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
- The fate and fortunes of startup founders, executives and employees should be tied together. That did not happen in WeWork.
- Five-hour startup work day is impossible.
- Former business partner is suing me personally for business debt. (C Corp)
- localsnear.me app
- What is the best way to find financial statements for a restaurant in order to estimate costs?
- Company is interested in my app idea. What next?
- Got an idea, don’t know how to make it become reality
- I got 30,000+ email signups. How do I build a newsletter around this?
- Business strategy conflict with CEO + Burnout
- Advice for resigning from a friend’s startup?
- Understanding which fundraising types are best for you.
- Developing app, should I register a company?
- Advice about retention (My numbers included)
- Strategy for a gig economy start up
- Cold Emailing - Follow the rules or face a fine.
- How do you handle sales taxes, EU VAT, etc for selling digital goods?
- Need Advice: Facebook Banned My Ads and is Punishing People for Sharing My Links
- I have built a product.. what now?
- How do i track an incentive program?
- Question about MVP
- Wednesday Social Club - Share What Events You Are Attending This Coming Week
| Posted: 24 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. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Oct 2019 09:31 PM PDT Thanks to SoftBank, WeWork's cofounder, Adam Neumann, is now $1.7B richer. As an entrepreneur, this is a great personal story for him and his family, and perhaps inspirational to other entrepreneurs. But what about WeWork's employees? Shouldn't their equity rise and fall along with that of founders and executives? Doesn't what's happening to WeWork's employees undermine the excitement of working for a startup? Yes, there are risks and rewards to startups. But we all rightfully assume that in a startup everyone proportionally shares those risks as well as the rewards. Aside from the fact that thousands are slated to be laid off, the equity compensation of WeWork's employees has virtually been wiped out. Briefly, this is what I know per my review of the news: In January 2019 WeWork's vaulting valuation was $47B. As of this week, that valuation has plummeted to $8B. Based on this week's deal, SoftBank now owns 80% of WeWork, which means that most WeWork's employees' stock options are now underwater (at $20-a-share according to WSJ). If anyone has more details about the winners and losers of WeWork's deal, please share. [link] [comments]  |
| Five-hour startup work day is impossible. Posted: 24 Oct 2019 08:11 AM PDT A German startup that develops websites, apps and e-commerce platforms, has a five-hour day work policy. Employees come to work at 8 am (apparently 8 am is not even strictly enforced) and leave at 1pm. That's an hour after noon! Apparently productivity is kept up by cutting out the fat - cell phones are turned off, company emails are checked only twice a day and meetings are kept to 15 mins. The company was profitable in 2018, its first full year in business. [link] [comments]  |
| Former business partner is suing me personally for business debt. (C Corp) Posted: 24 Oct 2019 08:45 AM PDT Business is a Delaware C Corp. My business partner quit and is now claiming that the shareholders are responsible for paying the debt based on the current ownership claim (he only vested 12.5% and I received the rest of the shares by default when he left the company). The only debt the company has is a credit card which he personally guaranteed. I offered to split the debt with him 50:50 and he didn't accept the offer, he's now suing me to force me to pay the debt myself. From my point of view it seems he only "quit" so that I would be forced to pay this debt myself. We were a 2 person startup so when he quit, the chances of the business succeeding dropped significantly. I gave him a fair offer to pay the debt, and not only did he not accept the offer, he continuously tried to talk me into accepting a bad deal. I tried to revive the company myself and attempted to hire a replacement so that we could raise enough money to continue business and repay the corporate debts but the business failed. He continued to contact both me and business partners and try to talk us into taking personal liability for the debt. He was being extremely sleazy about the entire situation. After I decided to cease operations he contacted me saying he would accept my original offer to split the debt 50:50. He personally guaranteed the card so I saw my offer to split the card 50:50 even though the business failed as a way to keep a business relationship and not something I was legally responsible for. I invested a lot more time and money into the company than he did even with the credit card debt so I don't feel morally responsible for the debt. He invested about 2000$ of his own money total, I invested $9000 and quit my job to work full time on the business. If I had stayed at my job, or found another job I would have earned $20-$40k during the time I was working at the business. Since this was Since he was being sleazy about the whole situation I decided to pull my offer. It seems as though he planned to "strategically" quit in an effort to strap me with the businesses debt. Since our business is a C-Corp I don't think I'm legally responsible for the corporation's debt and since he attempted to rip me off I don't feel morally responsible for assisting with the debt payment. Has anyone experienced this? Am I missing something legally? Lawsuit was filed in North Carolina [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2019 10:44 AM PDT Minimalist, clean design app to find your next coffee shop, pub, restaurant or club. The best tool to quickly find a place where you meet with your friends. ❤️❤️❤️ 🚀🚀🚀 Sometimes we want to go out for a walk somewhere without many purposes and we are looking for a close cafe to drink coffee. Sometimes we spend Saturday evening with friends and we are looking for a club or bar where you can sit with a beer. Sometimes we are in a foreign city and we are looking for a restaurant where you can eat something. Due to the minimalist design, carefully selected information and activities that we want to give you the feeling that wherever you are you will always have to know where you can drop in and feel like in your hometown. We present to you the application that will show you the nearest locations around you and show you how to get to them. ☕🍹🤗 [link] [comments]  |
| What is the best way to find financial statements for a restaurant in order to estimate costs? Posted: 24 Oct 2019 10:26 AM PDT I'm looking to service restaurants in NYC (particularly fast casual), and having a breakdown of their costs (individually by store) would be helpful in understanding their needs and pricing. Ideally, I'd be able to see a full income statement for a store, but any other sort of cost breakdown would be helpful. More generally, for B2B entrepreneurs, how do you go about doing research on your client base? [link] [comments]  |
| Company is interested in my app idea. What next? Posted: 24 Oct 2019 09:04 AM PDT Company is interested my app idea. What next? Hi all, I am very new to this community, and I'm not sure if I am in the right place for my question so please redirect me to the correct subreddit if you know it. I had an idea of an app, so I wrote the idea on a platform that specializes in developing digital projects. After only a few days, I was contacted by another company via the platform who is interested in my idea and would like to speak to me. The call is set for this coming Monday and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to prepare anything. Are we gonna be negotiating? I don't know if they want to help me with my project or rather buy the idea from me? If so, how should I go about dealing with them? Basically, does anyone have any experience with what I am doing or with such a platform, from either side (as the creator or as the company interested in the creation). Just to clarify, so far, the app is simply an idea. There is no code or website or numbers. Just idea. Thanks for reading! [link] [comments]  |
| Got an idea, don’t know how to make it become reality Posted: 24 Oct 2019 08:38 AM PDT So basically I want to start a fantasy football (soccer) app/website based in Italy, and focused, at least initially, on Serie A (the Italian league). Fantasy football is already extremely popular in Italy, it seems like every male under 40/45 plays it, yet I don't think there is as much money being made in it as it probably should be, especially compared to NFL fantasy football in America, which is worth close to $20b as a market, despite its popularity being similar to that of its Italian counterpart. I won't go too much into detail, but as a fantasy football player myself, I've been thinking about ways to improve the game experience and, partially inspired by American fantasy sports, I wrote down 25+ features I would introduce including a revolutionary scoring system. I'm focusing on the Italian market as it is my home country and the one that's the most passionate about fantasy football, but there would probably be a decent demand in about every other European country where football is king. I told a few of my fantasy football-playing friends about it and they all loved it and said they would switch to 'my' platform if it ever became reality. However, I'm still in high school, I don't have money, I don't know how to develop an app or a website and I don't have a clue about how to create a startup. I'm here for your help. P.S. How do I prevent my idea from being eventually stolen? [link] [comments]  |
| I got 30,000+ email signups. How do I build a newsletter around this? Posted: 23 Oct 2019 09:55 AM PDT Hey everyone, I recently launched a product that got some great press. My iOS app is out there but my Android app is still under development. As a result I got over 30,000 email sign ups for the Android waitlist. It's going to take me 3 months approx to build the android product so I was wondering how to keep these signups engaged until then? In addition to their emails, I have demographic information and know what their interests are (because they gave me this information as part of the waitlist sign up). My questions are 1) where can I hire a good copy writer to start writing a weekly newsletter to send to this distribution? 2) how much should it approx cost to get a weekly newsletter written? 3) what else can I do to keep these people engaged until my Android product comes out? Would be very grateful for your suggestions and thoughts! [link] [comments]  |
| Business strategy conflict with CEO + Burnout Posted: 23 Oct 2019 04:59 PM PDT Backstory: I initially joined the the CEO and another co-founder about 6 months ago. The initial agreed upon plan was that we will make an very basic MVP and use that as a data collection tool to validate our idea on n-number of users. The app is based around a very niche health problem which allows user to report the said condition to us through an app vs sending pictures of hand written notes (CEO tried this with about 5 people). People did see improvement in their disease. Forward to today, we have built a very appealing iOS and android app that collects initially agreed upon information, but the CEO keeps pushing ideas and features. We have less than 10% of the users we initially agreed upon. I said we should focus on that and not spend time and resources adding features and redesigning our current app without fully validating the idea in the market. We do have about 5 doctors who are willing to refer their patients to us. I feel like we are shooting in the dark. I am confident that the idea has potential. All the doctors we talk to validate it, but my conflict with the CEO is about first testing the product on the initially agreed upon number of users before we redesign our app and add more features. I feel like he is doing the classic CEO thing of "lets add all the fancy features" though some are needed but can definitely wait in my opinion. So the conflict is that I'm saying we should stop developing and focus on users and he says we should keep iterating on the app. He is full time, me and and the other co-founder are part time with day jobs. This constant features or ideas about features is pushing me towards burnout and I think we're focusing on the wrong things by iterating on the app vs looking to get more users. FYI, this is more similar to a weight management thing vs a life-threatening problem. Just wanted to put it out incase anyone thought we are doing any medical testing. [link] [comments]  |
| Advice for resigning from a friend’s startup? Posted: 23 Oct 2019 03:35 PM PDT Hello everyone, I realize this group is dedicated to encouraging and helping each other in the startup journey, and I think that's incredible. I hope this is the right place to ask this question, since you guys would be most able to understand what it's like to be in a startup. In short, I'd like to resign from a startup run by some very close friends. It's mostly been a really great experience, I just want a change of pace and change of lifestyle; I've been on the edge of burnout for a while and I'd just like to slow things down for a bit. A little bit about me and the situation: I'm in my last semester as a film/media student. I started making films and doing broadcast and photography work around 8 years ago, at the very beginning of high school. Typically, I would do my school in the first part of the day, and then do media work into what often ended up being the late hours of the night, then get up and do it all again. I absolutely loved what I did, and wanted to get as good as possible as soon as possible so I could launch my career and get to do media as my life's work. When I started college, I continued this pattern of intense effort, and put even more effort into my craft, seeking out upperclassmen mentors, volunteering on projects, doing some freelance work occasionally, and doing everything I could to be as connected and experienced as possible as soon as possible. A year ago, two of my recently graduated upperclassmen mentors asked me to come work as the production lead for their startup video company. The plan was to start out by doing corporate and wedding videos, and eventually build out the infrastructure of the company to where we could start to make our own feature films. At the time they already had a lot of work, and in general they've been pretty consistent in having clients. So I worked for them over Christmas break, and the plan was for me to come back full time after I graduated in May of 2019. However, my passion for my field had not entirely translated to academics (I went into liberal arts school with more of a trade school mindset) and many of my real-world experiences had just not translated into grades. When I got back, I found out my choices had caught up with me and I was going to have to take an extra semester to finish my undergrad degree. My friends were incredibly understanding, and said I could still come back and work for them after going back for the extra semester. So I worked for the company over this summer, and then came back to this current academic semester (which ends in December). This summer was mostly a good working experience, but just pretty stressful. I wasn't making a whole lot since they were still filling out their client base, so I supplemented my income by doing some freelance photo & broadcast work on top of working full time. We eventually did get an office, but for most of the summer I was living in a curtained-in corner of an unfinished basement and we worked in a makeshift office on the finished side of the basement. Work/life balance wasn't really a thing as I was living with almost all of my co-workers, and I wouldn't necessarily make enough to move out until the company really picked up. A lot of the sacrifices I/we were making seem pretty normal for a startup run by recent college grads, but again, I've been going as hard as I can non-stop for nearly 8 years (including 80 hr/week summer jobs and intense internships) over the course of both summer and winter breaks), and I honestly feel that I need to slow things down for at least a year or so just for sanity's sake. An entry-level 9-5 would be a very different pace than what I've been used to, and a lot less effort to keep up with than a startup. I had already been thinking of resigning as early as the first or second week of the semester, but I wanted to take my time to think through it—both to make sure that was what I really wanted to do and also to try and figure out how to bow out gracefully, since I still value the friendships (I've been tight with these guys for over 4 years now), and I want to be sensitive to things. But again, I'd like to get out. I don't own a percentage of the company, I was just hired on as an employee, taxes were on a W2 and all that. So in theory on paper it would be as simple as resigning from a regular job position. I want to give them as much notice as possible, but I have six weeks left in the semester and things have been getting really busy as it ramps up to the end. The city they're located in is an hour and a half away, and I have some pretty significant commitments in these next couple of weekends (a friend's wedding being one of them). Additionally, a professor recommended me for a different entry level job in my field a couple of weeks ago. It would be a pretty sweet setup (lower expectations, higher pay, being around many veterans who are better than me instead of a few peers who are at a similar level), and while I don't have a job offer yet, there is a decent chance I could get hired. So part of the reason I'm asking this here is because I don't want my friends to feel like I ditched them as soon as the first thing came along. I've been looking to leave since the end of the summer, just didn't know how to go about it, but now it's possible I could be hired again straight out of the semester. I've thought about going in person and talking to the founder over coffee, but that just seems really tense and awkward, plus would be 3 hours of my time just to drive there and back. I've also thought about writing an email, but that seems detached and not caring. Just curious if you guys had any thoughts or advice, as startup owners yourselves. How would you like to receive this kind of resignation if you had to? Do you have any tips to exit gracefully while still keeping the friendships? [link] [comments]  |
| Understanding which fundraising types are best for you. Posted: 24 Oct 2019 12:09 AM PDT I've spent the last three days at Seattle Startup Week learning about the many ways to fundraise - and all I can say is that it's been incredibly helpful and informative. I've learned more than I ever thought I would about angels, VCs, government grants, crowdfunding and the dozens of other ways to raise money. All of this knowledge has now lead me to holding a bag full of questions, and as an early stage startup we have many paths ahead of us which require answers. My two cofounders and I have been bootstrapping since March, and will continue to do so until we launch beta (we are launching alpha now). That being said, we also need to start raising money now as the process with Angels and VCs can take several months from screening to check deposit. Because we're in consumer software, the only real vehicles that make sense are F&F, Angel or VC. Our main focus has always been to start with F&F since we know Angels will want to see more tangible data than just our qualitative feedback from early testers. We have built proprietary tech, we have a very experienced team (no exits though) and a working prototype (InVision) - I've heard a mixture of those can also get you seed money in the absence of revenue. I'm providing the background to give context - especially after today when I heard the definition of "early stage" wildly defined by multiple folks. I wasn't sure what to title this - but it's really just me sharing my thought process and asking for help in return. Any advice or direction would be greatly appreciated - wether it audiobooks, podcasts, medium articles, regular articles, your own anecdotes - I'll take any help I can get. (Also anything that goes into cap tables and term sheets,) Thank you all again! [link] [comments]  |
| Developing app, should I register a company? Posted: 23 Oct 2019 10:57 PM PDT I am designing and calculating my budget for an app, I will have to hire a developer and market it a lot, I got a good job and saved a good ammount of money, I'm ready to learn from my experience even if I don't make huge profits, should I make my own company, I mean officially register it? Or should I wait until I get my first sales on play market? [link] [comments]  |
| Advice about retention (My numbers included) Posted: 23 Oct 2019 05:29 PM PDT Hey all, so I have a Chrome extension that's been live for 2 months now. Here is a screenshot of my weekly retention numbers from Mixpanel: https://imgur.com/a/vat8pDX (An active user was someone who triggered the extension) The numbers seem alright, at least to me. Should my focus be solely on iterating the product and trying to improve the retention? Or, is the retention good enough that I should be focusing more on acquiring new users and simply growing the user-base? And further, how does someone know when retention is, I suppose, good enough? My reasoning occurs under the assumption that we should focus on retention/stickiness of the product before focusing on growth. [link] [comments]  |
| Strategy for a gig economy start up Posted: 23 Oct 2019 04:45 PM PDT I am building a gig economy app in a niche domain. I am a UX designer and a web UI/mobile developer who has a full time job. This is my side project that I have started building a month back. I desperately need some help around payment systems. As with any gig economy system, there will be a set consumers who will choose service providers from a list, finalize the deal and deposit money in to the system. Once the gig is complete, the gig system will pay the service provider. I am new to ecommerce, and absolutely clueless when it comes to "paying the customers". I mean its easy to set up creditcard payment feature to receive payments. But whats the optimal way to pay the customers in the early stages of the product? Audience : US for nowPayouts: Typical payouts per gig could range from 50$ to 500$, and a provider would typically make between 200$ to 2000$ per month.User profile : Tech savvy, typical age 25+
thanks in advance [link] [comments]  |
| Cold Emailing - Follow the rules or face a fine. Posted: 23 Oct 2019 05:36 AM PDT Hi All. I'm not part of a startup but I am an IT Director at a company and I get A LOT of cold emails from small tech companies looking to sell me their new product. I don't particularly mind getting cold emailed because I get to see what new products are out there, but I do mind when I can't unsubscribe without responding. The latest being a new conferencing solution. They didn't provide any instruction or link for unsubscribing. This is a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act. At every stage of your startup or established company, you need to be aware of these laws and how your coworkers are advertising. If you break these rules consistently, you can receive a large fine. Here is a summary of the 7 points to keep in mind when emailing:
If you want more detailed info of these points, please refer to this website: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business [link] [comments]  |
| How do you handle sales taxes, EU VAT, etc for selling digital goods? Posted: 23 Oct 2019 05:25 PM PDT There are a lot of guides and discussion about how to accept payments using services like Stripe. But there is not very much guidance on how to deal with sales taxes. This is especially the case if you are selling digital goods--such as access to a web app, online courses, streaming video, streaming audio, etc. In that case, your customers could be spread across the world. So, if you are based in the US, you might need to consider the sales tax rules for different US states (if you sell a certain level to customers in the state), in addition to the VAT taxes for each EU country, and more. Stripe generally says it won't help with sales taxes and VAT, though it does say for certain types of orders it can help you integrate it, and work with third party processors like TaxJar and Avalara. But it's not clear those third parties actually handle the real complexities, like not only calculating, but also paying the tax and filing it. So, assuming you are not already a decently large company that can afford significant accounting help, how do you handle sales taxes and EU VAT for selling digital products? [link] [comments]  |
| Need Advice: Facebook Banned My Ads and is Punishing People for Sharing My Links Posted: 23 Oct 2019 03:54 PM PDT Hello all... This is my first post here and I'm utterly dumbfounded. On the 21st I noticed that the link to my Kickstarter in my Instagram bio - this is a page I use solely for business purposes - wasn't working. Someone wanted to make a pledge and couldn't follow the link. Attempts to edit the link made it clear that the link to my project weren't going to be accepted. I couldn't send it to the supporter in a comment either. I re-routed them to the webpage. I foolishly believed that was the end of it. Forward two days later and I am finally realizing the full extent of this ban. Everything single post with a link to my Kickstarter has been removed. My ads have been shut down. I cannot even share the links in messenger. I have been using Facebook ads since the campaign began. I sell a stand to pee device. I am careful to be discreet in my photos. There is literally nothing obscene about the campaign. But my links are flagged as "abusive". My backers earned credit towards a refund via the tracking code on referral links and I have since found out that they have been getting their accounts blocked or reported for posts they made sharing my links. I can't share my link even to myself on my personal messenger and all of the links I shared to myself previously have actually been deleted from my messages logs. I have opened up a complaint with Facebook marketing but I am devastated. Is there anything I can do to force them to fix this if they refuse? [link] [comments]  |
| I have built a product.. what now? Posted: 23 Oct 2019 09:23 AM PDT Hey guys, I've spent the last 12 months building a product. It's about 90% done, and it needs a bit more effort... money (I've been bootstrapping it with freelancers). Alongside this, the product is one that hosts video. I know it's going to have very expensive server costs when launched publicly which I won't be able to pay for. So my question is: do I go out and look for pre-seed funding to help me finish the product development and pre-anticipate the server costs? Or wait longer to gather my own funds to possible have enough runway (might be 4-6 months). Any advice with pre-seed at my current state? [link] [comments]  |
| How do i track an incentive program? Posted: 23 Oct 2019 10:34 AM PDT Hello, I have a small company with 10 sales reps. I am trying to find a solution track their sales (they will get share from the sales they made) as we are about to start running, customers book thru the website. What is the most affordable or efficient way to track each person's progress monthly? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Oct 2019 10:06 AM PDT How do businesses that create 3D printed objects build their MVP? Usually 3D printers are insanely expensive for somebody to be able to buy one without an investor. Do these businesses usually build their MVP on somebody else's printer before they get started? Because the same question can be related to software startups. How do non technical people with limited resources get an MVP for software up and running? Most people have co founders that develop the product. Is it unheard of to get funding first before a product is even designed / build? I know it's insanely risky to invest in something that doesn't exist yet. But I'm sure plenty of companies started out that way. Anyways thanks for listening to me rant, feedback is much appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Wednesday Social Club - Share What Events You Are Attending This Coming Week Posted: 23 Oct 2019 06:05 AM PDT Welcome to this week's Social Club thread.Share what events and meetups you are going to so we can discover new ways to be social together offline and help grow your local community. Focus on sharing events that are happening within the next 7 days of this date of this submission. Anything that falls outside of 10 days will be removed, no exceptions. No duplicate posts. If you happen to be attending an event that is already posted, leave a comment to inform the community that you will also be there. If you are hoping to organize something on your own, outside of an existing event, feel free to use this thread to rally some people together to meet up. Please use the following format to share an event: Event Name and URL: Location: Event Date: Event Time: Event Description: Event Cost: Discount Code: [if applicable] Please use the following format to organize people to meet up together: Location: Purpose of getting together: Suggested Places to meet up: You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord. [link] [comments]  |
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