Startups Wednesday Social Club - Share What Events You Are Attending This Coming Week |
- Wednesday Social Club - Share What Events You Are Attending This Coming Week
- I’ve been with my startup company for 3 of its 4 years, currently getting paid less than new-hires.
- Question About Business Licenses
- Is sending DMs from an Instagram/Twitter business account a good way to market?
- Should I ask this VC to invest ?
- About to do this, any words of wisdom??
- For a new startup, are PR Distribution services worth it?
- iOS App Marketing Ideas
- CAGR and other growth metrics
- Representing Two Companies in a Capital Raise
- Communing your people (partners/contractors/employees/customers/users)
- Selling software to local news agencies. Difficult?
- Should we delegate web & app development of our business to experienced developers?
- Stuck at the beginning, no drive or direction. How to handle founders and equity?
- Fundraising is just like dating. Halo effect goes a long way with a date, how are you guys building a halo around yourself to get a foot in the door and impress investors?
- How have you kicked the crap out of Fear?
| Wednesday Social Club - Share What Events You Are Attending This Coming Week Posted: 08 Jan 2020 05:06 AM PST 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]  |
| I’ve been with my startup company for 3 of its 4 years, currently getting paid less than new-hires. Posted: 08 Jan 2020 09:15 PM PST I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this but here it goes. I work at a start up currently, we're a small marketing agency, and we just hit our 4 year anniversary. I have been with the company for 3 years, and we are growing rapidly as of late. We've hired three new people in the last six months, bringing our total number to ten. Here's where I'm having trouble... I have been a backbone to this company. I do website development and graphic design. There is currently one other web developer, and one other graphic designer, both hired within the last 8 months. I am working with both of them, showing them the ropes in terms of processes, and giving feedback on design, picking up slack where needed, etc, etc. When certain projects come in, i.e. logos, websites, etc, all three of us will create initial concepts. Out of at least the last 7 projects, my design has been chosen as the final product, both branding/logos, and website/Ui/Ux - every single time. Here's the thing: I found out today that both of these people are getting paid more than me. I am a female, and they are both male, if that is even a thing anymore. I'm more concerned that because we are growing, and hiring more "experienced" people from further away, that our company has had to offer more competitive pay for them to join the team. However, my work is consistently better, and I am doing far more than my share, basically holding their hands through every project , and acting as creative director (without the title or the pay grade) to these other people.... who are getting paid more than me. So my question is, at what point do you have to lose your loyalty and move on? I have stuck with it this long because we were a startup, I saw an opportunity in getting in on the ground floor, and I'm passionate about our company. I have gone through years of growing pains that every startup faces, with no real reward as of yet. As of lately, it seems like is not paying off to stick with it, and that they are not treating me like the "extremely valuable asset" that they say I am. Does anyone have any advice on how to approach this subject? Do I simply start looking for other jobs? How do I ask for a raise? I can almost guarantee that if the company doesn't go out of business, they'll need to hire 2 people to take my position, and the company will take a huge hit in the interim. I care for my bosses, and I share their vision, but I will not do twice the work for 2/3 the pay anymore. [link] [comments]  |
| Question About Business Licenses Posted: 08 Jan 2020 10:50 PM PST Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this, but I am very new to this and want to make sure everything our business does is legal. My partner and I recently decided to start a cleaning service business together. We decided to create a junk/scrap metal cleanup service where we go to a person's home, and collect their unwanted junk. This is going to sound odd when I say this, and most might think my partner and I are stupid, but we don't charge for our services. Together we realized, we would get more customers by picking up for free, and our profit would come from taking the material to a recycling/scrap yard. With all that being said, we were wondering if, since we weren't charging for our services, what kind of licenses we would need. Also, since that profit is being used for business, does that mean it will be taxed as income? If there's any questions you guys have that are needed to answer these questions, feel free to ask, and I will try to answer them the best I can. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Is sending DMs from an Instagram/Twitter business account a good way to market? Posted: 08 Jan 2020 01:38 PM PST I offer free samples on my website, I want to promote it more and I'm wondering if sending messages to potential customers is a good idea. It seems like an easy way to market but I'm worried that it would come off as spammy, or even worse, goes against IG or Twitter guidelines and gets my account banned. Anyone have experience with this? [link] [comments]  |
| Should I ask this VC to invest ? Posted: 09 Jan 2020 02:00 AM PST I run a fintech/crowdfunding platform that's been around for almost a year. We have a team with a combined 30+ years of startup experience and just hit $250k in revenue last month (which isn't much for our market but is still something for a bootstrapped startup imo) One of my best friends from High school's dad is a VC. I would ask him without hesitation but me and his son got caught smoking pot back in high school and that kinda ruined our relationship. While that was more than 7 years ago and I don't do drugs of any kind today (for obvious reasons) I still am a little hesitant about reaching out to him. Any suggestions? [link] [comments]  |
| About to do this, any words of wisdom?? Posted: 08 Jan 2020 04:49 PM PST Hi there, so I'm looking for advice. I've been working on the start up idea for a while now, and it's nothing too crazy right now, basically in the idea/rough MVP stage. I took a shot and reached out to a VC firm with in my industry of some well known investors. I don't know if this was a good or bad idea, but they ended up responding to me (usually don't get success from this type of contact) and we now have a call set up between the two of us. Whether I receive money or not, I take this as a great opportunity to build a connection either way. Question- do I share my whole idea? I know most people say "no one's going to take your idea" but just making sure. Is there anything in particular I should say or ask, I've never had a conversation like this before so I'm not exactly sure what to expect. If anyone has any advice or previous experience please share!! Thank you all. P.S. So far I've written down some important facts about my idea and business, and also have some questions I would like to ask them. Just wanted to be prepared. [link] [comments]  |
| For a new startup, are PR Distribution services worth it? Posted: 08 Jan 2020 02:07 PM PST I've been looking into various paid PR Distribution services (newswire.com, prdistribution.com, eReleases.com, etc.) and I'm curious if anyone has found success using these low-cost methods, and/or what your experience has been? Does it really help with backlinks/SEO as is claimed? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Jan 2020 12:22 PM PST This post is a question to those of y'all who have had successful iOS Apps. My app currently has 700+ beta testers on Test Flight. We are launching for pre-order in the next day or so, then full-scale launch within 90 days. What have some of you done/what would you recommend I do to hype up the launch of an app and see success within the first few days of launch? EDIT: Advice on marketing in addition to traditional "social media marketing" would be greatly appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Jan 2020 06:16 AM PST Hi All, Just a quick one. I'm putting together an investor pitch for a pre-seed startup. My model currently has a customers growth CAGR of about 65% and revenue growth at 95%. I tried to be conservative with my assumptions....very large market size, I modelled addressing 0.01 to 0.36% of the market between year 1-5. Two questions :
Thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Representing Two Companies in a Capital Raise Posted: 08 Jan 2020 09:05 AM PST I work for a boutique Investment bank in the Midwest where we help clients sell their business. I am right out of college and the only 'lower-level' employee doing analyst/bus dev work. Since we focus on sell-side engagements for the most part, I am not as versed in the capital raise space. We have been approached by two local companies— both seeking ~$1m in funding— and i am tasked with finding a capital partner. The first is a beverage and ingredient technology company selling performance drinks, coffee and tea. They had success selling sports drinks in the past, but recently pulled out of retail to pursue e-commerce. Revenues are sub $750k atm. They need $ to roll out the new coffee and tea brands. The other is a Legal Tech/SaaS company in the eDiscovery space. They just onboarded their first few clients, so they aren't generating true MRR/ARR yet. They need $ for sales & marketing and product development. This is my first time working on a deal by myself, and I am caught in a bind. I reached out to a variety of VCs, but I haven't gained any traction. I know there is no cookie-cutter answer since every deal is different, however, how should I be approaching this? [link] [comments]  |
| Communing your people (partners/contractors/employees/customers/users) Posted: 08 Jan 2020 07:33 AM PST Hi, deliberately intended the title to use the word stem shared with "commune". I'm not sure where the best place to post is. In short, the problem I'm trying to solve surrounds community building. Telling people to sign up for another Slack only to have very little activity just feels like a hassle. In fact, having just another community feed to be a part of feels like a bummer in general.. or I'm not sure, that's why I'm posting. There is huge value for giving people a way to share the pulse and collect feedback and vice versa. When you've figured out your "values" or "mission" or shared territory, it becomes a force multiplier in my mind to routinely share communications. My specific need is that I have partners / prospective customers / contractors and ideally a funnel of new people from each category. I'd like to commune them all into one place. I'd like to form a mastermind group, for instance -- but the amount of effort to go to via email for this is tough, and a one-off call with 50-75% attendance doesn't feel like a win. I discovered my GSuite comes with Google Groups, but then thought of how annoying it would be for colleagues to add "yet another tool" they have to check updates for. Just to check the boxes, I should note I do already have some form of project management I implement on my own which could easily be a structure shared with others to participate in for their own value; let's say for example I have a content funnel, and finally let's say I have a deal flow funnel for my space. I'm doing not a great job of framing this, but here are some questions I'd love the community's take on when trying to build community:
Would love to hear about real world use cases and I'm hopeful others would benefit reading your insights! [link] [comments]  |
| Selling software to local news agencies. Difficult? Posted: 08 Jan 2020 07:03 AM PST So I don't know much about local news agencies, how they spend on tech etc, but I've got something that can automated some mundane writing work for them. More money or saved time for them. How hard is it to pitch local news agencies? Are they tech illiterate? Have experience with sales and marketing teams who are pretty tech literate [link] [comments]  |
| Should we delegate web & app development of our business to experienced developers? Posted: 08 Jan 2020 06:32 AM PST We are a bunch (3) of college grads trying to bring our vision into reality. One of us is domain expert, while 2 of us are novice programmers having background in Machine Learning and Data Analytics, not so experienced in Web and App development. Notably the latter 2 slightly incline towards the business and strategic sides, although we're ready to get into development if it's sensible thing to do. Does it make sense to add another full stack developer into our team? Or should we handle the whole process ourselves? The company is based in food processing and distribution. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Stuck at the beginning, no drive or direction. How to handle founders and equity? Posted: 08 Jan 2020 06:19 AM PST Hey everyone In a situation currently - 6 friends (including myself) have started a venture together and now it's become obvious that a lot of the people involved aren't that interested, or are lacking the initiative to work hard at making it a success. It was initially meant to be a bit of fun to begin with; I don't think anyone thought it would be successful (we were doing it outside of our full time jobs, so weren't moving quickly and we never bothered having discussions about equity or responsibilities etc - a mistake I know. To give a bit of an overview:
We now have a couple of businesses interested in our product and a potential deal on the table. This is now making everything feel real and the direction needs sorting. Unfortunately, we have 6 people here, a couple of them wanting to continue and start making money, a couple that say they want to keep working on it but then don't actually do anything and a couple that just aren't interested. My gut tells me that 6 people is too many to move forward (people can hide in the crowd and not do anything) and that most of them should really have lower equity, or be employees. And because there's so many of us, I feel like no one is making decisions because we're all equal and no one knows what the other people want. How would you approach the awkward conversation of asking people to "commit or get out" and legally what are the options that go along with this? Can people be kicked out? Must they be bought out? If the company isn't worth anything how do you buy them out? I'm just looking for any help or insight anyone can offer on how to move forward, it would be greatly appreciated. I know we've made stupid mistakes here. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Jan 2020 05:55 AM PST Okay, so there I said it, when speaking of dating a rockstar is always going to be more successful than a regular Joe, even if the rockstar is a terrible person who cares little to nothing about their many partners and the average Joe is a sweetheart who'd put their (sole, unique) partner on a pedestal. Sociologists refer to this phenomenon as the "Halo effect", each and every human is subject to it and those who are affected the least better not discount the halo effect while building their model as it's real and can really hurt you (ask those who shorted Tesla discounting the halo effect around Musk). Speaking of Tesla, many things can be said, but both sides really do agree on something. The capability of Musk to generate halo around himself which exceeds the actual capabilities or qualities of the man and the company. Shorts will tell you that's disonesty and being promotional, Longs will tell you that's black belt salesmanship and they'd get to what they promise eventually In any event the halo effect is something which is there and cannot be ignored, and it's working wonders for the company in terms of fundraising (making it easier to essentially print money by issuing stock or by lowering interest rates in the bond market) I want to end this with a question: So given that fundraising is just like dating....how are you guys trying to build a halo around yourself? [link] [comments]  |
| How have you kicked the crap out of Fear? Posted: 07 Jan 2020 09:03 PM PST Fear of rejection has been the little monster sitting on my shoulder most of my life. Any decision I've ever made has this little dude in my head asking "will I be liked" or "am I good enough." As someone who builds products, being afraid of failure is paralyzing. Time, experience and success allows me to tell myself that I actually know what I'm doing. Still, hiding in a dark corner of my brain there's that dude Fear. Most recently he stopped by just as I was about to release my new app. My partner and I had the core of the application built months ago, we ran it through a group of testers. The response was overwhelmingly positive. As I hovered the mouse over the App Store "Release" link last Friday my buddy Fear started getting in my head. "Should we wait? Do we need to add syncing? Will people like this?" I chuckled a bit and launched. I write this today, a couple of days later. Our app is seeing some early success. We cracked the top 125 apps in our category, have good buzz on social media and even made a few sales. I've told myself "What's the worst that could happen?" many times only to ignore my advice and let fear win. I felt it important to memorialize this time, when I kicked the crap out of Fear and leapt. How have you kicked the crap out of Fear? [link] [comments]  |
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