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
- How do you prepare for a pitch?
- How did find a niche for your e-commerce product?
- Why are the hiring processes so unprofessional at lots of start-ups?
- You are the undercover boss. What would you secretly assess?
- Inbound vs Outbound for developer tools SaaS
- Seeking advice. Shutdown or scaling up. My small digital agency
- Startup scene in Austria
- Worried about my compensation and growth trajectory as software engineer at startup
- How to build an email list for your startup
- How to efficiently & legally let my potential customers know my product?
- At what moment do you decide it's time to concede or repivot in a new direction?
- Advice on pitch
- How do you measure the value of an opportunity in your CRM with recurring revenue and/or transactional revenue?
- Challenges in finding partners / contractors
- How do I get customers for my hosting company?
| Posted: 28 Jan 2020 05:06 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]  |
| How do you prepare for a pitch? Posted: 29 Jan 2020 12:56 AM PST I am wondering what steps do you follow to prepare for a pitch (not necessarily to a VC). Do you write it down? Do you practice in front of a mirror, how? Do you pay attention to what you wear? I would be very interested in reading your preparation steps! [link] [comments]  |
| How did find a niche for your e-commerce product? Posted: 28 Jan 2020 07:49 PM PST I have a skin care product line that I want to launch, but I need to decide which target market I want to pursue. The plan right now is to create 3 different prototype brands, launch a test campaign for each of them and see how they perform relative to each other. How did you approach this situation? What kind of tests did you run? Which metrics were meaningful and helped later on? Anything you wish you knew before you started? [link] [comments]  |
| Why are the hiring processes so unprofessional at lots of start-ups? Posted: 28 Jan 2020 07:49 AM PST So, I have a question that I would love for entrepreneurs to answer. When I say unprofessional, I don't mean non-traditional new ways of hiring and selecting candidates. I mean down right unprofessional. I'm not a boomer, if that matters. Lol I have been unemployed/underemployed and looking for permanent work for around six months now. I have been applying to places, sending out my resumes, applying, all of the things, blah. As I look back on all of this, I realized that all of the the start-ups and young companies that I have heard back from have been very unprofessional and flakey. Cancelling interviews at the last minute, not answering emails or phone calls, no explanations, ghosting, founders being extremely arrogant, etc... Now, I am not saying that all start-ups and young companies are like this, just the ones I have been in contact with. The things that made me interested in working for a young company is the freshness, innovation, benefits, and the ability to get in at the beginning and help something grow. My experiences with them are really turning me off. So, I'd like to hear it from you all. Why are some so unprofessional? Is there anything I can do or look for to steer clear of these sorts of companies? written from my phone, please excuse errors [link] [comments]  |
| You are the undercover boss. What would you secretly assess? Posted: 29 Jan 2020 02:50 AM PST I'll start. We are a SaaS startup. I'll pretend to be a potential online customer and will engage with our live chat. I will want to see how kind, aligned to our communication etiquette and decisive my ISR are. CRMs and other tools can give us metrics but there are some soft elements that are still not able to capture. Besides, when you are still small like our startup, you might lack those BI skills to make a statement out of a metric. You can rely on your managers, but to some extent. They might be the best, but they might be so much involved into day-to-day operations and their targets that might distract them from some core values (eg communication style of their teams). Ball in your court now. [link] [comments]  |
| Inbound vs Outbound for developer tools SaaS Posted: 29 Jan 2020 02:19 AM PST What have you guys seen works better for developer SaaS in case of Inbound? While I totally have a clear understanding of what outbound strategy I should take, totally confused about Inbound which is really necessary to have a lead pipeline/bookings in larger number. The reason I am saying in this because the tool I am working on has very low search volumes. So what approach should I take to have an abundant lead flow. [link] [comments]  |
| Seeking advice. Shutdown or scaling up. My small digital agency Posted: 29 Jan 2020 01:41 AM PST Hey guys, I'm looking for knowledge sharing, mentoring, some tips? I'm at a stage where I'm thinking about to quit, even though I'm almost at a point I dreamt of starting as somebody with little goals in mind. But I just feel burned and alone and don't know what to do next. I'm running a small one-man part-time digital agency that focuses on creating websites and online shops as well as synergies like google ads or e-commerce services. I know that sounds a lot but in the digital age, there are really a lot of similarities in these services when it comes to the needs of the clients. Here some facts: ...and still, I don't feel very good. It's mainly because I don't know what to do next, how to do it all by myself and how to leave that loop in the first place. Personally I think I feel like needing people that I can't afford to pay just yet. Of course that all lead down to getting staff but where who and how to pay them long term? Some thoughts of mine include things like hiring some individuals for something like wireframes and screen design and hire somebody to actually build the website with Wordpress. Stuff I'm doing right now and the results are good but I'm not a true expert on those fields. They could be from India, Asia or local. Another option would be to hire another agency or freelancer fix for a particular project. But everyone I watch online is recommending local employees or at least none from these countries because you won't' be able to compete with your competitors in a local market with local clients. If the website creation part is checked off, there would be also the need for somebody that assists me, manages the projects at least to some point, makes sure everything runs smoothly in the background and creates things like graphics and documents that relate to the company so tasks and topics I wouldn't be able to tackle in the daily business. On the assistance part, one remote try with somebody that is pretty new to the industry didn't make me happy. The development team expanding part was planned with the assist still on board so I don't know if I leave that one for now. I think that I'm in a good way but that I also can massively fuck it up at this point too. Like if I take on to many clients at the same time and then don't meet their expectations and time and / or rush to the hospital caused by all the stress. I feel like somebody in person as a staff could help me, but something like a mini job wouldn't give him the quality and experience I need to keep my standards, nor the time to really make an impact on my situation. At least that's what I believe. Side note: I think I can finish around one project from scratch to finish in a month at the maximum by myself. I know that I could get more effective but some things just take time... In general, I'm not worried about getting new clients long term, especially with the new website and some possible investments in PPC ads. Extending the relationship with existing clients is an option too. So.... here I am... with mixed feelings and thinking about quitting or getting it on the next level, but not feeling comfortable doing it all alone. Excited about your comments. Thank you in advance and greetings from Germany! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jan 2020 05:06 AM PST Hello guys, I am a young Austrian just finishing school and on my way to uni. As a career goal I want to work in the Startup scene and build my own company. What is your experience with the Austrian Startup scene? Is Vienna the growing Startup-Hub it is often advertised as? Moreover, what would you recommend studying in university when it comes to entrepreneurship? Would you recommend a business degree or a technical degree? (I have some electrocal engineering background [HTL]) I also appreciate any other insights! Thank you very much! [link] [comments]  |
| Worried about my compensation and growth trajectory as software engineer at startup Posted: 28 Jan 2020 08:39 PM PST I'm trying to get some input on my career trajectory and determine if my compensation is reasonable. I joined a software startup about 9 months ago, as the first software hire in a senior software engineer role. I was employee number 6 when I came on, and the company had been around for a couple years doing consulting work, and was thus able to get by without a true software team. This brings me to my first question, my salary is a bit above average for the area, but I only got .5% equity. I could have opted for a lower salary to get me up to .75%, but I was really hoping to get 1-2%, as I'd read that's a reasonable amount for a first/key software hire. I decided to take the offer anyway, because the company had very good prospects for growth in a large market with little competition. Also I should mention I have 14 years industry experience, and have been programming 20+ years as I learned young. My second question is around my growth within the company. I feel like I've absolutely killed it in my first 9 months, and have gotten glowing feedback from my boss/CTO. It's by far been the most productive part of my career. I've architected and built a very complex software product with the help of another software engineer we hired while also taking on many higher level duties. I've lead the software hiring effort, being the first point of contact from our recruiter and making final hiring decision, make key decisions for technology selection and software road map, keep our task tracking system organized, planning and keeping other devs busy, developing all processes and standards, and even had to help deal with firing a software engineer that wasn't working out. I crank out a lot of code that I'm proud of, but I'm increasingly feeling proud of the software team I'm building that is now rapidly growing, and I'm hung up on feeling my title and compensation are no longer a fit for the scope of my work. I want to work on architecture and coding, but I want to grow more into the high level work of growing and running the team, and working within the business needs to execute on our companies ambitious goals. I feel I have a very strong vision for how to build a top notch team and deliver on challenging goals, and I'd like to be in a position to do just that. I'm wondering what my best move is here from both a career and title perspective as well as the compensation side. I can see myself moving into a very hands on director of software engineering role in the shorter term and then growing into a VP of software engineering as the team gets even bigger in the coming years. Also, we'll be raising a sizable series-A in the next few months. Is now the time to try to get more comp, on the thought that I can get more equity pre-raise, or should I hold out until post raise? [link] [comments]  |
| How to build an email list for your startup Posted: 28 Jan 2020 08:45 PM PST I know this might've been asked a few items already but I can't seem to find the answer I am looking for. I am currently in the process of putting up a email sign up page for my startup. Since no one knows the website exists and the fact that I can't rely on my friends and family as a potential customer base how do I market this webpage to have potential customers provide their email addresses. I am not looking for paid solutions at this point so anything that I can build/market on my own is probably the solution I am looking for. Can someone point me in the right direction here? [link] [comments]  |
| How to efficiently & legally let my potential customers know my product? Posted: 28 Jan 2020 08:14 PM PST Hi folks, I have a product which will serve auto body shop businesses. I can use yelp fusion API to download all those businesses' data from which I can know their business phone number. I was thinking to broadcast marketing ads as SMS to their phones, but according to https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0350-text-message-spam, it is illegal to spam text messages. I don't have their emails, now it seems like the only way left is to make cold call to each of them. Is there any better, more efficient way to let them know my product? Thanks for any advices!!! [link] [comments]  |
| At what moment do you decide it's time to concede or repivot in a new direction? Posted: 28 Jan 2020 07:59 PM PST I have been working on a startup on the side and I in some ways felt that while working on it, it was a little bit of a lost cause because there's bigger players out there that already did it well and I wouldn't be adding anything exciting to the table. I do have other projects that have gotten better results from users and media than the one I working on (added benefit is that I'm not the only one on those projects). So I feel like the scrapping or selling the code I had for my startup and transition into other projects that quite frankly be worth more of my time and actually has stronger public interest. The only thing is that feeling of failure when the one I was working on isn't achieving the status as I hoped. I want to know how you all deal with these situations [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jan 2020 12:52 PM PST Hi, university student here I'm looking to pitch my business idea in a competition that simulates a real life pitch to investors. There's a couple different competitions I'm asking for advice on how and what I should include? 1st the business idea competition- from what I've gathered it just seems to be the idea and a minute or so long breakdown of what it is at the basis. What all is important to include for the very basics? I understand the problem/ solution /market/ features of the app I'm creating but what else? 2nd an actual business plan competition- this one I don't plan on doing till I have more data... they're looking for an actual business plan for my idea.. has anyone ever done a competition like this or pitched an idea to investors? Thanks Feel free to correct me on anything. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jan 2020 07:01 AM PST I am looking for some best practices on measuring opportunities properly in a CRM, when there is recurring revenue and/or a transactional element to the deal. If a company was to offer both a SaaS type subscription service and a consulting/custom work element how should they measure the value of that deal in their CRM? Should they enter the deal value as one month of Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) or the full Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)? With a different pipeline for transactional deals? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Challenges in finding partners / contractors Posted: 28 Jan 2020 08:55 AM PST Hi there, So I've maybe never been the most charismatic leader. I have some elements of charisma, but lately I've been looking for someone who wants to moonlight on outside clients with me. My game is to work with clients with co-development IP agreements so that they receive a free license in exchange for helping the IP along. It's tougher than I thought it'd be. Let me short-cut, because I've been at this game a long time. Would like to see if others here can confirm my thinking. First question: When you go the direct hire / contract route: It's incredible to me that when you have a paying software gig on the table the number of people who will totally B.S. you about what they bring to the table. I guess one question here is.. do you see software gigs go horribly wrong still these days or would you say it's more in differences of style or communication that you didn't originally anticipate? The underlying question I'm trying to answer here is if I'm overthinking the prospecting stage of business and should just contract it out once I have formed the gig into a nice package with a bow on top? It could be that I just abide the economics market is showing me and take what margins I need from both sides (customer and spoiled contractor, see question #2). Second question: When you go the partner route: It's incredible to me how many people just have zero drive to hustle. You put in all the work to prospect and then they show a rotten work ethic about creating opportunities, or the nuts and bolts of business such giving the prospector their cut when they don't participate in prospecting. The thing is I don't think it has anything to do with their ability to write code, it just more or less reflects a bad attitude about everything else. I guess what I'm talking about here is that I have experienced so many people where it's a sliding scale of time wasting:
1a) "ok do you want to help me prospect some new customers?" -- 'crickets' 2) "hey do you want to jump on this meeting call with me?" -- 'crickets' 3) "hey do you want to help me scope this deal?" -- 'does it pay??? does it pay more than this day job i'm hunting for???' 3a) "no, not quite, just looking for someone who wants to get in early with me but yeah I can pay you" -- 'crickets' 4) "hey, what is your tech stick, think you wanna jump on some extra work?" -- 'how much can you pay? does it pay me a top rate like some established business?' 4a) "not quite, but i can pay you $60/h which i think is a pretty solid number and you can grow with it?" -- 'crickets' My colleagues I guess don't cease to baffle. They just want to go back to employment only to get their asses kicked and they'll be back around in 6-9 months. It's the game I played I guess, so maybe I'm supposed to find a different type of person to work with? I've tried the whole sales partners who have massive fulfillment demands I can't meet. I haven't figured out a way to steady the cashflow with outside business enough to hire others. I know sometimes money may motivate me but not others necessarily (kind acts can go a long way to pay someone less!). Third question: When you want to delegate to a team to lighten your load with customers: Maybe this is more to do with my lack of team building skills, but how do you go about telling a prospective customer, "hey my CXO is going to sit in on this meeting" or "hey I'm going to have someone I work with sit in on this call". My goal here is to get out of the way and let other people handle my affairs for the efficiency of it without alienating customers. I've tried this a few times and a lot of the time people want to work directly with me (which is understandable). I'm just looking to source tips for changing the first impressions around so this doesn't become difficult later on. Thanks!!!!!!!! [link] [comments]  |
| How do I get customers for my hosting company? Posted: 28 Jan 2020 05:23 AM PST Hi I am offering really affordable WebHosting packages for startups. I have done some Bing/Microsoft advertisement also. Although results are not that good. My Questions is how do I get more customers? Where should I advertise? My USP is my pricing Help! [link] [comments]  |
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