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
- Am I worth anything or just an "idea guy"?
- Best ways to grow pre-launch list + tips on BetaList?
- SaaS Team Numbers for a 100 Person Company - looking for opinions.
- How do you know when to pay for advice/mentorship when everybody is trying to sell you their advice/mentorship?
- I have built the product, an online marketplace + shopping search engine + online store builder, what do I do to go to the next level?
- The GoDaddy domain I want expires soon. What are my options?
- Tips for beta testing an app with less than 1,000 testers?
- Which position to start my career as a CS graduate if I don't want to code but learn more about business?
- How could some of the subscription-based services be profitable?
- Non-Technical Founder - Creating MVP - Best
- How to find a Co - Founder ?
- Question regarding issuing of shares upon company formation
| Posted: 28 Apr 2020 06:06 AM PDT 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]  |
| Am I worth anything or just an "idea guy"? Posted: 28 Apr 2020 05:12 PM PDT For the last few months I've been working on creating a MVP for a tech platform that I think would do really well. Initially I had planned on doing all the development myself but I only have a few years experience with programming and am well aware there's some developers which are just leagues ahead of me. I was always going to have to pay out of pocket for the visual design elements of the project too. Also it's obviously important that the product launches with highest quality possible. So I changed my tune from wanting to own the entire company to wanting funding. The platform serves a growing niche. I've noticed when I explain my idea to people familiar with this niche they instantly get it. People outside of it generally struggle to understand it let alone think it's a good idea. There is one prominent figure in this area that is very wealthy and I really want to / think would be interested in helping fund it. I would like them to ideally fund a very small team for 1 year initially and would be willing to give up a substantial amount of the company to them as they would also bring a ton of value to it. My concern is that although it is my idea, I have created the MVP and have put a lot of thought into the design and roadmap for the company, I could be easily replaced. This is especially true as, to have a chance at funding, I think I would need to be fully transparent about all my ideas for the future of the product. I don't have experience running a business so I find it hard to believe (let's believe it is, in fact, a great idea) that they would not be better off just taking the idea and hiring some to replace me. The idea itself isn't completely original - you could compare it to a local taxi firm's app -> uber. It's right place, right time sorta situation and that time is now. I could still help with development but I would (hopefully) become the worst developer in the room. I'm just afraid that I'm an "ideas guy". Do I have value? Any thoughts would be appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Best ways to grow pre-launch list + tips on BetaList? Posted: 29 Apr 2020 12:56 AM PDT I am currently building an MVP, I'd say at least 1-2 months away from the first release. At the moment I have a landing page gathering emails on a wait list. It's a skincare platform with a unique search functionality - will share URL if you're interested. I came across BetaList and am thinking about sharing my company on there, to get emails for the waitlist. I've been looking at best practices for using BL but can only find advice for launch/MVP stage, not the 'coming soon' phase which BL allows for. Is it worth launching with 'coming soon' or should I wait for when I'm closer to finishing. I don't suspect that BL users are really my target demo, so it's more for exposure to eyeballs really. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| SaaS Team Numbers for a 100 Person Company - looking for opinions. Posted: 28 Apr 2020 08:53 PM PDT Building a P&L estimate for a startup and project out to year 5. We all know that even the next 5 minutes are hard to predict - but looking for some best guesses, or experienced estimates, on what the crew composition for a 46M revenue company would be in year 5. I'm basing the 100 person tally on the 1/2M per person rule of thumb. Nature of the company. Distributed workforce. Fintech. SaaS subscription model with marketing channels being conferences/tradeshows, direct demos, and the regular digital channels. Product has a bit of a learning curve - so we expect some level of Customer Success Team requirements. Estimating 35,000 customers. Desktop and mobile with some enterprise, on-prem/white label type integrations required. In my estimates I am sitting at the 81so far (but feel like I am either missing some roles or under-estimating what will truly be required): Development/Engineering: 42 people including 6 people in Product and Project management (6:1 ratio) Sales: 20 people including 4 mangers (that will still do some selling) (4:1 ratio - although this seems low as I type it) Office - 15 people including HR, Accounting, 6 people in Customer Success Executive Level - 4 people, The regular spate of c-series type roles. I realize there is a tons of "it depends" but looking for any thoughts on where this estimate lands and what feels glaringly off (and yes, I expect some people to say the $46M expectation is the biggest one!) Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Apr 2020 01:50 PM PDT E.g. you need financial basic knowledge to device who could financially advice you. Even though many people say you should pay for financial advice, this doesn't seem to be worth it if you make less than $250k, then just go for Vanguard ETF's for investments and save your money. I'd like to start a SaaS/Tech start-up in the future. I'm open to paying sometimes for advice, but how do you know who you should pay? People are VERY UNEQUAL, but you cannot recognize who is better, without having some of the skills yourself. Did you benefit from paying for advice and mentorship? Any good strategies how to find good advice and mentors? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Apr 2020 09:49 PM PDT I started out in 2005 building an online store builder with a co-founder, that took about 5 years, I was lucky to have a couple of people do sales and customer service so I could work on the product, and this brought in the necessary revenue to bootstrap (I have never received investment, only my own funds from selling my house at the beginning). The small number of clients that we brought in have slowly dwindled to about 20 now, who I rely on for my monthly income. By about 2010 the online store builder market was pretty crowded so I did a sideways pivot and spent the next 5 years (off and on while still supporting my clients and improving the store builder part of the platform) building a shopping search engine, it includes the 20 or so stores that are on my platform but also built a Google Shopping-like bot that imports from websites running on most platforms like shopify and woocommerce. I have also built the functionality that allows anyone to sell directly, like a Amazon storefront. So the idea is essentially a multi-channel marketplace that integrates with existing online stores. At the moment it works solely as a click through / search engine, but I have built the transactional functionality to buy directly. Right now I'm wondering what to do next. I have been fortunate over the years to have mentors and likeminded people help with growing my business, particularly on the sales and marketing side. I have a few thousand in savings, so I'm ok financially for the time being, however the bottleneck I face now in growing to the next level is the sales and marketing side which is not my strength. There is also the chicken and egg conundrum that marketplaces face, however I do have a plan for that, it would however require investment. I see a lot of people in this sub say "do your own sales" however I have 1. tried that and failed, and 2. been advised that it is not my strength and should not do it. I have also hired a couple of people who I knew weren't sales people but they were enthusiastic and wanted to do it: no sales resulted. So I understand the skill required in selling. It would also mean I would have to do design and build, product loading and the rest that is involved which means more years of bootstrapping, not a lot of work going into developing the product. I enjoy doing it, I'm just wondering if its the smart thing to do. So what do I really want? What I idealy want is to find a US based partner. I am not in the US, however I have worked with US businesses over the years and was once employed directly by a US company (prior 2005). I won't expand on the reasons but the country I live is small, a small market, and partnering locally would be fine and I do obviously want to develop a local team, its just that there are reasons for wanting a partner outside my country that would be more beneficial. The application I have been building is very hard to do, I currently have over 400k lines of code, all maintained by me (backend and front end) and it is only version 1. For V2 and the 3 I have plans that are far more involved and is beyond what I think I am capable of doing alone (e.g. iphone and android apps etc). My co-founder runs another startup full time, over 100 employess, so is not actively involved right now however things are up in the air with the pandemic. I have no debts or liabilities and my co-founder and I are the only shareholders. So what do you think? Should I just be content to be a one-man band, or should I look for a partner? [link] [comments]  |
| The GoDaddy domain I want expires soon. What are my options? Posted: 28 Apr 2020 02:59 PM PDT The website name for my future business is owned by Godaddy and expires at the end of June. It is purchasable now for around 1500 bucks. A lot for a website but it is the name of the exact business with a dotcom and within my budget. So what's the move? I can think of a few options. A) Bite the bullet and buy the domain now. B) Wait till end of June and buy it at 1201am (I've heard there is a probation period after the domain expires not exactly sure how that works) Other questions? Will they just renew it? And I'll be screwed then it was registered a decade ago. Are there bidding websites where I can buy it for cheap with a lowball bid? Any other advice for someone trying to scoop up a cheap website from GD? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Tips for beta testing an app with less than 1,000 testers? Posted: 28 Apr 2020 10:35 AM PDT We've been beta testing our iOS app with a group of 15 people for a couple of months now and we're looking to take the next step and release to a larger group. Everything has gone well with that test, so we want to expand by adding about 200 new users per month. How do we go from working with 15 beta testers (in a very non-scaleable way) to effectively receiving feedback from 100-1,000+ beta testers? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Apr 2020 04:08 PM PDT I've had a few unsuccessful startup attempts and I should get a job to learn more about starting a business. That way, I could code after my job until one project starts generating at least some basic income. I'm strongest in python and ML/AI field where I've done most of my projects. I've been through several incubators with those projects and even got some prizes on local competitions. My ideas are either Business Analyst or Sales but I would like to get more experienced opinions on what job would be beneficial to me? FYI, I'm based in Europe. [link] [comments]  |
| How could some of the subscription-based services be profitable? Posted: 28 Apr 2020 04:00 PM PDT I could wrap my head around the profitability of some of the subscription-based service businesses like I saw on one website it says $89/mo. for a dedicated lawyer, and on another one it saws $400+/mo. dedicated UI designer. How could they make this work (profitable)? [link] [comments]  |
| Non-Technical Founder - Creating MVP - Best Posted: 28 Apr 2020 08:59 AM PDT Hi All Hope everyone is well. For someone who is a complete beginner in programming, what would you recommend is the best language and framework I could pick up relatively quickly to build an MVP for an app or website? My initial thought was if building an, learning something cross platform like Dart/Flutter would be best? What are your thoughts? Also would I find the learning curve with web dev less steep than say Dart/Flutter? I was also under the assumption that in the first instance using a MBaaS such as Firebase would be easiest. Is this correct? I appreciate an MVP is about getting something out there to test your theory as quickly as possible so as you have confirmation to either move forward with building something more polished/robust or to pivot or to call it a day on the idea. To this end, I have considered just getting some mockups done in Figma and Protopie and putting them on a landing page with a pre-sign-up form which could give me some idea, but as per the post, I would like to get some advice on going the route of hacking something together too. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Apr 2020 07:37 AM PDT Hi. I am currently working on an idea for a Start - Up. But my current problem is to find a co - Founder. I already tried people I know and our local "Start up lab". I am from germany and looking for some founder in my region. So what platform could you recommend where I can find people? Greetings Losspost [link] [comments]  |
| Question regarding issuing of shares upon company formation Posted: 28 Apr 2020 06:10 AM PDT Hi All Hope everyone is well. As per the title my question is regarding the issuing of shares upon legal formation of a company. Assuming you are a solo founder and you are issuing 10,000,000 shares, with 85% going to yourself as founder and the remaining 15% in employee options. Is there any particular reason why you wouldn't issue the 8,500,000 to yourself straight away? I.e. is there a particular cost or time/effort associate with say transferring some of your shares of issuing new shares if bringing a cofounder on shortly after formation - i.e. would you be better served holding a certain amount of shares un-issued in case you wish to bring on a cofounder? [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Startups - Rapid Growth and Innovation is in Our Very Nature!. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment