Startups Weekly Feedback and Support Thread |
- Weekly Feedback and Support Thread
- First employee is struggling. How much time do we put in before it's time to give up?
- What To Focus On First?
- How to estimate the value of my business for investment purposes.
- How is there a business case for self-driving delivery robots?
- To Niche or not to Niche
- IP Protection for Consulting Agreement
- Am I underestimating how hard starting my business could be?
- Questions on taxes
| Weekly Feedback and Support Thread Posted: 25 Feb 2019 03:07 AM PST Create something? Let's see it! Feedback or Support RequesterPlease use the following format:
Post your site along with your stack and technologies used and receive feedback from the community. Please refrain from just posting a link and instead give us a bit of a background about your creation. Feel free to request general feedback or specific feedback in a certain area like user experience, usability, design, or code review. Feel free to request support with hiring talent, finding a job/clients, recruiting a co-founder, getting your pitch deck made, or anything objective based that is specific to your startup. You can also receive advice and feedback in instant chat using the /r/startups discord. Feedback Providers
Support Providers
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| First employee is struggling. How much time do we put in before it's time to give up? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 12:37 PM PST Things have been going well for my company. The technology is working. We've signed some big contracts with customers. We've brought in a lot of non-dilutive funding. We recently closed on our first seed round. Growing so quickly, my co-founder and I became overwhelmed with all the work and 5 months ago hired our first employee. Employee had a fantastic resume and had worked as an engineer for our industry equivalent of Google and Apple. Our lead investor was the former President of one of these companies and put us in touch with employee's managers. All gave glowing reviews so we extended him a very competitive offer. Five months later, his performance has been underwhelming. Employee was someone we hoped would could take lead on some of our projects, but he lacks some very fundamental skills. We're not a software company, but to give some context, it would be like hiring someone with a CS degree, who worked as a developer for Google, who didn't know the difference between a function and a class and had never used a For loop. I promise this is not an exaggeration; my partner and I have no idea how he reached the levels he did with this skill set. Now - employee is a great person. He works really hard. He wants to succeed. We want and need him to succeed. My partner and I both have academic research backgrounds where part of our mission statement was to help train and grow the next generation of engineers, but I'm concerned that state of mind is hindering growth of the company. Employee was supposed to give me more free time to work on business development. I now have less time because I'm spending it teaching him. To summarize - first employee does not have the skills we expected. Do we spend our time helping to develop those skills, or do we need to find someone that already has them? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Feb 2019 01:35 AM PST So I'm trying to start a new startup but I got stuck in this dilemma: If I tried to focus on customers before my product, they can't see my product and know if they'll use it. If I tried to focus on the product before the customer (market). I might lose a lot of time and energy developing something no one wants. If I tried to focus on key partners first, I still don't have a product to show them. I'm lost and don't know who should I focus on before the other. Can anyone in this subreddit give me advice? [link] [comments]  |
| How to estimate the value of my business for investment purposes. Posted: 26 Feb 2019 01:25 AM PST Next couple of months I will try to raise extra capital to further expand my business. At this moment we have 20k euro turnover per month, we are growing constantly but because the first competitors are starting to emerge I would like to speed up the growth. With an extra 100k I could hire between two and four people to handle the day to day business so I and my first employee could manage growth. We are the first business in the Netherlands that solve a particular hot problem in a very charming way: without trying to squeeze as much out of the customers or underpaying the people that actually do the job. This is the way I want it: and customers really seem to appreciate it. 7k turnover the first year, 80k in 2018, this year probably 650k or more. Maximum of 4-5M is possible after two more years. Expanding to other countries and other fields is a possibility. How can I estimate what the total value of the business is? I will consult with some people next weeks, but I would like to have some extra information before I start talking to them. I need this information to be able to put a price on the shares. Your feedback is greatly appreciated, as are your stories about similar experiences! [link] [comments]  |
| How is there a business case for self-driving delivery robots? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 09:39 PM PST Companies like Starship are making self-driving delivery robots that travel on sidewalks for restaurants, post offices, etc. But how is there even a business case? Let's just assume the technology is faultless and accident-free. Here's a a few of the main issues I see:
Competing against cheap labour that ranges from ~$5/trip (UberEats etc.) or $20/h (Post Office), how is there a business case in rolling out delivery robots? Why do the investors behind these companies even bother? Wouldn't you as a customer prefer your order/package delivered by a person that travels takes it to you 4x quicker in a car for $3 more? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2019 11:37 PM PST Hello all! From following this, and similar, subreddits, it looks like most people turn down ideas because similar ones already exist and seem to dilute and underrate the niche effect. I am a big proponent that if an idea is too novel, then it's not a good idea. Chances are that there was already someone else who thought abt it before you and did not pass market validation. On the other hand, if an idea is already implemented and popular in some region, an entrepreneur can spin off a different version of it, or perhaps improve on it. I was wondering whether anyone here has hands-on experience with SaaS or mobile apps that are a niche of a more popular well-known product, and became equally successful? [link] [comments]  |
| IP Protection for Consulting Agreement Posted: 25 Feb 2019 09:18 PM PST Hi r/Startups, hoping for some advice on a potential legal issue. I'm starting a role for a company as a 1099. There is a clause in the contract that assigns ownership of all IP to the employer. I've discussed with the employer, and they agreed the language is too broad. They have asked I draw up an addendum or alternate language that provides proper ownership of unrelated work to myself. Wondering if anyone has a contract template or advice on language. I have a few main concerns:
I have no intention of using company resources for code or operations. Really looking for a way to broadly protect myself and the company. Any advice is appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Am I underestimating how hard starting my business could be? Posted: 25 Feb 2019 05:54 PM PST Ok so we both had a plan to give part of our land out for our business, we decided on a small rv park where we build the hookups for water, electric, sewer and internet along with trash. on paper this is VERY easy for us to do, since we have done this all for our home and for other people. We have built sceptic tanks and houses and worked on electric plenty of time. However we are not technically certified. Since we are doing the work ON OUR OWN. Nothing is technically certified by a master electrician or anything. But that's not that point here, I'm trying to figure out how much we are actually missing. Im not here to ask you a dumb question like "am I allowed to start this business with no permits etc". All I want to ask is this I have told you our situation, that we are trying to do the work on our own but nothing is certified yet. Are we severely underestimating the costs of starting this business? Or is there a reasonable way to get it going? all I want to make sure is that we are not so far off the mark that it's hopeless Edit: to put it better terms. I'm not here to ask a question with an obvious answer, I'm just curious with what I have told you of my attempts have been way far off at starting my business [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Feb 2019 12:51 PM PST Hi all, I have a few quick questions on taxes. Our new startup raised a small amount this year through a couple of angels (25k total) Now that tax season is rolling around, we have a few questions regarding taxes. First question: How should our investors report this on their taxes? Second question: If we raised 25k, but made no money (lost money overall) how should we report that amount? Apologies for the vague questions. I have a meeting with a CPA tomorrow, but would love any help. Thanks very much [link] [comments]  |
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