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
- {Seeking Advice} Please Send Me All Your Productivity Tool Recommendations. This is what I'm using.
- Building a Startup for a Fast Exit (8 Tips)
- Team broke up after equity split discussion
- We want to make a fake news related app for school, but we need opinions!
- A practical guide on validating startup ideas using Reddit
- Navigating discussions around access to Partner API as a new startup
- Shopify Employees Stole Customer Data from Merchants
- Conducting trainings and copyrights - where is the limit?
- Hey, need a specific todo list that has this 1 specific feature, and a tidbit on doing things that are worthwhile
- I Need Advice
- Terminated at 8 months - 2nd employee
- Went from $0 to $20M My First Year, Now I Want To Share How I Did It
- How to calculate year on year salary growth?
- Post Angel Round Dilemma: RSA vs. Options
- How to improve investment funding pre-revenue
- Anxious about the start
- How To Start A Buisness With Zero Start-Up Capital?
- Terms of Service / Privacy Policy Resources?
- I’ve been working a full time job, studying and also working full time on a startup, but I’m slowly getting unmotivated
- Azure Cloud Architecture Patterns for SaaS
- What are some questions that you've had about startups while (potentially) creating your own business?
- Introduction email
| Posted: 22 Sep 2020 06:05 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]  |
| {Seeking Advice} Please Send Me All Your Productivity Tool Recommendations. This is what I'm using. Posted: 22 Sep 2020 02:02 PM PDT I work as an operations manager at an SF based startup, where I oversee the daily actions of +20 ops staff and dozens of partner/client accounts. Every minute in the day counts, so I'm looking for productivity tool recommendations that could help me save time, keep my sanity, and still kick butt on the daily. What I'm using right now: RescueTime - rescuetime(.)com
Scribe - cursive(.)io/scribe
Grammarly - grammarly(.)com
Roam Research - roamresearch(.)com
Would love to hear your recommendations! [link] [comments]  |
| Building a Startup for a Fast Exit (8 Tips) Posted: 23 Sep 2020 12:23 AM PDT This post is based on a conversation I had with Henrik Rosendahl who has multiple exits behind him. If you prefer to see it as a video instead it is available here. Here are the tips and learnings from a founder that has done 5 fast exits with 3 of them very successful. He has sold companies to Cisco, IBM, VMWare, Quantum and others. Tip #1 Begin with the end Think about who would buy the business and why? Who would benefit the most from buying the company? Listen carefully to the early customers and let them tell you how you fit into the wider ecosystem, Engage with the potential buyers early, not to sell the company, but rather to integrate with them and better understand if you're on the right track. Tip #2 Solve a real problem Release early, validate, improve, and expand the product. Focus everything on the core problem and unique IP/technology, don't boil the ocean. Get the product out there! Tip #3 Buyers are looking for technology, talent, and proof, not revenue Typical acquirers are looking to add new capabilities to their existing portfolio and people who have the expertise in that area. They want to make sure your technology works in their customers' environment - preferably already integrated into their platform. A little bit of revenue is good proof, but a lot of revenue can make a transaction more complicated and doesn't matter for a big acquirer. Tip #4 Have a real business model from day one Get real money from real customers solving real problems, it is proof for a potential buyer. Basically sell the same product to multiple customers solving the same problem. Tip #5 B2B is a lot easier than B2C B2C expensive to grow, it is hit and miss, timing and luck play too big a role. B2C is overall very risky. It can take years of a free product before a business model is even introduced (Tip #4 not possible). Tip #6 Venture Capitalists are not your friends Most startups are sold for $25 to $100 million after 24-48 months, this is not interesting for VCs, Raise money according to that. Raise $1-3 million, don't raise an A-round it will require a +$100 million exit. Understand how VCs make money so you understand their playbook Tip #7 Go for the Tuck-In Acquisition There are 3 kinds of acquisitions:
You always hear about the strategic acquisitions usually over $1 billion, but they are very rare and typically propels the buyer into a new market/technology. Most transactions in the $25 to $100 million range are tuck-ins - an addition of features to an existing platform, this the most likely and best acquisition for a fast exit. Finally, the acquihire - a way to hire a team with a certain expertise. Tip #8 Be an easy target not a complicated target What to do:
What not to do:
Please let me know what you think and if you have other tips for a fast exit! [link] [comments]  |
| Team broke up after equity split discussion Posted: 22 Sep 2020 07:27 AM PDT Hello, The founding team of the startup got broken up after trying to decide on splitting equity. One of the members who came up with the idea proposed a split where he gets 80% and the remaining 20% gets split between 5 other partner and any potential future partner. Now, that the team has split, both of them have been asking me if I want to work with them and tbh I'm new to this and not sure what do to. Any advice is appreciated, Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| We want to make a fake news related app for school, but we need opinions! Posted: 23 Sep 2020 02:33 AM PDT Hello lovely people! Our names are Michelle, Ruben & Malvin. We are 3 students from the Netherlands. We study Multimedia Design & Communication. We are conducting research on fake news and the impact it has on certain groups. Our target audience is children who argue with parents about them spreading said fake news or believing in conspiracy theories. Since two members of our group have the same issues with their parents, it only felt natural to do so. After a lot of research we found out that we are far from the only ones with this issue. One of our group is already a member of this subreddit and one of them found it and is actually the one who came up with the idea to ask for opinions here. So, we want to solve the issue where children and their parents are constantly or periodically arguing about said subjects. In research we found out that there are alot of children who are anxious about even starting a discussion or trying to tell their parents how much it hurts. But, since we are not psychologists, we cannot directly head-on tackle this discussion and turn it into a conversation. What we can do is offer a community-feeling which helps these victims. Unlike Reddit, we would love it to show personal growth as well. Don't worry, we are not trying to tackle Reddit, but are just trying to get the best out of our school assignment! That doesn't mean we don't want the best for these victims of course, we have a lot of intrinsic motivation to try and tackle this issue. What we need from you lovely people, is an opinion, or ideas! We want to design an app with the goal of not needing the app anymore after a while, or to keep it to help others. So, if you guys would just like to tell us if an app like this would be a possible solution, that would be amazing. We obviously understand not everyone in this Reddit has the fake news/ conspiracy issue, but we would still like your help as well! Because the subject is just leading, but not the only subject we can maybe solve with this community app. The app has a few big aspects to it: We want to design a community forum where people can post their stories and other people can react to it (only with an account, because we don't want trolls to just be able to comment and we want to moderate these trolls to ban them, we want a safe environment for all). We want to design a possibility to have a 1-on-1 chat if things are to be that bit more private, or maybe if you live close and want to meet up or Skype up! We want people with the same kind of issues to find each other by tags (open to other ways to tackle this of course). Privacy is top priority, so accounts can be made anonymously, no need to fill in a first and last name, it will be optional to do so. We want people to listen, share, help and get help in this community! We will put in some educational part where conversation-tips and other tips surrounding these subjects will be available for all! Forum posts can be read by everyone, but posted without a name. This so parents who stumble upon this app might use it to reflect on themselves. But! There is always a but: You can only react on topics if you have an account. People who posts on the forum will be able to choose to keep the forum post locked to read for only those with an account. So! There are a few of the ideas and set of rules we want to design for the app. If you have any tips they are more than welcome! Also, we just want to know: Do YOU need this? Would YOU like to have an app like this? Because if we were to take this to our teachers, we would love to know if what we want to create if something people actually need! You can also check out our pitch down below in the link: https://xd.adobe.com/view/2a320cb8-5b17-4377-97bf-d6f5de1da4a0-7f61/?fullscreen Thanks so much, love to you all <3 [link] [comments]  |
| A practical guide on validating startup ideas using Reddit Posted: 23 Sep 2020 01:52 AM PDT We come up with this methodology around 2 years ago. By today we launched 5 projects, including a "cash cow" Email Verification Add-on and a micro-saas Silent Inbox. I believe this is the simplest and cheapest approach available on the market. Reddit receives 11 billion page views a month [1]. A lot of opportunities for unbundling and audience building as you can see. Here is how I research subreddits and evaluate them for ideas validation.
Congrats, now you are ready to pick the most relevant subreddits, plan content, write a title, research the best time to post, etc. If you're keen to learn more about the topic, check my guide on validating startup ideas using Reddit. Resources [1] Similarweb Stats https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com [2] Reddit Evaluation Spreadsheet by Ryan Luedecke https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IjgpzGBgZF9L9dVKkUrC7tE_AkPErApK_fJazsTNIP4/edit [3] Related Subreddits by User Overlap https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps [link] [comments]  |
| Navigating discussions around access to Partner API as a new startup Posted: 23 Sep 2020 01:23 AM PDT Working on a price comparator type web-tool in a market niche lacking one but desperately needing one. The web-tool value is that it creates convenience for users, and exposure/traffic for price providers as a one stop shop. Has anyone navigated a similar situation where you need to navigate access to a providers API? [link] [comments]  |
| Shopify Employees Stole Customer Data from Merchants Posted: 23 Sep 2020 01:02 AM PDT |
| Conducting trainings and copyrights - where is the limit? Posted: 23 Sep 2020 12:47 AM PDT I'm an experienced Software Engineer with a wide range of knowledge. Currently I'm discussing with a company I was cooperating with, to organize some kind of trainings for the employees, because my knowledge is generally better than average knowledge in the company, so I could teach them some stuff and make some money from that. But my knowledge is wide, but not always deep enough in some topics. Because of that I want to invest in some online trainings for myself to improve my knowledge. I am wondering, if I will get some knowledge from an online training (that I will buy with my own money), can I use this knowledge to organize my own training for this company, with almost identical content? Of course I would create my own presentations, examples and other "material/physical stuff" - just fill it with mix of my own knowledge, and knowledge from the online training. Would there be some copyright problem? Can I do it? What if someone will find a similarity between my training and this online training? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 23 Sep 2020 12:17 AM PDT Hey, I need a todo list app that can quickly open a new instance on current virtual desktop
Is there anything you use that does this? Please reply with something that helps if you know. Thanks! Tidbit on doing things that are worthwhile: Startups/products/ideas get discovered by users in all ways, that's not what matters most. What matters is if X (something) has sustainable value
[link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Sep 2020 07:28 PM PDT I'm at a real crossroad. My startup was doing amazing before this pandemic. I own the entire company and everything was on pace to bring in $400K for 2020 (which is amazing for me). The business model is essential a recruiting agency that is better on the clients budget and also monetizes off the recruiters who want access to these roles. I know the startup was doing good but things have really frozen up since March. Mix that in with the business model not exactly being "disruptive," I'm not really sure if I should bail on the idea and go for something different? Or get a job and lick my wounds for a while. Any advice would be appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Terminated at 8 months - 2nd employee Posted: 22 Sep 2020 10:24 AM PDT I was a senior SME engineer in a well funded startup for 8 months. Delivered multiple critical features to get company through Series A as we were non-revenue generating. CEO/CTO are both engineers/not people managers and very much ICs in terms of skillset. After COVID and move to remote, visible CTO stress levels have continued to raise as he struggls to maintain an aligned team. Additionally he works non-stop in an IC engineer capacity (including coding on the weekends). About a month ago, he began having shows of anger at the team in public and private. In our next 1:1 he began raising his voice and acting inappropriately at me and I needed to stay in a heated conversation with him to get him to see this was not okay. I brought the obvious public behavior up to him (not directed at me) and he thanked me and acknowledged. Afterwards the team/public atmosphere with the team improved, however, the next 1:1 was a repeat of him raising his voice and using heavy blame based verbiage for what is menial engineering discussions. I brought this up to the CEO, who saw some of the things I described, said we'll get through it together, times are stressful, but nothing personal. However also turns out CTO has been sharing concerns behind the scenes as of late, but nothing other than 'get more work done'. CEOs solution is just that - for everyone to get work done and that will make everyone feel better (namely CTO). Now, CTO has been having me look at highly ambiguous rushed features/critical fixes but also slightly randomizing me everyday with new critical priorities. I clearly communicate my status, blockers and focus each day in standup. CTO begins to shy away in ours 1:1s, simply listens to me, gives minimal responses, nods head. A week ago I directly ask the CTO if we are okay and everything is good. Suddenly come in to being fired in my next CTO 1:1 with no emotion. Have conversation with CEO after the fact who says this was in works for about a week based on perceptions from CTO about me being defensive about feedback among other minor things. CEO was clearly uncomfortable and seemed to be scrambling for vague reasons. He self-admits they made a mistake if a written performance plan would have conveyed this. Was given a few weeks of pay (if I sign a release) but looking at complete loss of seed equity. This hit me like train and I clearly put to much faith in leaders without track records of team building, but are experiences like this normal? [link] [comments]  |
| Went from $0 to $20M My First Year, Now I Want To Share How I Did It Posted: 23 Sep 2020 12:58 AM PDT Hi, so I did at least $20M my first year and kept up the growth over 5 years. My "start up" is now 5 years old and the journey has been humbling and crazy to look back on and see the growth. I feel really good about my company's growth and success so I'd like to share the knowledge Ive gained over the years and start writing articles or release a podcast. Im not trying to self promote, so no, Im not going to share my company name or any links. I dont have a course to sell nor do I plan to sell one. Personal Background: Some college experience, middle class USA family. Made my first million by the time I was 25. Self made and bootstrapped my way here. I had a small business before that I started with $0, grew that to $2M in a year and then took the profits from that and invested in this startup and made $20M the first year. I plan on writing a series helping people start their company but I dont know what people are most confused about or what they want to learn about? What do you want to know? My guess is that people are afraid to start but what are other questions and concerns you have? The most upvoted questions, I'll answer in a new post on this subreddit. [link] [comments]  |
| How to calculate year on year salary growth? Posted: 22 Sep 2020 01:40 PM PDT Not sure if this is the right subreddit. Im in the middle of an incredible opportunity, where there's discussion about salaries going on. I'm currently a marketer from a very established startup (8 years, 3500 employees, lots of stability), and am being offered a position of a marketing manager in a 3 year old enterprise startup. The product is brilliant and the team is incredible, but with audacious goals. I'd be the first marketer, and have to set everything from scratch. I can hire my own team and have done my background. It's a very very niche market, and they've done nothing in marketing, but are very good at their product and domain knowledge. Their expectations is 10x growth though, which puts a lot of pressure on me (audacious goals, remember?). So, how do I tackle this and give my own metrics/goals? Now, this is a huge jump in work, effort, stress, and responsibility for me. I want to put my skin in the game and need to discuss my salary. Apart from that, I've to also tell them how I expect myself to grow in the next couple of years. How can I calculate year on year growth in a way that gives me more to work for in the long run? [link] [comments]  |
| Post Angel Round Dilemma: RSA vs. Options Posted: 22 Sep 2020 07:36 PM PDT There's a lot online content on equity but I couldn't find anything on this specific use case. I've negotiated 25% equity to join a Founder in building out his 1yr old startup. He's recently closed an Angel round valuing the company today at $900K. My stock is coming directly from the Founder and will follow a 4yr vest/1yr cliff. I'm literally the only person besides the Founder but we have plans to grow (separate employee pool already set up). We are deciding on how to transact my equity and I'm confused. My current understanding is with Restricted Stock Awards (RSA) I have to pay the income taxes on their value today. If I were to have joined 1yr ago this would be straightforward but there's now an implied value $900K. Are RSAs still relevant (or preferred) here? Do I need to buy the shares and pay taxes on them up front? Or can I pay for the shares or taxes as I vest? Options - how should I value these vs. RSA? It appears the ISO is better than the NSO? My other concern is that Options do not give me the ability to vote (just based on what I read online). Is this unfounded or legitimate? [link] [comments]  |
| How to improve investment funding pre-revenue Posted: 22 Sep 2020 09:16 AM PDT Hello, and thank you for the advice/suggestions. I am working with an early-stage healthcare company offering at-home house call visits for employers to provide their employees. The goal is to improve clinical outcomes by reducing barriers and on-demand care through the services offered. For a flat fee, paid by the employer, the employee has access to a clinician, mobile imaging, and some lab draws if necessary. Over the past few years, the company has done some trial and error testing to determine which model makes the most sense. I am working with the company to expand its organic marketing and explore which markets make the most sense for expansion. One of the challenges we are facing is fundraising pre-revenue. What would be the suggestion to get the eye of an investor pre-revenue to get the small number of funds necessary to take them over the hump toward growth? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Sep 2020 04:49 PM PDT Hi Fellow Entrepreneurs! I've started a marketing agency. Now I've been working on this since April. Logos, website, email, letterheads, all the back of house stuff etc. (we are 3 partners, the whole thing was my idea) We started off on 5th August with physical office and actual employees. It is almost October now and we have been in loss. I'm thinking I should end it before it gets too financially straining even though I can still support up till November's end. Am I rushing my decision and should I wait a little while longer and survive in market, before turning the profit? Or should I let it go? TIA [link] [comments]  |
| How To Start A Buisness With Zero Start-Up Capital? Posted: 22 Sep 2020 02:13 PM PDT I want to start a Medical Billing/Electronic Medical Records (website). The goal of the site would be to simplify the billing/coding process for medical professionals/small buisness by clearly negotiating between insurance companies and assisting them in getting a better payout for services. The company website would also assist with medical records, scheduling, and office organization. I have no coding experience and I don't want to go to college. I am willing to learn the basics of coding. My goals: 1. Create a company and retain 'founder' status. Meaning I don't want to share all my assets with stakeholders and lose control of the company vision. (I want to be the puppeteer) 2. Have enough startup capital that I can begin the design process of the website. 3. Find a team/cofounder willing to create with me. I have a solid idea and I am writing it down to bring it to life. The only thing is I don't know how. I've read a few books and they've said that the fear someone will steal your idea is irrational, but how can I ensure that this doesn't happen? What are the legal ramifications? Any help appreciated! :) [link] [comments]  |
| Terms of Service / Privacy Policy Resources? Posted: 22 Sep 2020 12:46 PM PDT Hi guys! I'm building an app and I want a rock-solid ToS and Privacy Policy, so I'm looking to hire a lawyer to draft them. Do you have any recommendations for good lawyers who specialize in this or resources where I could find vetted lawyers? Thank you so much! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Sep 2020 08:02 AM PDT Everyday I'm constantly up till around 5pm-3am working on my start up. It's been going well for the past few months but lately I've been doubting myself. I've done the math, and this is a fantastic startup idea, but it's getting difficult to keep going. I've only invested a small portion of funds into the project but know in the next weeks I'll have to invest significantly more, I have the funds to do so but I'm nervous I'm going to waste funds on an idea I'll abandon. Please. I would be incredibly grateful if someone provided some resources in the comments to stay motivated. Or ideas to think about that could kick-start my passion, what should I think about, the future, the present? Any help would be appreciated ❤️ [link] [comments]  |
| Azure Cloud Architecture Patterns for SaaS Posted: 22 Sep 2020 11:12 AM PDT Hi all! I'm looking to design a cloud architecture for a BI/reporting web app where I need the tenant data to be fully isolated. I'm planning on using Azure, but am open to another cloud offering if there are elements of the ecosystem that might be more appropriate. The current plan is to ingest data into one blob container from the data provider, merge that with prior data in a second blob container, and then enter the data into another service for analytics (dataset will be less than 1GB per tenant). I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on whether Azure SQL databases would be best for this? Is data warehousing a better solution like with Azure Synapse and OLAP? (I don't think multi-tenancy is even available there) I've also been looking at offerings like GoodData, Panoply, Kylin, Teredata, Greenplum, Vertica, and Drill. I'd really appreciate any and all advice/thoughts! I was hoping there would be more resources around multi-tenant analytics as a service architectures, but I've struggled to find clear patterns for this kind of solution. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Sep 2020 10:30 AM PDT Hi, just to provide you with some context, I work at a school in the west coast (US), researching startups/entrepreneurial financing (e.g. VCs, Angels etc.) and was wondering whether you have any questions about startups that you have as (prospective) founders/employees of startups but couldn't get answers through the web/peers or figure it out by yourself. I am not necessarily here to provide answers but just wanted to be enlightened by/informed of the questions that you feel are not addressed via education or any source on the web and are currently struggling with. Thank you in advance and feel free to just shoot any questions! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Sep 2020 05:23 AM PDT My family has recently started up a small business and at the moment we are handling the communication side of things ourselves. Mostly me to be particular. I was wondering if you guys had any pointers for an introductory email, what to avoid, what to include, what to keep in mind? I sent out my first email earlier but I'm sure there are a lot of improvements I could take on board. Anything welcome! [link] [comments]  |
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