Startups Tuesday Operational Roundtable - A Forum to Ask About Legal, Accounting, Project Management, or How to Get Started |
- Tuesday Operational Roundtable - A Forum to Ask About Legal, Accounting, Project Management, or How to Get Started
- Are there any startups working on solutions to the CA wildfires?
- 5 Intermediate Social Media Marketing Tactics
- How to determine when it is possible leap to target mass market(ecommerce)?
- Help, Interviewing customers
- Tag and drag along rights in the termsheet for an early stage startup in Southeast Asia. We have a few concerns as first-time founders...
- Advice on finding investors?
- Validating markets pre-MVP, what is fair to your early target audience
- Managing investors after investment | What do they look for
- Patenting Software Designs?
| Posted: 05 Nov 2019 05:05 AM PST Welcome to this week's Operational Roundtable Thread. Ask about anything related to legal, accounting, project management, or how to get started. 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]  |
| Are there any startups working on solutions to the CA wildfires? Posted: 05 Nov 2019 08:48 PM PST This year there have been more than 5,000 wildfires in California. Historically, these wildfires would burn without causing much damage. But that's not the case any longer. In addition to the State's arid weather and high winds, people are ever more residing deep into wilderness areas that are susceptible to wildfires. As firefighters work hard to stop these fires, others are developing technologies to forecast them. One such technology is WIFIRE, a supercomputer that combines "real-time weather" info along with "known fire corridors" and other data to forecast wildfires. This is reported in a 11/4/19, WSJ article. What am I wondering is if startups are coming up with technologies to solve CA's wildfire issues? Certainly, residents and local, state and Federal governments would be eager for any solutions. [link] [comments]  |
| 5 Intermediate Social Media Marketing Tactics Posted: 05 Nov 2019 09:40 AM PST For anyone who wants to step up their online marketing, these are more intermediate to advanced tips, but no reason people early on in their entrepreneurial journey couldn't try applying some of them I'm sure some of you will find value in this post, if you need further clarification let me know, I'd be happy to answer any questions :) (This is a fairly long post, so for those of you that prefer watching to reading, I also have a video about this: https://youtu.be/urwV54DZVTI ) No. 1 - Better advertising campaigns Particularly focusing on Facebook and Instagram. I am assuming most people can know how to run basic ads and use their pixel data, do retargeting etc. I find a lot of people are trying to do adverts wrong. Trying to sell from the get go, then retargeting trying to sell again, maybe even offering discounts. And that is understandable, but it is not a good approach. It typically takes 7 different interactions with your business to convert someone from cold to a sale. 7! One or two ads just won't cut it. And 7 different interactions, showing them the same advert again only counts as one. For the sake of this we will only count ads as interactions, but any different interaction would normally count. So when you are setting up your campaigns you need to have this in mind. Think of it like a story. The first few ads, 1, 2, 3, they are creating the hook, laying the context, showcasing what the brand stands for. Short and sweet. Don't be trying to push people to your website here, don't pay for link clicks, pay for engagement. It's far cheaper. (You can have a link, but have a specific landing page for it, not a hard hitting sales pitch, but something that showcases the brand.) It's all about awareness here. But 3 different ads doing it, not one. Ads 4, 5, these are now creating the problem, creating the conflict. Use that pixel data to do retargeting to the people who interacted in the first ads. Don't give them the solution yet. Have a different landing page for these ads again. Finally ads 6, 7, these are now were you can highlight your solution, you give them the resolve to that problem that has been festering inside them over many days. It is the resolve to the story. These ads are only for people who clicked on ads 4, 5. Then you can bring them to a landing page where you have your sales pitch (bonus tip, do that in a video, people don't like to read.) Your conversion rates for these people will be far higher now. The advertising process is a journey, bring people along that story. Remember: Awareness, Leads, Conversions. Awareness, Leads, Conversions. No. 2 - Post Sale Relationships Most of your marketing effort, 70%, should be going into the post sale relationship. Make ads that share the story of your brand. Let them reinforce their beliefs about you. Share the stories of people benefiting your products. Create valuable content around your industry. Post all over social platforms. You need to keep yourself constantly in their mind, so the next time they are in the market for your business, you are the first people they think of. And when their friends are in the market for your business, you get recommended. (That is very powerful, recommended by a friend. It creates immediate trust. If their friends trust it, there is no risk for them so they trust it too.) Email marketing is also done here, the process for effective email marketing is: 1 get permission, 2 add value, 3 make it personal, 4 repeat. Don't be pitching or pushing products in your ads constantly. There is a time and place for doing that. But 80% of your emails should just be over delivering value to your audience. Then when you do have a new product out, you can run a specific email campaign for that. But don't just shove products and sales and discounts in their face. That is the quickest way for your open rates to drop to embarrassing levels. No. 3 - Collaborations Collaborate on social media with complimentary businesses. Then go out and create specific awesome content with them. This leverages each others following to great effect. E.g. if you sell chocolates, work with a flower shop. Flowers and chocolates go hand in hand. You may need to work out a business deal here if it is not on equal footing. You can also try the opposite of collaborations. Go to war with your competition. People love drama, people love conflict, it is at the heart of all stories. People can not be helped but drawn in. And creates great awareness for both brands. People pick sides and argue about it in the comments. Amazing for your interactions. Think Mac vs PC, or last year when Burger King comes out with the not a Big Mac range cause McDonalds lost the legal battle to trademark a Big Mac. People also love an underdog vs giant story, if your competition is way to big for you to go head to head with. No. 4 - Competitions and giveaways Now don't just create some crappy campaign where you get people to like and share and follow to enter. That is redundant as a tactic. I've made that mistake myself. All you end up with is people who just want free stuff and will never interact with your business again. So then in the future you end up with a load of dead followers, so any post you put out gets very few interactions and then is shown to even less people. You just end up hurting yourself. You want to create competitions where it celebrates who you are as a brand. Where it is an effort to enter. And that effort is shared on there social page with you tagged as an entry. Creating the viral effect. For example, if you sell skateboarding apparel, people should have to learn a skateboarding trick to enter. Something they already want to do. This is now extra motivation. They have to showcase them learning it in a video post to enter. All their friends see it, and what are their friends into, skateboarding too. So your brand spreads, as they are likely to want to enter in to. And as well as the prize, you showcase the winners on your page, so they get a shoutout, everyone wants more followers ;) Plus give discounts to everyone who enters. No. 5 - Focus on the heart not the aesthetics Go deep, shallow surface level crap has no value. 100s or 1000s of post like that on people's feeds. Be the stories that matter. Teenagers pages are full of memes, and adults are full of gym selfies and their friends trip to Thailand 4 years ago. Find the stories that go deeper, that connect with people on emotional level to do with your brand. Stand out by being the only one that posts with heart! [link] [comments]  |
| How to determine when it is possible leap to target mass market(ecommerce)? Posted: 05 Nov 2019 10:15 PM PST If a company is selling a niche product to niche customers, with limited branding and marketing (compared to the big competitors), how would they determine when it is feasible to try to move into less niche customer segments? Should the company ideally try to do this when its trying to scale, and make the leap into mass market customers like the book crossing the chasm talks about? What does the analysis look like for what capabilities, marketing and r+d that is needed to compete in mass market? How does that planning look like, and is that typically left for consultants and finance firms to determine? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 12:13 AM PST Hello community, I have been working on my idea about creating an email testing platform. My target customer is an email marketeer mainly based in the USA working in a small startup or as a freelancer. I am having a hard time finding customers to interview them, not sale. I have tried several approaches: Scraped emails from LinkedIn 200 people and send an email with a survey. Only 1 filled out :( Facebook adds with a link to a survey and a gift card in return for the help. 400 people reached, 9 clicks on the survey, nobody filled out. The only customer interviews that I managed to get where from local people but they are not enough and most of them do not match fully my target customer profile. Do you have any suggestions on how I can do better at finding customers and interviewing them ? Thanks in advance for your time. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 01:42 AM PST Hi everyone, we're a small startup in SEA and just recently received an offer from one Singaporean investor. These two terms below were mentioned in the termsheet and as first-time founders, it'd be great for us to have some advice/opinions from more experienced founders and investors in this sub.
^ Our concern: as we undersand, this means that if someone wants to buy more than 50% of the shares in the company, they want the right to join in and also sell their shares. Is this a common practice? We are an early-stage startup, and ideally we don't want early investors to exit too soon. That and Is there any other future complications?
^ Our concern: we understand that this is meant to stop minority shareholders from delaying or preventing a sale of the company. Although we can't say anything about the future, but in case the founding team (right now we are the majority, but let's consider us the minority at the point of sale) doesn't want to sell, would we want this term to be in place now? Any possible complications on this one down the track? We feel that these terms might have some unfavourable future outcomes when we receive more investments. Are theystandard practices and whether or not they should negotiated more? Thanks heaps first for your help! (Edited: formatting) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2019 09:06 AM PST Hello Reddit! I'm hoping to get some guidance on how to find investors for a business that me and several people I met through my current employment have founded based on interest and seeing something that can be improved on. At the stage of our business we've invested considerable time and money into design and prototypes of our product. The issue now is getting our idea into full production. We've pitched our idea to many consumers who have expressed serious interest into purchasing our product when it's finalized, but now capital is our limitation. We've considered so many options even looked into manufacturing and importing from other countries. Right now we're fore-casted to be up and running within a year if we can find some kind of investor or obtain a loan. For some perspective and figures. Currently we're looking at roughly 5,000 dollars of invested money from us collectively to secure 6 incomplete prototypes. We will be completing them ourselves but have obtained the parts we aren't able to create ourselves in our current conditions. The process of creating our product requires a level of capital we don't have. We've been quoted roughly 20k for 200 of our product from a 3rd party manufacturer outside of the US inside the US this estimate would be 50k - 70k for 200; and estimate an average sale of 750 ea. which would net us at 150k return. This of course is flat without other expensive for brevity of subject here I'd estimated 100k as minimum. Based on market analyst and talking to interested parties we opt'd to sell on the low side as well to encourage sales. This of course could be much cheaper if we were to manufacture within the company. Currently we have three options for production: CNC Milling, Forging, or 3D Metal Printing. All of these have their own challenges which we have actively researched and talked to specialist of the trade to get a better ideas of. Estimated investment we've determined to do our product ourselves would be a minimum 50k ranging to 200k. Without an actual investor or loan we are considering on advertising and hoping to obtain pre-orders to fund the backend production of our product; of course this will be entirely transparent the whole way through. We believe in honesty and transparency with our consumers. Due to the nature of what we are producing we do not have the luxury of using kickstarter or gofundme because of policies. Any advice on the next steps to take would be so much appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Validating markets pre-MVP, what is fair to your early target audience Posted: 05 Nov 2019 06:22 PM PST How early would you validate a content product with the target audience? Broadly speaking, the choices are, spend 3 months building an MVP database product and serve them real data that I believe has value, or test the demand without a built-out MVP in order to avoid "building the wrong thing." Obviously some of the leadgen / CTA work can be couched, but doing so lowers the odds of engaging people. [link] [comments]  |
| Managing investors after investment | What do they look for Posted: 05 Nov 2019 05:47 AM PST Once a startup gets investment I wanted to understand founder's experience and relations with their investor. Alternatively investors, once you invest in a company, how do you handle/ monitor your portfolio companies. I am 100% confident that this WILL defer from investor to investor, sector to sector and dependent on the size of the round as well but here goes - 1) Pre-investment say some KPIs were agreed upon (MRR for SaaS, DAU for social/ news websites, product stage for hardtech companies). How often do you report these to your investor and in what form? Excel sheets over email? Google Docs? Dropbox? 2) What is the primary difference in reporting (frequency/ KPIs) when moving from angel --> seed --> series A onward 3) What challenges do you face while logging, collecting and sharing this information? I was part of an accelerator that did everything via excel sheets and gmail and people would lose them or send past data causing lot of confusion. 4) Is there any tech/ software people use? I know some VCs have in-house software, but what about some SaaS product? Or is gmail, dropbox, excel sheets type combination sufficient. Because I have a hard time understanding how a VC with 50+ investments keeps track of them manually. 5) Do you share/ regularly update company information like MOUs, minutes of meetings, changes in cap table, bank statements? 6) When you raise a new round, do you share all the past information and progress reports to the prospective VC or simply give a consolidated view? For example a full Dropbox of last 1-2 years reports and just share those as part of due diligence Thanks in advance ! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Nov 2019 04:15 AM PST Is it possible to patent a software design for your application? If not, how do you protect your IP? I've developed a system for my SaaS that we're convinced has potential in being disruptive, yet it can easily be imitated by other startups or even larger companies if they could pivot. I've been told it's slightly ridiculous to patent software designs since it's difficult to define what are you patenting, is it the structure of the code in this or that section? Is it the function of the entire system? So if anyone has any experience in patenting software or software designs I'd appreciate any feedback as I'm quite worried about not having at least 2-3 years of rights to profit for our efforts. Edit: I'd appreciate comments answering the questions as opposed to dismissing them. [link] [comments]  |
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