Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (February 07, 2020) Entrepreneur |
- Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (February 07, 2020)
- A piece of advice that helped me stop worrying that my business idea already exists.
- I've just pressed that "publish" button on my app!
- Business ideas to invest in? I have 20-30k capital. Im tired of having the money and mot knowing what to put it in.
- Broke a latch on my first customers laptop, I feel like shit. What failures did you face on your very first customer?
- I understand everyone is entrepreneurs here, so what is your entrepreneur specialty?
- Slack vs Teams vs Workplace: The intriguing dynamics of the work messenger market
- So we've just finished our very first pitchdeck and we're super excited to hear some feedback on the concept
- Instagram shops
- Which useful and practical skills can I develop from home?
- home care agency
- My first kickstarter
- Need a bit of Consulting Advice
- What's the best ad strategy for a writing class on facebook
- Experience expediting CAGE Code for SAM.gov registration?
- Do I need a degree to be a entrepreneur?
- To those that tried Dropshipping...
- Web Hosting- DIY options?
- Quick email marketing survey - help appreciated (and rewarded)
- Advice on how to process return items?
- �� Business Idea Validation
- Rate my new logo
- Crowdspark - Summary Document Released For Public Comment - Connecting Passionate Entrepreneurs and Founders
- Realized I'm paying $2500 a month for referral marketing - suggestions on what better ways to spend it with a new site?
- Starting a at home tech services, what should I be on the look out for?
| Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (February 07, 2020) Posted: 07 Feb 2020 05:12 AM PST Please use this thread to share any accomplishment you care to gloat about, and some lessons learned. This is a weekly thread to encourage new members to participate, and post their accomplishments, as well as give the veterans an opportunity to inspire the up-and-comers. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| A piece of advice that helped me stop worrying that my business idea already exists. Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:38 AM PST Founders tend to associate the lack of growth with their product not being good enough, and thus begin a cycle of endlessly improving it to win the market. Sometimes the root cause might actually lay elsewhere - building for the wrong audience or a shrinking demand for the product's value proposition. I found the following piece of advice in one of the Software Engineering Daily episodes:
Let's explore why these words spoken by Jeff Meyerson make a lot of sense. If you happen to build a subpar product, you are free to iterate, pivot, or build something entirely new from scratch. The length and quality of development cycles are under your control. Given the wrong market, you are going to fight an uphill battle against circumstances that are not up to you. Turning the wrong market into the right one entails creating a market momentum by yourself, and this is often difficult and tricky. I think of it this way: Building a wrong product in the right market is like having a pair of old wooden skis and zero skills in Aspen. A great product in the wrong market is like being a top professional skier in the middle of the Sahara desert. It's way easier to learn to ski and use better equipment over time than turn a desert into a ski arena (Though you might argue one can form slopes out of the sand, that's not the point 😉). What makes a market unattractive? High competition with low margins and shrinking segment of users, to mention just two. Let's explore the example of a flourishing market - Email Marketing Justin Jackson has recently tweeted a pretty impressive short analysis: https://twitter.com/mijustin/status/1207848321944965120 Over 1.5 million in MRR, with only 0.34% market share, is a stunning result. Sure, it does not make ConvertKit a unicorn yet but makes them a part of the unicorns' natural habitat. Think of going to 1% market share in this case. That's roughly additonal $3,000,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Don't be afraid to be the 100th company in the RIGHT MARKET. This piece of advice changed my approach to new business ideas completely. I used to be like "Ohh, something similar already exists" and ditched the idea right away. [link] [comments]  |
| I've just pressed that "publish" button on my app! Posted: 06 Feb 2020 02:48 PM PST That feeling... I've been trying to get to this point on this app for ages, and yes, it's been way more complicated than I thought it would be starting out, and my budget was a grand sum of as little as possible, but man it's a great feeling. For me, it's the greatest thing when you work so hard on something, you come up with the whole concept and then you can see it in real life, working in front of you. I love it. All this hype, but why? Well, it's over cheese. Yes, cheese. I'm English, but live in France, just outside Switzerland. As a family, we love cheese. And wine. We're becoming locals...in a sense. One day, after some wine and a plethora of cheese, my wife turns to me and says, That was it. She gave me that look and said, Ross, please no. Not again, but it was too late. The seed was sewn and I had to make it so. If you are unfamiliar with vivino, it's the wine app that you take pictures of wine, it recognizes it and it gives you a rating of that wine and tells you about it. I've worked on projects with similar technology before and I know what's possible, and I knew having an app that could recognize cheese, tell you about it and recommend pairings of wine/beer, fruits, crackers, chutneys etc. was 100% possible. And it was. The problem though, is that you forget that cheese is not a bottle of wine. Wine looks pretty much the same and the technology behind that is text recognition within images and also some image recognition. Cheese looks different depending on maturity quite a lot. It turned into a genuine data science mission. But it was possible... The app is pending publication on the Google Play store for it's Beta and yes it's not 100% finished, but it's bloody getting there. I now rely on people adding cheese to the app to fill out the data and train the model, so it learns and gets better. We have just short of 10k images of cheese, which covers 10 cheeses with a 92.4% accuracy. Yea, I get it, there are thousands of cheeses, not 10 the model needed a base. Every cheese that is now added will teach it. I'm adding more each day and as soon as the app is in Beta I'll be ramping up all data on pairings, similar cheese and just all cheeses in general. So I'm sat here, having presses the button 24hrs ago, impatiently waiting for that published flag on Cheezus, so I can finally go to the app store and download the app. This is only the first real hurdle, there are many more to come, but sometimes when you've been working on something so hard, this little milestone feels like everything. I just wanted to share my little journey, I'm sure many of you can relate and I don't think anyone around me really gets how I feel haha [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:44 PM PST |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:19 PM PST Sigh. I thought I was up for the job. I'm trying to repair PC's and laptops while going there. I was able to go and diagnose the issue correctly. But when opening it up, a latch broke. But mind you, putting everything together, it all looked the same. And when the customer inspected it, they didn't say anything. I'm just so defeated. I'm proud that this is my first customer. I was nervous as hell doing it. Any first failures you guys can share? Maybe make me feel better? Anyone in PC repair ever run into and break a latch (it's a $1,500 laptop :( ) [link] [comments]  |
| I understand everyone is entrepreneurs here, so what is your entrepreneur specialty? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 08:51 AM PST |
| Slack vs Teams vs Workplace: The intriguing dynamics of the work messenger market Posted: 07 Feb 2020 08:06 AM PST Watching new and rapidly changing markets can teach you many things. The work communication market led by companies such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Facebook is something I have been following for a long time. Last year, before Slack went public, I did an analytical review of the data disclosed in Slack's S-1 filing. At the end of that review, I shared my opinion that Slack experienced problems in the enterprise segment: the competition from Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Facebook for this market segment threatened Slack's long-term growth prospects and its $20+ billion valuation. A lot of things have happened in the eight months that have passed since I published that essay. A lot of new data has surfaced, with one of the biggest market intrigues fading away and a new one appearing. The leading characters once again reminded us of a number of fundamental rules the market plays by. And this is exactly what I am going to talk about in this essay. The facts about the race between Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Workplace by FacebookMicrosoft Teams was introduced to the market at the very end of 2016, and became available globally at the beginning of 2017. At that time, three-year-old Slack's DAU already amounted to more than 4M users, which is an impressive number for a young startup in the B2B segment. By mid-2019, Microsoft Teams took the lead in DAU, and by the end of 2019, Teams had outran Slack with their 20M DAU versus Slack's 12M (almost double). It is not only about how fast Teams was able to catch up and then take the lead, but how dramatically the growth rates of the two products differ. A good proxy of the new users' dynamics of Slack and Teams is their app download figures. In my experience with Workplace by Facebook (I worked on Workplace by Facebook for a few years, I am not working on it now), the new users of these services either install apps within the first few days or don't install at all. Therefore, the dynamics of the number of downloads of the apps should correspond to the dynamics of new users coming to the services (mind that this is not entirely true for older products due to the significant effect from the old users downloading apps again when they purchase a new phone). In 2017, the number of new users downloading Teams and Workplace were fairly comparable. Both of these services were gradually catching up with Slack, but were still lagging far behind in terms of the number of new users (keep in mind that Slack had already had about 4 million DAU at the time its competitors launched). In 2018-2019, Workplace continued to increase the number of its new users faster than Slack. Currently, Workplace monthly downloads numbers make 35-40% of Slack's downloads. In 2018, Microsoft Teams started to leave Workplace well behind and gradually closed its distance with Slack. By the end of 2018, Teams had caught up with Slack, according to the number of downloads per month. Shortly after, it flashed past Slack and left it in the dust. Presently, the Microsoft Teams app gets 2.5 times the downloads that Slack gets. The observed dynamics corresponds to what we saw in the DAU's chart above. It is worth noting that, due to the fact that Slack tends to thrive in the technology segment of the market, it is likely that the proportion of users who download Slack's app is higher than that of Microsoft Teams and Workplace. Slack's stock price began to tumble right after going public. You can see the sharp drop in the stock value right after Microsoft announced the DAU numbers for Teams in September of 2019. Now Slack's valuation has plateaued. It is currently estimated at $12-13B (the value reached $20+ B at the moment of their direct public offering). How did Microsoft Teams grow so fast: Understanding the importance of controlling distribution channelsWhat allowed Microsoft Teams to boost growth and outrun Slack in such a short period? Was it the product dominance? Not really. Instead, it was Microsoft control of distribution channels that delivered the product to its massive customer base. I have three hypotheses about which growth channels accelerated Microsoft Teams' growth:
Judging by publicly available data, here is what I think. The main driver behind Microsoft Teams's growth is the deep integration with Office 365. Most likely, we also observe the early results of the users migrating from Skype for Business to Teams. I suppose we will be able to see a more vivid effect of this process next year. Let's discuss each of these hypotheses in detail. Integration with Office 365Microsoft products are deeply integrated into the workflow of many companies in the world. The audience form Microsoft Office 365's main product (a bundle with all the Office products, such as Excel, Word, Powerpoint, etc.) surpassed 200 MAU users by the end of 2019. Office 365 also includes the ProPlus, a special service that allows tech departments of any organization to install Microsoft services on their employees' computers, as well as control the frequency with which the individual products within bundles are updated. Some of these products fall into the Monthly Channel (monthly updates), others fall into the Semi-Annual Channel (updated every six months). In mid-2019, the Teams product was included into the Monthly Channel for the new version of Office 365 ProPlus. This meant that in companies using the new version of ProPlus, Teams would be installed on employees' computers automatically with the next monthly update. Microsoft spent a year and a half polishing the Teams product. Once it was good enough, the company began to gradually introduce it to its customer base through its powerful distribution channels. After hearing about this, Slack representatives were quick to announce that Microsoft Teams overestimated their DAU numbers by including such pre-installed Teams' clients. "We define DAU as the maximum daily users performing an intentional action in the last 28-day period across the desktop client, mobile client and web client," said Microsoft Vice President Jared Spataro. "Examples of an intentional action includes starting a chat, placing a call, sharing a file, editing a document within teams, participating in a meeting, etc." Migration of users from Skype for Business to Microsoft TeamsSkype for Business corporate chat came to life in 2015, becoming a replacement for its predecessor, the Lync messenger, whose audience exceeded 100M users at the time. The new product combined features from Lync and Microsoft's recent acquisition, Skype. On September 25, 2017, Microsoft announced that Teams would at some point replace Skype for Business. Last year, the company saved the date: Skype for Business will no longer be available for new organizations starting from July 31, 2021, which is a year and a half from now. But until this date, the Teams' product will live completely separately and won't affect Skype for Business in any way. Most likely, some organizations have already started the migration, which may impact Teams' growth rate. However, this process is currently organic, and is not forced by Microsoft at all. Given the end date for Skype for Business, we can expect that the migration process will only build up its speed, and is likely to become the second powerful driver for Teams' growth next year. The absence of any forced transfusion of users from Skype for Business to Teams is also evident in the dynamics of mobile app downloads for the products: Teams' rapid growth hasn't affected Skype for Business downloads at all. The launch of Teams free versionIn July 2018, Microsoft launched a free limited version of Teams aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. Despite the fact that the launch coincided with the first jump in the number of Teams app installs, I don't think that the free version was the main driver of their phenomenal growth in 2019. The main growth channel in the SMB market is word of mouth. I explained in detail how it works in a previous Slack's review. Despite a growing interest from the market, Teams loses much to Slack in terms of organic interest in the service, fueled by a word of mouth (based on Google Trends). It is also worth noting that the numbers for Microsoft Teams might be underestimated in the graph below, since many users can search for a product by simply typing "teams". However, it is impossible to distinguish those who are looking for the service from the ones simply using the same word for their query. I think that Microsoft launched Teams free version outside Office 365 (for Office 365 customers the product was already a free addition to the general bundle of services), in order to simply tick all the boxes and meet the industry's standard, covering all the potential audience segments. But I don't believe Microsoft is that much into the SMB segment because it has traditionally drawn most of its value from contracts with large corporate customers. I might be wrong, though. In Slack's case, the focus on SMB segment and corporate teams is part of their unique bottom-up growth strategy, a stepping stone toward attracting large companies. This strategy has worked to a degree and some large teams have already started using their product. But Microsoft already has large corporate customers and it doesn't make sense for them to use the same tactic to reach customers with whom they have already built a relationship. On the other hand, Microsoft might have wanted to win back the SMB segment, which they had previously lost to Google's G Suite product. Slack will continue to grow, but won't become the market leaderSlack ushered in a new generation of messengers for teamwork. The product quickly proved that it creates significant added value over email and other general purpose messengers (such as Skype), which took over users' hearts in most tech and media companies. Slack built an effective growth machine by using their bottom-up model: Using word-of-mouth, the free version of Slack finds a foothold into teams and then starts to grow inside companies (sometimes organically, and sometimes with the help of Slack's sales team, and sometimes in both ways simultaneously). These two innovations provided the foundation that allowed Slack to create a new market and become its dominant player in the tech corporate messenger segment. A similar growth model has also become the foundation of a sustainable business model with a negative revenue churn. This means that older customer cohorts pay more over time. This happens due to Slack's increasing over-time penetration in organizations where someone has already started using the service, as well as due to these companies' growth. The creation of a new product type, the leadership in the tech niche, and most importantly, a growth model that was not dependant on the size of their sales department made it possible for Slack to build a fast-growing multi-billion dollar business and drew the attention and interest of huge investors in Slack as a company. Yet when the company went public its valuation was mostly based on its future growth potential, particularly in the Enterprise segment ($28B a year, according to the Slack team's estimates). Much of Slack's S-1 filing was dedicated to demonstrating how Slack is successfully expanding into the Enterprise segment and how well the current growth model provides a launch pad for this process. Here's what the Slack's team said it in the S-1 filing: "We offer a self-service approach, for both free and paid subscriptions to Slack, which capitalizes on strong word-of-mouth adoption and customer love for our brand. Since 2016, we have augmented our approach with a direct sales force and customer success professionals who are focused on driving successful adoption and expansion within organizations, whether on a free or paid subscription plan." Slack was too slow to conquer the market and had no built-in protection mechanismsThis is where the most interesting things surface. By the time of its IPO, Slack had a working growth model, but in the six years since its launch, this growth model provided the product with no more than 5-6M paying users. It doesn't sound too impressive if we compare it to Office 365's 200M paying users, or Skype for Business (or Lync, if we are talking about way back) with its 100M users. Slack had a very small market share at the time of their IPO filing, while their main growth potential lay in the Enterprise segment. The key question was whether Slack could transform its growth model and capture the market before Microsoft or Facebook made their move. Here is what I had to say on the matter eight months ago: "Microsoft already has access to a lot of large enterprise clients from all verticals and has been selling them products bundled in a single package for a long time. They recently added Microsoft Teams to the Office Suite, which is just as good as Slack in terms of functionality. Does Slack offer enough incentive to convince enterprise customers to forgo the benefits of their long-term relationship with Microsoft? " And now at the beginning of 2020, it seems that we have an answer to the above question. Slack, most likely, won't become the leader of the market it has created:
Slack didn't give up and tried their best to resist Teams Slack is increasing its marketing and sales budgets. The company invests a lot in increasing its penetration in companies where teams have already started using their product. To do so, they even offer large companies the offer to pay for 1,000 annual licenses and get the rest of the licenses for free. But all of these measures don't stand a chance to what Microsoft has up its sleeves. After announcing last quarter's results, Slack's CEO mentioned that the Teams audience is less engaged than Slack's, which won't allow Teams to achieve the same effect that Slack has on teams and organizations. Teams' audience might not be as engaged as the Slack's. However, if a company has already switched to Teams, this fact blocks the path for any other direct competitor, in this case Slack, to enter this company. Slack's added value pushed many users of email and Skype for Business to switch to it. But when comparing Slack to Teams, the differences are not enough to trigger the same effect at the team or company level. Microsoft was quick enough to notice the startup that began to carve itself a niche in its market by capturing the use cases previously fulfilled by email or Skype for Business. Microsoft decided to create their competitor's twin and use it to kill Skype for Business and partially Outlook on its own instead of allowing Slack to do it. This is not the first time Microsoft has played this game. We can think of Internet Explorer vs Netscape, or Lotus/WordPerfect/Harvard Graphics vs Excel/Word/PowerPoint. The scheme "default + good enough" still works just fine. New intrigue within the race: Workplace by Facebook and Microsoft Teams fighting for "Firstline Workers"In January 2019, Microsoft released a product update, where all the new features were aimed at first-line workers (sometimes they are called frontline workers). First-line workers are employees who are at the forefront and are responsible for communication with clients (e.g., salesmen, waiters, cashiers, delivery, etc.). These people usually belong to the deskless workforce, thus, they do not have their own workplace, computer, etc. Frontline workers have never been among Microsoft customers before. Most of them don't even have an email account, since the cost of such an account would have been financially unjustified. Outlook, for example, costs $4-12.5 per month per user. Such a change in product's focus can be considered a signal that the Microsoft team is pleased with the results of protecting its borders from Slack's attack, and is now ready to expand Teams onto the new markets. And this is where a new intrigue comes into the spotlight. This time it's between Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Facebook. Key facts about Workplace by FacebookWorkplace by Facebook was publicly launched in October 2016. In February 2018, Workplace announced they had 2M paid users, and only 8 months later they claimed the figure had grown to 3M. Workplace is not a direct competitor of Slack or Teams. Workplace serves a much wider function, connecting people from different teams and parts of the organization. Most of these people would have never talked to each other under normal circumstances (for example, employees of different Starbucks coffee shops). It is worth noting that Workplace also has chat for teams, but this is only one of the product's many features. Workplace targets large organizations, most of them located outside the tech sector. Its customers include Walmart, Starbucks, AirAsia, and many other large companies. If you look at Workplace customers, you can see that the product resonated with the companies whose first-line workers are very numerous. Knowing that, the fact that Workplace is choosing to move in this direction from a product point of view can't be an accident. "Today we're announcing new Workplace plans: Workplace Essential, Advanced, Enterprise, and a Frontline add-on. These plans will help organizations to connect frontline workers with the rest of the business, predict costs, and choose the tools they need," said Facebook vice president Julien Codorniou in a statement in 2019. In addition to this, Workplace is trying to solve the problem of integrating first-line workers into the company not only from the product's side, but from the business side as well. They even presented a special tariff for the first-line employees, which is much less expensive than the standard plan: It only costs $1.5 per active user. Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Facebook's fight for the first-line workers segmentThe first-line market segment is a great opportunity. According to Gallup, today there are 2.7B first-line workers in the world and only 13% of them feel engaged at work. This market segment has historically been deprived of communication tools, making such employees detached from the company they work at. A product that solves this problem will create a significant added value. I find the current confrontation in this segment of the company communication tool market very intriguing. The starting line up looks anything but boring. Microsoft has no clear advantages in this market segment. First, they still need to prove that their current product can create value for first-line workers. Second, their current distribution channels don't reach first-line workers (they don't use computers, which means they don't have Office 365 accounts). Most likely, Microsoft won't have trouble reaching companies with first-line employees. But once they do, they will have to come up with something new to reach the end users. Third, the battle will take place on the smartphone battleground, not personal computers. And as far as we know, this has never been Microsoft's forte. Workplace stands in a more promising position to win this market. Workplace has already shown that its product creates value for first-line workers: their successful case studies include Starbucks, AirAsia, Walmart and some other big names. Workplace also has the advantage of not requiring any workshops to master their product (everyone is already using Facebook anyway, which means that the interfaces and Workplace features will be familiar to its users). Perhaps Workplace's other advantage is that this market segment is already using Facebook tools to solve its business-related tasks (using Messenger, Whatsapp, Facebook Groups). This is only a hypothesis, but even if it is true, the task of transferring such ad-hoc and unconventional use cases to a new specialized product is yet to be solved. Summing upSlack has redefined the business messenger market, has found a unique and working growth model, and has built a decent brand. This was enough to create a multi-billion dollar company, but it wasn't enough to become the leader of the new market. Teams, which can be called a free doppelganger of Slack, currently distributed across Microsoft's client base through well-established distribution channels, has already outrun Slack's DAU numbers by a factor of two. Next year, the gap is likely to grow. I think that at this point the battle between Slack and Teams is over. Microsoft has once again reminded us that without strong network effects or other powerful protection mechanisms, control over the distribution channels remains one of the main success factors. After showing Slack who is the best, Microsoft is off to conquer the first-line workers segment, which has been deprived of any attention from the key tech players for many years. Here, the standoff will be between Teams and Workplace to win a 2.7B user market. Both products currently hold similar positions. I might even say that Workplace may have a slight advantage here. However, both of these companies are just starting to pave the way, so the best drama is yet to come. Stay tuned! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 11:57 AM PST Hi all, About 4 months ago, I decided to do a deep dive into the current state of the fashion industry. I found a lot of interesting opportunities for startups to shine IMO, but decided to focus on combining tech with fashion to create transparency for our (future) customers. I'd happily share our pitchdeck via a direct message, so if you're curious, hit me up! Hq [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 10:56 AM PST On Instagram shops it appears you need to make a website of your own to sell your products. Should I use Wix, Shopify, or what? [link] [comments]  |
| Which useful and practical skills can I develop from home? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 09:09 AM PST I'm aware that I'll mostly learn from experience, but sometimes, like today, I'll be at home for hours and I would love to use them to better myself. What practical skills can I start learning, such as copywriting or digital advertising, to improve? Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:13 PM PST home care agency (lhcsa) is hot in my city. Any idea how much per hour they get paid from insurance company? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 02:22 PM PST |
| Need a bit of Consulting Advice Posted: 07 Feb 2020 01:36 PM PST Not sure if this is entrepreneur related, but.. I am a technical consultant at a lot of companies, been doing it for 9 years now. I have been hitting a wall repeatedly for the last few years when it comes to getting people to go with industry best practice advice. Basically, everyone wants the shiniest new technologies that google, Facebook and Netflix use and they simply do not want to hear anything else. The problem is that those solutions are not suited for 100+ people companies with 20-40 developers. All you get from it is empty promises and the majority of your time fighting fires. On top of that, I am getting my finger bitten off every time I extend my hand into someone's fiefdom and recommending they make changes. Is there some internal sales advice I could use for convincing people to go with technical solutions? [link] [comments]  |
| What's the best ad strategy for a writing class on facebook Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:56 PM PST I want to teach writing on facebook. I don't have a website or full program yet. I just want to know how I would go about advertising it. [link] [comments]  |
| Experience expediting CAGE Code for SAM.gov registration? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:38 PM PST Experience expediting CAGE Code for SAM.gov registration? I'm submitting an NEA grant for an org with Part 1 short form due Feb 13, and did not start the SAM.gov registration process until Monday, Feb. 3. The TIN verification processed quickly, and I was able to call DLA to expedite the CAGE Code assignment (which when I have, will allow me to begin the NEA app on Grants.gov). However, they won't give me a timeline to know whether there's any chance of it finalizing by the deadline. Have any of you been in my shoes before? Help...I'm in a pickle! [link] [comments]  |
| Do I need a degree to be a entrepreneur? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:28 PM PST I finished high school this summer and my parents wants me to continue studying in a university. But personally I like to be individual, work on projects and earn money from my computer and make a living from that, instead of go to a university, get a 9-5 job and live like that all my life.. you get me? Anyone who's been going though this stage or have any advice? Btw I'm really happy to share my ideas here and good luck with your journeys also! [link] [comments]  |
| To those that tried Dropshipping... Posted: 07 Feb 2020 12:21 PM PST What made you stop? If you're still doing it, what are you struggling with? For me, I'm having a hard time actually making money from it. Profit margins are so low but when I increase price, sales drop by a lot. I'm ready to move on to something else [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 11:46 AM PST I'm curious what options fellow entrepreneurs are utilizing for websites to promote a project. I'm in real estate and have taken the step of buying several domains relevant to projects I'm working on, but that's it. I wouldn't mind using my spare time to put up simple sites for some of these with renderings, PDF downloads, and a contact form, but am not sure what services are best. Wordpress looks like a deep dark hole that I don't know I want to go down. I've hired professionals in the past, but sometimes it's too early in a project or the exercise of putting up a site might help me get organized. Open to any free or low cost options I could learn in a weekend and wouldn't be at a loss if I didn't touch it for 6 mos. but wanted to come back and edit then. [link] [comments]  |
| Quick email marketing survey - help appreciated (and rewarded) Posted: 07 Feb 2020 11:44 AM PST Hey guys, if you have under 2 minutes and use email broadcasts to sell your product/service, I'd greatly appreciate your help (I'm conducting research to improve my freelance copywriting biz). I'm offering free feedback on one of your email campaigns in return (if you want it). Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Advice on how to process return items? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 11:41 AM PST Hi Newbie here. I just recently got a really nice deal for an exclusive dropship deal ( so only my company), however one thing the company will not do is accept returns for me. Question is I'm wondering if anyone can share their experience/knowledge as to how to start accepting returns without a store front? thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 11:01 AM PST Hi all, here is yet another newsletter I will be sending to my email list, have a read and tell me what you think. What can I improve on? Cover better? Explain further, etc. 📚 Business Idea Validation In the previous #002 Newsletter edition, I choose to concentrate on some tips to help generate business ideas. That by no means indicates that's the only driver of success, the unique idea no one else has thought about. Instead, it was about moving the brain to think differently. This article is piggybacking of that article, moving into the next stage validation. Often when we are launching a new business validation is on the mind and a topic of discussion. There seem to be a few camps on this at least from my short recollection. I have read the camp who suggests it is better to build an audience beforehand and the other camp who think it's best to launch a minimum value product (MVP) quickly and iterate based on customer needs. In this newsletter, I will be discussing validation and some strategies surrounding it. Why should we be concerned with Validation? Imagine spending countless hours on a business you were sure would succeed only to realize many months or years down the road it would fail. Think about the time you've spent and lost (not including and lessons learned along the way). Or perhaps the amount of money that was spent. Money spent can be a multitude of things like your salary or salary of overs, marketing, research and development and so on. These reasons alone make validation an important part of the puzzle when starting any business venture unique or not. What are some avenues early on to help validate my idea? Talk about your business, service, or product. See what friends, family, peers, colleagues all have to say about it. Keep in mind there may be some bias here in either direction positive or negative since most of these individuals know us quite well. Take note of their feedback or suggestions but don't take it as the end all be all just yet. In fact, you might hear the best feedback from people who want to be supportive and the opposite of others who don't want you to succeed. Jealousy is envy is a real thing, unfortunately. Write down and test your assumptions
Further to assumptions, there are 3 tools that we can use to help further validate our ideas. First Tool - The Buyers Utility Map is used to access the likelihood that customers will be attracted to your idea by filling out the table below. 📷 The 6 Stages of Buyer Experience Expanded
The above stages are described in a physical product context, but if you are on the tech side of things, try to think about how the stages would apply in that scenario. Second tool - The Price Corridor of Mass is used to determine the right price that attracts the most customers who will purchase your product 📷 Third Tool - The Business Model Guide helps to understand how to profitably deliver the idea at the targeted price point. 📷 Furthermore, understand your target audience. Where do they hang out? Google is your friend here! Are there any others who are also solving this problem? If there are, don't let that discourage you and use that as confirmation. Think about it, if there are other companies solving the exact pain point you are trying to solve, then there must be a market for it. The difference here is providing a better experience for future customers. A better experience can be faster to use, easier to understand, better design and speed, etc. How to decide on one idea over the others? As a component of market research, I believe a helpful way to decide which ideas to pursue is to create a 'scoring system' to apply in this scenario.
By following this exercise as honestly as possible this will help rate or rearrange projects based on the above factors. Then you can select the highest scored idea first and dive into further research or begin to plan out an MVP. Create demos or customer tests to further validate your ideas Once you have reached this stage you can begin to offer test runs for your product or service to customers. There are a few different ways to go about testing customers. Trial and error really is the only way to know what is successful for you and your business.
Now, these are just a few examples of how you can structure your pricing plan. These are a typical pricing structure of SaaS businesses. In summary, there are various metrics and strategies out there to assist you in confirming idea validation. The important thing to remember is to give your idea a chance. Don't get persuaded to stall, delete or move on from your idea especially if you are really passionate about it. It took Airbnb and companies alike years to become successful. I'm not saying this adventure is easy, on the contrary, hard work, perseverance are key as well. As always if you have any feedback or are interested in a topic you would like covered please do let me know at https://thefoundingentrepreneur.crd.co/ [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 10:55 AM PST |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 10:55 AM PST Hello Everyone! Just a Quick FYI. If you remember my post several months ago, Crowdspark is a new community dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship by connecting passionate professionals and founders across all functional areas. The goal is to leverage the combined experiences, passions, and resources of a network to make positive changes in the world through entrepreneurship. Crowdpsaprk aims to help facilitate entrepreneurship from the earliest stages of ideation all the way through maturity. We just released our long-anticipated Executive Summary Document. Please feel free to take a quick look if you are interested and provide feedback. You can follow the Crowdspark community at r/crowdspark Thanks! -The Crowdspark Development Team [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Feb 2020 07:05 AM PST Hey gang, apologies in advance if this is the wrong place to post this. I'm VERY behind on my online presence, and my web site literally hasn't been updated since 2010. I've been paying to get traffic from partnering web sites all this time, and since it's served my needs (and kept me really busy), I haven't given it much thought. As you can imagine, back in 2010 I watched these expenses very closely, but have let it slide up to this point, since the profit margin was good enough and I was too busy to look at it closely anyway. So I was very surprised it had ballooned up to this point, and I'm sure there's a better way to spend it. I'm considering starting a new site from scratch in the same market, but doing things smarter this time. I still only know basic wordpress & plugins, some html, and a few google scripts coding, but I think for my market that should be enough for now. If you had to do it all over again today with a $2500 monthly budget, how would you spend that money? Content writing fees? Backlinking? Facebook ads? Google adsense? [link] [comments]  |
| Starting a at home tech services, what should I be on the look out for? Posted: 07 Feb 2020 03:09 AM PST For anyone who knows tech, I am capable of doing everything short of board repair. I am basically going to the customers home, with my tools, and fixing what I can. How do I go about building trust? What nightmares should I be on the look out for? I recently made a Facebook post, for PC and Laptop repair, while building custom PC's. Got my first customer 1 day later! I gave him genuine advice about how to deal with a micro center repair issue. And made no money, but he went to micro center and got it repaired. I wrote it down as a marketing scheme. Is this good practice? I don't intend to do this often. At all. Today, I am going to my first customer to diagnose fan issues with their laptop. Most likely just clean it out. Purchase a new fan even if I have to. Total charge is $55. I am happy with that, if I spend an hour at most, I feel good. Down the line, I hope to learn board repair, and purchase a truck/small bus, and rig it for my repairs. Has anyone done this? Am I charging too low? Or should I start repairing laptops and flipping them? Other than simply knocking on the door and showing up, what other things I can do to seem more professional? Thanks, anything you can have in mind, will be good help! [link] [comments]  |
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