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
- Anyone else get anxiety about their startup/idea being "too late"?
- Co-Founder Hunt Question
- Not taken seriously as a cofounder?
- How to find a CTO and what to look for?
- Why do you need heavy investments?
- Looking for a cofounder for a design agency.
- The Mom Test
- Does anyone have experience giving equity to a CTO, who wants to join as a cofounder a year after the company has been running? I originally paid him to build the app as a contractor. He now wants to join at a much-reduced salary but want 30% equity (vested over 4 years), which seems a lot.
- Bookkeeping for the Beginner
- What are some low-cost ways to finding talents?
- How should a CTO manage a team with a high turnover?
- Enterprise Questions
- Willing to work for equity? Where to look?
- How can I learn about user engagement better?
- How much decision making authority do product managers have?
- Question about equity in tech startup
- Have you ever told your boss/CEO no?
- 7 lessons on product design I learned after analyzing TikTok for 20h
- Question about reduction of stocks
- Coming up with an original app idea: is it even possible when everything already exists?
- Any suggestion for how to get downloaders to reply to emails and requests for feedback?
- Series A - at what point should I expect/ask for a term sheet?
| Posted: 28 Sep 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]  |
| Anyone else get anxiety about their startup/idea being "too late"? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 10:24 AM PDT thinking "if only I thought of this 12 months go, id be golden". How do you overcome this? I had this idea for an app abut 12 months ago, It would have been perfect to launch during these covid times, but now I'm having a bit of anxiety that it will end (covid/lockdown), or that someone else will think of the same idea and realize it before me, beat me to market.. I guess what I should do is write everything out, so that I get an overview. Right now, I'm just getting started, my mind is all over the place, its so easy to get discouraged. Anyone relate? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2020 10:51 PM PDT If you're going to start your business/company where would you recommend finding a technical co-founder? I have been struggling with the tech part of my startup idea and it would be a great help if you can lend any tips and tricks on where to find a great co-founder to any business idea that you want to try. [link] [comments]  |
| Not taken seriously as a cofounder? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 08:00 PM PDT I'm in Southern California and I want to found a startup soon, but I'm also going to take hormones to transition from male to female, and it will likely be quite visible that I am transgender. My concern is that when I search for other cofounders/investors/employees, they will avoid my company on the basis that they're not comfortable working with a "man in a dress" (as some unfortunately might say). And for those that my company manages to retain, I'm afraid that my ideas & authority will be dismissed for similar reasons. I would much rather put myself as the CEO, since I would like a strong amount of control over the direction of the company, and I don't have the in-depth technical knowledge that a CTO should have. However, this will also make me the face of the company and may make growing the company challenging for the reasons in the first paragraph, and that's assuming the startup is even somewhat successful. I can't find any data on (un)successful startups with a trans CEO, so I have to rely on intuition here. How do you suggest that I'm taken seriously as a cofounder/investee/employer? (And I find my body disgusting and want to take hormones ASAP, so waiting until the company is successful does not feel like an option for me.) [link] [comments]  |
| How to find a CTO and what to look for? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 10:36 PM PDT I came up with a social app idea around a month ago that I've become very passionate about, and I think its ready for the development phase but I don't know anyone in mobile app development. Since I've started working on the idea I have been doing some research as well as learning things like Balsamiq, Glide, and Adobe XD and used this to create a prototype I'm pretty proud of. That being said, the app seems like it would be pretty hard to learn to code myself as I only have a little bit of experience coding. From all the stuff I read/watched it seems like my best option is to find a technical person to partner with. What's the best way to go about finding that person? I contacted an old teacher from college who is one of the founders of an Angel investing group held at the school and he says he thinks there can be a big market for the idea but I'm too early in the stages to take it to an Angel group since I don't have any proof of concept (an app). One of my next steps I have planned is to get in contact with the administration of my college to see if I can launch there but I feel like I can't get much further until I have a working app. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Happy to answer any questions if it helps understand my predicament! [link] [comments]  |
| Why do you need heavy investments? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 06:01 AM PDT I might be looking at it from a strange angle. But I can't help but notice how about 80% of new startups keep going through the motions of: "I need x million dollars to successfully launch my company." or "I'll give you 60% equity if you just give me a thousand dollars". I totally get that you might need big amounts in order to operate in certain manufacturing industries, it really depends. Though I keep seeing new entrepreneurs and people in this sub claiming they need 50 front end developers, 60 back end developers, 40 customer support people for some app with basic functions and zero market validation. All while claiming maintenance costs to be of $400,000/month. (A bit of an exaggeration). This all seems really bizarre to me. A few months ago I was working with a team of 4 developers. We were working on an app and my calculated costs of operation were around $3,300/month tops. That included their salaries. Around $500 per month with the main goal of raising their salaries much more once we reached profitability. They all accepted. Got everyone working remotely, found them through LinkedIn, so zero costs for office space, all expense left was hosting and other tools. I figured that the most I'd be willing to invest were $20,000 (a total of 6 months). And if I saw zero profits after that, onto the next project. I just keep noticing this attitude of "I need 50 iMac Pros, a 4 story building completely decked out and full staff just to build my app that tells you fun facts about hot dogs." Edit: Why not try to see if you're even profitable in the first place in order to keep growing before splitting your business between 40 different investors that will basically pull all the strings and leave you with chunk change by the end of it all? [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for a cofounder for a design agency. Posted: 29 Sep 2020 01:09 AM PDT So I've been doing freelancing, VA, jobs from the last 5 years. Now I'm looking to form a company. I'm looking for a co-founder, who has done design, apps, or saas in past. We'll start with a design studio dealing in WordPress, Shopify, and Woocommerce design and development. Later I've planned for the SaaS launch. Please Upvote, so others can find it in their feed :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2020 06:44 AM PDT Just finished reading "The Mom Test" - how to talk to the customers and learn if your business is a good idea when everybody is lying to you "Mom Test" refers to framing questions in a way even our mom can't lie to us. 1) Don't share our idea upfrontPeople will lie and protect our feelings. Instead, focus on learning their current and past behaviors. This is a fact-finding mission, not a feel-good session. 2) Ask about specifics in the past, rather than hypothetical / generic futureGood:
Bad:
Opinions can be a false signal. We want to get facts to understand a user's pain point and behavior. 3) Avoid bad data
Anchor your discussion and subtly pivot away from these. 4) Prepare you list of 3 learning goalsThe 3 most important things you want to learn from the person. If you don't know what you're trying to learn, you shouldn't bother before having this conversation 5) Casual coffee chat instead of a formal meetingIn a formal interview setting in a meeting room, people will tend to just go through the motion and check off the boxes. You want them to feel like they are sharing / venting to a friend. 6) Segment your customer and talk to the right peopleDon't just talk to the most senior and important person. [Personal experience] when my team was consulting for a mall business, our best insights of shopper behaviors came from talking to concierge, customer service, and shop sales staff. 7) Successful learning can be "X is not a problem"Don't get married to our problem. You are here putting on the hat of an investigator: is there a pain point 8) For B2BGo into a meeting with the mentality of not trying to sell, but in search of an industry and customer advisor. The author laid out a Vision-Framing-Weakness-Pedestal-Ask framework with an example below: "Hey Pete, I'm trying to make desk rental less of a pain for new businesses (Vision). We're just starting out and don't have anything to sell, but want to make sure we're building something that actually helps (Framing). I've only come at it from a tenant's side and I'm having a hard time understanding how it works from the landlord's perspective (Weakness). You've been renting out desks for a while and could actually help me cut through the fog. (Pedestal). Do you have time next couple weeks to chat (Ask)." --- Customers don't always know what they want. But unmistakably, they know their pain points and issues. Asking the wrong questions - and getting false signals - is arguably more dangerous and costly than not talking to customer. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2020 06:51 AM PDT I'd appreciate any good practices and things to make sure I do in an agreement like this. A few points: Me: - I have taken all of the risks so far and I am the only employee currently. I have been the one that has gained the traction and I have invested my savings into the company, savings I mainly used to pay him to create the app initially. - I expect the company to grow a lot in the next few years so equity could be quite valuable assuming an exit in 6-8 years. - I also will likely need investment if I am to employ more people, which this company needs to scale up properly, but if I give away 30% to a CTO that doesn't look good when trying to get investment (usually investors will ask for 20%+), and I don't want to end up with only 50%. - I would prefer to get investment and then just give him a basic salary and a very small equity stake. The problem with this is getting investment takes a long time and while I'm trying to come up with some kind of deal, the business is stagnant as he's not working on anything because I can't afford the inflated prices he's now suggesting if I don't give him equity. At the same time finding another dev would be very hard at this stage as it's a complex app with a lot of code. - He has built the app, but to this point I have been paying him as a contractor, so he has taken no real risk, apart from missing out on some bigger contracts as he offered me a discounted rate based on me committing to him for a long term contract. But this is pretty normal and I don't think represents risk. - He is a talented developer with a lot of potential and also for a software guy has a good business mind, which is valuable. - The downside to this huge potential is that I don't expect him to stick around until exit, so I want to make sure I don't give away 10% of my company to someone who will leave in 2 years. Maybe it could be a potential of milestone and time based vesting? Does anyone have any good tips for coming up with a good equity deal without too much risk? Any help would be greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2020 11:14 AM PDT hope there are others who have been in this situation and know how I feel, but when it comes to the finances and bookkeeping side of starting a small business, I know nothing. Feel free to ask questions and I will edit any answers into this post but here we go. I am an archivist and a few years ago I started to preserve family collections on the side as a Freelancer. Earlier this year, I decided that I wanted this to me my only career, so I've slowly been getting things in order to make it a full time business. Now, I know what I need to do when it comes to the main draw of my business, that's not an issue, but if there's one thing that I dread it's bookkeeping. Frankly, I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to keeping records, I don't know what records I need to keep, I don't know how I need to keep them, etc. So, if anyone can link me to good tutorials and resources, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm looking for the following:
On top of that, I actually would like to do bookkeeping manually, at least at first because it honestly helps me know what I'm doing later when I can actually afford bookkeeping services of some sort. [link] [comments]  |
| What are some low-cost ways to finding talents? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 06:14 PM PDT What are some low-cost ways to finding talents? The CTO I work for doesn't want to spend money for an agency to headhunt for him. Is there a way to find good talent that's low cost? I am thinking that surely there's some kind of service that doesn't cost much or some kind of website other than Indeed that allows you to find good senior programmers. Is there anything like that? [link] [comments]  |
| How should a CTO manage a team with a high turnover? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 03:53 PM PDT Everyone in the team ends up leaving after 6-9 months, and now our most senior developer is leaving. The most senior developer currently is someone who has 2 months of experience. How should a CTO manage this? Should everyone learn how to do everything from devops to QA, or should you have specialists? We're only a team of 4 programmers. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2020 02:49 PM PDT Generally, startups can't solely rely on a basic per month plan. They have to reach higher value contracts such as $3-5K yearly. My question is exactly how this process works? Here are my questions/concerns
Any advice is really appreciated!! [link] [comments]  |
| Willing to work for equity? Where to look? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 02:29 PM PDT So I'm not a developer or anything but background is in finance. Honestly, during Covid I am feeling like a my life isnt super fulfilling. Given that its work from home I have a lot more time on my hands. I really want to help build an idea/startup. Dont need to get paid but would at least need equity. Just needs to be an idea I feel good growing. I really want to work with a good and fun team creating something innovative rather than just focusing on the mundane corporate world. Anyone know where I can look? [link] [comments]  |
| How can I learn about user engagement better? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 08:26 AM PDT Hi There, I have launched a few products for enterprises but I am testing the waters with my first B2C SaaS tool. I understand the idea of product-market fit and MVP very well but because of my enterprise background, I could get feedback by having my team sit with our users or have 1/1 meetings with them to get info. With B2C I know that won't be possible so I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestion of how to learn how to measure and adjust my product for engagement? I've been reading about tools like segment, mixpanel, etc..and they seem really awesome but I feel they are one part of an overall engagement strategy that I'd like to learn so I can put all the individual building blocks into perspective. Any resources that you think would be helpful? [link] [comments]  |
| How much decision making authority do product managers have? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 02:08 PM PDT I pitched a billion dollar company in the travel space back in the first week of September over cold email. I sent it to several executives in different departments. The first reply I got was a no from their head of supply. He said it wasn't the right time. He CC'd the director of product management. Then a few hours later I got a reply saying yes from one of their product managers. Since then I've had 3 calls with him and one of their head of product execs that he brought into the conversation. It's going really well. The conversation is progressing much faster than I expected. With each call the conversation goes deeper and deeper. The calls are no longer about selling them but more about set up and execution If all goes well the deal could close in the next month. What I'm selling/pitching is a joint venture/strategic alliance with the company I'm working with. There's no upfront cost for this company So far the calls have only been with these two executives. But, I can't get over the feeling that based on that first reply the whole thing could get squashed somehow. [link] [comments]  |
| Question about equity in tech startup Posted: 28 Sep 2020 12:59 PM PDT Hi all, I was just recently offered 1.2% equity (vested over 4 years) in a seed stage SaaS tech startup which raised roughly about 1M to date. I am the 4th employee hired and was brought on as a developer. I make roughly 20% below market rate salary in Canada. Is this a good offer? Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Have you ever told your boss/CEO no? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 10:12 AM PDT My workplace is laying off our hourly associates and passing their work onto me. Their work is the mundane, tedious stuff, mindlessly clicking around, ensuring posts go live etc. I don't manage them, but they do help assist me with my clientele. Since they'll be without a job, someone's got to do the mundane stuff, so it was inferred that it was sent to me. The company is cash-strapped, so I'm not sure if I'm just being spoiled or just need to suck it up. Technically, this is not what I signed up for. This would change my whole workday to be repetitive and have 85% of my workday go to this, instead of me spending 85% of my work on my clients. The new tasks think literally are just clicking buttons, the same buttons, daily, no rhyme or reason, and no thinking behind the tasks. If I told them no, what are the chances that they can fire me? [link] [comments]  |
| 7 lessons on product design I learned after analyzing TikTok for 20h Posted: 27 Sep 2020 06:18 PM PDT TikTok is an app that was designed exclusively for engagement. It's an interesting case study for anyone who wants to build an engaging product with high growth. I have spent more than 20h analyzing it. Here is a summary of 7 lessons I learned from its addictive design. 1. Build An Influencer EconomyTikTok designed an alternative economy were your views are like your wealth. And that wealth is spread between users similarly to how money is spread in the world. The top 1% have most of it. They are the faces of the app. They inspire others to become creators and follow that path. They look like average everyday people who were able to achieve massive success, so it makes you believe "if they did, then maybe I can do it too". This pushes the masses to participate in the economy and try to win. Even if the majority of them will stay "poor" or "middle class", seeing the top 1% gives them the motivation to continue. But only 1% reach that success, the rest of the users are "poor" or "middle class". They don't get as many views and followers. They are more like consumers, they drive all the traffic that the top 1% collects, and they produce content in the hope of joining that 1% one day. For TikTok it's great, they created an economy where everyone wants to participate and everyone wants to win. ➜ THE LESSON: To get large engagement, create an economy where people are inspired by the top users, and the wealth is represented by your engagement metric. 2. Optimize For The Power UsersNow, in an economy, not everyone participates the same way. You have to identify the power users, those who will be the most active members of the economy. If you look at TikTok's audience, you notice that it's much younger than all the other social media. And there is a reason for that. Kids and teenagers are in quest of attention. They are very impressionable, they are easier to influence, they pick up trends faster, and most importantly they are very active online. TikTok identified that and optimized for it. That's why the most popular users (the "top 1%" that TikTok promotes) are all mostly teenagers between 14 and 18 years old. They are the stars who are supposed to inspire this community of power users. ➜ THE LESSON: Find the most active users of your economy and optimize for them. One thing I would like to mention here is the ethics of targeting a young audience. The younger your audience is, the more responsibility you have to carry. I don't really see TikTok trying to promote a healthy culture on the platform. A lot of it is very superficial, and if you combine the addictive design with young developing brains, you have a dangerous combination. If TikTok wanted to change that, it's simple, just change the top 1% you promote. If the top users would inspire these kids to be better versions of themselves, to learn more, to stay healthy, exercise, etc. that would change the whole culture of the platform. Issue here is that this wouldn't get as much engagement, which is the primary focus of TikTok, so you have to make a decision between profits and the legacy you want to leave for humanity. 3. Personalize The User ExperienceTikTok uses a very powerful AI to recommend you new content. It's like an entertainment slot machine where you are always winning something. When you open the app, you get a new random video each time, and the more you spend on the app, the better these suggestions get. It personalizes to you. The common challenge with AI is getting good data. We already have the algorithms, but getting the data is the hard part. This is what TikTok was able to crack. Instead of presenting a list of recommendations (like YouTube, Netflix or Instagram does), TikTok infers what it thinks you will like and directly shows it to you. Then based on how you react: if you like the video, follow the creator, watch it until the end, or swipe away, they know with much more accuracy the type of content you enjoy. On YouTube for example, there are a lot of factors beyond the video itself that influences if a person even clicks on it (like the thumbnail, the title, the number of views, who the creator is), so if someone doesn't click on a video, that doesn't tell you if they would have liked it or not. Because of that your data to make recommendations isn't as accurate. ➜ THE LESSON: Personalize the experience by collecting the most relevant data you can. 4. Create Bite-Sized InteractionHuman's attention span is short. You only have a few seconds to grab someone's attention. On the web, the rule is that when visitors land on your website, you have less than 15 seconds to get their interest. Oh wait, but TikTok videos are also around 15 seconds long. Is it a coincidence? Probably not. This is engineered to keep your brain stimulated. You get a dopamine hit each time you watch these short videos. That's part of the reason why it's so addictive. ➜ THE LESSON: Create bit-sized interactions to keep your users engaged! 5. Bring Real Value To Your UsersA key component that people often forget when they think about engagement, is that at the end of the day, you have to remember the big picture, which is to bring value to your users. TikTok doesn't really do that, in fact it might be the opposite, it takes your time away and doesn't give you much in return. You might argue that it doesn't matter as long as your business is growing. The reality is that there is a business reason for bringing value as well. Simply put: people don't stay on a platform that damages them for long. If users are stuck in the app and it starts to negatively impact their lives, they will leave as soon as they got the chance, and when they do, they will feel a lot better. ➜ THE LESSON: When you create an engaging design, don't forget to bring real value to your users, otherwise you will become an addictive product they will want to get rid of. 6. Make It As Easy As Possible For Your Users To ParticipateThere are two ways to participate on TikTok: you watch content or you create content. The easier these 2 things are, the more people will do them. That's why when you look at the app, literally everything is made to make it as easy as possible. To watch content, you don't even have to click anywhere, you don't have to make a decision. Unlike on YouTube, you don't have to look at the thumbnails or the number of views to decide if you should watch it, it's all done for you. The app presents you the videos it thinks you should watch, and you just swipe through them. ➜ THE LESSON: Make it as easy as possible for your users to participate! 7. Empower Your Users To Generate Content For YouNow to create the content, again TikTok makes it super easy. They provide a range of creative tools and fancy effects. The video format is short too, which by itself makes it faster to create. You spend a few minutes to shoot the video, and then a couple of minutes to edit it in the app. That's it, you are done! The algorithm will then help you quickly get views, so you have that instant gratification. More views are generated on TikTok compared to other platforms, because the videos are so short. On average, in a day, people end up watching somewhere around 200 to 300 videos, compared to YouTube where you will probably watch maybe 10 videos max. ➜ THE LESSON: Encourage user-generated content by empowering users and making it super simple for them! Hope you enjoyed reading this! I have made this video where I dive deeper into TikTok and breakdown everything step by step (took my 30h to make lol). You can check it out if you are interested :) [link] [comments]  |
| Question about reduction of stocks Posted: 28 Sep 2020 05:01 AM PDT I assume I need to talk to a lawyer but could use options before I start down that road. I started working for a technology startup about 5 years ago and opted to take stocks in place of a full salary. The stocks are a percentage of the total, which I understand now is not the best option. Over the first few years the percentage went down by a percent or two. Earlier this year it was suddenly reduced to less than half the original amount. When I confronted my boss he told me everyone's stock was reduced as we took additional investment and that he "had my back" and would make sure I would get a bonus when the company sold. Needless to say he was not willing to back that up in writing. I work with a good friend that received the same amount of stocks at the same time I got mine and he confirmed his stocks were reduced to less than 10% or his original amount. My guess is the company is taking stocks from long time employees and giving them to new employees in lieu of a full salary. Questions:
[link] [comments]  |
| Coming up with an original app idea: is it even possible when everything already exists? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 08:24 AM PDT Every time I think I have a good idea for an app, I get all excited, I draft up my concept, I do the market research, all the jazz.... only to see there are already 15 apps around the same idea. I've read countless blog articles, went on countless Google deep drives about this. How do I find a good, unique idea for an app? Is it a "one in a million genius idea" kind of a thing? It feels a bit impossible! I'm sorry if this is a very general open question, but I'm starting to get discouraged and hopeless. EDIT: Thanks guys for all your encouraging feedback (not sure why someone keeps downvoting this post though)! I'll keep in mind all your tips! Cheers. [link] [comments]  |
| Any suggestion for how to get downloaders to reply to emails and requests for feedback? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 08:03 AM PDT I have a software product, people find it and download it. I follow up a with a friendly "Let me know if you have questions or need help!" I don't hear back from them. Later I might send a followup email asking for honest feedback ... good or bad ... but they don't answer. Any suggestions for how I can get downloaders to respond to requests for feedback? I'd really like to know what they didn't like so I can work on making that specific thing better. [link] [comments]  |
| Series A - at what point should I expect/ask for a term sheet? Posted: 28 Sep 2020 07:25 AM PDT One fund started diligence. We dug into finances and now digging into product architecture. I don't have a term sheet from them yet. At what point in the process should I expect a term sheet? Is it customary for a VC to send it before the diligence starts or after as a "after carefully reviewing, here is our offer." I don't want to ask and look amateur, but also don't want to be wasting time if it won't amount to anything. [link] [comments]  |
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