Startups Feedback Fridays - A Friendly Feedback Exchange For Ideas and Products |
- Feedback Fridays - A Friendly Feedback Exchange For Ideas and Products
- How To Hack Your Own PR and never pay an agency....
- W8-BEN-E
- Cash is king and don't celebrate a deal till the ink is dry, a cautionary tale from almost going out of business this month
- My good friend who invested in my startup and fell in love with me and got rejected, just offered me a position at his startup.. and I'm taking it.
- In 2017 I co-founded a mobile app development studio, mainly aiming at startups. These are 10 things that I have learned so far.
- Advice: packaging for hardware products
- [Question] Start as an LLC then switch to C-Corp once ready to raise funds?
- Creative ways to do cold calls/emails
- Need advice: Multiple ideas/problems to solve. Which one to pick and fully get behind?
- Weird question from a prospect
- Should i go to US?
- Startup compensation salary or equity?
- How to go about salary negotiations for career transition (new field, new position) in established start-up?
- How to raise funding for my app?
- How do you become code “literate” as a non-technical founder?
| Feedback Fridays - A Friendly Feedback Exchange For Ideas and Products Posted: 07 Jun 2019 06:08 AM PDT Welcome to this week's Feedback Thread. This is the place to request feedback on your ideas and products. Be sure to give feedback if you are requesting feedback. Equivalent exchange goes a long way towards reaching your own goals and it makes for a stronger community. Please use the following format:URL: Purpose of Startup: Technologies Used: Feedback Requested: Additional Comments: 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. You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord. [link] [comments]  |
| How To Hack Your Own PR and never pay an agency.... Posted: 07 Jun 2019 03:06 AM PDT I've been in early-stage startup marketing/growth roles for over 12 years (with 3 exits as HoM) and I can tell you without a doubt that if you're an early stage startup you need to learn how to hack PR yourself because Agencies can charge about $5000-$10,000 a month. Timing is important here, but what I'm about to teach you is a longterm process, that you only unleash once you have data proving that your product/market is ready. Hacking PR is all about building relationships with the media related to your industry and getting them to tell your story. Over the past 12 years, I've worked with startups all over the world and at all different budgetary constraints and you'll hear me say this over and over again, I believe that early-stage stage startups should NEVER hire a PR agency, if they're cash-strapped. PR agencies are simply too expensive for an early stage startup so you need to know how to generate your own buzz so that once you have the funds to hire a professional PR agency, they can expedite your growth, and build on the PR program you already put in place yourself. Here are the 6 steps to hack PR for your startup that I have used time and time again for companies all around the world: Step 1. Figure out your keywords/topics: What is your business relevant to? What keywords and topics are people writing about that your business' news can apply to. For most projects I've been fortunate enough to be working with I've aimed to find 3 categories/topics/key phrases for relevancy. For example, a travel app that uses AI to help with travel booking will be interesting to reporters who write about Tech, Travel, and Business, not just travel. Think about these keywords and terms and run over to alerts.google.com to set up alerts for them (don't worry I'll explain why in a second). So again, going back to the travel app I'm going to set up alerts for " AI startup" "Artificial Intelligence Apps" "travel startup" "travel industry news" " digital nomad trend" and so on….Why do this? Simple, because I want to see which writers are writing stories that I can be a part of. Every day I check these alerts and also visit Google News to see if I missed any terms (customizing your google news saves hours here monthly). Step 2: Create relationships with Reporters: So now I'm seeing everyone whois writing relevant stories about my industries. The beauty of PR Hacking is that 90% of these articles have the writers' contact information on the article. If they don't have their direct email, they'll usually have their twitter. So everyday, I will grab the relevant email addresses and names and go on over to my excel sheet or Google doc and drop them in…building this list during product development, or in expectation of a launch. If it's a large enough contact I will email them immediately saying that I loved the article and I'd love to offer them an exclusive to be featured in the next piece. The focus here should be about creating value for the writer. Not just asking for free promotion. My favorite personal quote of mine I've ever said is "Spam isn't spammy if there's enough value for the recipient". If there's no email, I'll go add that person on twitter and tweet to them immediately to follow-back and then I'll DM. I will continue doing this until my PR Hacking List has reached 300–500 entries. Now you've got a solid list for Press Release Distribution!Most reporters put their email address on their publications directly, to entice people like me to send them stories! Utilize this to start building a relationship with them. Don't be spammy, but create value for them. Step 3- Make Your Own Milestones! This is another one of my favorite quotes. Often times when I work with early-stage startup founders on PR Marketing they tell me they don't have anything newsworthy. To that, I immediately call BULLSHIT! Just because you don't have a $1,000,000 revenue stream yet or 500k monthly uniques doesn't mean you don't have something newsworthy. Think about your mission that you initially set out to complete, are you further along than when you started? Think about your data, is your product solving the problem it set out to? Have you mapped your millionth datapoint? At another travel startup I headed PR for, the founder told me he had nothing I could use for PR, so I sat for an afternoon with the engineering team to see what they were working on. Turns out they had created the world's largest database of categorized hotel review sentiments. That might sound boring to you, but to a writer who writes about hotels, travel or big data that's sexy as hell. I spun it up into a PR Marketing campaign and we got 4 nationwide articles with no spend. This company got acquired 4 months later. Find some sexy, relevant news story based on what you ARE doing, even if you haven't fully done it yet. Try to push out at least 1 story per quarter even if you're heads down into product development, just to maintain thought leadership and industry awareness. NOTE: If your startup is going for fundraising try to do 1 per month! Step 4- Create your own Press Release! This doesn't have to be a scary mountain to climb. Writing a press release is all about making it very easy for reporters to do their job. They are usually quite LAZY. They want relevant, copy-pasteable chunks of writing that they can simply regurgitate onto their article to look like they're amazing at their job. If you can help them be lazier, you'll win more. Just remember three main rules: Focus on the value for the reader, keep it simple, and include a lot of numbers, quotes, and facts. Also include a sexy title, a subtitle that goes further in depth and make sure your date is the day you email the release out. Reporters will insta-delete your email if the PR is outdated. The need . fresh news. Step 5- Distribute your Press Release. This is the fun part. Start blasting that baby out. There are two main tasks here: 1 send your PR with a short and succinct paragraph in an email to your press list you've been cultivating ( I use a free Mailchimp Account with every company email address). Be sure to personalize the email subject with first name and organization so the open rates are higher. The second task is to send direct emails to the biggest press contacts a few days prior. I like to title said direct emails with the word EXCLUSIVE, and yes, in all caps. Always offering the big dogs the exclusive will no doubt create more value for them, and therefore make it more likely you'll get that big nationwide press release marketing push your company needs. Work with them, see what they need to be better at their job and then provide it. We're all just people trying to work. Remember that. They need you too, so help them out. Step 6- Stay on top of reporters. I recommend using a free ESP like MailChimp (free under 2k email list) to send out your press emails so you can easily track opens. You do this so you can see which reporters opened the email more than once and follow up with them directly. A lot of times they will open it, start working on your content and forget and move on…so if you stay on top of them you 10x your chances of getting featured. I also recommend copying the email campaign in your ESP, and resending to the segment that didn't open the previous email every 3 days. Just keep hammering them until they either say "Please remove me from your list, unsub or respond to set up a time to chat. More often than not, the response will be just a Thanks. Will be in touch one-liner but even that is good enough. The goal is to start building a foundation with the people who tell the story in your industry. Get noticed, become a go-to source and eventually a thought leader in your industry. Pro Tip: Also spend some time distributing your press release on free sites like PRlog.org, Reddit (The Startup Subreddit for instance), Flipboard, StumbleUpon etc. You can even repurpose your press release into a blog post and post it on your blog, which can then be shared on social media etc. Just be sure to wait a few days after sending to the PR contacts, before you post publicly. There you have it. That's all you need to do to get press traction for your project. And then once you raise a round, you can hire an agency to expand on what you've done. If you're interested in proof of who I am, google my username. I look forward to answering more questions! -AndrewStartups [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 09:29 PM PDT Hello, We are a US based startup and are hiring a company overseas to do some work for us (building our software product). The entity is based out of India. I am confused on what form they need to fill out. Do they need to fill up a W8-BEN-E form instead of a w9 form that a US vendor would fill up? Or do I just skip getting any info from them and just create an SOW. Want to do the right thing and it's kind of confusing for someone with no accounting background. Please help. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 03:36 AM PDT We're a young company. We made a bit of money year 1, had 7.2x growth year 2 and 7 months into year 3 we're at 4x growth for this year already. Yet we almost went out of business this month. At the start of the year I had 3 customers all saying they wanted to close that month (January) and that we had to be ready to go. I was looking at my first $1 million month and hiring like crazy to be able to support all this business. Then all 3 projects started to slip. We put loads of effort into these deals and kept them alive but now we're seriously burning cash each month because of all the new hires. Finally 6 months later we closed 1 of the deals and that means we're OK for a while but before that closed we were 2 weeks away from shutting down if we didn't fix it. This was all because we didn't wait for deals to be signed and thought that there's no way 3 could slip and to compound the hurt we hired a sales team and instead of sales going up, we had our worst quarter while we trained them up. We're just about out the other side now which is great but I am never planning runway against anything but dried ink in the future and I hope that I can inspire other people on the journey to do the same. I had heard cash is king and sage nodding from experienced mentors but I thought these guys just didn't get probability and were being overly cautious. Now I know better. I know people will wonder yes we could have got investment but when you're burning cash like you hate the stuff and your sales have just stopped dead, you're not going to get the valuation you want. We did actually get some convertible notes, just to cover our ass a bit. It's a very strange dichotomy running a business that is at once talking about potentially hitting 10x growth and hitting an 8 figure valuation and also a blazing money torch that seems like it will go out of business and isn't very imvestible. Lessons learned:
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| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 11:05 PM PDT This is something I'm currently going through and I thought it might be interesting to document as it's quite a unique situation. A year ago I met an investor. Let's call him Henry. I pitched Henry for my startup and after a few weeks of talking he decided he'd invest about $35k. Nice. Shortly after this investment it became clear that Henry was "deeply" in love with me and showed it off by sending me a several paragraph love letter. While touching, I quickly and clearly told him that I wasn't interested and I'd prefer not to ruin the relationship we have. He seemed to understand. Over the next few months we would hang out quite often in a friendly manner and Henry even got into a serious relationship with someone else. We started to spend a lot of time together and discussed business strategies and it was obvious we had a great chemistry and solved problems very well together. 3 days ago Henry offered me a very good role in his early stage but successful startup. An offer that would see me owning 8.25% of this already established startup. It's a very interesting situation when 1 person that you met 1 year ago can have such a big impact on your life. I don't really know where I'm going with this but I think it's an interesting story. I'm curious what your take on this situation is.. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 05:17 AM PDT In mid-2017, my business partner and I started planning our mobile app development business. A couple of months later, we launched our first website. 18 months later, and having started from zero, here are 10 things that we learned:
After 18 months of growth, and some projects launched, we decided to have our website redesigned with some of our latest projects and also pitch ourselves as an outsourcing solution for agencies, developers and designers. In due time I will attempt to share the aftermath. [link] [comments]  |
| Advice: packaging for hardware products Posted: 07 Jun 2019 12:27 PM PDT I've designed and developed a small tech product that I working on getting ready to produce and sell. Right now I'm trying to figure out packaging. I want it to feel like a premium piece of tech you would get from google etc. because the product is tiny and $60, so I want people to feel they're getting something high end. Does anybody have suggestions, opinions or preferences on what type of boxes and insets to use or where to get them? [link] [comments]  |
| [Question] Start as an LLC then switch to C-Corp once ready to raise funds? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 10:40 AM PDT Hi Everyone, In the early stages of a company where I am a solo founder and I've incurred some cost which I'd like to deduct (win for LLC), however, I do have every intention of raising capital once I'm past MVP (win for C-Corp). So I'm debating the process of starting as a LLC then switching to C-Corp later on. Has anyone gone through the process of changing corporate structures and can provide some feedback? Should I just shut up keep it clean with the C Corp from the start? The intention here is that I live in the Bay Area and I'm getting absolutely hammered with taxes. Solo founder so I have flexibility to serve my own needs for now, but I do plan on bringing others once I feel happy with the prototype (does this ever happen? lol). C Corp is the best structure for everything I want to do in the long-term, it's just the immediate term I'm contemplating how to prioritize, if at all. [link] [comments]  |
| Creative ways to do cold calls/emails Posted: 07 Jun 2019 08:22 AM PDT I'm starting a B2B business and am looking for creative ways to reach out to potential customers. I have no choice but to start with cold calls/emails, but was wondering to hear about some creative ways to do that. I've heard people talk about vidyard go and personalizing emails using online tools, but why other techniques can I use? [link] [comments]  |
| Need advice: Multiple ideas/problems to solve. Which one to pick and fully get behind? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 10:12 AM PDT Like most entrepreneurs, I maintain an idea/problem book to note down every idea, issue or problem I face or hear from someone else. Periodically, I will review these problems, do some research, talk to prospects and then decide if I want to pursue making a business out of solving one of the problems in my list. I am working with 3 ideas right now, and they all have been somewhat validated in the marketplace with a small sample set of prospects. There is a need from initial research and people are willing to pay for it. Which one do I pick to fully get behind? I have a rough idea of the market size for each of these ideas, but don't know what the true potential will be, and most likely will only know that once we are fully immersed in it. So, which one do I pick? Has anyone else struggled with this type of a decision? One of my entrepreneur buddies said - 'just pick the one you are most passionate about', which makes sense, but I would be pissed if the idea(s) I left behind ends up having unicorn potential down the line. Some context: This is not my first startup rodeo. Grew startup # 1 and sold it. # 2 is a SaaS solution that is growing fast for the last 7 years, and I have a management team in place. This will be my # 3, and I want to aim for the moon. Hence my question. # 1 and # 2 were problems I had and once I solved them, other people wanted it too. [link] [comments]  |
| Weird question from a prospect Posted: 07 Jun 2019 01:50 PM PDT So recently I did an inside sales demo of my SaaS software for a prospect, it went well, though he didn't close. Today he emailed me out of the blue and asked if he could see an "example of the landing page that we provide for clients" (we provide some sort of marketing software for their niche), because "their developer" (<insert name of webdev shop>) wants to see it.
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| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 05:49 AM PDT I am a high school student in India and my biggest dream has always been to be an entrepreneur. I am interested in electronics and hardware and made several projects over the years. Obviously every Tech enthusiast has heard of silicon valley and about all the start-ups and success stories there and always wanted to go there. However I really want to keep learning and updating myself and educate myself in a way that colleges at least in India don't support. I just want to know y'alls opinions on what I should do? Should I apply for a college after high school in California and start my company when the time is right or is college not worth it there and u could just stay there and learn stuff myself from the internet while being in touch with the stuff happening there or do y'all have a completely different opinion? I am interested in you guy's say in this and any proper opinion is appreciated. Note: money isn't really much of a problem. I would say my family is always very supportive of my decisions and will support me financially. I also would like to meet new people who share the same ideas and passion. I know reddit is the best place online for that but I do feel meeting people in real life and possibly starting a startup together is cool too. [link] [comments]  |
| Startup compensation salary or equity? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 06:08 AM PDT I'm a student in Canada and I've done a few internships. A guy I worked with from one of my previous internships recently contacted me and said that he's starting a startup and asked if I would be interested in working part time. My job would be to continue developing the prototype that he started to make. There are only 3 people in the startup so far (including me). I'm pretty excited because I think this would be a great learning opportunity for me, but I'm not sure how much compensation I should be expecting. I get around $30/hour for other internships. The startup guy offered EITHER $20/hour or 10% equity. Is it normal for startups to offer only salary or equity? Which one do I choose? Should I negotiate a higher offer? I'm really new to this so any comments would be helpful for me. Thanks :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 11:46 AM PDT I have about 8 yrs working in an unrelated field. My soft skills include customer success, coordinating, etc. I've been under challenged for the entire 8 yrs. What I've sold them on is my ability to learn fast and deliberately, mentality of self-mastery of myself and for the workplace, and working well with autonomy and vagueness. I'm transitioning into a new field, new position requiring some customer skills but more towards analytical, problem solving, autonomy, and creativity skills. It's written as an entry level job. I'd be an addition to a fast growing team. As for the current person, she's been in it for almost a yr, it's her first job out of college, but she has a math degree. As a humanities major, I'm missing that sense of "rigourous" schooling, though I did well on their logic test. I'd say the salary's in the realm of 50-65k. However, that's a wide range and I feel that I'm just grasping because while the position is listed as "analyst," it's not in the sense of data science or business intelligence, but more operational (i.e. Less $), like there's a problem and you need to help the customer solve it. However, it's a very unique position and that's what makes it exciting to me, but I don't have any pay history to google, even for the specific company as it's a start-up (70-90 ppl). Other benefits match successful established start-ups (health ins, 401K, very good work/life balance, team outings, annual trip, etc). It's a very genuine company with good funding and more coming this yr. I've read that if the offer is good, you should just accept, but I've also read that companies expect you to negotiate. Honestly, I'd take the position for 50k because the culture is so much better than where I work now (45-50k is a pretty solid salary for a new grad in this area). At this point, I have 8 yrs of experience entering into an entry level position. I don't want to undervalue myself. How do I approach it? Say if they put out a number, is it reasonable for me to say: I appreciate the offer, but was hoping more towards XXX (just throw 5k onto whatever they say)? Again, it's a unique position and I don't have "market research" to point to. At this point, I've taken two tests and talked to 5 people. I plan to be have 3rd round interviews (with founder, so likely the last one) next week so I anticipate that salary will come up. They gave me a heads up about references and I know mine will be strong. TL;DR How do I negotiate salary when I have 8 yrs experience transitioning into a unique entry level job in a new industry. What are my soft skills "worth?" [link] [comments]  |
| How to raise funding for my app? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 10:11 AM PDT Hello, everyone! I'm an Android developer from India and have developed a basic app on Dec 2017 and released it. Now it has about 16,000 active installs and 350-400 daily active users (most of my users are from US and Europe). It has had over 63,000 installs till now. I want to develop it further as I feel the market for it is there and add more functions and release it on other platforms too but I need some funding for it. My questions are :
Hope I'm asking this at the right place! :) Edit #1 : For revenue I'm thinking of implementing a subscription based model like Medium has, pay to read. I haven't tested it yet as I don't have proper knowledge or resources for creating one. But it will work, hopefully. [link] [comments]  |
| How do you become code “literate” as a non-technical founder? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 02:41 AM PDT As a non-technical founder it is difficult to get your points across or ask the right questions when your thoughts dont come across as intended. Sometimes you spend hours working on the wrong thing due to miscommunication. So, I would like to learn able to "speak" code to developers, so that I can effectively communicate with them. Any tips on how to learn how to learn how to become code "literate" will be much appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
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