it difficult to search for a person who I can give the responsibility to drive my van and do a 5-star service. No help among family and friends unfortunately. Question: did any small business owners struggled too to hire their first employee? If so, what's the best conduct and what are the common mistakes? I'm ready to make this step but I'm a fresh starter so appreciate all your kind suggestions. Many thanks in advance, Goldie [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for a credit card for a startup! Does anybody know a "startup-friendly" bank? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 03:50 AM PST Fellow Redditors, I'm searching for a credit card for my startup. Don't have any exp. with this. What should I be looking for? Recommendations? Any feedback is great appreciated. Thanks in advance! - Mike [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:21 AM PST ello /r/Entrepreneur, I know I've seen it posted around once or twice but wanted to see what you guys think. I have an idea for a fun little business I want to work on, but it requires artistic skill, nothing overly crazy, but I'm far to left brained to handle anything but the business side of things. Should I 1 - Find an artist and work with them 1 on 1, and split things down the middle based on profits. (or) 2 - Find a site to hire someone and pay them based on images. Again wouldn't be anything hard at all for someone in the field. And if 2 where are some good places to find some people. I know I've seen a post or 2 about making shirts where they were paying next to nothing someone in another country to do their art. [link] [comments]  |
| How did you get comfortable accepting money? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 10:41 AM PST Most people when the start out feel anxious accepting money for what they do. Usually its disguised as feeling like you can't make money from what you do, others do too much for free. What is your advice for being able to accept money for your product/service? [link] [comments]  |
| Startup Cemetery: Learn why 100+ startups have failed Posted: 25 Feb 2019 10:39 AM PST Hey /r/Entrepreneur! I'm Rich, maker of Failory.
After 6 months of research, data collection, writing, designing and development, I've finally launched Startup Cemetery, a BIG resources in which I've analyzed why +100 startups have failed! The last 3 months of building this side-project have been quite difficult. The truth is that I had fear of launch and I was always postponing the launch day. I always felt as if there were features missing and wanted to add new information to each business page. The strategy I found to avoid putting off the launch day was to contact Kevin William David (a Product Hunt community member) and scheduled a PH launch day with him. I can now proudly say Startup Cemetery is featured in Product Hunt! ☺️
Over 35,000 words of content on how companies like Vine, Yik Yak and Netscape have failed. Use the filters if you want to search for a specific industry, country or cause of failure, or just click the "Surprise Me!" button if you want to be redirected to a random startup! But if you don't know where to start with, there are three startup case studies which particularly caught my attention.
Beepi It went out of cash to operate and tried to sell itself to two potential buyers, but the potential sales were not successful and Beepi had to close operation. The company had an incredibly high burn rate, spending about $7 million per month. The reasons for cash shortage were attributed mismanagement of funds to support expenditures unrelated to business such as covering the bills for the founders' partners and spendings unnecessary sums of money on expensive furnitures. At the same time, Beepi was also reported as giving disproportionately high salary and overtimes to its top management. Besides having failed to manage the financial aspects of the startup, also Beepi's logistics in buying and selling cars came short. Originally planning to complete an acquisition deal with Fair.com, one of its main competitors, that never happened and the company tried to negotiate with DGDG, but also this deal fell through. The company shut down in December 2016.
Juicero Juicero failed to build a profitable business after raising a substantial amount of funds under the claim of innovation and disruption. The company received funding from high profile firms before users realized that the machines were useless. The high initial price of $699 was already a barrier for many of its potential customers and the fact that the machine only worked with Wi-Fi was an additional inconvenience. To add to that, the company put a scannable QR code on each packet serving and the machine would not function unless it detected the presence of said code. In other words, people could not press home-made packets but had to order them from Juicero, each packet costed between $5 and $7. After months of slow sales, the company tried to sell its product at $400 and planned to offer a cheaper version in the months to come. The company received one last blow when Bloomberg News published a video proving that simply by hand squeezing the packets you could obtain a full glass of juice and that the $700 machine was really useless. Few months after that Juicero went bankrupt and has since been classified as another absurd Silicon Valley startup product that raised huge funds but didn't really solve any real problem.
Fab Fab's success echoed around the world, resulting in companies launching their own same exact replicas of Fab's platform, including the Samwer brothers, who are known for launching replicas of thriving American businesses abroad like ebay, Amazon, etc. This news troubled Fab's CEO. Jason Goldberg. To secure sales in the European region, Fab's CEO insisted on acquiring three new startups in the region. The move to prematurely expand to Europe ultimately costed Fab over $60-$100 million dollars in capital. A former Fab employee said that the decision to move towards Europe would've been fantastic if it had been done in a subsequent period, after the company became fully established in the U.S. The expansion led to serious funding issues inside the board. Furthermore, in an attempt to solve the slow delivery rate to their customers, Fab decided to buy their own warehouse in New Jersey. This solution was initially successful as the delivery time went down from 16.5 days to only 5.5 days. This became the perfect opportunity for Fab to exponentially grow their product inventory. Sales rose up rapidly but what the company didn't immediately seem to realize was that by scaling up their inventory, they would lose their competitive edge for which they were known for, "providing personal and intimate designs". The company focused too much of the funds on several initial marketing campaigns which led people into buying an initial product but didn't help in developing customer purchase patterns they could rely on. The plan on expanding their product inventory backfired as customers realized that they could find the same products for a cheaper price and a faster delivery on Amazon. Customers left Fab in exchange for a better service from Amazon. In the middle of 2014, CEO Jason Goldberg concluded that it was better to sell the remaining parts of Fab to a prospective company. In the end, the $1-billion-dollar worth company was sold to PCH Innovations for only $15 million dollars.
You can read 97 other failure stories here. I'm so enthusiastic about this project, so I would love to know your opinion about it on the comments 😉 [link] [comments]  |
| too good to be true - absentee convenience store listed on one of thsoe business resell sites Posted: 25 Feb 2019 10:26 AM PST Why is this a terrible idea / whats the catch? There are a couple convenience stores listed on the site in a major city a live in, in areas with high walking foot traffic. The listings say the convenience stores are absentee operated, does have beer and small amoutn of grocery sales, but no deli or lotto - which I like as I don't have food management experience. low rent, long lease with extension, everything in place to have a deli, reason for selling = retirement; "100% absentee" net 200+, ask = 400 + inventory (60+k) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2019 10:13 AM PST Is it hard to get a merchant account set up for a CBD vendor? Anyone have experience with this? [link] [comments]  |
| Starting a website agency as a student. Posted: 25 Feb 2019 10:09 AM PST Hi all, just want some advice regarding me creating a website development agency (possibly extending our services to a creative development agency offering animation and more). Right now I'm doing a similiar thing for someone else working on a miniscule commision on PROFITS. I got a job through a mutual friend selling websites, animation, marketing, SEO and more. The business model is as follows: -Hire a bunch of part time sales reps to work on commision, scouting people out on social media and other platforms. -Hire freelancers to do service (would be web dev for me) once you get the job. -Buy domain and charge client for hosting. -Profit? Now that I know how to work the system I think it could be pretty good for me. I'm just wondering what the start up costs would be for me, and anything else I should worry about. Would the start up costs just be limited to my website? If I made 400 dollars extra a month I would be more then happy. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2019 09:45 AM PST Facebook is a pain in the ass an our rep isnt much help. We're looking for an in at Facebook where we can work closer with someone who can actually get things taken care of. For example white listing ad accounts and getting ads approved when disapproved etc. More than happy to pay you decent money if the intro is legit. Thanks :) [link] [comments]  |
| MBA users, what did you learn from your MBA? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 09:36 AM PST Don't have an MBA, but my impression is that an MBA is just a credential and doesn't really provide much valuable training. For the MBA holders: What did your learn from your MBA? What classes were beneficial? Do you think you learned more from your MBA than you would have 2 years working? [link] [comments]  |
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