Thank you Thursday! - (August 01, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Thank you Thursday! - (August 01, 2019)
- The 5 Entrepreneurs who taught me digital marketing
- My first app failed miserably. Here’s the story and my reflection after building dozens of other apps.
- Hiring Your First Employee: The Ultimate 6-Step Guide
- What is the best way to start a business while working full time?
- I'm a Google Gold Product Expert for Google Ads - Ask Me Anything About Google Ads
- Best Small Business Loan Options?
- How I'm using retargeting differently on FB to convert more people.
- Best way to find investors?
- What is your #1 biggest challenge in your business in relation to user experience design?
- Could a business idea like this work?
- Fitness/Sports Reservation Application
- Opening a business but unsure of property zoning - horse industry
- $10k/mo selling standing desks made of cardboard.
- Is it effective to snail-mail advertisements?
- "Boring" business ideas with a great potential ROE
- how does the landing page look (SM platform)
- Is there a subreddit for sourcing materials?
- Starting a Business with No Money?
- Make meaningful products that you can realistically expand on - Story of Venture Cost
- The future of digital marketing
- Any other cheap warehouse fulfillment people aside from Printful?
- I own a footwear e-commerce brand and I’ve come to a point where I feel like I need feedback from someone who’s who owns their own successful online store.
- Looking for recommendation for a CRM or CRM type software for my dad's Taxes and insurance business
| Thank you Thursday! - (August 01, 2019) Posted: 01 Aug 2019 06:16 AM PDT Your opportunity to thank the /r/Entrepreneur community by offering free stuff, contests, discounts, electronic courses, ebooks and the best deals you know of. Please consolidate such offers 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]  |
| The 5 Entrepreneurs who taught me digital marketing Posted: 01 Aug 2019 06:28 AM PDT I graduated with an Executive Master of Business Administration from Oxford just two years ago, it was really a competitive industry and it seems like working experience and hidden knowledge about marketing was one of the key factors of securing a high paying position. I have spent about 13 months working for Alibaba and started my business after that. Well, being an entrepreneur isn't easy at all, especially when there's an array of hidden digital marketing strategies that requires a lot of analysis and researching online. After referencing over 50 digital marketing entrepreneurs, these are the top 5 people who inspired me. Thanks to their methods and strategies, my business successfully reached out to over a hundred thousand of subscribers online within a period of one year. 1. Gary Vaynerchuk I have personally watched most of his videos on productivity and marketing. He has emphasised so much about social media, content and storytelling. What I personally love the most is about his topics on future marketing and "preaches" amazing principles. Though some may say that GaryVee projects an unrealistic idea of what most businesses look like while preaching that anybody can start a business like his because he's a self-made man. While he is not technically wrong, he is an exception, not the rule. He works in a fancy NYC office, travels around the world speaking at conferences, meeting fans and uses luxury products (Apple AirPods, iPhones, high end sneakers, etc.), and spends a lot of time being social with industry peers and colleagues. When I first came across his content about a year ago I was addicted with his keynotes and interview. AskGaryVee was in its heyday and had a lot of great content. It really helped shape the way I run and market my business on a core level. But honestly, this is not what business looks like for most entrepreneurs, and it's not a realistic aspiration when starting up a business. He is surely a professional "personality", I love watching his candid conversations with someone, either in person, on the phone or on Skype, giving them a motivational speech about how they can change their life. He is super motivational for sure with some sort of special gene for energy to be able to do the amount of stuff he does with the sleep he sometimes gets. I take his advice to heart and would say he's a teacher with great intentions and a lifestyle that backs his stuff up. 2. Neil Patel He was one of my top references to Digital Entrepreneurship. He is a New York Times best selling author and was also recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations. Though alot would say that Neil Patel is the Dr. Oz of SEO, his SEO tips, hacks, and solutions are about as meaningful as the weight-loss advice of "Eat less and work out more." It is hard to disprove the validity of it, but also hard to put it to practical, effective use without the nuance, time, and dedication that real, comprehensive, sustainable results require. I still think that his content ranks because he is really good at click baiting. From my understanding, SEOs usually don't have blogs where they teach people how to do SEO, because they can make more money doing SEO in other niches. Another point is that not exactly that many people could even put real advanced SEO tactics into action cause they lack either skills or assets to do that. He is great at SEO, but at a certain point I think it's more about marketing his own name than producing results. With this credibility building method, that is surely how he gets big clients. His podcasts are good for sure, I still listen to them during my transit in the train. 3. Zachdev I have always assumed that marketing intelligence was easily obtained through googling. But after knowing Zachdev, it seems like the algorithms are way much more advanced and complicated. It requires a specialized team to conduct a few months of detailed observations and critical analysis. Zachdev was recommended by my Oxford lecturer as a project reference to better understand the importance social media algorithms and digital marketing trends. He is known to be one of the top online digital marketing experts from Singapore who has worked with many high-profile individuals to go viral. I have personally spoken to him on telegram before (@zachdev) and unlike other "Gurus" who wants you to buy their E-Book, Zach has unconditionally replied to any of my questions. Though I still find most of his answers too technical to understand, his algorithm predictions are mostly accurate. I do agree to an extent that site analysis helps to keep track on your site's growth. Also, the observation of trending marketing activities will help you understand what society expects from your content. I would say that unlike Gary Vee and Neil Patel, Zach is not exactly that kind of famous digital marketing guru with a massive amount of self-marketing videos online. He is more of the under-radar marketing specialist that can only be known through the word of mouth. I have personally used most of his services for my marketing campaigns, and I would say that those services are very different from those traditional social media / digital marketing agencies. 4. Matthew Woodward Matthew writes excellent, high quality tutorials, answers questions/comments, publishes regularly and has built strong relations in the SEO community. Though I would say that many of those high quality tutorials have been primarily focused on black hat SEO and in particular automated/tiered link building. He is definitely a very knowledgeable and experienced marketer, but I wonder if he really still believes in those (outdated) techniques or whether he is simply giving his audience what they want. Recently Matt's email popped into my inbox, it linked me to the post which focused on some tiered link building method he had previously advocated. He has constantly been emphasizing that the link building method no longer effective but in my opinion, this is very one sided. I personally feel that there is just too much low quality content and strange target site lists being used, correct me if I'm wrong. Matt has developed a strong influence in the internet marketing community. For him to come out and say strongly that things have to change (and that his previous methods are now outdated) has taken a lot of balls and I admire him for that. I think that 2020 will be the year of huge algorithm changes from google which will kill all these spamming low-quality link building sites. Matt is the kind of guy that I use for tutorial for sure but only to an extent. 5. Danny Sullivan Danny's the SEO guy that was hired by google to help educate and communicate with SEOs. I mean, just like any other search engine, Google is constantly preventing spammers and those who challenge the algorithm rather than improve the technical aspects of their websites. Still, Good Product Management, good content development, good business development, and good engineering will never die. In the long run, Google's goal is still the same, to organize the world's information and make it accessible and useful. There are two ends of the spectrum, people wanting to make information accessible and useful, and search engines trying to make sense out of information accessible and useful. Danny has always pointed out that Google uses the systems to keep track of businesses acquiring other businesses, businesses merging, businesses growing and any other instance where a domain might change hands. Danny has shifted away from his role as Chief Content Officer of Third Door Media, and is taking an advisory role, of course he isn't the first "first generation" search marketer to step away from the industry but he is still called the "Godfather of SEO" for a reason. What about you guys? Who are your top 5 favourite Entrepreneurs? Please share with us! Lets keep the ball rolling [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Aug 2019 09:04 AM PDT Last month I shared a funny story about an MVP we developed to test a new feature. The project we tested that feature for was my second app, and it attracted hundreds of thousands of downloads plus a seed investment. My first app was not so successful. Failures are inevitable along the way -- especially in your first business. But this one still bugs me. After designing dozens of other applications for MVP Development clients -- inspired by the visions of some really bright entrepreneurs -- I'm quite certain we wouldn't run out of money if we could go back. In fact, I think we might have even made a fortune. The backstory Today I help entrepreneurs determine what features are necessary to test the viability of an idea, what those features should look like in an interface, and how we can bring the vision to life as quickly and inexpensively as possible. This was the project where I learned I had a knack for those things. We built an app for paying cover charges at our college's local bars. This was an SEC school, so there were about 30,000 students and a good proportion of them partied a lot. There were 10 major bars downtown and on any night of the week you could find one that was packed. It was rare not to be charged $5 or $10 at the door for cover. Usually, that was the bar's profit, and there were drink specials sold at cost. Cover charges had to be paid in cash. If you didn't have cash, you would visit an ATM. So we built an app that let you buy covers on your phone with a credit card and we called it Gulp. Gulp V1 We hired a recent graduate as our developer for $150/hr. This guy built the Newsy app, which sold for $37m. At the time, we were 19, 20, and 20 in age, respectively. This app cost us all of our money and then some. Determining how users would buy covers and redeem them was my first major UX challenge. In the beginning, users would buy 'digital covers' which had a QR code the doormen could scan at the door with their own phone. This method worked well enough to launch, so we did. The launch We convinced 2 of the 10 bar owners to accept our digital covers to test the viability of our app. We told some friends the app would be available on a Monday night, we spent $75 on facebook ads announcing the app would be available, and we tweeted to our 250 followers that we attracted by word of mouth. The app was not approved by the app store until that afternoon. Just in time! We showed up early, grabbed a booth and some drinks, and waited for the crowds of people to show up to use our new app. Only 25 people had downloaded at this point, but I guess we expected people to download it on their way to the bars. No surprise now -- they did not. It was just us and a few friends. User acquisition Our failed launch was a wake up call. It's how we learned "if you build it they will come" is not true. So we implemented a few strategies to market our app:
We were getting users for about $1/each blended. In one month, we acquired 2,500 users-- about 25% of the bar-going crowd. We even had some haters (which typically means you're doing something right). Usability As the app started to pick up steam, we started getting emails saying door guys weren't accepting their covers. So we went to the door guys to ask why, and they were very candid in saying it's a pain in the ass to pull out their phone, find their own app, and scan drunk people's phones. So it was back to the drawing board. Ultimately, we determined that a user wouldn't redeem a cover on purpose without getting entry in return. So we created a button you would hold for 3 seconds, a yellow bar would fill behind the button over the course of those 3 seconds, and then the cover would vanish. Users would simply redeem the cover in front of a door guy for entry. Problem solved! Retention & Monetization Processing these $5 covers cost us $.47 each time. We bore that expense because bars were already hesitant to reduce the amount of cold hard cash they brought in. Plus, customers ability to pay cover by credit card wasn't a benefit strong enough to attract customers to one bar over another. We charged $5.99, and people knew they were paying an extra $.99 for convenience. A $1 convenience fee was better than $3 at the ATM, and walking to an ATM. Still, we were making just $.52 per cover, and users weren't sticking. We processed $10,000 in cover purchases, and averaged less than 1 purchase per user. $.52 per use, $1.50 to acquire a user, $15,000 to build the app, and we were out of money (in debt to our parents, even). Failure Ultimately, the project failed. Our value proposition wasn't strong enough. The unit economics didn't work. We had no other way of monetizing other than 'ads', which (1) we had no idea how to implement (ie. sell placements), and (2) we had no money to implement. It was one of those long drawn out failures where you deny that you're failing for several months. You just sit there and feel stuck & miserable for months on end, rather than chalking it up as an L. As an entrepreneur you're told never to give up, while simultaneously being told failure is 'good' (but it feels horrible in the moment). So you freeze up. It's hard to identify and execute new ideas in that mindset. What we should have built Building apps for other entrepreneurs has opened my eyes to many new ways of doing things. I've reflected on that experience with the knowledge I've gained since, and I think I know what we needed to do. At the time, I had no idea what affiliate marketing was, or how referral agreements were structured. What would businesses pay for a customer referral? We should have implemented some combination thereof to gamify our app. Users redeem points for covers, and points could be collected in a number of ways:
The economics Point economics would be structured such that we make 3x or 4x the actual cost of a cover. That way, bars charge us $5/cover but we make $15 to $20 as a student collects enough points to buy a cover. This solves profit and value proposition issues, but there are a few more benefits:
Conclusion Despite losing $5k/each in college and having to endure the pains of failure, building that app was far and away my most valuable experience in college. I don't think failure is valuable because you learn from failure. I'm not sure you learn anything from failure itself -- it just hurts. But it hurts less the next time. You learn from trying -- from experiencing firsthand. Plus, we landed a ridiculous amount of interviews relative to our peers. We didn't have great grades -- we barely had time to go to class. But that experience stuck out on our resumes and everyone involved landed great opportunities by graduation. That opportunity taught me never to build anything without a planned path to profitability. I learned to plan out the unit economics of a business and budget accordingly. I learned that every expense is 3x greater than what you plan for, and revenues are always a third of what you project. Lastly, I've since found that most good app ideas can be implemented in a way that influences purchasing decisions. Any time you gain leverage over how people spend money, and that spend is significant enough, you're going to make money yourself. Sometimes you can even charge both sides of the marketplace to make a transaction happen. What do you guys think? Is that how we should have monetized from the start? Or was the business doomed from conception? PS. Many people have asked over the years if they can steal our idea and try to make it work. I've always replied with an emphatic 'yes!', but no one has followed through. If anyone thinks they can pick this concept up and make it work, go for it! I'm too old and out of touch with college students to make it work now. But I would love to see another student succeed with it at their school (and beyond). [link] [comments]  |
| Hiring Your First Employee: The Ultimate 6-Step Guide Posted: 01 Aug 2019 12:33 PM PDT Hiring an employee certainly requires time and effort, however it also symbolises an exciting new stage for your business. When it's your very first employee, the stakes can feel even higher, though the rewards can be equally gratifying - after all, it's the first time you're trusting someone else with your business and vision. Adding structure to the hiring process can help create the distinction between a profitable decision and a missed opportunity. Luckily for you, we've collaborated with some leading Talent Acquisition specialists from global successes like Amazon Web Services, Zendesk, Viacom and Kloud Solutions, as well as some experienced CEOs and Founders, to craft this definitive guide. Here's a foolproof breakdown of how you can find, hire and retain that first employee and set them up for success. We gathered a ton of options as to how to proceed with such a relevant task if you found in interesting check it out here. [link] [comments]  |
| What is the best way to start a business while working full time? Posted: 01 Aug 2019 06:27 AM PDT I currently work from 7 - 6 Monday through Saturday. I'm still working on how to manage my time efficiently so I'm not burned out or too tired to work on my business but I'm feeling hopeless. Working 50 or do hours a week is mentally challenging and I was wondering how some of you entrepreneurs deal with this while holding a full time job. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| I'm a Google Gold Product Expert for Google Ads - Ask Me Anything About Google Ads Posted: 01 Aug 2019 10:42 AM PDT
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| Best Small Business Loan Options? Posted: 01 Aug 2019 02:14 PM PDT Our company is looking to take out a small business loan (ideally around $50,000). We are looking to get a loan with 0% interest for the first 12-15 months. I talked to Chase Bank and they had something like this, but just stopped their promotion. Does anyone know of any other banks or have any other advice? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How I'm using retargeting differently on FB to convert more people. Posted: 01 Aug 2019 06:18 AM PDT If you run FB ads, you likely know how powerful retargeting campaigns are. But it's getting more expensive, which means that margins are getting tighter. One effect of this is that making a good ROAS (Return on ad spend) retargeting custom audiences (where for example, you run an ad going to a blog post, then retarget those who clicked with an ad for something else) is slowly getting trickier. I've been doing something recently which is working great - and judging by the recent ad accounts that I've audited, it's not common practice. What I've been doing:tl;dr - I'm splitting retargeting ads up into multiple objectives AND multiple time sections. For the main 'Top Of Funnel' campaign, I'll use whatever makes the most sense for the piece, video views for a video, conversions for an ecommerce ad, Lead ads for local services etc... But then for the retargeting ads, once someone has shown themselves to be interested in what we're selling, I use a variety of other objectives: Reach, Brand Awareness, PPE, Video views, Event Response, Traffic… I'll then split the custom audience into date groups, i.e day 1-7, day 8-14, day 15-21. Doing this means gives me a lot of different ads. Here's how that could break down from the above example of 6 objectives & 3 date windows (18 ads in total):
It's much more work to set up, but I've found it to be worth the effort. Why it works:If you scroll through your newsfeed, you'll be shown an advert every 5th post. Those ads will be split into different objectives. Each of the ad objectives that FB gives you gets a certain share of the news feed. That means that if you only use one or two objectives, you're competing with yourself for the limited space on the news feed. By using the different objectives you can suddenly find yourself not only occupying multiple slots on the feed, some of which will often be cheaper for the same results. It also works great with often unprofitable placements, such as the right hand column and the Audience Network. This helps you get that 'being everywhere' effect that's so powerful, allowing people to get to know you / your brand / your products / your message without a sky high frequency (making your ads annoying & unprofitable). Using conversion ads for retargeting is largely pointlessly expensive anyway because what you want to do with a retargeting ad is reach everyone from the first stage, so getting Facebook to optimise that custom audience is a waste. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Aug 2019 08:11 AM PDT I've had a kind of unique idea for a business and unfortunately it needs alot of money from investors. I've created a business plan explaining everything, costs, profits, the idea, how it will be executed etc. all i need now is the money to start it all going. Where should I be looking to actually find investors to pitch to and get money to make the idea real? should i be looking at business loans from banks or just investors? will be needing 50k. Im in the UK and im looking for the actual place to find the investors, like a specific website or whatever, not just a general overview on finding them. thanks [link] [comments]  |
| What is your #1 biggest challenge in your business in relation to user experience design? Posted: 01 Aug 2019 02:49 PM PDT Trying to understand how different businesses are using UX/UI design and where they run into problems. What works, what does not. Many companies I have worked with look for contractors to do part of the UI/UX work, some use an agency as they want better overall strategy in place and maybe need guidance. Then there is of course hiring UX in house, so adding a designer to your team. What different approaches are people taking and where are the pain points? [link] [comments]  |
| Could a business idea like this work? Posted: 01 Aug 2019 01:42 PM PDT |
| Fitness/Sports Reservation Application Posted: 01 Aug 2019 01:14 PM PDT Follow up from my previous post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/chm8i8/fitnesssports_reservation_business/ As per u/RealityUnchecked comment, I went ahead and gather some fitness instructor and badminton court owner. I presented the idea and I told them to give me a few week so I can share a mock up prototype to them. They sounded excited as I will be solving a lot of their problems. With that in mind, I went on to look for quotations for application developer to bring my idea to life. I have no coding background hence, I need someone else to do it for me. My budget is around USD$8,000. The idea is to come up with a hybrid app for both Android and iOS. The business model where I make money is basically on top of every transaction, I will be charging $1 service charge for the user. For the instructor and facilities owner, they will need to pay a fee every month to use this service. Anyone has any advise on what to look out for when you outsource your mobile application? Or any marketing tips out there I would greatly appreciate them. [link] [comments]  |
| Opening a business but unsure of property zoning - horse industry Posted: 01 Aug 2019 01:06 PM PDT Looking into starting a retirement barn for horses and I found some pieces of land but unsure of what type of zoning is needed for this industry. Would it need to be commercial land or maybe agricultural? If you're unsure where could I find the answer, would it be the county or would a business lawyer in the area know better? [link] [comments]  |
| $10k/mo selling standing desks made of cardboard. Posted: 01 Aug 2019 09:01 AM PDT Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Ashley 'JP' Lockwood of Deskmate, a brand that sells affordable standing desks. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Ashley 'JP' Lockwood. I am the co-founder of Deskmate. We are a standing desk startup on a mission to make the world work better. I met my now business partner, Arthur at the back end of 2016 during an incubator called Escape The City. Both working on separate projects and set up Deskmate as a side hustle to earn some extra money whilst we were living and working in London. We have two products, Deskmate, for large setups, desktops, keyboards, and Minimate, which is specifically for laptop only users. All of our products are environmentally friendly (cardboard) and take less than 10 seconds to pop up. We are proudly the cheapest standing desk available, globally. Which is pretty cool I think? We've sold over 5,000 units since launch, to just under 100 countries. Cool fact: Deskmate started on £300 and we launched in 3 weeks. Our first homepage What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?We were working from a coworking space and wanted standing desks. We asked the community managers if they'd considered them. Answers ranged from, 'too expensive', 'space doesn't allow them', 'why do you need one?', I guess that was the lightbulb moment. The idea behind Deskmate was quite simple really, there was no affordable standing solution in the UK. We did the typical google search, amazon check and there was nothing there. We saw the gap and went for it. With regards to the standing desk and office furniture market, we had no idea. I'd recommend anyone launching a business in an area they don't understand to research but not to overthink it. Learn on the job. I was personally from an e-commerce background, having launched an online shirt retailer at University. I then went into Fintech and left as Sales Director of a venture-backed startup. I've been working for myself for about a year and a half. Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.I had a family member working in cardboard production and we had a rough design. We sent it over and within a week we had a prototype. We launched without a website with a pop up at WeWork and sold 5 desks in the first 30 minutes. I had a friend, Tara, who was working as community manager who said we were too early stage to pop up. I left it with her but said if anyone cancels, we'd be happy to fill in. The next week a coconut water brand cancelled, we got the gig! That was idea validation, market testing and customer feedback all in one hit. We had no real business plan, cash in the bank or strategy, but we knew if could sell in WeWork, there was a market, at least in the start up space. We bought 250 white units and realised we didn't get a logo printed. Here's a photo of Arthur sticking the Deskmate logo manually to our first ever batch: Deskmate first pop up at WeWork - no website, stickers purchased on the internet and stuck on product 10 minutes before we started Describe the process of launching the business.We built version 1 of deskmate.co in 14 days on Shopify and launched a week later. Sales were slow to start and we didn't have that much content to start advertising online, we took our own cameras wherever we went and shot the product. Not everything we shot was useable, but it built up over time. This was with no coding background and on a shoestring budget. As the units began to sell (slowly) we realised we needed some capital and formulated a business plan. We approached Virgin for a startup loan and raised an initial 12k. This is the only debt the business has taken on to date. Biggest lessons I'd give anyone is to only outsource if it's absolutely necessary. We've used agencies, PR people and Sales execs before but until you absolutely know your product, you are the only one who should be selling and marketing it, especially if you are selling in a niche, like ours. Personally, I'd also recommend anyone moving from 'side hustle' to 'full time start up' to have a real plan and make careful considerations on the position of your team and co founders. We've had a few people come and go since launch, with me and Arthur consistent throughout. Startups are tricky, you have to be 100% committed and you need a thick skin. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Deskmate is a really interesting product in that it has multiple customer channels and routes to market. We break our sales channels into three main sections; 1 - B2C (direct to eccom) Driving customers directly to deskmate.co. Main traffic drivers are paid ads, PR, social media (IG, FB, Twitter) and blog posts. Google ads are challenging (CPC is high due to competitors price point being 10x higher), so we've worked hard on FB adverts, building content to help the top stage of the funnel understand who we are, what we do and how we can benefit. 2 - B2B (business to business) Our direct to business sales mainly consists of outreach out to businesses directly that look to sell multiple units, directly to businesses. Main drivers for this are email marketing, LinkedIn, strategic sales calls and hustle! We use G sheets to track our leads and conversion rates. 3 - Wholesale (retailers, partnership channels, amazon) These are third parties that either resell Deskmate or are able to promote the product to their network. Deskmate is available on Amazon, Wayfair (hopefully US) soon and we regularly offer the product on third party relevant websites. I have also had meetings with a host of other wholesalers who have said no: ASOS, Urban Outfitters, Argos, the list is extensive! Segmenting like this allows you to have a clear understanding of what's working and what's not. We also use different marketing techniques for each market, e.g. B2B is directed far more in relationship management, email marketing and targeted sales calls. B2C is more digital marketing, paid ad spend and content marketing. Within our marketing efforts we use digital advertising (IG, FB, etc), PR (via a programme called response source), SEO (blogs), and partnerships (Virgin, WeWork, Three), to attract customers. Via basic outreach, I have secured PR with Forbes, and other major newspapers in the UK. Be consistent with your outreach, create a positive message and be clear on what you are offering. We've partnered with the likes of Three, Virgin and WeWork to sell to their customer bases. We started our relationship with Virgin through start up funding. We used their network internally, asked for introductions and eventually find our way into Virgin Red, who are Virgin's customer loyalty app. This was a slog and took around 3 months! Why? It's great distribution and usually free marketing if you can get in there. My advice for any start up would be to think about their sales channels and how to sell to them before you start! How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Gross margin is around 65%, monthly traffic to the site is around 10k and our customer database (B2B + B2C) is 14k. Our sales funnel is long and takes time to educate people on the product. The business is tricky today and it will be tricky tomorrow, but our aim for 2020 is to break 1m units sold. Our Operations are lean, we manufacture, pack and ship from the same factory in the UK, meaning less time from production to customer and also means we can stay nimble on stock, test product ideas quickly and provide a great service to the end customer. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?In hindsight, I would have started selling other products earlier, hired interns to help with admin and onboarded international shipping from the start. Deskmate has done well with our partnerships, considering we are a niche product in an emerging category. I think signing contracts with Three and Virgin are the two that stay front of mind. Our PR has always been strong, and I'd recommend any business with a unique idea or service to start reaching out to journalists right away. They don't bite! What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Have also used:
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Don't overthink your MVP, keep your business as lean as possible until you have validated your idea, don't overspend on outsourcing, you can figure most things out yourself and call in as many favours as you can. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right nowWe are currently hiring a sales intern and a marketing intern. Drop us a note if you want to apply! hello@deskmate.co. Where can we go to learn more?Lastly, we are currently looking for a partner to expand our US presence. Previous background in e-commerce, furniture, and early-stage products preferable. If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM [link] [comments]  |
| Is it effective to snail-mail advertisements? Posted: 01 Aug 2019 12:25 PM PDT I have a small business and I'm wondering if it's okay to mail brochures for my products to people. Would this be more effective than facebook? [link] [comments]  |
| "Boring" business ideas with a great potential ROE Posted: 01 Aug 2019 04:49 AM PDT Hello, As the title says, I'm looking for business ideas that can generate a good cash flow. I have about $70,000 invested in stocks, bonds and REITs but I would like to take <$10K to start a small business. I'm not interested in the startup world (like making an app, raising capital and losing money for 5 years in a row). Basically, I'm looking for ideas solving basic problems. I live in Canada so summer/winter might provide more opportunities. For example, I was thinking about buying power brooms and renting them (frontyards are always dirty as hell when the snow melts). Do you have any other idea or suggestions? [link] [comments]  |
| how does the landing page look (SM platform) Posted: 01 Aug 2019 12:13 PM PDT Hi there. I recently put the promo video on our landing page. Wondering how does it look now. It is a social media management and automation platform (SaaS). Here is the link to check it: socialbu.com What is your first impression? How does the video look? Why would you not sign up? [link] [comments]  |
| Is there a subreddit for sourcing materials? Posted: 01 Aug 2019 04:29 AM PDT |
| Starting a Business with No Money? Posted: 01 Aug 2019 07:57 AM PDT Hey guys, Probably a really dumb question, but I am super curious.... How does one start a company with little to no money? I understand you can easily do that now with the use of social media if you're trying to sell a product like sunglasses or t-shirts, but when it comes to a business that requires the use of commercial real estate (like student housing, co-working, property management, etc), how does one start that up? Is it virtually impossible to do so without help from investors? That's the only legitimate way I can see that being possible. Thanks guys [link] [comments]  |
| Make meaningful products that you can realistically expand on - Story of Venture Cost Posted: 01 Aug 2019 11:14 AM PDT Hello - Binu Mathew from OyeStartups.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Tomas Woksepp of Venture Cost, a product that track your travel expenses and discover new places to visit . Hello ! Who are you and what are you working on? My name is Tomas Woksepp. I'm from Sweden but has been on the road since 2017. I am working on Venture Cost for many months now, with a few smaller projects in between. What motivated you to get started with? How did you come up with the idea? When I started traveling in late 2017 I was afraid of how much it would cost as I had a very strict budget. I kept a Google Sheet of everything I bought to make sure I didn't exceed my budget. This worked great for a few weeks, but as the expenses started lining up, I had to scroll further and further down to add my new expenses for the day. That's when I made a simple interface with a database to make the process more convenient. It didn't take long before I decided to make this my long term project. Can you tell us the story of your business from idea to where you are now? After I decided on executing on this idea I went head first into the project. I knew it was going to be a quite complex app with multi-currencies, different login portals, timezone-related issues. But even though I had all this in mind, I still failed to put every piece together in a way that would make it appealing and useful for other users. I finished an early version after 2 months that to me was still very useful, but the way I was presenting images, numbers and the community aspect was awful. I was too blind making the expense tracker perfect, that I completely ignored the most important detail, FEEDBACK. It hurt, but it was true. It's the biggest lesson I've learned along the road. Fast forward a few months after putting less and less effort into Venture Cost. I decided to give it a proper makeover. 6 months ago I made it look beautiful, more engaging with community functionality and better administration tool for me to be able to manage everything by myself. What has been your biggest failure or struggle? My biggest failure was to not ask for feedback earlier. If I did I wouldn't have to completely redo the whole project. And what has been your biggest achievement or success? The biggest achievement is definitely that I finished what I started. It was one year since the idea came to mind and I've been struggling with motivation a lot, but I promised myself to not give up. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers? At first, I was not very impressed by the number of visitors Venture Cost got in the Product Hunt launch. The numbers clearly showed that Reddit was more powerful, but one huge difference is that the PH hype doesn't die in 1 day like reddit. It's now 4 days since the launch and the visitor count is still at least doubled. What are the biggest challenges you've faced and obstacles you've overcome? What are your goals for the future? The goal for the future would be to obviously launch it 😇 After that's done I have plans on making the app progressive (or make Android/iOS versions) since Venture Cost requires internet right now. Another thing would be to expend engagement within the budget travel niche. There's a lot of talk about how to travel cheap on reddit, forums and blogs, but there's definitely a lack of price tags. What I call cheap might be expensive for someone else and I want to solve that problem. How are you doing today and what does the future look like? The worst part is over, I'm at the stage where I can improve the current functionality and wait for Venture Cost to grow more and more every day. It doesn't mean I can work less, it's honestly the opposite, but it's definitely more fun now! Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous? Feedback is extremely helpful. Planning ahead is vital, even if it's not in perfect detail. What platform/tools do you use for your business? Digital Ocean has fantastic VPS hosting, I highly recommend them. I'm not into fancy frameworks, I use basic HTML/CSS/JS with jQuery on top. Who's your most inspirational CEO or founder? Pat Walls seeing his progress through discouraging comments is amazing. It's dark world out there with way too many people doing everything in their power to not let someone be successful, Pat walls in the exact opposite. We need more people like Pat. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources? None. I'm not a big reader. Lately I've been listening to podcasts but it's mostly to fill the silence rather than trying to take in advice. What's your advice for fellow aspiring entrepreneur who are just starting out? Don't be a corporation, be a person without the "Founder of" and "CEO" in your Social Media bio (unless you have something to actually back it up and you want to show off) Make meaningful products that you can realistically expand on, that is also in your interests because you might be stuck with it forever if it gets successful! ----------------------------------- If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. For more interviews, check out r/OyeStartups - We post new stories daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a DM [link] [comments]  |
| The future of digital marketing Posted: 01 Aug 2019 05:12 AM PDT Hello, this is my very first post in here. Let me introduce myself, this is Adam Romano I'm an italian entrepreneur. I work with digital since 2010, always in Italy. Italy is a very strange Place, everything happened in USA will happen in Italy one year later, it's an unwritten rule. I had a satisfying business life: i created blogs, digital newspaper, online brands and - last of all - several ecommerce. At this point in my life i am searching some new challenge: my luck has always come from previewing what would have been the incoming game-changer platform or digital behaviors. I'm searching new ideas: what will be that thing in the web marketing that is coming out, and that will be the new game-changer business? In your opinion [link] [comments]  |
| Any other cheap warehouse fulfillment people aside from Printful? Posted: 01 Aug 2019 09:43 AM PDT I know printful has a program where you can ship your apparel inventory to them and when you sell things they will pick and pack and ship it off to the end user. Are there any other services like this? I'll probably do it myself initially, but if I start scaling up I think it might be cheaper & easier to outsource than to hire employees & buy space for my business [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Aug 2019 09:21 AM PDT Hello, I own Idrese.com, a custom footwear shop. Currently I'm working on building domain authority, producing content, and gaining a better direction for the brand (new photo content, and website coming out in 2 months). I have around 15k followers on Instagram, and 3,000 people in my mailing list, and YouTube videos that help me gain traffic. I truly do believe I can make Idrese a strong, reputable, and popular brand, but there are moments where I feel a bit lost. I would really love it if I could find someone who's built a successful e-commerce brand that can help give me a bit of direction. I'm hard working, respectful, and would take your time very seriously. We can call or chat, and if you're in Chicago, I'd love to meet up. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for recommendation for a CRM or CRM type software for my dad's Taxes and insurance business Posted: 01 Aug 2019 09:19 AM PDT My dad is looking for a software to help organize his clients, about a thousand, he wants something where he can store basic info such as their name number and email and it would be nice if he can attach files to them but that's not necessary. I looked up some CRM software but I don't think that's what he needs because they offer a lot of features that are useless and complicated. His biggest need is to be able to filter his clients into different categories such as home and auto and he able to email or text them based on those categories. I understand that CRM can do this but they don't appear to be user friendly and my dad is not good with computers. He doesn't need something to track every part of the sales cycle. So I am looking for software or a type of software that will fit his needs, please recommend them if you have any. If you need more info from me please let me know. [link] [comments]  |
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