- AMA - We’re Dr. Marcel Muenster, and Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, experts on entrepreneurship and mental health issues who’ve advised the World Economic Forum, Dr. Oz, the world’s most successful and powerful individuals, written for the Harvard Business Review and been endorsed by Sir Richard Branson.
- Current methods of finding user interview participants?
- early adopter stories
- Startup wants me to forfeit my unvested stock
- Expert advise
- Struggling with partner when the startup is shinning
- Another compensation question
- How much equity to leave on the table in a new company???
- How can we improve our UX/UI on a shoestring budget?
- I am lost, where should I start?
- Speaking with pre seed investor, is this how it is typically supposed to go?
- Dealing With False #MeToo Allegations
| Posted: 26 Apr 2019 07:28 AM PDT |
| Current methods of finding user interview participants? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 09:58 PM PDT I am wondering how most early-stage startups currently find user interview participants, and also which industries are you primarily based in. Is this something you would be concerned about right at the start, or do not worry till a later stage? Currently i'm trying to find participants for a school project, perhaps just chat for maybe 5-10 minutes about this same topic (on how user interviews are conducted, and what are some possible pain points startup owners/entrepreneurs might face while doing so). Trying to go to places physically: Not everyone is my target audience, ie. some people are just there doing freelance work, or they have started their own business but didn't do user testing/interviews. Otherwise, people are busy. I did manage to find a few people, but not enough.. Is 5-10 mins really hard to find people to talk to, without offering a reward for it? Typically i notice people offering rewards for user testing sessions 30 mins and above. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Apr 2019 11:43 PM PDT What is normal with early adopters? We have 10 people who saw the prototype, 6 gave $1000 each as donation/down payment. The software is for sales people. The software is for branding a business. The software lets sales people quickly put a quote together without going back to the office. Up to 1/10th the amount of work to create the quote. They have been given access to a beta, but they are not using it. Any stories of getting people to start using software. I am aware of Technology acceptance model etc. And know people often don't change their work patterns. Options look to be: A) It is too hard to learn. - We need to improve the UI B) I have the wrong kind of users, i.e. they don't fit the normal early adopter patterns. - We need to find new early adopters. C) the software does not save them as much time as we expected it would. - We need to add new time saving features. But how to pin down a cause. [link] [comments]  |
| Startup wants me to forfeit my unvested stock Posted: 26 Apr 2019 05:32 AM PDT I've been working for this startup (US, state not disclosed) for 3 years now. After the first year I was given restricted stock units, vesting each year for 5 years. After 2 years the company just informed me about their decision of forfeiting the unvested part as I wasn't working as hard as other stock holders and I was rather an employee to them (Although I was never informed about this before and my contract also doesn't mention this. I would be open to a discussion and an agreement, but they're not willing to open any discussion about this with me). Now they want me to sign the forfeiture agreement and I'm not sure what to do about it. Should I sign it as they could just terminate my contract resulting in getting only the current market value of the vested stock according to the profits interest award agreement or should I lawyer up and try to keep the unvested units? I think I should just sign the forfeiture agreement as there's not much to do about this situation according to the profits interest award agreement. I just wanted to ask if there's any other way around it. Thank you in advance for your advice. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Apr 2019 06:24 PM PDT Dear r/startups I am a web ,app developer. Even though I have a good job and pay. I always dreamt of making my own money ,at least 100$ per annum, more than that to release an application of my own. I tried everything I could, I posted on freelancer, forhire but with no better luck. I tried some of these apps , a local bus arrival timing widget for android, a social networking for local community and many more ,but none was successful in monetising. As a fellow startup entrepreneur what is your suggestion. What can I start with? I tried Adsense on my blogs but not so successful ,with 50 to 100 users per day. I have to take down the blog to avoid expenditure. I am eagerly looking forward for the sub, for any valuable suggestion to kick start my entreprenership. [link] [comments]  |
| Struggling with partner when the startup is shinning Posted: 26 Apr 2019 11:58 AM PDT My girlfriend built a business where she would assign private tutors to students in Indonesia. She would initially do it through paper work. She had loads of work and the service was not scalable in that way. It had been having a small revenue. At a point, she was close to quit. She expressed her concern over the work loads. Hearing her, I asked her if I could join as a co-founder and help her in terms of knowledge, skills and most importantly an automated system (Forgot to mention that I am a software engineer working in Malaysia). She agreed on that. I made the official website, which was a huge thing for the brand. Then i started working on a system where we could manage Students, Classes, Invoices, Payment and more information. I had automated 80% of her work work load even i integrated payment gateway working on my weekends. This automation leveraged her to focus on marketing. We saw a spike in our revenue on the second month. I had estimated if we would get assigned 1k students in the end of year, I would personally earn 10 times of my current salary per month. The potential is unlimited on this and I am willing to spend my effort in it to make it happen. But... my girlfriends often says, she wanna quit and close the service when she finds out she is not good at administrative works. I told her she would learn on the way. It is good to mention, the business currently earns almost same like her salary in an International school as a tutor. I revived her on all these times. It was her idea originally where I came later. Now, the fate of the business is totally on my hand. Recently, we agreed to be separated due to our personal reasons (have doubt about how long it will last). She wanted to close the service again. But I insisted we should stick to it no matter how our relationship is. I reminded her, how I spent my last 3 months working on it bit by bit, building it from scratch. I also reminded her about the potential of it. it works, she agrees with me but later after a few days, again same old song "I wanna close it". So, I am in a loop now. It's better to mention that we haven't done any official legal paper-works on company share. It is totally on trust based. TL;DR - My girlfriend who is my business partner as well is not motivated enough to catch up with me in forwarding our business into the ultimate potential it might have in future. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Apr 2019 01:38 PM PDT Been going around and around with a founder of a startup. He finally offered me a Subscription and Stock Restriction Agreement. From how it was explained to me, I'll own a certain number of shares and I get a cash bonus if certain metrics are hit (i.e., financing). it's a reverse vesting agreement. I'm employee #1 and Founder A has a regular job and Founder B is a serial entrepreneur but dedicates maybe 20-30 hours a week on the business but he has a lot of contacts and a really good network. What should I realistically expect and ask for as part of this agreement and what are the disadvantages of this agreement? [link] [comments]  |
| How much equity to leave on the table in a new company??? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 12:10 PM PDT Good friend and I are working on a company together and would like to hash out all ownership and legalities early as possible to avoid any confusion and awkwardness later down the line. We are working developing the product now after we have done about 6 months of R&D on development of the product, market, need for the solution, and all that good stuff. For confidential reasons, the project will not be mentioned. My question is we are thinking doing 70% me and 30% him. As we bring on potential developers, employees, investors, etc in the future, how much should we leave out on the table or should we stick with 70:30 with a clause that we each reduce some points prorated or have a pool to allocate for those people as vested / unvested equity depending on the situation and take from our equity if need be prorated. I will discuss with an attorney as well but many smart heads here that I have actively been reading comments and discussion from so wanted to post here. Thanks all! [link] [comments]  |
| How can we improve our UX/UI on a shoestring budget? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 05:47 AM PDT We are in beta mode of a platform we are building for startups to use. The technology is coming together and our CTO is crushing items in our product roadmap. However, our CTO is fantastic at functionality but not very strong at front end: UX/UI and Design. When we first launched the platform, we cared very little about design and wanted to make the functionality powerful and give actual value to our users. It does that, but I am noticing beta testers giving negative feedback regarding asethics and design. Im the biz dev guy, I travel and sign partnerships for our company and book sales. But I also come from a design background, and am very good at building clean, efficient UX mockups. In which way should you think we should handle this on a minimal budget, here are some suggestions I have been comtemplating. Feel free to tell me which one you like and which one you dont, and/or your suggestions.
Please suggest some things, I am open to doing anything it takes to succeed. I would be curious to know if I should just let my CTO continue doing what he is doing, me continue chatting with investors to raise capital to hire a front end expert. (How much does it costs to get front end code built from mockups per page?) We are on a shoestring budget and cant yet afford to hire a front end developer to do this for us just yet. Please, I am in need of your advice. Cheers, [link] [comments]  |
| I am lost, where should I start? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 02:55 AM PDT I was sending out email/video messages asking companies what problems/challenges they are facing so I can collect data and find a suitable solution to the needs. The response rate was insane low (below 5%). After some discussion with some people they suggested me to search it more nearby first and expand later on. So I decided I should focus on companies more nearby my place (The Netherlands). I focussed on English customers first so I could outsource my work (since it's harder and more expensive to hire Dutch people). Well okay, let's follow these suggestions and I should stick with Dutch companies first. What it makes hard for me is I don't own any skill (did one study which is aviation), I don't know more than the basics of marketing & sales. How do I decide what kind of services/products I want to offer, which people need and what kind of niche to pick? I'ts making me insecure because I don't know shit about running a business, getting clients and stuff like that. I'm still in the research phase. Well basically I'm nowhere but that's my next step. Currently I have no clue where to start or get going. I thought I was doing really well, sending out messages, trying to get in contact with other people but not getting any feedback is kind of demotivating (I won't quit). So for sure I need to do it different this time. [link] [comments]  |
| Speaking with pre seed investor, is this how it is typically supposed to go? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 05:08 AM PDT So a pre seed investor reached out to me a few weeks ago about my mobile app idea and prototype and we've been keeping in touch. First he asked me to send him an elevator pitch. Then to send him a business plan. Next, we scheduled a 15 minute Skype call speed pitch to get basic questions and answers out of the way. The next day, he asked to send a list of all the features of the app. Now, I just scheduled a 30 minute Skype call with a member of his team that works with the technical side of startups to go over the features/functionalities of the app so that they can "get a realistic idea of the scope of the investment needed to develop the platform" as he said. Is this typically how the funding process it is supposed to go? Also, they are based in the United Kingdom and I am from the U.S. and they have invested in I believe around 50 startups. [link] [comments]  |
| Dealing With False #MeToo Allegations Posted: 25 Apr 2019 05:34 PM PDT I run a startup and recently after some bad publicity about me personally two women who I have had (online) relationships have claimed I sexually harassed them. I had "ghosted" them and I understand that their feelings were certainly hurt, I'm not discounting I'm a jerk... but that I didn't do what they said I did. I didn't, I have the chat logs which show a totally consensual relationship, even me explicitly asking if they were comfortable with things. The problem is my business caters to a fairly progressive crowed, I have run with that and really jumped in with that crowd for our business. Sponsorship deals, etc. I'm not saying "oh look at what we do so I'm not a creep", but also trying to also highlight look we donate to women in tech charities, we actively promote diversity, we stop doing business ourselves with other companies that have #metoo problems they don't handle (which likely made us a good target for this). There are a few problems: 1) I can't just say "these allegations are false let me show you my intimate conversations with these women" it would not only make me and my business look bad by sharing private details about their private life (and also I don't really care for my sexual things to be public record). 2) After the allegations were made I decided instead of just coming out and saying no these are false I wanted to take a look at the way I interact with women professionally and personally and while I think the case is very obvious that these two women are wrong... I'm not entirely sure that every conversation I have had with former clients have been above board. There is one specific case where I DM'ed a woman at night and it was just a stupid joke, I don't even know why I said it but I cringed about it... they ignored it... we moved forward but I certainly was in the wrong making the joke. If I come forward and say "these allegations are false" I'm concerned other women who might have actually better allegations might come forward in a sense of duty to the women who actually lied or who might not have come forward themselves because they didn't think they needed to before. 3) It doesn't matter if the allegations were false and no one else comes forward, the allegations were made and for better or worse (I would still argue better) an accusation is equivalent to being tried and convicted. For now, I have just taken a step back trying to let this blow over a bit and trying to ensure that women in my field feel comfortable (which would happen easier without my presence than with it). So now: What do I do? Luckily a large part of my business is online, I could just create a fake name and operate using that (though there is a physical side of the business which I participate in too). Keep going on but with a better respect to my role in hostile work environments... or I can try coming back and saying "look I didn't do anything wrong" or I can just say "hey I'm coming back... I've made mistakes but I want to do better I hope people will accept my apology" and not even bother refuting the claims against me? Are there people a small business can hire to help in this situation? I really want to do right by everyone, I know that I have made mistakes and I want to work to be better and to fix them, but also am pretty well all-in on the business so I can't really just walk away. [link] [comments]  |
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