Startups Peer Support and Self Management Saturday’s - A Safe Place to Vent, Seek Emotional Support, Share Self Management Techniques and Experiences, or Just Rant |
- Peer Support and Self Management Saturday’s - A Safe Place to Vent, Seek Emotional Support, Share Self Management Techniques and Experiences, or Just Rant
- My SaaS was killed due to platform risk, here's my learning from failure.
- I'm tired of having no idea how to improve the product and make my users happier. Asking them doesn't work, I need to optimize with the collected data. Somehow. Who here has a similar problem? How do you guys go about this in your business?
- Being a founder or starting a startup doesn't require you a formal knowledge. Then what the hell does it require?
- California LLC - what to do about ownership stakes
- Apple 30% in-app fee
- How do you deal with the rejection?
- Sunday’s Success Stories - Celebrate Your Successes From the Past Week: Anything goes, none too small!
- What Would Be Fair Equity to Request For An Employee?
- I'm confident in my start-up. Need help on how to get a loan or should I just use credit cards.
- Finding people for market research
- CRM for small web development company
| Posted: 31 Oct 2020 06:05 AM PDT Welcome to this week's Peer Support and Self Management Thread. This is a Safe Place to Vent, Seek Emotional Support, Share Self Management Techniques and Experiences, or Just Rant. The goal for this thread is to help one another manage mental and physical health so we can more easily find success. We all struggle sometimes and it is important to recognize that the struggle is part of the journey. The important thing is to learn how to overcome that adversity to grow and succeed. Be tactful and classy in how you vent your feelings and share your frustrations. Act in a mature manner. Ask questions, share experiences, and be there for one another. Practice empathy in giving advice and remember that what worked for you isn't guaranteed to work for others. Make suggestions, not demands of others. #Because this is meant to be a safe place to support emotional and physical health there is a zero tolerance policy in effect. Be KIND. Be sure to report any conduct that is in violation of that key tenet. You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord. [link] [comments]  |
| My SaaS was killed due to platform risk, here's my learning from failure. Posted: 31 Oct 2020 06:21 AM PDT Hi Members, So a few weeks back I had got an awesome business idea. The idea was to provide custom domains and analytics for Substack publications. The great thing was that there were a ton of users of Substack who were ready to pay for it. This was a great option for me to work on, why?
Now it was lucrative so I started working on it. I was able to build the first version in a few weeks. Now I was quite happy and got great feedback from the community. Quickly I started getting traction too, some people started tweeting and my SaaS was also mentioned in a popular newsletter(in marketing/products space). I was amazed at the growth as it was only 2 days since launch. My revenue was near $200 in just 2 days, though it might sound low to some of you, for me it was really huge. Then on the 3rd morning, I woke up with a shock. Substack started providing custom domains (the same service which my SaaS provided). Substack too started charging for it and as they owned the platform they could easily reach all target audience at once. I was broken down and understood how dangerous platform risk is. Want to know how the platform might hurt you?
Even after these serious risks, I don't discourage these kinds of businesses until they do it in a proper way. Like look at Buffer, it is dependent on multiple social media networks and not just on one. Similarly, Baremetrics is a platform-dependent business but it depends on multiple payment providers for data collection. Distributing your product/service with multiple platform help to dilute the platform risk.
P.S. - I tried posting it earlier but was low on comments karma, so I'm back to tell this. Keep Hustling,
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| Posted: 31 Oct 2020 07:03 PM PDT So I have an app with some user base and really want to make it better. Found out some bottlenecks, but that's that. When I ask my customers, they don't really know, how to improve the product, so I need to find the answer in the data. Demographics etc. doesn't help, I somehow need to get into my users' subconsciousness xD and find out, where their dedication lessens. There should be a solution - would love an advice. What are your ideas? How do you solve this problem in you startup? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Oct 2020 08:26 PM PDT Please no answers like - Courage, Focus etc. I learnt BMC(business model canvas) and other basic stuff a year back. In a year this is what i did. Think of a pain which i felt. Fill all the blocks in BMC. Bought a domain corresponding mail box, hosting. Learnt frontend, backend just to be able to develop my idea into an web app. Now this is having aroung 300 registered users. 100 users per day. Earned 0 penny through it.(custom ads) I just don't know what to do. [link] [comments]  |
| California LLC - what to do about ownership stakes Posted: 31 Oct 2020 05:10 PM PDT After having talked to a successful founder and based on our finance needs - we're self-funded/scrappy - my co-founder and I have decided to go with a California LLC for now. However, we have a couple of people who have joined us and are working for free (we're a long way off from launching, at least 6 months), in the expectation that we'll give them stock , if this things goes anywhere. (We offered ownership stake, a contracting fee or a mix and all went for a stake) Anyway, we'd like to repay their trust and give them a stake in our LLC - our lawyer has suggested the following options : Option 1 : You can issue them units in the company, which would enable them to share in profits downstream; however, they would then own equity in the company, which means they would receive a K-1 from the company rather than being W-2 employees. Also, typically, if they leave the company downstream, there is a "buy-out" provision which would permit the company to purchase the interests at termination. Option 2 *A second method of accomplishing this is through phantom equity. With phantom equity, the employees are provided with a contract right which would allow them to participate in any liquidation proceeds of the company (i.e., if the company sells, they get to share in the proceeds). This is purely a contract right, not equity in the company, so they wouldn't receive K-1s (they would be W-2 employees). There is also a typically a provision which states that if they terminate their employment, and the termination isn't for cause, then their right to participate in liquidation proceeds diminishes over time, and fully expire after a specific period of time. There is no buy-out, and this protects them from a potential risk that they get fired immediately prior to a liquidation event occurring. * I'm a little worried that option 2 may mean we'd have to pay them minimum wage. Any thoughts or suggestions or should we just go the Delaware corporation route and get it over with. Option 3 may mean we just incorporate and start a vesting schedule ? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Oct 2020 06:23 AM PDT We're thinking about getting out an iOS app in the foreseeable future for our tool. So far it's only webapp / desktop. Straightforward freemium model What is your experience with the 30% fee apple takes for all in-app purchases? Is there a way around by not bringing up any premium features / any mention of premium on the app? Been reading about it and seeing some conflicting opinions Thx [link] [comments]  |
| How do you deal with the rejection? Posted: 31 Oct 2020 06:09 AM PDT We launched our MVP in July (been working on it for about 2 years) and though just that, an MVP, the market has validated our solution. I've applied to/for several programs/accelerators/schools/seed funding etc and the rejections are bearing heavy on me. I've been applying from ideation) I know that from several applications only a few will land but knowing that does not seem to make the sting any less painful. Any advice on how to deal with this? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 Oct 2020 06:05 AM PDT Welcome to this week's Sunday's Success Stories Thread. A lot of us get way too hung up on the destination and the fact that we are not there yet. It is important to take a moment to reflect on a great quote from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., "The steps you take don't need to be big, they just need to take you in the right direction"- Jemma Simmons This is extremely relevant to all of us in this community. We should all be more aware of the successes we achieve every day that carry us closer to our goals. Celebrating these successes, no matter how small they are, allow us to stay motivated, focused, and happy while we struggle to achieve dreams of various sizes. The purpose of this thread is to share our successes from the week with one another and have something to celebrate together. So, let us know what successes you have achieved this week! Nothing is too small or insignificant! #Because this is meant to be a safe place to support emotional and physical health there is a zero tolerance policy in effect. Be KIND. Be sure to report any conduct that is in violation of that key tenet. You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord. [link] [comments]  |
| What Would Be Fair Equity to Request For An Employee? Posted: 31 Oct 2020 04:21 AM PDT UK here. I have worked part-time minimum wage (3 days/week) for a small but interesting company since 2016. A lot of packing boxes, cleaning shop floors and dealing with shitty customers however also a lot of high-skill stuff - for example I made custom coded the ecommerce store (extremely fast, high converting), made our shipping system and take care of the digital marketing. After the founder I am employee No.3 (No.2 left year and a bit ago) and have been with the company at least two years longer than anyone else... now there are 5 employees who take care of customer support/packing. During that time I've helped with the growth of our ecommerce website. Because I've had control of both the technical and marketing sides I've been able to grow online revenue to where it accounts for at least 2 thirds of revenue and this year we are looking to top £2m in sales through the website alone (exponential growth). Total revenue to top 3m. TL;DR: The owner recently has given me a raise from minimum wage at £8.50/hr to £12/hr. He knows it's not much (I think it's great and I understand the tight margins and costs). He wants me to go full time at £12/hour. Unless I have more incentive I would rather explore other options. I would either like to be paid comission on sales or get equity in the business. As the margins are tight and every penny is needed for competitive growth I would rather have a stake in the business and plough comission back into growth (he has mentioned selling). I have no financial risk involved in the business and the owner has shouldered all the finances. At the same time he would be nowhere near where he is without my help at this point. I am not sure what a fair percentages would be in compensation for continuing to be paid under market value. I am thinking about proposing a 5% stake with room to go down to 2.5%. I am also not sure how to communicate to him that if I did have a stake in the company I would be more motivated to work on growth and stratagies in my free time. Interested know how to best approach this with the owner. [link] [comments]  |
| I'm confident in my start-up. Need help on how to get a loan or should I just use credit cards. Posted: 31 Oct 2020 07:16 AM PDT I need $10k to $20k to finance my start-up. Let's just assume that I will be successful and I will get investors on-board once I create a demo of my product. Is there a way to get a loan without any credit history or current income or assets? If not should I just take out a bunch of credit cards? Once we get investors to invest could I add my debt to the proposed budget? Thanks for any help. [link] [comments]  |
| Finding people for market research Posted: 31 Oct 2020 04:15 AM PDT I see a lot of posts that (quite rightly) say to validate your market before you even begin to make anything; talk to potential customers and ask them about their problems. What I'm wondering is how to find people in the first place. If I was making a video game it would be easy, there are loads of gaming forums where I could talk to people, but let's say I'm making some new device that would save car manufacturers money. Who do I go to then? There isn't a Reddit community for that kind of thing, and I doubt Facebook ads would work. I also couldn't just pick up the phone and call people, who would I call? Or maybe I'm making a new saas that would be of interest to people in digital marketing, again where do I start looking? I'm sure there is a simple solution to this and I'm just missing the obvious, but any help here is appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| CRM for small web development company Posted: 31 Oct 2020 03:21 AM PDT I run a small web development company and the last couple of years we have been growing to a point that it is becoming overwhelming to manage a few small issues which add up and we're not as efficient as we could be. The team is expanding and I want us to address these issues asap so we don't lose time or money over small things that can be easily fixed. The main issue is regarding client management and I believe a good CRM software would really help us and that's what I'm looking for your advice on. What would be very important for us, besides the actual CRM, are:
Most of our clients, after the web development, end up hosting with us or we provide them with maintenance, both of these services are based on either monthly or yearly fees. As the number of clients add up, it keeps getting harder to keep track of when a client needs to pay, whether he has already paid. So it would be essential for us that the CRM solution keeps track of recurring clients, ideally sends an automatic email (monthly or yearly) letting the client know payment is due and we can then check it as paid.
This one is not a must-have, but also very important (not sure if it's standard in most CRM solutions). For leads handling, it would be nice to have automatic follow-up emails a couple of days after a proposal is sent. For those of you more experienced in software development companies and CRM, we'd love to hear your feedback and also any advice you may have on scaling client management. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
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