Startups Weekly Feedback and Support Thread |
- Weekly Feedback and Support Thread
- You need to study your competition.
- App is about to launch! What do I do now??
- EU grants and funding
- How to Recruit and Pay Employees for a Startup
- Scared of failing (again)
- How did you make ends meet?
- C Corp Question - When do you have to introduce a Board of Directors and pay yourself?
- NFC Payment Business
- Looking for a BI solution for my users
- So I have some data, how do I draw the correct conclusions?
- How the hell do I handle shipping on a multi-sided platform?
- B2B - How to sell to sporting clubs and high-schools?
- Creating a partnership with the company
- Someone offered my website an autoclicker service to drive traffic and ad clicks - is this legit?
- Advice on exercising large number of options at a startup?
- How do I pick myself back up?
| Weekly Feedback and Support Thread Posted: 30 Nov 2020 03:06 AM PST Create something? Let's see it! Feedback or Support RequesterPlease use the following format:
Post your site along with your stack and technologies used and receive feedback from the community. Please refrain from just posting a link and instead give us a bit of a background about your creation. Feel free to request general feedback or specific feedback in a certain area like user experience, usability, design, or code review. Feel free to request support with hiring talent, finding a job/clients, recruiting a co-founder, getting your pitch deck made, or anything objective based that is specific to your startup. You can also receive advice and feedback in instant chat using the /r/startups discord. Feedback Providers
Support Providers
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| You need to study your competition. Posted: 29 Nov 2020 11:44 PM PST Hey Guys, As we all know, studying our competition is necessary, and one of the most important things to study is their ad strategy. You can understand a lot about their messaging, creative and funnel strategy when you look at their ads. Here's a simple way to understand what your competition is doing in terms of their ad strategy:-
This will help you learn from them, get creative ideas, and actually do things better than what they are doing. I've done this for multiple businesses, across various industries, and this always saves me money (and time) to test things, especially in the initial stages. [link] [comments]  |
| App is about to launch! What do I do now?? Posted: 29 Nov 2020 01:55 PM PST Hi all, So after 6 months of work, my app is finished and just passed the first beta test. Also, the website is done and ready to go. I am planning a soft launch in my city to 1000 people in target neighbourhoods with a flyer campaign (cost $550) in one week. Now I'm not sure what happens next. I want to begin advertising and marketing but the budget is only about $500/month. At launch I'm doing a flyer campaign, so that's December's budget, but I would like to do something every day to help the business. An Instagram or Twitter account seem over saturated and not particularly relevant to what I'm doing. Do writing medium articles make sense? I could certainly write every week about the journey of creating a start-up as a solo-developer also working full-time during a pandemic. Does anyone even read those? I know Gary Vee says just make content, but making *relevant* and meaningful content seems more useful than just filling up the digital landscape with words. Should I be reaching out to local papers and online magazines? I would think it would be too early for that. My personal network honestly is not very supportive so I doubt I would get much traction there. So the question is: How can I promote my start-up every day in a relevant way? Any perspectives would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2020 10:03 AM PST Hi everyone, did any European founder get grants from the EU recently? I discovered that there was a program called Horizon 2020 that ended recently that had 80 billion euros budget! I was in the EU websites looking for some contact information to inquire if my project could have been eligible for grants or equity funding but can't find any way to contact the right department that deals with startups. [link] [comments]  |
| How to Recruit and Pay Employees for a Startup Posted: 29 Nov 2020 06:16 PM PST I've currently decided to get more serious about something I've always wanted to do, open an indie game development company that also does a bit of animation. I have a decent amount of skill and experience in programming, but for the kinds of ideas/projects I have in mind, I will need quite a bit of help. I was thinking that I could accomplish this with a good team, but I am unsure of how I could start a company that can pay for things like artists and a fellow programmer. A main strategy I have thought about and read about is starting the company as a contractor that does paid jobs for customers and using the fees we would charge in order to pay employees before eventually graduating to creating our own original projects. The only issues would be is how I would get employees to start helping me work these contracts and how I would pay them in the initial stages before we get customers. Would I pay potential employees with money I would have saved up initially or is there something I am missing that someone more knowledgeable could inform me of? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2020 07:01 PM PST I am days away from launching my second marketplace website. The first (over the summer) was poorly built, but had a good deal of interest from vendors, with several signing up and listing products. I never put much effort into the site/business because there were so many problems with my website, and eventually it just fell to the wayside. Now, I have a new and improved website/brand that is 1000 times better than before. Currently, I am finishing my site and talking to vendors, some of whom I worked with on the last project. I was surprised they showed interest in me and my new product being that the last was such a train wreck (bad platform, no sales). Once the site is live, all I have to do is maintain it and promote it online. I have social media accounts totaling about 200 followers between them. Keep in mind, I am a one man show, and have little to no budget for marketing. I would love more than anything to hire an experienced marketing agency, but sadly this is not feasible at this time. I will have to promote it myself, which could prove to be quite the challenge. Finding vendors is not that hard, however driving buyers to the site seems rather difficult. How can I overcome my fears and deliver an amazing service to my vendors, as well as customers? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2020 11:33 AM PST How did you make ends meet while starting up? Hey folks! Longtime lurker, first time poster. I'm in the process of starting a custom home office furniture brand. It's been challenging but rewarding, and I'm feeling confident in our launch plan. Happy to follow up with more details, but what I'm interested in hearing about is how you paid the bills during those early business days? I lost my job earlier this year due to COVID which has paved the way for me to finally focus on entrepreneurial pursuits. I've struggled to find a consistent side-gig to stanch the bleeding from my savings and was wondering if anyone here had experience or insight they could share. A little about me: I'm an organized generalist with experience across all of the standard CRMs, office suites, project management platforms, and marketing tools. I'm also a pretty decent handyman and carpenter hobbyist. Before COVID I was managing a small community outreach team in NY for a renewable energy a startup. [link] [comments]  |
| C Corp Question - When do you have to introduce a Board of Directors and pay yourself? Posted: 29 Nov 2020 11:57 AM PST I am planning to launch a small pilot with my MVP soon (still a side hobby) and want to incorporate the company on Clerky prior to this launch. I've read that when you start a C Corp that you need to:
Is this really needed for someone in my situation who is just launching the prototype of their new side hustle? I really just want to launch ASAP to start getting feedback. I don't want to rush into getting a board of directors because that just seems like a bad idea. And obviously I cannot pay myself being that the company is not making money. Am I making the wrong decision in starting this company as a C Corp? I would need investments down the road... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2020 09:02 PM PST Hey guys, My question could sound silly and I am sorry for that :) I want to start a NFC payment getaway business. How can I do that and where should I start? Is this something only big guys can do it or a small start up can do this as well? Thanks so much! [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for a BI solution for my users Posted: 29 Nov 2020 08:49 PM PST Hello - I am working on a case management project that is similar to salesforce. How it works is that the users would upload the data needed about their customers, and my site would create profiles of each of my user's customers for their review. I would really like to add a BI (Business Intelligence) feature to the site which will give my users more insight into their customer base, but I don't really have the resources to build a whole BI solution, so purchasing one might be an alternative I am willing to explore Any recommendations for an out-of-box solution? It would be great if it was a start-up from this forum, but I won't be picky. Thanks in advance for your thoughts. [link] [comments]  |
| So I have some data, how do I draw the correct conclusions? Posted: 29 Nov 2020 05:56 AM PST Hi there, So I have a mobile app idea but I want to validate my idea before starting development. I also want to build up a mailing list so I can ask people for feedback right away. The app would be free but ad based. My strategy To see if people are interested I would buy some social ads, redirect them to a landing page and try to convince them to click on "Get Access". Having setup Google Analytics and tracking how many times people click on the "Get Access" button would give me some insights. When users click on that CTA they will see a form where I tell the user that we are still working on the app and that they can subscribe to stay up to date. Question But now I'm wondering how you guys define the bar needed to start the next phase, I don't want to focus on the click ratio of the social ads because an ad just gives a glimpse of the concept. So what is a good ratio of people visiting the landing page vs people clicking on the call to action? Is 2% enough, should it be 10% or more? I'm reading a lot about how you can apply strategies to validate or look for product-market fit, but for someone with no experience, it is hard to draw the correct conclusions. I also know it's not black and white but I'd love some tips. I'm funding this project out of my own pocket, so I don't really have money to go to multiple marketeers or strategists. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How the hell do I handle shipping on a multi-sided platform? Posted: 29 Nov 2020 08:27 AM PST Hello everybody, I run a network of Instagram pages around custom and slow fashion and as of recently, I expanded this into a website, Wix website to be precise. I get product info and photos from designers, upload them on the website, promote it, sell it, regular stuff. There are some other cool features that are not relevant to this, hit me up if you wanna know more. I am obviously facing a lot of limitations by using Wix for something like this, but it's what I have to work with now. My question is, while this is multi-sided, designers selling to customers, in theory, I am still doing everything manually. How do hell I handle shipping? To be clear, designers do the shipping. There's a purchase, I get an invoice, I send the designers money, they make an invoice, get the money and then they ship the product. How do I let my customers know this? Or I guess, how do I include shipping pricing for different products when those different products come from all over the place? Some designers are in the US, some in EU, some in Asia.... they all have different shipping rates. Is there even a way for me to calculate this for customers in my shop? Is the best way just to tell designers to put projected shipping cost into product price and classify shipping as free on my side? I will probably make the shipping labels that I can distribute to designers but I still have no idea how will it all work. If any of you have suggestions or experience on this, I would be immensely thankful and willing to give a good discount code on some unique, exclusive, and sustainable clothing! Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| B2B - How to sell to sporting clubs and high-schools? Posted: 29 Nov 2020 06:47 AM PST I have a new product that I've created for the amateur/semi-pro sporting levels that give sporting clubs an easy and convenient way to provide a large range of injury-prevention and management products that has not been done before. I'm currently overseas and unable to do in-person meetings anyway, but I am wondering in a B2B setting where I have to sell to sporting clubs and high schools, what is the best way to get my foot in the door with these entities? It is really difficult with both sporting clubs and high schools to identify the 'decision-maker', aka the person at these places who would actually make the purchase of these products. High schools and clubs are also notorious for having 'generic' emails available which basically means they go to a receptionist/volunteer for clubs and likely get ignored. Does anyone have any ideas as to the best way to make contact with these sorts of organisations and what an effective method to get started trying to make sales might be? [link] [comments]  |
| Creating a partnership with the company Posted: 29 Nov 2020 01:43 PM PST I, like many others who have posted on this subreddit, has created a product and a SaaS business. My team and I will release our product on Product Hunt in December. We have created a scheduling assistant tool that has voice capability. This way, users and the owner can control scheduling with their voice assistants. My main concern; we are using an existing scheduler and essentially enhancing their product to have voice capability with multiple integrations. Would it be foolish to attempt and connect with the company we are enhancing their product for a potential sales opportunity this early on? Edit: What is the best timeline to contact this company? [link] [comments]  |
| Someone offered my website an autoclicker service to drive traffic and ad clicks - is this legit? Posted: 29 Nov 2020 12:59 PM PST They showed me how it worked, but basically they have a software that will repeatedly open my website, click on ads, close and refresh. And they can periodically change IP addresses as well. The thought I had was I want to drive some view metrics and clicks initially just to get a starter boost in popularity. But will this actually help, or can Google, other advertisers, etc detect this and not make it count? Thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| Advice on exercising large number of options at a startup? Posted: 29 Nov 2020 12:44 PM PST Hello r/startup. I am looking for advice on figuring out whether I should exercise my options at a startup I was an early member at. Some background on my situation. I worked at a startup for nearly 6 years as a software engineer, the last 4 of which i was deemed a cofounder and given a large sum of ISOs in exchange (it represented approximately 20% of the company at the time, probably closer to 5% now). This company never had any big VC funding, in fact the cap-table was starting to get messy with the amount of angel and seed funding we had going on (hence the dilution of my options). I have since left the company and since there was never a 409A valuation, I was given a 1 year runway to exercise my options from when the company finally got that straightened out. Well, they did the valuation and the cost is around $500K to exercise altogether (an impossible amount for me to pay off), but I believe in the company and knew of its financials from the earlier years and its on a good trajectory (we grew the team from 3 of us to 40, and became profitable my last year there). Given that I do not have the liquid cash to exercise all of them, nor could I do it with even the largest personal loans an option I have been interested in is using a fund like esofund.com (or other funds/wealthy individuals) to "buy some of my risk" in exchange for some percentage of the potential upside. The issue is I don't have the financial information for these funds. Does anyone have any advice on using a fund like this. I have reached out to my old startup asking for financials but they want me to sign an NDA and have specific financial questions ready. I'm also not entirely sure what those questions would be. Has anyone been here before? Any advice on how to value my old startup to make an informed decision would be amazing. Thanks everyone! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Nov 2020 07:23 AM PST So a few months ago I started recruiting developers for an app/website idea I had. Turned out I had basically found a pot of gold in this idea. We ran some tests and we worked directly with our target customers and they were loving our platform and the potential it had to make them money. People in my city's government even got word about it. We had people from all over the world visiting the landing page a few times a day just to read what we were going to come out with. Some were asking about potential investments and were willing to help to get a piece of the pie. For a few months I was building hype on social media while the devs were working. My devs established november as the release date for the full version. Everything was going wonderfully. Then in august I started making some ugly decisions. Long story short, I was being an a**hole. My devs were facing difficulties in their personal lives and I showed zero sympathy or support for them. Then whenever someone wasn't doing their work properly or if they made mistakes, I insulted them on a personal level. My subconscious saw them as enemies, enemies who were plotting against the success of the project. Everyone seemingly caught notice of my issues and the bad treatment they were getting and collectively dropped out of the project within the span of three days or so. Now I've spent the last three months regretting everything with a pain. I've been basically doing nothing. Just reflecting and thinking about the "what if's". It's easily the toughest punch to the face I've taken. It's so stressful because I feel that at any moment anyone could come out with a similar service and have massive success. I'm surprised no one has done it yet. It's a pretty "on-the-nose" solution to something. My budget is nonexistent. Only thing left to try is to get new devs who are okay with not getting paid and giving them ownership of the business. What do I do? [link] [comments]  |
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