Startups Fundraising Thursdays - A Forum to Ask About Fundraising, Investors, Accelerators, and Other Sources of Capital |
- Fundraising Thursdays - A Forum to Ask About Fundraising, Investors, Accelerators, and Other Sources of Capital
- How to start a company with little or no money
- What should I pay a non-employee sales rep for a SaaS app?
- Don't know if I'm learning or being taken advantage of (First Internship)
- Should I launch an app which's usability is affected by COVID-19?
- Is it a good idea to build a startup during this upcoming recession?
- Infographics on over 500 startup failures.
- Hire in house dev team or an agency?
- Setting up Gsuite.
- I'm running a free website builder and junk sites like these started to appear, any ideas how to keep them away?
- Recommendation for designers.
- Friends want to start a company. I’m being pessimistic
- Does any startups face this issues too?
- Making contacts in the right places
- Evaluating Startup Ideas
- What are some good roles/titles for an early generalist hire?
- Success from Advertising?
- When do I transition from my MVP?
- When to go for branding?
- Education startup: way to keep track of video lesson subscriptions?
- The co-founder dilemma
- Legitimacy as a Teen Entrepreneur
- Are there granting bodies that allow companies to acquire used iPhone for app development?
- Looking for VAT Paying Web App (Merchant of Record for Marketplaces) for Stripe Connect
- What is an investment agreement?
| Posted: 28 May 2020 06:05 AM PDT Welcome to this week's Fundraising Thursdays Thread. Ask about anything related to fundraising, investors, accelerators, grants, and other sources of capital. That includes how to find these sources, how to work with them, and how to negotiate with them. Don't be shy. The purpose of this is to learn and share ideas and methodologies with one another. Any question is a good question! If you are answering questions, remember to be kind and supportive. Many are just starting out and have no idea what they are doing. That's okay! We all knew nothing before we knew something.You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord. [link] [comments]  |
| How to start a company with little or no money Posted: 28 May 2020 08:57 PM PDT Starting a business without initial capital is a process of building a foundation while minimizing risk. There are three things needed to start a company:
Since we're doing this without money, we're left with just Customers and Products. The easiest way to get this started is with a side-hustle. The idea is that you keep a stable job to provide you regular schedule and some financial stability and work on your business during the time you should really be sleeping. Your side-hustle doesn't have to be the exact business that you will start but it should move you in the general direction of your interests. If you think your business will be in the food space consider delivering grub-hub/instacart as a side-hustle. Want to get into transportation? Look into driving for Amazon. You get the idea. The side-hustle gives you some extra cash while letting you research your domain. Most people who start a business don't really research the market needs before jumping in so make sure you really understand the space. There are a lot of examples of entrepreneurs getting started by side-hustling. Michael Dell was hustling computer for friends while he was a student. Daymond John, the founder of clothing company FUBU, was hustling hats on New York street corners. The founder of Mattel sold picture frames as his main thing and used the scraps of the picture frames to start building and selling dollhouses. Lara Merriken, was working in Whole Foods stocking shelves working on her product the Lärabar, which gave her insight into how Whole Foods works and it also gave her access to store buyers willing to try her product. Starting your business as a side-hustle gives you the advantage of financial stability but it also gives you a unique view of business problems. It may also give you access to customers. If you're trying to start a company with little or no money one thing you try to do to get initial cash flow is to get a customer to pay upfront. You can sometimes do this by building a prototype or a sample. Prototypes don't have to be expensive, they can be drawn on a piece of paper, cut out of cardboard, hand made models, or 3d printed. Certain businesses are harder to start without funding but most business ideas can be prototyped. If you've built a prototype or sample of your product then test market the product. Ideally, you can put it in front of real customer/buyers to see if there is interest and at what price. Services like Kickstarter, Fiverr or Etsy can give you a platform to sell products. These types of services require very little or no up-front capital. You can get customers before committing to a lot of financial up-front risk. Some of these services won't scale well with a growing business but your initial goal is to get initial traction. If you have a service business you may also be able to charge an upfront-deposit or down-payment giving you initial cash-flow. This is common in many consulting, construction, and subscription businesses. Your early samples and prototypes can also give you customer feedback on what people like or dislike about your product. Initial sales are unlikely to have a significant initial financial impact but they will help you continue to improve your product and they will get the initial flow started. Initial sales are sold one-by-one, so expect to get personal when you start the business. As your product or service gets out into the real world, you'll start to develop word of mouth about your business or product. For companies that have Money – they can spend money to get customers. But starting a company with little or no money, you need to make your products really great to get the word-of-mouth and attract more customers. As the business grows, the revenue flow starts to flow and you'll be able to spend more on growth and making your products, prototypes, and samples better and better. I started my consulting business with no capital, it was a side-hustle while I did other work. I grew it into a multi-million dollar business that I recently sold. Now I angel invest in startups and make videos on entrepreneurship. Good luck on your journey! [link] [comments]  |
| What should I pay a non-employee sales rep for a SaaS app? Posted: 28 May 2020 02:54 PM PDT I have this web app that connects with a 3rd party ERP solution. There's also this sales guy that no longer works for the ERP company, and I'd like to use his contacts. I can't have him as an employee, but I'd like him to sell my product on the side. I've read a bunch of guides, but they are all based on employees. What should the compensation look like? Keep in mind that he has all the contacts AND knows both my product and the ERP, which should warrant a larger payout. Here's my idea: If he manages to sell an annual contract of $4,800 ($400/month), I pay him 50% over the course of one year ($200/month). After a year, I get 100% of the value. I'd also like to offer first 30 days money back on the annual contract, and the sales guy gets paid when I get paid. How does this sound? [link] [comments]  |
| Don't know if I'm learning or being taken advantage of (First Internship) Posted: 28 May 2020 01:33 PM PDT About the title: Obviously I am willing to give back to the company if I am learning about professional skills; however, I feel that I am learning little but doing a lot of dirty work (or work that other people don't want to do). It's my first internship and I'm a rising sophomore in college. I was originally happy about even landing one in this time of age (the internship is unpaid). However, there was a red flag on my first day. We were supposed to have a team meeting at 5pm, I waited and it never started so I texted my boss (btw text is our main tool of communication). S/he said "We're running a bit late but hang in!" We ended up starting the meeting 3 hours later. This has happened at least every other week with meetings (We have about 2-3 a week). It's been frustrating to sit around, not knowing exactly when we start and end up wasting a few hours. They also do not send out notifications for meetings for certain meetings, but talk about meeting attendance being "unacceptably low". (They're usually recorded and I've heard my name being brought up because I didn't show up when this meeting was never mentioned). I'm part of the social media team, and the communication among the team is horrible. I will be assigned a task, complete it days before it will be uploaded, then have it rejected because the board decided on something else an hour or two before it should be posted. I will also be assigned a task that requires information from the CEO (like a list, etc.) and not receive it for weeks. Even if I ask him, he says he'll get to it soon and just leave me hanging for who knows how long. Yet at team meetings, he'll call me out for not completing the task and putting the full blame on me. This is just a speculation, but it seems that no one in the company is paid (not sure about the CEO). The content editor and brand director who work almost full time for this company are for sure not paid (they told me they work a few other side jobs). It makes me question where the money is going. I'm also curious why people are still willing to work for this company when there seems to be little incentive? I know startups and even most companies aren't structured perfectly. However, I feel that this company is too unorganized. Does anyone have any advice on how to pull through till this ends? I'm passionate about social media marketing but I feel that I'm just not learning. Or is this what I should have expected? [link] [comments]  |
| Should I launch an app which's usability is affected by COVID-19? Posted: 28 May 2020 11:39 PM PDT I've worked on an Android application for the last 2 months and just finished it today. It requires somewhat close proximity with other people (about 20 metres?) and/or for people to sit in restaurants/coffee shops. Should I launch and market or wait for the pandemic to be over? [link] [comments]  |
| Is it a good idea to build a startup during this upcoming recession? Posted: 29 May 2020 03:19 AM PDT I had everything planned out and I quit freelancing for a trusted client around Feb. Unfortunately, I had to get an eye surgery March and I couldn't work for another two months, now finally, I am back in full force. But I am having trouble whether I should be looking for a job or keep working on my startup. How many of you are actually still working on building your startup rather than looking for a job? How confident are you that this recession is actually to your advantage rather than a huge disadvantage. [link] [comments]  |
| Infographics on over 500 startup failures. Posted: 29 May 2020 03:16 AM PDT For those of you who love infographics, here's a small compilation of over 500 startup failures. I think it'll definitely help many make better decisions moving forward. Enjoy! [link] [comments]  |
| Hire in house dev team or an agency? Posted: 29 May 2020 02:59 AM PDT Hey guy, So me and my co-founders are in the early stages of a mobile app startup(social networking) My co-founder believes that we should hire an agency to develop the app since none of us have much coding experience, but personally I'm a bit on the fence about this idea. Would it be a smart idea to hire and agency since none of us are great at coding or should we hire in house devs, and how would hiring an agency be devs effect us in the future (introducing devs to codebase, etc...) Thanks for any help! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 May 2020 02:01 AM PDT Hi all, I work full time outside my home country. I am setting up my Gsuite right now and I see it requires a lot of personal information like home address, kind of business etc which can be troublesome for mine employment. Should I register via my spouse's account? or it doesn't matter right now? any other tips? Thanks, [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 May 2020 01:47 AM PDT It seems to me the sole purpose of these sites is to create backlinks for SEO purposes. To me they don't seem to be for phishing purposes or anything like that. Two examples: I could do manual moderation for a while but I have several problems with it. The platform is growing nicely so this won't scale for long. I'm worried about false positives. I shouldn't be removing sites just because they link other sites. I'm thinking about legit fan sites, for examples. I'm also worried they might negatively impact other legit sites on the free *.boomla.net subdomain. I love the Cloudflare approach of not moderating anything but they too gave in in the end. I'm looking for any ideas on how to combat this in a community-friendly manner. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 May 2020 12:48 AM PDT Hi all, I am working on my startup idea and I need someone who can be with me in the long run. I need to work on the following items:
I have never used Fiverr before but I can see there are a lot of good options but most of them are very expensive and I am not sure if I should choose them. It would be great if I can get some advice or recommendations. Thanks, [link] [comments]  |
| Friends want to start a company. I’m being pessimistic Posted: 29 May 2020 12:31 AM PDT Hey everyone. I have a very tight friend group from high school. Even though (almost) all of us went to different colleges, we're all super tight and each other's best friends. We're all 20/21 and all have very different skill sets that we feel would be beneficial to starting a company. We're all still in school but here's our areas of expertise based on our majors: finance, engineering, marketing, design (x2), environmental sustainability, and then there's me... a nursing major... although I definitely have the most experience with leadership and managing teams, so I do have that going for me. They want to start a clothing company focused on sustainability... I think we do have a decent spread of skills that will be beneficial. But here's my issue and what I need help with. We're all brand new to this. I'm usually the pessimistic (I prefer to call it realistic) person in the group. While I think we could make A startup work, I'm not sure we could make THIS startup work. I think the idea sucks. I just don't see how we would fit into this over saturated market. I've been looking over several of the top posts in this sub and using the grading systems outlined in several of them and the idea doesn't score well. People who have been in similar situations, how have you shifted your partners vision from one thing to another? What proof is necessary to determining whether a startup is a good idea or not? During the brainstorming and initial phases of a startup, what are the key things to consider? [link] [comments]  |
| Does any startups face this issues too? Posted: 29 May 2020 12:07 AM PDT About 8 months back we have been working on our idea and now we are happy to say that we are working to build an mobile app which will be done in 3 months time! Is a SaaS mobile application targeting the fitness industry & we understand that is a really competitive market, no doubt we still have confidence in our business model!! Any startups managed to get investors or VCs to invest in their ideas without proof of concept? We need someone valuable, we are open to interested parties (Investors & VCs) and constructive feedbacks, furthermore this pandemic is a blessing in disguise for us!! [link] [comments]  |
| Making contacts in the right places Posted: 28 May 2020 02:56 PM PDT Hi all, for the idea I have, I need to make connections in order to speak to the people at large companies, or make connections that can help me market to those folks. How can I best make these connections? My entire idea is worthless if not adopted by companies of some size, I can make edits to the idea and act as an affiliate for sometime, however it seems this may lead to an additional array of difficulty I do have a linked in profile but it is for Business use, and not one I want to be utilizing for my alternate Business… At least not yet. Even if I were to create a secondary profile, where should I look and how should I determine the right people? Would venture capital be worth pursuing so I have money to advertise in somebody that might have connections? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 May 2020 11:56 AM PDT Anyone have any suggestions for coming up with a framework for evaluating business ideas ? I have a bunch and they all seem like great ideas. Wondering if anyone can help ? Starving Crowd (0 - 20 Points): Only applies to ideas where you can reasonably deduct market demand. For example a grocery delivery start up in the midst of a pandemic would be a 20. To me, this singular criteria is more important than all the rest. Time/Capital to build MVP (0 -10 Points): Time and capital required to get to market. Competition (0 -10 Points): Is anyone else doing this ? 0 points if no one else is, 0 points if there is a 100 competitors. Time/Effort to 1st 100 customers (0-5 Points): Time/effort to get to first 100 customers (You can change this to a thousand for smaller products/B2C). Time to get to Cashflow Positive (0 - 5 Points): Doesn't apply to all ideas, but a cashflow positive business is of importance to me. Learning Curve (0 - 10 points): Is this an area of expertise for you or are you flying blind ? Having started a few businesses, I know that you can go in thinking you know everything, and turns out you know nowhere near as much as you thought you knew. Any feedback is greatly appreciated ? EDIT: I didn't think I was asking all that unique a question and I did find an answer I like. It's from Peter Thiel's Zero to One. The key questions to ask:
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| What are some good roles/titles for an early generalist hire? Posted: 28 May 2020 11:50 AM PDT Hi everyone. I'm in the process of hiring our 4th team member and they are a jack-of-all-trades person, which is of course invaluable during the early phases of a company. They have some basic coding skills, basic design skills, lots of project management and operational experience, and a strong administrative background. During our trial period, this person has been hopping in and making contributions to design, writing some code tools for us to get work done faster, helping manage projects/workflows, and also serving in an executive assistant role with scheduling and research assistance. This kind of "get it done" attitude and willingness/ability to learn whatever is needed to knock something out is super valuable and I want to reward that with an appropriate title beyond "administrative assistant", especially since this person may be outward facing and their title should reflect their influence on all parts of the company. I'm familiar with the rule of thumb that one should avoid too-senior titles early on, as that makes it harder to hire in someone more experienced above the person later. But I also don't like when someone who is punching way above their weight is given an assistant title. Title should reflect someone's skills, experience, and contributions, and even if the person is fine with admin assistant I don't think it's fair or appropriate in this case. Some obvious options are Operations Manager/Director, Project Manager, Director of Special Projects, etc. We've also considered Chief of Staff given the administrative support aspects. But I wanted to see if anyone had other suggestions before discussing title with the hire, as well as any broader advice. I'm open to anything. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 May 2020 10:00 PM PDT So I built an app and added advertising to it out of curiosity and become more familiar with it on a personal project. Except, I experienced limited success on profiting from advertising. I know this is due to many factors such as click rate, target audience, type of ad and total traffic. But it led me to thinking about how many people are successful at profiting from advertising? [link] [comments]  |
| When do I transition from my MVP? Posted: 28 May 2020 09:32 PM PDT Hey Everyone, So I've been running a prototype for a mental health service in my part of the world for roughly 10 weeks now. Everything is manual. I have a chat window that people go to when they hit the landing page, I man the chat window, take it on to whatsapp or email and deal with scheduling this way. My user engagement/feedback sessions also happens over peer support that I offer over video call as well as texting to check in. This has been fairly successful - I've got ~15 paying users of which 50% have now recurred (and I expect this will go up as the others have expressed interest in continuing, they just haven't gotten to the point where they need to pay up again), with revenue for the month touching a thousand dollars. Question At what point do I start building out actual features? Right now there's *nothing*, no login, no sign up, no automated reminders - I'm doing it all manually. I'm a fairly good engineer and I can build it all, but my apprehension has been around cost. Do I have enough signal to start building? Or do I need to wait to get more users? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 May 2020 02:59 PM PDT Hi all, I am working on startup which will have two clients service provider and customers. I am in the process of creating a landing page for the service providers. I am not sure if I should have some logo or branding or it is fine for now? My plan is to create another landing page for customers after onboarding some service providers. Thanks, [link] [comments]  |
| Education startup: way to keep track of video lesson subscriptions? Posted: 28 May 2020 04:46 PM PDT Hi! I am currently helping with web design for a startup that provides online English lessons to students in other countries. We have both online courses as well as providing 1-1 video lessons over Skype. The way it works is that users will subscribe to a specific plan, which will allow them a certain # of lessons/month, and they expire at the end of the month. We need a way to keep track of these lessons that decreases each person's allotted lessons by 1 every time they use one, and erases them at the end of the month. We are thinking some sort of bookkeeping software that integrates with WooCommerce or whatever scheduling tool we use (Calendly, etc.). It would be nice to integrate it with BuddyBoss to display this number on the user's profile for them to keep track of as well. Does anyone have any suggestions? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 May 2020 03:59 PM PDT I've recently started a new business with a contact of mine. It's a niche area, very new concept and our expertise & skill sets complement each other. On paper, this is a match made in heaven. In reality, our logic runs on fundamentally different reasoning and judgment at times. So much so that it leaves me speechless and I often don't even know where to start to "solve" our different lenses. I have a decent amount of years behind me in corporate senior management as well as startups but I've never had a cofounder before so this is new to me. Considering the amount of time & effort we both put into aligning ourselves I can't help but wonder how sustainable can this be? Our business is service-based and relies 50/50 on both of our skills, and since it's such a new concept, we're both developing it as we go. I'd love to hear your experiences of having/not having a co-founder. What happened? Success stories? Your biggest learnings? Relationships like this are intense and never perfect, what has/hasn't worked for you? So basically, go solo or with a partner? [link] [comments]  |
| Legitimacy as a Teen Entrepreneur Posted: 28 May 2020 03:49 PM PDT To all entrepreneurs/investors, I'm an aspiring teen entrepreneur and I've been hearing a lot about how teen entrepreneurs are at a disadvantage when it comes to getting investors to listen/give money due to our age and lack of "legitimacy". I was wondering if I could get some of your ideas about:
Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Are there granting bodies that allow companies to acquire used iPhone for app development? Posted: 28 May 2020 02:41 PM PDT I know this seems like an odd question - but is anyone aware if there is a resource to attain a used iPhone (ideally 7 or newer) for an early stage company? Ideally super cheap or even on loan? I have a couple devs working and it would be neat to give them the phone (since they don't have one) so test and iterate. It's pretty expensive to buy used ones too - but I'm hoping to find a resource that can lend the phone for software development. Any help is appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for VAT Paying Web App (Merchant of Record for Marketplaces) for Stripe Connect Posted: 28 May 2020 12:11 PM PDT Hey Folks, -I am building a Marketplace website. -Merchants on my platform will only be able to sell digital goods. -So I mostly need to be able to solve payment: - For the marketplace I want to use "Stripe Connect" (part of the reason because Braintree currently doesn't do it's marketplace service as of now, I have asked them). -My issue is that Stripe doesn't: 1.) Calculate taxes for me (especially location specific VAT like 9% in Los Angeles and 7% in other places of California state) 2.) Also Stripe does not pays these local taxes on my behalf for local tax authorities. -So I am looking for a service like Paddle.com = Merchant of Record, but a service who handles marketplace specific features like paying out my merchants and taking a xy% cut for me. -So I am looking for someone who can connect to my "Stripe Connect" account and being able to put the local VAT on top of payments during the payment process. And later on as a 3rd party pay that to local authorities on my behalf the tax Thank you for the help :D [link] [comments]  |
| What is an investment agreement? Posted: 28 May 2020 10:50 AM PDT Hello all, good day! Trying to find sources for my essay about what is investment agreement and how it differs from term sheet. Cant really find any good sources with proper explanation of investment agreement and the differences. Any help on this will be appreciated. P.S I am completely new to finance/entrepreneurship thanks!! [link] [comments]  |
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