Startups Manic Mondays: Support To Get You Through The Week: Share What You Need Help With, Job Postings, For Hire Offers, or Resources |
- Manic Mondays: Support To Get You Through The Week: Share What You Need Help With, Job Postings, For Hire Offers, or Resources
- How to deal your 'grand idea' that you were salivating about building but has already been implemented?
- Startup Compensation Thoughts/Examples?
- how much equity to offer to a co-founder with unknown potential?
- Freemium to premium- please help me with messaging to my customers
- What's a startup?
- How do I create a bootstrapped start-up marketing plan & strategy?
- When paying a freelancer hourly, how do you know when they're working on the service you've paid for?
- Dental Implant market size
- How do you handle the pressure?
- Freelance website / avenues to hire talented iOS + Backend developers?
- Startup validation before or after the MVP
- White label CRM Solutions
- Membership Management solutions/software that you use?
- I need advice on deciding what to do with the upcoming clients and their project development
- What should I have done before I go and look for devs, specifically back-end devs?
- Business license help!!
- LinkedIn marketing?
- Channel user feedback/issues from different sources
- Looking to start a food delivery app, but interested in knowing what kind of tech personnel I may need to get it up and running.
| Posted: 11 May 2020 06:08 AM PDT Welcome to this week's Support Thread. Please refer to the below suggested formats to get the most out of this thread. Need Support?Please use the following format to seek support: SUPPORT REQUESTWhat I am working on: What I need support with: Why I need support with this: My questions to the community: Requested Resources: Relevant URL: [if applicable] Additional Comments: Please add any additional comments that may provide more context around what you need support with so others can provide the most relevant support or guidance to you. Job Provider?Please use the following format to post a job listing: HIRING Company Name and URL: Job Title/Role: Employment Type: [Intern] [Contract] [Part Time] [Full Time] [Remote] Job Description/Responsibilities: Necessary Skills and Experience: Requested, but not necessary Skills and Experience: Job Compensation: Willing to Relocate New Hire: [yes] [no] Job Listing URL: Additional Comments: Please add any additional comments that may provide more context around the job listing to make it easier for the right people to apply.Job Seeker?Please use the following format to post an offer to work : FOR HIRE Title/Role: Desired Location: Willing to Relocate: [yes] [no] Remote Availability: [yes] [no] Relevant Skills and Experience: Requested Salary/Hourly Rate: Resume/Portfolio URL: Additional Comments: Please add any additional comments that may provide more context around the job listing to make it easier for the right people to apply.Resource Provider?Please use the following format to post an offer to work : RESOURCE Organization Name and URL: Location Served: Resource Name: Resource Description: Resource URL: Resource Cost: Do not forget to explore the /r/startups discord. We have many relevant channels to seek support, post job listings, share for hire offers, and share resources. You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 May 2020 09:16 AM PDT I am feeling a lot put down since day before yesterday. I finally wrote the spec of the product that I wanted. Yes, it solved my problem and I had verified that it is a common problem. Had been busy working on other ideas and finally I got time last week (got over procrastinating) only to realize that someone has implemented the same thing and in way better way than I even imagined. For some reason I am feeling very troubled by that. Probably because I have been mulling about it for over 4 years now. Its not a startup problem as such, its a mental problem. What do you think? [link] [comments]  |
| Startup Compensation Thoughts/Examples? Posted: 11 May 2020 07:57 PM PDT So I'm completely new to startups, but for the past couple of weeks I've been in contact with a startup's founder. For reference, this startup is in education & tech and is currently unfunded (no seeding, no VC or angel investors). Founder is confident in acquiring investment/funding in the next 3-6 months. The startup's main product is working, but in early stages and doesn't yet have a large user base. WHAT I HAVE DONE: I've created an outline for a feature program that will be offered on the startup's product at launch. I have done preliminary operational planning for launching the feature, and have talked to the founder about details concerning the program's deployment, usage as a profit platform, iteration, etc. I haven't created or implemented anything detailed yet. Moving forward, I will be basically involved in project management, content creation, data analysis, etc for the program. This will be a sizeable amount of work, and the program will add great value/attractiveness to the startup's product, as it directly addresses an identified market gap. I will not be working in a technical or software engineering role, but more of a project manager/content producer/director role. MY QUESTION: Before moving forward, what kind of compensation should I seek? The founder does not have cash yet, but is willing to work out a deal for me to work part time for equity -- I'm currently waiting to hear back from them about their offer in more detail. Should I get compensated for deliverables, or on an ongoing basis? Should compensation include a title or deferred salary, or should I be an independent contractor? Any other details or types of compensation would be great to hear about. I know that much of this will depend on the context and on my own decision regarding risk/reward and time valuation. I just have literally zero experience with this kind of work. TL;DR -- I'd love to hear from others who have worked for startups in the pre-funding phase, and what sort of compensation or agreements you've all made. [link] [comments]  |
| how much equity to offer to a co-founder with unknown potential? Posted: 11 May 2020 06:13 PM PDT I have been building a web platform for the past 1.5 years as a solo full-stack developer. I want to bring a front-end developer/designer on board to help me take the project to launch. I already presented the project to him, and he is eager to begin working with me. The current agreement is: he will wireframe some new functionality and present it to me. If I like it, I will draft up his equity agreement and an NDA, and then I'll give him access to my code base. I don't have the ability to pay him, so I want to offer him equity. I want to give him a share that would make him excited to be part of the effort. That being said, I am worried about giving him more equity than his involvement would be worth. I realize that the equity is worthless at this point, but let's pretend that the product will be valuable. At this point, all I know is that he has the skills I need in the moment. I gathered this by looking at his portfolio. The unknown variables are:
Any advice? How should I determine the amount of equity to give him? Is there a common paradigm in which a potential collaborator first has to establish a track record before the equity share is determined? And if the collaborator proves to be capable, how should the equity percentage be determined? [link] [comments]  |
| Freemium to premium- please help me with messaging to my customers Posted: 11 May 2020 08:16 PM PDT Hi guys, My edtech SaaS platform has been a free solution for the past 3-4 years of beta/development etc. however, time to flip the revenue switch and offer a free version that is limited in features and customization. We realize we could lose half, maybe more of our user base. But, it's really the only path we see to sustainability. We also know schools are willing to pay $1,500/year for our currently free software, and we just signed out first district license. My question is how to I tell the 2,000 schools currently on our platform "your free account will be frustratingly limited in function come June 1st. Please ask your admin for funding or apply for a scholarship if your school doesn't have funding"(we will be more than happy to sponsor any teacher that at least shows an attempt to have the school pay. Part of me wants to justify the pricing, and tell teachers that 4 years of software development has not come cheap, and this is in effort to be sustainable and reach more kids. And the other part of me just wants to deal with the backlash as it comes and know that a loss in users will make us sustainable. Appreciate any advice [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 12 May 2020 02:11 AM PDT This post comes from my newsletter The Valley, published on Substack. I thought that some of you might find it useful. Who I am. I'm the founding partner of LombardStreet Ventures, a pre-seed VC firm in Menlo Park (CA) that invests in distributed teams with HQ in Silicon Valley. --- Everybody talks about startups, but in my experience, meeting thousands of founders around the world, very few of them know what a startup is. They are building ordinary, maybe high-tech, companies. How we got hereI love my job: talk to startup founders around the world, and find the ones that will likely become successful big companies. I focus my attention on a subset of those promising companies, those that have HQ in Silicon Valley and operate thanks to a distributed team. Investing in remote work strategies and realities with a distributed team is our investment theses at LombardStreet Ventures. LombardStreet Ventures work in the pre-seed first and then seed market. We interview founders anywhere in the world with a clear view of how to get to dominate their market niche from Silicon Valley. I rarely meet people in person, and for the last three years, all the talking has been held through a video conference. Don't get me wrong: I love meeting people in person when Silicon Valley, remote work, and the right founding team are three concepts that drive our discovery of the next big thing. At least half of the people I talk to don't live in the Valley, though. Sometimes they have a great product and are determined to execute their vision successfully. Most of the time, something is missing in their picture: a geographically limited market, a not big enough dream, a problem too specific to their community, and much more. After thousands of calls, I started thinking about what all these companies have in common, and my conclusion is that they don't grasp "what a startup is." Sometimes we think it's obvious, but it's not. And the more you get far from Silicon Valley, and the more the misunderstanding becomes real. This fact is especially actual nowadays because startups are all the rage. Every nation thinks it can create successful startups in its own country, and that's a good thing. The wrong one is that they try to adapt the meaning to what a startup is in their country. Most of the time, they do that without a clear understanding of this phenomenon. How could they? How many senators did create a startup and sold it for $500M in their career? A startup is a global company and a universal concept for the venture capitalists, and there's no such thing as a country-dependent definition. For example, it's great that every government wants to nurture its startup ecosystem, but not every country has big enough markets that its startups can tackle. And when I say big markets, I mean in the billions. Let's clear once and for all what a startup is so we can then talk about all the rest with this universal definition in mind. A startup is a fast-growing young big company.This kind of company aims to reach an impressive market share and substantial revenues in much lesser time than an ordinary company. And to get to that point quickly, it leverages on a) novel technologies that presumably will spread a lot eventually, b) venture capital funds' money. In its essence, a startup is a fast-growing young big company. All the rest comes from the previous few concepts. For example: How big should be the potential market of a startup? "Billions of dollars" is recurring a lot in startups' life. To create a company so big, it's clear that the company must tackle problems that a lot of people have and provide them with precisely the same solution all around the world. If the country where the startup is born is too small or too slow or too complicated, that is not probably the best place to start gaining a market share. Prove to an investor that you can make it in the smallest and tightest country on Earth is not a useful metric. The ideal for a startup is to tackle a large number of people since day one, all with shared habits, rules, government, and language. That brings us to three main clusters: the USA, India, and Cina. Europe is another attractive cluster, of course, but harder to conquer. There are shared rules among the members, but each nation has its president, language, and country-specific laws. Nonetheless, even if harder to get into, it's a vast market. Probably slower to scale, but valuable. Another significant aspect that distinguishes a startup from an ordinary company is its competition. A startup always has a global market, and that means global competition.Your competitor list comes directly from your business proposition. A barbershop competes locally; there's no other way of getting your beard done. A translation service competes globally, even if the entrepreneur doesn't understand that already. Sooner or later, a new online service will pop up on the market, even in a different continent, and your local translation shop might risk going underwater overnight. Most of you could say: "Well, not in my town. People know me, and they want to see me in person". Right. Then a pandemic event comes; suddenly, your customers cannot meet you anymore, and all of your certainties become less certain. How can we avoid getting confused?When we talk about startups, Silicon Valley always plays a central role. San Francisco undoubtedly leads the startup market. I think the best we can do to understand how things work in this business is to realize how Silicon Valley startups get created, raise capital, face the market, hire people, grow, get sold, and sometimes are reborn from their ashes. Understanding how Silicon Valley startups work is crucial if you want to be part of the same game anywhere in the world. You can accept it or not, but San Francisco set the rules and define standard practices in that area. If things work differently in your country, you should ask yourself why. You might be playing an exciting but very separate game. If you can't raise capital, there's always a reason—and you better understand what that reason is. That is my goal here with "The Valley": help founders and first-time angel investors make it clear on the Silicon Valley way of doing things. [link] [comments]  |
| How do I create a bootstrapped start-up marketing plan & strategy? Posted: 12 May 2020 12:49 AM PDT I have a website that I just completed. It's supposed to be like Wikipedia but with comments. It's not meant to be as objective and educational as Wikipedia. On my site basically any person, place, thing, concept can have one page, users comment and other users learn from reading the comments. It's called encyclowiki. I need a marketing plan to get users to write topic pages and get users to comment on those pages. I don't know where to start. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 May 2020 06:44 PM PDT I appreciate everyones help with my questions I've been asking. With that being said, when paying for an hourly service from a freelancer, do I know how many hours they put into my project after they finish, or is that something we discuss before I pay them? I'm only 19 & this question sounds like it has an obvious answer, but I'd just like to make sure. Thank you. Edit: I'm looking to hire a mobile ui/ux freelancer (im sharing this so people can better inform me on my question) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 May 2020 08:07 AM PDT I am looking for a report that would provide me with information regarding market shares of dental implant manufacturing companies not in USD but in number of users. (worldwide would be great) E.g.: USA has X number of dentists Y% of these dentists are placing implants and the company ABC is supplying implant to Z% of those. Any idea where I could find that? Many thanks everyone! [link] [comments]  |
| How do you handle the pressure? Posted: 11 May 2020 01:37 PM PDT I haven't started a company so I'm a little ignorant here. But reading a few startup books, there's so much pressure. How do I make this happen, how do I fire him, how do I hire new people, how much equality should I be giving out. Jesus Christ, how do you guys do it? It seems to me you'd acquire so many skills even if you failed with your startup, does it look good on your resume or is it usually frowned upon? [link] [comments]  |
| Freelance website / avenues to hire talented iOS + Backend developers? Posted: 11 May 2020 08:07 AM PDT Hey guys, I'm looking to hire an iOS developer and node.js developer to finish a project that is about 60% completed. The reason it is only 60% completed is due to working with an overseas dev shop that had sketchy business tactics, but did good work. I ended up cutting ties. Can you recommend good freelance websites or other avenues to hire skilled developers? I have used Toptal in the past with pretty good results. Upwork is a dice game, unless thorough vetting is done. I am on a small startup bootstrapped budget, so most likely looking to hire overseas developers. Thanks in advance for the advice! [link] [comments]  |
| Startup validation before or after the MVP Posted: 11 May 2020 03:16 PM PDT I am currently working on an MVP for a rather big project that I have in mind. I am trying to trim it down as much as I can, but it still is rather big, and I need a couple more months to finish it. It is something extremely useful in my opinion, but I don't know how to validate my idea. The problem is that it's not a niche at all, and it is not a Saas. Let's say a social media. And a general one. Not Facebook or something like that, you don't have friends or connections, but similar in terms of size(size when it appeared, not now) and functionality (profile, posts, comments etc.). There is a twist in it, that makes the idea unique, and this twist is what I should validate. This being said, I don't know how to validate it. If it was a saas, I could just ask a couple of business owners in that niche what they think about it, and the validation is done. But for this one, the only two approaches I can think of are: - make a survey and ask people to answer it - make a landing page and ask people what they think about it I kinda hate any of these approaches because I am very scared someone might just take my idea, build it in 2 weeks and take my place. I know, I know, it's stupid to think like this, but I have an unusual confidence in this and I don't want to take this risk. Having an MVP would give me a third option: present the product. So, my question is: Am I stupid for not validating it immediately and risk that someone might steal it, or continue my work, finish the mvp, and risk that nobody wants it (loose time and possibly money) ? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 May 2020 02:41 PM PDT I want to provide a CRM and was wondering if anyone has a preferred white label CRM they use? I was going to build a simple one myself but I already spent 2 months building a CMS I'm burning out. It would need to route form submissions to the CRM. I've come across Zoho Creator but still looking for other options. [link] [comments]  |
| Membership Management solutions/software that you use? Posted: 11 May 2020 02:31 PM PDT Hi all, working for a recent startup. We are a Health Institute funded by our local hospitals and academic institutions. We serve as a "central hub" connecting academics, physicians, industry for all things health research related. In order to be able to enjoy the benefits of being connected with us we encourage individuals to sign up as members. This is currently done by a surveymonkey sign up survey. They fill in their details here, and these are sent to us afterward. However, after this point the rest of this stuff is tracked manually in variety of excel databases. It isn't very efficient, and doesn't tie into our email marketing solutions seamlessly. Hard to keep track of everything and memberships as we grow. Is anyone aware of a solution that we could plug into our website that will serve as member sign up, member database and allow us to reach out from directly (mass emails to members, or groups w/in membership) all in one spot? [link] [comments]  |
| I need advice on deciding what to do with the upcoming clients and their project development Posted: 11 May 2020 12:25 PM PDT Hi everyone, I want to apologize for the long post, I tried to make it as shorter as possible but I wanted to be enough clear. I really wanted to talk to someone and get some advice cuz I feel like I'm stuck on a street without exit. Also, I believe there might be others who are in the same situation as me so I hope this post will help them too. Let me give you a short background first Background: I own a startup that is providing software development services for companies. The startup consists only of me mainly because I haven't had the chance to grow a team yet but that's another story. I already had some clients that helped me built a portfolio and gain a lot of business experience but because the projects were very small (Prototype, POC) the money coming in wasn't enough ($3K - $7K). I mainly used them for personal costs and to build a strong new brand, a website, and lead generation strategy - my biggest issue to date to which I believe I finally found the perfect solution. As a one-man show, I was in charge of estimating some of the projects and developing them. I'm horrible at estimating software projects. I'm a developer but estimating was never my thing. Because of that (and lack of PM experience), I had some issues with too short estimates and receiving less money for more work and in other cases, the client kept adding new functionalities. Lesson learned! But till today my main issue was that I was working with clients who were too small, didn't had enough money, and kept losing my time in meetings without any results. I'm finally changing the strategy and I'm about to launch a strong lead generation strategy that will result in qualified leads with money who can pay. That's is one of the reasons why I'm freaking out. In the best-case scenarios:
And you'll be able to provide solid PM process and strong development while working on other stuff in the company which requires your attention. In my case, I do literally everything. Outsourcing some of the work to freelancers was a good decision for some of the small projects but I'm not quite sure for a bigger one. I think that might be the best option but I'm not really sure. I don't know anyone who has been in my situation or a mentor who can advise me. I literary need 2-3 full months of paid work and I'll be able to hire 2 devs What do you think is the best option or what I should really do? I strongly believe there is a solution to my situation but I can't find the sweet spot yet. Thank you for taking the time to read everything. [link] [comments]  |
| What should I have done before I go and look for devs, specifically back-end devs? Posted: 11 May 2020 12:10 PM PDT So, I've started work on the product that I am going to be basing my startup around right. I've realized that at some point I'm probably going to have to woo devs to join the team as cofounders, or maybe hiring them if quarentine lifts and I can go work. What should I have done, have with me showing to devs, and basically work that should be completed to seem "attractive", for lack of a better word, to developers. So far, I've gotten a second cofounder who is basically my business founder, and we plan to work on some mockups for the UI of what I am building as well as a general business plan. The product I am building centers around music production, the plan is to get a ton of input from those people through a survey and stuff, see what they want. The plan is possibly to crowdfund it, but that's in the works right now. Like I said, I don't really have money to spare and the thing is that I'd love for them to join as a co. This is probably unreasonable for most cases, though, but we'll see what I can do It's not a lot, of course. Really just the basics. Before going after devs, and in order to attract devs, what else do i need done? thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 May 2020 08:08 AM PDT Hello, don't know if this is the right sub for this post so feel free to redirect me as needed. I'm toying with a startup idea that follows the same format of business as Dietbet, which if you're familiar with, is a fitness based "betting" app. I put bet in quotations because you're betting on yourself to lose a designated amount of weight, essentially making each bet to lose weight a skill-based endeavor. This is where my problem comes in, currently I'm doing all the research I can but and getting stumped on what business license I would need to acquire for this. The business would be: online, skill-based, betting (potentially) Thank you for all input [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 May 2020 11:14 AM PDT Hi everyone! I am currently working for a startup on their marketing team. I just created a YouTube video to help promote the brand. Has anyone have experienced with marketing on LinkedIn? I was thinking of cutting the YouTube video into bite size chunks (~1-2 minutes long) as well as including other clips/questions that didn't make it into the video. Opinions? Should I bother with LinkedIn? Perhaps embedding the video and writing a thought piece about the topic on LinkedIn? Any feedback would be appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Channel user feedback/issues from different sources Posted: 11 May 2020 05:21 AM PDT Not sure if this is a good place to ask. However, we are a small Startup and currently have the problem of having multiple channels where users ask question and where they file issues. Therefore I am looking for some sort of Help Desk software or tool(s) that can combine all these channels (Email, Github for now) for everyone of our team to see and also for everyone to see if someone replied already or not. Does anyone know of such a tool that brings what we need out of the box or knows how to combine multiple tools to achieve that? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 May 2020 09:45 AM PDT I'm a delivery driver for a couple of the food delivery apps, and there are things that I feel that they do wrong. But, I'd love to know what it takes to actually have a food delivery app run from a tech perspective. Maybe I'm under estimating the amount of horsepower it takes. [link] [comments]  |
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