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
- Startup Entrepreneurs -- Bootstrapping vs. Raising Capital
- Valuable skill sets?
- What are some good tactics for increasing sales conversions in SaaS?
- Giving out free stock in exchange for product feedback
- Leaving my job at a startup?
- Tapping into the drone industry
- How to actually design a prototype for an app?
- What is the best solution to clock-in/out users in a marketplace?
- Am I doing the biggest financial mistake ever?
- Need Help Making Decision to Stay or Leave My Startup
- Finding other developers to start something with
- SEO for B2B SaaS - What is a Decent conversation rate from articles(blog)?
| Posted: 04 Feb 2020 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]  |
| Startup Entrepreneurs -- Bootstrapping vs. Raising Capital Posted: 04 Feb 2020 11:05 AM PST The idea of seeking venture capital funding is so prevalent today that it often seems like a required step for any entrepreneur starting a new business. Not to mention the fact that raising billions of dollars for your startup is one of the quickest ways to earn breathless adoration and land yourself on the cover of business magazines. But the reality is most business owners don't actually raise capital from outside investors to launch their companies. Rather, the most common sources of funding for entrepreneurs are personal savings, debt (in the form of bank loans and credit cards), and gifts or loans from family and friends. By necessity, founders who bootstrap their businesses need to prioritize profit overgrowth and minimize risk as much as possible since their and their loved ones' money is on the line. I have spent a lot of time studying entrepreneurs who take this approach to business and I even coined a term for them: I call them "bedrock entrepreneurs." They make up 99.5% of all entrepreneurs who create the vast majority of all the new wealth generated by entrepreneurs in developed economies, like the United States. Bedrock entrepreneurs include average folks like you and me, as well as some of the most successful and recognizable entrepreneurs of all time, such as Bill Gates, Sam Walton and Walt Disney. Whether they run small businesses or massive enterprises that generate billions of dollars, they all operate with the same mindset. They build their businesses without raising capital from strangers and then grow their companies with control and patience. They start businesses that are inherently profitable or can become very profitable quickly. And at least in the beginning, they make business decisions based on how much money they have immediate access to rather than planning the business and then finding money later. This approach is certainly less sexy than the approach of "shooting for the moon using other people's money," but for most entrepreneurs, it's the right one. Why? Taking money from strangers is always risky. Many entrepreneurs who do so end up losing control of their business or even being fired. Entrepreneurs who raise lots of money to fund audacious business objectives also fail at a much higher rate than bedrock entrepreneurs. (The success rate is about 30% for bedrock entrepreneurs and 1 in 500 for high-risk entrepreneurs.) When I started my last business, I made the decision to raise money from investors, in addition to putting in some of my own money into the company. My reasoning was that I needed to grow faster than my competition in order to gain a competitive edge. But when the business hit a few roadblocks in the early years, I was nearly kicked out of my own company by my investors. Luckily I was able to keep my job in the end, but it was a terrifying experience. Certainly, there is a time and place for "high-risk entrepreneurship," as I like to call it. With the support of venture capital, high-risk entrepreneurs can create companies that grow faster than the companies of bedrock entrepreneurs, especially when economies of scale or network effects provide a competitive advantage over everyone else. But most entrepreneurs don't fall into this category, and for them, raising capital from investors is often a bad idea. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Feb 2020 01:00 AM PST In general, what skill sets do you believe are extremely valuable for founders to have? This includes technical and non technical skills. For example, are web dev skills very valuable for founders because they can create their own sites, or is this skill not necessary because it can just be outsourced? Bonus: what skill sets do you think may be overrated? [link] [comments]  |
| What are some good tactics for increasing sales conversions in SaaS? Posted: 04 Feb 2020 09:24 AM PST It's been about a month since I've launched. Right now I'm targeting mainly prosumer type customers. Prices are higher than comparable services. I always hear that charging a lot is ideal. It's a freemium model but the free tier is quite limited. Competitors offer more features but my service is better at doing the things that it does. A lot of users seem interested with over 1/3 creating an account to use the product. But only about 1% of those that create an account end up making a purchase. And a lot of times they purchase the cheaper options. Traffic is sitting around 150 visitors a day and I'd like to figure out some good ways to increase sales conversions before pumping more traffic to the site. Here's some ideas I came up with:
What are some other generally applicable methods for increasing sales conversions in SaaS? [link] [comments]  |
| Giving out free stock in exchange for product feedback Posted: 04 Feb 2020 12:57 PM PST In short, we're a startup that's giving out stock in our company to early users/customers in exchange for their feedback along the process. Our site is a place to commission art. If you don't know what that is, it's essentially paying an artist to paint or draw something for you. For example, you can submit a photo of you & dog on our site, and our artists will respond to you with offers. Then, you compare offers & pick your favorite so the masterpiece can be shipped to you. In other words, you can turn any picture (or idea) into a painting to hang or give as a gift. As you can imagine, reputation/credibility is a critical component for us, so we're deciding to give out stock in our company (incorporated in Delaware a C-Corp) to those customers that would be willing to provide feedback on the entire process. How much stock? Generally, the price of a painting (avg: $85). Curious to hear everyone's thoughts! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Feb 2020 12:13 AM PST Last months I'm considering looking for a new job. Personal reasons:
Company reason: After more than 3 years since it was established ,it's hard to see a bright horizen for the company. The product is fantastic,but the way R&D is managed is horrible. The head of the R&D has a lack of motiviation and doesn't take responsibility for his bugs, there is only one software guy and the R&D team is very small anyways. Lately,the CEO have brought a great investment to the company,but the way the R&D is managed is still very not efficient.
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| Tapping into the drone industry Posted: 04 Feb 2020 02:21 PM PST I commented this in the daily thread but didn't get any response. This is my first post here. I had a question regarding getting started and was hoping someone had some advice for me to get started. For reference, I'm a 23 year old software dev building an Angular application for a healthcare org. My general idea is this: drones are used for commercial inspections for many different applications: solar, wind, power lines, agriculture, et cetera. I'm looking to get into this space by creating software that takes existing drones and allows us to build the software for the DJI Matrice or other commercial drones for these different types of deliverables. I also think a fleet management software would be a good idea as well. I know DJI already has this for their own drones only. My general thought now: 1) Get FAA 107 certified 2) Build some connections 3) Get some commercial operator experience 4) Think about what challenges could be solved Any advice for getting a drone-based business...wait for it... off the ground? [link] [comments]  |
| How to actually design a prototype for an app? Posted: 04 Feb 2020 12:26 PM PST I have had many ideas in the past but I realized I give up on each idea as soon as I write the idea down in detail. I feel like the part where I have to develop a prototype is where I end up quitting because I just don't know how to. 95% of the ideas I want to work on are internet based apps (computer and/or phone apps). I have no background in coding and am too busy with college right now to learn. Is it possible to start an internet company with little to no experience? [link] [comments]  |
| What is the best solution to clock-in/out users in a marketplace? Posted: 04 Feb 2020 10:14 AM PST We have a marketplace in the hospitality industry that facilitates servers, bartenders and etc to work shifts posted on our marketplace. Currently, we use timesheets which is a piece of paper with all the names of staff (users) who work per given shift. They sign the timesheet and input their time of arrival, start and end time. This process is very manual so our tech team developed a QR solution. Every client is given a QR and staff download our app and scan the QR when they start and when they finish. We are noticing that QR does not work for everyone due to phone compatibility, permissions on the phone, age and etc. Another method that we can use is a manual clock in and out by inputting the time from our users which is not the most reliable as their pay is determined from the hours they input. We are thinking about geolocation too when users arrive at a location (let's say a restaurant of our clients) they are able to sign in. What do you guys think? I would love to hear from some of you who have similar processes in place. [link] [comments]  |
| Am I doing the biggest financial mistake ever? Posted: 04 Feb 2020 03:48 PM PST Our MVP is 95% ready, it's a matter of days. We have decided to refrain from selling for now as we need to figure out pricing tiers properly (perhaps do Freemium, but we need to plan this properly). For the time being we have decided to distribute our app for free to top potential clients, through Influencers. The influencer will advertise our app to his / her wide network. He will drive say 100 sign ups, 20 of which qualify for a free license, because they are vip clients. We keep the other 80 on records for when we decide to sell our app to them. The influencer makes no money initially, as we are not charging for the time being. However, the moment we start charging he will make 25% of the yearly revenue that all his 100 clients will drive. It feels like a win-win to me: we get to get our first pilot free customers easily, and the influencers makes a good side income in the future. What do you think of the strategy? Will it break me financially do you think? What worries me is the 25% revenue share recurring. At the same time, if this customer acquisition strategy works and I onboard thousands of users, I will rush to VC to raise the capital needed to rebalance things. P.s. for full disclosure, our app lives in an industry FULLY dominated by influencers. [link] [comments]  |
| Need Help Making Decision to Stay or Leave My Startup Posted: 04 Feb 2020 10:55 AM PST Hi everyone, I have a tough decision to make and I wanted to see what you all think. I got a sales and marketing internship with a local tech startup in December of 2018. After about 3 months, there were some issues with funding and paychecks have been sporadic ever since. Around this time, the CEO told us that a large amount of funding was coming in so we would be back to normal soon. Throughout this time, I took on a larger role in the company and have developed a talent for selling and have generated a large increase in revenue for the company, but not even close to breaking even. It has been almost a year and funding has not arrived. We have gotten small funding from our board here and there but, myself and the rest of the company have missed many paychecks and I am behind roughly $2,000 - $3,000. After graduating this past December, I accepted a full-time offer but have been interviewing with other companies as well. I got a job offer for an outside/inside sales position with a similar company. Where I would only work remote (Which sounds awesome for me) and the company offers great compensation and benefits. The question is, should I take the risk and stay at my current company that I really love in hopes that funding arrives and I take on a management position in the company, or take the new job offer and leave my company? [link] [comments]  |
| Finding other developers to start something with Posted: 04 Feb 2020 01:47 PM PST Hey guys - I've been a software engineer for several years and often get a bit antsy with my day job so during my open time over the years I've worked on a few side projects. I haven't found anything I am overly passionate about but despite being a backend/data engineer by day I've dabbled in frontend web development and mobile development when needed. Unfortunately, in every situation I find myself in when confronted by an idea I feel like has some real legs it's always in the company of "non-technical" people, and inevitably I end up working on the entire application (UX/UI design, frontend, backend) while they focus mostly on business model and help me with product ideation. I have found myself in this situation 3 times so far and invariably I always get burned out and cannot continue with it. I love building something from scratch but doing it alone becomes incredibly onerous and lonely rather quickly. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to meet other technically minded people to potentially start something with? My coworkers aren't really the types to (they're much older, established with families). I've thought of trying MeetUps but those are not really my thing and I have difficulty engaging in conversations at those types of events, however if you guys think it's a good option I would try it. Any other suggestions? [link] [comments]  |
| SEO for B2B SaaS - What is a Decent conversation rate from articles(blog)? Posted: 04 Feb 2020 11:18 AM PST Hey there, I have been exploring the benefits of having a blog for SEO purposes, and they seem great. Though I haven't been able to find a % for B2B. Would anyone enlighten me on a very general %? Thank you for your time! Cheers [link] [comments]  |
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