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    Startups Fundraising Thursdays - A Forum to Ask About Fundraising, Investors, Accelerators, and Other Sources of Capital

    October 18, 2019

    Startups Fundraising Thursdays - A Forum to Ask About Fundraising, Investors, Accelerators, and Other Sources of Capital

    Fundraising Thursdays - A Forum to Ask About Fundraising, Investors, Accelerators, and Other Sources of Capital

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 06:05 AM PDT

    Welcome to this week's Fundraising Thursdays Thread.

    Ask about anything related to fundraising, investors, accelerators, grants, and other sources of capital.

    That includes how to find these sources, how to work with them, and how to negotiate with them.

    Don't be shy. The purpose of this is to learn and share ideas and methodologies with one another.

    Any question is a good question!

    If you are answering questions, remember to be kind and supportive. Many are just starting out and have no idea what they are doing. That's okay! We all knew nothing before we knew something.

    You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord.

    submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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    Which software do you use for remote meetings? Zoom, Skype, Teams, Hangout?

    Posted: 18 Oct 2019 12:11 AM PDT

    I recently got many meeting invitations using Microsoft teams. Mostly in Europe. In the US most startups/ companies seem to use zoom to schedule meetings. Is anyone still using Skype?

    I don't really see the difference in all those communication tools. All of them seem to integrate well into calendar for meeting requests and fit best to their office suite (teams for Microsoft, hangouts for G-Suite).

    submitted by /u/rogi_o
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    Potential employment at new startup.. Should I share my expansion strategy ideas before I'm hired?

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 10:14 AM PDT

    There's a start up I've been talking to here and there for the last couple of months. There's potentially a new role for me and I potentially want to take it. What I know for sure is that I have PLENTY of really good ideas to steer the start up in the right direction and improve branding and profits which I know would work. Should I share my ideas during meetings/interviews before I'm even hired? They could technically just use the ideas and not hire me, but is that just the way things sometimes go? And people network to get new ideas?

    submitted by /u/karonjes
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    How can I find developers at my university?

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 10:51 PM PDT

    Hi, A friend and I are making a B2C app startup (it's in a similar format to Yelp, but absolutely not the same market if that helps) and we're having trouble finding an iOS developer on campus.

    So far I've written all of the code on Android and I just need to find someone to make the same software but through Swift, but I haven't had any luck bothering friends in the CS department and posting on my schools reddit.

    Have any of you found a good way to seek out developers in college? I didn't know this would be so hard, especially given that my college has a very reputable CS program.

    Thank you in advance.

    submitted by /u/terik99
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    Help! Pushy CEO'd start-up Vs Google

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 03:08 PM PDT

    Hoping you can help me!

    I'm six months into position as senior executive in a UK start-up. CEO is aggressive, fickle, and insatiable. But wins business and gets investment.

    Got 1% at £50m valuation over next 4yrs + market rate

    Should I just learn to deal with the shit sandwiches I have to eat daily to win my 1% and potential windfall or switch to "dream job" at Google? (individual contributor)

    Have a baby as well so startup life not ideal, but not convinced Google will be that family friendly.

    submitted by /u/letsbehavingu
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    Politwire: get access to US 2020 media data !!

    Posted: 18 Oct 2019 01:54 AM PDT

    Hi folks,

    We are a Data-as-a-Service company (pre beta stage) called politwire.

    Daily, we aggregate hundreds of thousands news articles from all over the world in near real-time and check if politicians are mentioned there. Then, if any politician is mentioned at least once in article, we collect such information as:

    • publisher, title, text and summary
    • how many times each candidate is mentioned
    • tone and polarity of text

    • named entities:

      • persons
      • organizations
      • places

    • 20 top keywords

    • and some more

    We expect to launch a beta version of an API by the beginning of November; however, we thought that we might try to launch a weekly newsletter product. We are willing to provide an access to our database (PostgreSQL) to people who might want to dig into the data and be able to report the results as a writer to our newsletter audiance.

    We mostly see data scientists and data journalists students/enthusiasts who might be interested in it. Even though we cannot pay you for the moment, we will take care of promotion of our newsletter and augmenting the number of subscribers. On the other side, you can have a real experience and, maybe, add few additional lines in CVs, or build a portfolio.

    We will collect the requests until the end of October. If you would like to participate, please, DM me and let me know about your background.

    Here is an example from fivethirtyeight that gives you a good idea of what you could do with pretty basic data (you could do much more with our data!):

    [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/biden-may-not-have-won-the-debate-but-he-still-dominates-media-coverage/]

    Also, check out our website at politwire.com - subscribe to be updated ! :)

    submitted by /u/Fireche
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    What should my equity split be? (Co-founder coming on post revenue, 2-yrs later)

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 08:31 PM PDT

    Hi, I've been working on my startup for about 2 years now, part-time while in a grad program. I'm bringing on a co-founder and I'm trying to figure out the split. Generally, I resonate with Seibel's approach: it's a little bit more about motivation, a little bit less about "fairness".

    Here's what I've done so far.

    • Won $30k in awards
    • Worked with a freelancer to develop and launch the product. Got great press coverage of the product.
    • Got revenue and traction. Our traction and revenue is still quite small. We have about 300-400 users per month, 10-20 customers, which turns into $100-$200 in revenue per month.

    I have the domain expertise, the business expertise, and product expertise. He has the technical expertise (it's a software product and he has a grad degree in CS and is working at a big tech company).

    What do you think the equity split should be?

    submitted by /u/Simonga25
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    How do I increase my mobile apps user retention rate?

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 04:40 PM PDT

    So I am having a tough time getting my user retention rates up and I am wondering, is it because my app sucks or am I just doing something wrong?

    So my app is a bookmarking app that is an alternative to Pocket, Instapaper, Flipboard, etc. You save content from other apps to my app which you can then view in our custom web browser. What differentiates us from the competition is

    1. Our content is entertainment-based, while you'll find an abundance of news articles on Pocket/Instapaper/Flipboard, on our app you'll find memes, links to shows/movies, videos, recipes, gifs, etc.
    2. We have extensive social networking features that allow you to follow users who save cool content (forgot to mention you can view other users content on the app), like/save content you find, see what's trending, and search through thousands of pieces of content (you can't do this on Pocket/Instapaper)

    I recently released a major update to the app including massive upgrades to the performance of the app. Some of these upgrades were asked for by users and some were just obviously necessary to an app like this like faster loading times and allowing Facebook/Google sign-in/up. And I was really hoping this would boost retention rates but sadly it did not. This update has been out for two weeks and this is a breakdown of the retention according to Firebase Analytics

    https://imgur.com/a/HtQ2JMm

    As you can see it is still pretty unimpressive, especially the second week. What I try to do is every once in a while send out emails to all my users and ask a few questions about why they use/don't use the app, what they like about it, what they like to save, and what they want to be added, but very very few people email me back and I have like 3300 registered emails. Here is an example of an email I sent out

    Hi there! 😊 In order to make (App Name) even better every once in a while we try to ask our users a handful of questions. If you could take 2 minutes out of your day to answer these questions, we over at (App Name) would absolutely appreciate that 😆 1) Whether you've been using (App Name) or not, what content would you like to save on an app like this? 2) If you had a chance to redesign (App Name), what would you like added, removed or upgraded? 3) If at all, how often do you check out other users' content? And if you do, where on the app do you primarily find other users' content? 4) Why do you use (App Name) and how often? If you have stopped using (App Name), what turned you away from it? Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions, you are what makes (App Name) great! 😀

    ​

    What should I do at this point? Am I just targeting the wrong niche group of people? I have a ton of my most loyal users saving food recipes, should I try to go after people interested in cooking and expand from there?

    submitted by /u/fred_the_mailman
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    Are creative job postings attractive or annoying?

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 08:04 PM PDT

    I'm the visionary founder of a SaaS startup and looking for another co-founder to round out the team. I often think of my business strategies using analogies.

    For our founding team, it's like a basketball team that needs a good point guard. I can fill in up to a point, but I should really be playing power forward.

    Is this an effective way to describe the role that I'm trying to fill or should I just say "we need a guy to run sales and marketing."?

    submitted by /u/first_byte
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    Learnings of taking a product idea from concept to several happy customers

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 06:43 AM PDT

    There is no great joy than watching users flood into your app, using it, and start paying for it. The greatest pain, however, is going from an idea to a fully developed product that people can actually use.

    Just over a month back, we launched our product. We were on the first page of Hackernews for multiple hours, got hunted on Product Hunt, and got several users to sign up and become engaged users. The key for us, I believe, wasn't just because we planned our launch properly, but because we did several not-so-sexy stuff first.

    For most of us the process of building a product looks somewhat like this - have an idea, get feedback from people, build product, get more feedback, and start marketing.

    But over the last several months of building our product I've learned few things about the product development process that I believe isn't all too obvious.

    1. During the ideation and research phase, most of us spend time thinking about what to build than the why. When we focus on why we're building our product, our thought process naturally shifts its focus on the end users and their pain problems than on our idea.
    2. Start defining your idea. Write down the problem, the target market, your solution, and competitors. Often, you'll notice big gaps and gaping holes in your ideas only when you put it down on paper. It is okay if you can't nail it the first time. Heck, you most likely won't get it right in the first few attempts. But the goal should be to inch closer to an accurate description with every conversation you have with your end users.
    3. Start building. If you've come this far, it's time to start building a first cut of your product, or run a stripped-down version of your business. Get partners to help you in your weak areas, push and sell.
    4. Product development isn't a linear process. As much as we would like our development process to be streamlined and go in sequential steps, product development almost always go has multiple back-and-forth.
    5. This back-and-forth happens within teams and across teams which makes it really hard for us to either collaborate or predict outcomes.
    6. Drive demand. Post on places like BetaList to get a few beta users to try your MVP. You can validate your ideas with family and friends, but you have a real business only if you can prove a few thousand people WANT what you're building and are willing to give you their money for it.
    7. Keep the feedback loop going and remember to tie it back into the product. Without user feedback, you are pretty much sitting in the dark and building something you want.

    Your million dollar idea is now probably a few 100k business. Sure, it's not yet a million dollars... but it's worth way more than the "idea" of it!

    I've gone in depth about this on our blog with splashy images and screenshots. My hope is that you'll take a page from our book, apply it to your own product development process and get happy, engaged users like we did.

    I first shared this post on r/Entrepreneur and I thought I should this here as well since it is relevant to the community.

    submitted by /u/svikashk
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    Interviewing at a start up: What questions should I ask them?

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 02:54 PM PDT

    I've been with a few start ups for an internship and and am unsure how to anticipate if they have their shit together or not. How can I find out if they do? What are smart questions I can ask?

    Can I ask who their investors are and what funding round they're in?

    thanks

    ​

    PS: I' a UX designer in NYC, just graduated school and want to avoid ending up at one where I'm the only designer doing all sorts of random tasks that have nothing to do with user experience.

    submitted by /u/HHDern
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    Who should pay the downpayment for a car lease (company car)?

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 06:30 AM PDT

    My co-founder brought up that he thinks we should lease a car for him to use on the company dime. I am not 100% opposed to the idea as he produces about 80% of sales for our company at the moment which involves driving to and from meetings quite often. We currently pay his gas for a big truck which runs $100's each month, so I think we will even be able to save some money if we go electric for the vehicle.

    I found a good deal with a $2,500 downpayment and my question is the following. Should I make the downpayment his responsibility, or should we have the business pay for it? I know he will use the car for personal use a lot and he is the one pushing the issue now. The company will certainly pay the monthly lease amount and the title will be in our company name, just not sure how to handle the downpayment.

    Have any of you encountered this scenario, or have any advice?

    Thanks.

    submitted by /u/better_meow
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    How to make Questionnaire

    Posted: 17 Oct 2019 05:26 AM PDT

    Hello friends, I have start up idea in occupational health and safety field and would like to get data on what client might think about the service. I am planning to make a questionnaire on this but wanted to know the content of the quesnnaire such as what and how many questions to put in the list. Can you please help me out naming the resources from where I can get help. Thanks.

    submitted by /u/escape_the_dark_2
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