Startups Staying sane as an executive in hypergrowth |
- Staying sane as an executive in hypergrowth
- Building a framework / website for sharing ideas
- Conversion numbers for B2C software products and influencer campaigns vs traditional ads?
- I have an product idea that involves the participation of another company. Is it possible?
- How should I decide how much I need to raise at pre-seed round for SaaS?
- I'm being asked to help create a property management startup as its CEO. Can't find much on CEO negotiations; what are some reasonable models to think about in this situation? (Texas)
- Working for a Chaotic Startup with Two Conflicting Owners - Thoughts/Advice?
- Selling before you have a product ready?
- Best revenue planning and reporting tools for enterprise SaaS
- Selling online, how to handle VAT/duties/import for different countries
- This is why self-awareness in business is key!
- How to motivate potential users to use a website that looks for protecting the environment (green project in farm sector)?
- Made $135k my first year - What's next?
- How do you find potential customers willing to be sat down and interviewed about their problems?
- Early adopters for a new startup is hard
- Payment processor recommendation for a startup?
- Building Scalable Ventures & your (poor) likelihood of success
- How to charge clients for my work?
| Staying sane as an executive in hypergrowth Posted: 03 Jan 2021 11:48 AM PST Growth is cool, but also exhausting. The absolute number of fires grows with time as does complexity. I've made it a habit to ask my execs not only about business performance but also how they're taking care of their mental wellbeing. You can only push >100% for a time but burnout is real and is often a bigger problem than underperformance due to incompetence. If you're a CEO or C-level exec I strongly recommend considering the 50% rule (originally there was a link here) and strong support networks (including coaching) but the risk of burnout is still big. How do you hang on to the rocket ship? I give these three pieces of advice. Give up the martyr complex. Director+ leaders often forget that they're not player-coaches anymore and let themselves dive into managing tactical day to day issue. While you can and should be part of your team's bench and operational buffer as well as an escalation path, those occurrences must be few and far between. Hire a deep bench. As Jason Lemkin says – if you reach the end of the week and you're exhausted, you're missing at least one VP-level hire. Great leaders are great because they build great teams and delegate, not because they do a lot with little, especially in high growth environments. Renegotiate operating mechanism. Shit will hit the fan and you will be pulled into situations you didn't create and will have to apologize for. Giving up direct impact to increase your span of control is part of the job. What you should do is negotiate operating mechanisms – OKRs, frequency of meetings, dashboards and what they track – to keep yourself aware of the state of the business. It's also ok to obsess over these things as long as that obsession doesn't translate into micromanaging two levels down because you didn't like the daily change in a KPI. By now you probably know, managing in high growth is unintuitive. Learning from others, then giving yourself the space to learn and reflect, are critical for your and your team's success. [link] [comments]  |
| Building a framework / website for sharing ideas Posted: 04 Jan 2021 01:42 AM PST Hi, new person here. I'd like to build a website/community where the structure of the site itself specifically facilitates innovation, but would like feedback on how I've structured it so far. The basic premise is this:
The long-term plan here is to build a repository of ideas, problems and realizations, and then let the community identify and propose new and interesting linkages so that existing problems can be solved in novel ways using other existing ideas/realizations. I'm not sure exactly who the target audience is, but I could see it appealing to the startup community, academics looking for inspiration for new research avenues and just about everyone looking to share and find life hacks. I've tried to document this concept in a little more detail here: https://www.portnovel.com/idea/online-platform-sharing-ideas-and-implementations (this is a post on the site prototype itself, which can be seen here.). I'm acutely aware that I'm by no means an expert in how the innovative process even works, other than having had my own experiences trying to come up with novel software solutions and seeing some succeed and others fail. If it starts to see some traffic, I'm ultimately hoping to use a "meta" topic on the site to iteratively improve the functionality (by letting the community propose problems and ideas with the site), but I thought I'd start by asking communities like this about whether this structure even makes sense as a way of documenting and assisting the innovative process. And if not, what would make it better? [link] [comments]  |
| Conversion numbers for B2C software products and influencer campaigns vs traditional ads? Posted: 03 Jan 2021 08:36 PM PST We're considering driving some sales via running influencer campaigns on Youtube. We just launched our first one and got a few sales but the conversion isn't super high. Like 0.25 % in terms of total views of the video. But still I think that the numbers could be stable as some of the influencer view counts have something like 100k views and we'd end up making like $20k LTV on the acquisition so if we paid $5-7k or so for the video I think it would be a good deal. Obviously it varies by product but I'm curious what a typical B2C app marketed via social media influencer campaign conversion looks like. Are there any decent public stats on this? Usually everyone hides them. [link] [comments]  |
| I have an product idea that involves the participation of another company. Is it possible? Posted: 03 Jan 2021 10:18 PM PST I have a product that involves a company who has a software that is purely user driven and they could benefit from it without any harm. I only need their permission to make an app version of their software. Firstly, Is this a smart idea? Is it possible to make a prototype and pitch it to them or will the fact that a startup with relatively no experience be shot down instantly? [link] [comments]  |
| How should I decide how much I need to raise at pre-seed round for SaaS? Posted: 03 Jan 2021 08:53 PM PST I am a bit confused about this. Should you raise as much as you can or Should it based on financial projections? Because discounting tech cost and salaries, for most new companies there needs to be a big piece for customer acquisition. For which you would likely have to do experiments of what works and what doesn't (ads, offers etc). So how does one go about putting a number on it? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jan 2021 01:19 PM PST My background is mostly Fortune 500s in consulting and mid-level management. My focus is on aligning people/systems/tech to growth/revenue goals. For the past year I'm VP of IT at another early-stage startup and making a reasonable salary and a small equity %; I've had a lot of success in my domain but the org is stagnating and I sense the founders are losing interest. Two guys I know are asking me to join as CEO to create and grow a not-yet-existing property management company. They are the board, I'm the employee: haven't gotten into specifics yet but my guess is they are going to highly overvalue their future equity and try to make a modest % be a substantial part of my compensation. They've said they can bring 500 units in the next 6 months (including their own) which would be very foundational. I don't know what else what they are bringing yet in terms of money or resources. I am comfortable describing the value I'd bring / walking away from this if it doesn't feel favorable, but I'd love to know more about some models that are common in this scenario to help me evaluate and negotiate their offer. Do startups bring a CEO to help found the business but not treat/compensate them as a co-founder? Is that common? Reasonable to ask for an equal cut as the founders? etc... [link] [comments]  |
| Working for a Chaotic Startup with Two Conflicting Owners - Thoughts/Advice? Posted: 03 Jan 2021 12:24 PM PST Hi everyone, I am just looking for your thoughts. About a year ago I took a job with a startup that is a couple years old. There are two owners who own the company in a 50/50 split (which I have since learned is not typically the best setup). I am basically just a low-paid admin assistant to both of them. Overall, the startup has been very successful in my area and they have gained a massive client base. The owners and their staff are quite good at their specific skill. However, I have learned that they have very little, if any, actual business savvy and it is very challenging to work in between them. I know the "best" solution is for me to quit this job and leave. However, the reason I am asking for your thoughts here is because my job with them is work-from-home, which means that I am protected from COVID. I can also set my own schedule and have a fair amount of freedom. I don't like the job, and I am finding it increasingly tedious and mentally draining dealing with all of their drama and bizarre behavior, but I am trying to weigh that with having to find a different job in the middle of coronavirus. So, I'm hoping you might be able to help me get a little clarity. Here are some of the things I have been dealing with:
So, based on what I shared above, what are your thoughts on this situation? Can you see any reason whatsoever why I should stick this out for much longer, or is there anything you think I could do on my end to make this more workable? From a more objective business standpoint, have you ever seen/experienced anything like this? Is this common in startups with multiple owners? Apologies for the long length of this post. I appreciate any and all thoughts/advice you want to give. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Selling before you have a product ready? Posted: 03 Jan 2021 12:35 PM PST Hello, I am looking for some advice/best practice please for how to sell your SaaS product before it has been built. Or indeed whether I should be trying to sell before the product has even been built. Background: Product is a B2B/Enterprise web application to allow financial institutions to more efficiently manage their corporate documents. I have a high fidelity clickable prototype of the product that I have been using to validate the idea and iterate the features over the past few months (by talking to people in my network that I believe also have the problem I am looking to solve). Questions: What can I reasonably expect in terms of gaining letters of intent/commitment from potential B2B/Enterprise customers? What does this conversation look like when I don't even have a product? How important is it to do this at this stage? I have already mom tested the product with 25-30 contacts. Should I be cold calling/emailing potential customers (outside my network) trying to sell them the product with a sales deck + prototype? I am concerned that I might burn a sales opportunity with these sorts of customers by not actually having a product yet. I do not want to give away the product for free, I want to charge customers from day 1, is this the right approach in any conversations I have with potential customers now (with only the prototype to show)? My initial pricing model aims to be charing users £150-250 per user per month. My concern with giving it away for free (even if just to initial early adopters) is that I won't be proving there is a paying market for the product. I am also keen to generate revenue asap (default not dead). Issues: I am not technical and am currently searching for a technical partner to build the product, I am therefore unsure of when it will be ready for any customers who do signal some sort of commitment. Am concerned this could lead to loss of momentum with sales process. The documents and data I am asking potential customers to migrate to my platform are very sensitive, and so data security has been a main point of concern in conversations. There is also an issue around GDPR etc. Some of the people I have spoken to have said "yes we are interested, provided the final product meets our security requirements". Further info: I am UK based and initial customers will be in London/Jersey/Guernsey. I have personal experience of the problem I am trying to solve (having previously worked in the financial sector for a number of years) so already have quite a strong conviction that there is market for what I am building. But obviously am conscious of trying to validate idea as much as possible before spending £££ on development. Very grateful for any thoughts/advice. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Best revenue planning and reporting tools for enterprise SaaS Posted: 03 Jan 2021 06:59 AM PST We have bespoke contract terms: some clients are pay as you go, others switch on and off their usage of the product, others pay a fixed monthly fee. Average contract size is $5K/mo+, and we've got a bunch of these and hope to add 100 more in the next year. I need a good way of tracking and forecasting the revenue from these. Is there an off the shelf tool like an Anaplan, or are there good best practices in excel + a DB? Would love some pointers on what kind of software to look for and how to get some clarity on this. [link] [comments]  |
| Selling online, how to handle VAT/duties/import for different countries Posted: 03 Jan 2021 04:21 AM PST I have a product I'm planning to sell from an online store. The product is a small device I buy for cheap from China, flash with some custom firmware, add some nice packaging and instructions and then sell on. I am based in Hong Kong but my customers will potentially be located all over the world. I'm wondering how I find out what VAT, duties, taxes, etc I need to pay for each customers country? It seems quite time consuming to investigate what's required for each individual country when I get a new customer. For example, if someone in Ecuador buys my product then I need to investigate what paperwork is required for Ecuador, and possibly this information won't be easy to find in english. How is this process usually handled by smaller web stores? I'm very new to this whole process so any advice is appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| This is why self-awareness in business is key! Posted: 03 Jan 2021 12:10 AM PST It's one of those days... You're looking at all the things you have to do, start thinking of one, and you're starting to get ideas. Then you remember you have to send an invoice, set up a meeting, or delegate a task to a colleague. But first, you have to post on social media or reply to an important customer. In a matter of minutes, you started 20 things in your head. All important. But did none. Moreover, you haven't yet decided which one to focus on next. I wish I could replace the word(s) self-awareness with something cozier. Less philosophical. More familiar. I won't. You need to get this as it is. Early in my career, someone told me: "Aristotel, you need to develop an urgency, you need to move fast in the office. Run between people's desks. Show people that you're on fire and get stuff done." It may be true for some, but it wasn't good for me. I got used to doing things that don't matter that much, just to get things done. I just couldn't do both! Do what matters the most, and do it fast. And no one ever tells you to stop and be self-aware. Do you ever dream that you're flying? Like a bird? I do sometimes. It's the most wonderful feeling. Close your eyes, stop what you're doing. For 5 minutes hear yourself asking, smiling, hoping, sobbing. Self-awareness is all about knowing what you don't know. When you're overwhelmed, getting angry, discouraged, take five and ask these 5 questions:
If you want to feel light and become resilient, become aware of what happens in you. Take 5 minutes and ask these 5 questions. Even better, ask yourself those questions when you feel light and resilient too. So you can attract more of what made that happen for you. Go change lives! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jan 2021 02:05 AM PST This is only an idea, I haven't developed anything at this moment, but I have been thinking and discussing about this for the whole last year. The objective of this project is to help in the task of reducing methane emissions, concretely I focused on farms. The aim of the project is to connect farmers with biogas companies, so the manure (waste generated by animals such as pigs or cows) can be used to generate clean energy (biogas), instead of being storaged (in that case, the methane shall be released to the atmosphere, and that is a well-known contamination problem). The main point of the idea is to organize farms subscribed to the same biogas plant within each small region, so the transport would collect the manure from farms near the plant and would deliver it there in order to generate biogas. The main issue found here is that the farmers won't be motivated to register to this service, even if they help to take care of the environment by doing this (generating clean energy, helping biogas companies to create more plants, and reducing the amount of methane released). Honestly, I do think they won't find any direct benefit (even if they are helping the environment), because I am not adding any real value for them. They wouldn't obtain discounts for supplies for instance. The only way I have found to "motivate" the farmers to register is to also allow them to do business within the platform (such as post ads, bargain between farmers that are not near enough to negotiate face to face, or let company supplies to register there too). It would be like a professional network but oriented to their sector (i.e. startups, companies, farmers would be able to exchange products, services or feedback even if they are maybe too far to talk face-to-face). How would you motivate potential users to use green solutions, even if they don't obtain a direct benefit from it? Thanks for reading! [link] [comments]  |
| Made $135k my first year - What's next? Posted: 02 Jan 2021 03:40 PM PST About 30k Net with an asset worth $12k (total is 30% net). Majority of my expenses is the cost of drivers (I run a logistic and distribution company). I am the only employee and I grew it by cold calling companies. I'm partnered with a competitor to subcontract, allowing me to scale rapidly. Thinking of hiring an assistant, somewhat someone who can do what I do to delegate the operations and account managing tasks while I focus on sales. Today, most of my time is spent running the business, not getting new clients. I'll be calling bigger leads, potentially closing clients bringing $5k to $40k per month each (my clients are under contracts and give me work almost every day). What revenue could I aim for this year? Also, how much of that 30k would you invest back in hires? Monthly profit is about $3k. Let's all strive together, thank you for your help! [link] [comments]  |
| How do you find potential customers willing to be sat down and interviewed about their problems? Posted: 02 Jan 2021 06:46 PM PST Hi, Running a fledgling startup here. Were trying to find product market fit, but are B2B, and have a hard time figuring out how to schedule meetings with people who might need what we have to sell. Most guides just assume you have 30+ interviews lined up with potential customers and inform you about how it should go. We already know what to ask. We would talk to our users, but we basically have none to talk to, which is what we're investigating in the first place. We know we don't have product market fit because we've spent hundreds of dollars on advertising, LinkedIn InMailed dozens of potential clients, cold called, etc., and haven't had one scheduled meeting yet. But we don't really know why because there are no conferences going on right now where we could approach and physically arrest the people that we thought would be interested. How do you actually get this done? Do we have to offer people money to speak with us? [link] [comments]  |
| Early adopters for a new startup is hard Posted: 02 Jan 2021 01:30 PM PST Hi, I'm in the stage of trying a side project and I want to validate the project. However, finding early users is harder than I thought. I'm curious what can I do? The project involves trying a different solution to an existing problem (shopping online). It is a double-sided market (I understand this is harder). Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Payment processor recommendation for a startup? Posted: 02 Jan 2021 02:33 PM PST We are working in a niche and building a marketplace for two parties. We are struggling to find the right payment processor. Our Use case: 1. Party A and B get into contract and decide on fix amount for a service delivery. Service delivery can happen after couple of month.
We spoke to stripe but they do not support escrow kind of payment, they release all payments in 7 days to either seller or buyer. Any suggestion? Thank you all in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Building Scalable Ventures & your (poor) likelihood of success Posted: 02 Jan 2021 01:53 PM PST from the perspective of a startup studio 95% of new scalable ventures fail in the first 5 years Why is one venture able to scale and the other doomed to fail? What is required to increase your likelihood of success, whether that is with a small startup or a large corporate? The general consensus seems to be that if you apply the right methodology (Lean startup, Growth Hacking, Design thinking, Agile, etc, etc) success will knock on your front door with the blink of an eye. Unfortunately and not surprisingly reality seems to be a bit different. So, the question is what can a (co-)founder do to reach (financial) success? The first thing to call out is that there is never a guarantee for success in absolute terms. In the best case you can only influence the "likelihood of success". Because data is still telling us that 90 out of a 100 new ventures will not survive the first 5 years after incorporation. So how can we beat the staggering odds of survival of just 5%? In the part below we will describe what we have learned from our own experience in building multiple new ventures in our own studio and what we have learned from other venture studio's. We call these the "Venture Building Success enablers". Again, even if you manage all these enablers extremely well, at best you will only increase your likelihood of success. So still no guarantee, but you will be more likely to outrun the odds. 1. Venture Idea: Of course an important part of the likelihood of success is the actual venture idea which you are trying to bring to the world. Does the idea address a real and sizable problem? And is the solution you are offering significantly better than existing solutions? Through fast and early real market experimentations (even before having a working prototype) we try to gain insight on the desirability of the product and learn from the market feedback. The key is not to fall in love with your idea, (this happens too often), but with the customer problem which you are trying to solve. 2. Industry maturity/lifecycle: The timing of your idea and maturity of the industry you are in, is crucial to its success. Is it a blue ocean or will you have to compete with many others with comparable offerings? On the other hand if you are too far out and too early and have to create a new market all by yourself, it can also be a significant hurdle.Therefore picking the right industry at the right time can significantly increase the likelihood of success of your idea. 3. Methodology: What is your process to create a product from initial ideation through go to market and later on scaling? How do you minimize waste in terms of time and money and optimize learning. As said there are many partly overlapping methodologies, which are providing a very solid framework to create a new product, such as "Lean Startup", Design Thinking, Agile and many others. The best read recommendation we have on this topic is "Inspired" Marty Cagan. This will help you to get the most important process elements in place. 4. Funding: Access to capital remains a very important enabler, applied in the right manner, it will give you time to learn and acquire the right capabilities. However it is also very important to find the right type of funding at the right moment. This is called "Metered Funding": Funding based on actual progress. Many high potential ventures have failed as a result of a mismatch between actual progress and funding. Too much money at an early stage can make a team sluggish and delay the time to market as there is no real (financial) need to push the team and product. That is why a critical component of a strong venture building ecosystem is the availability of (smart) capital. Oh, btw, never ever a bank loan in the early life of a venture. Just not the right instrument in the beginning. 5. Co-founders capabilities: The co-founding team needs to have relevant capabilities and experience, relevant to the product and the industry. If you are building a software product, you want to have an experienced software developer and somebody who knows the industry. Also it is very important to have a diverse and complementary set of capabilities in your team, with team members who think differently so that the likelihood of a blind spot is diminished. However, the most important capability of any founder is effectiveness in whatever the specialization maybe. Is the co-founder able to turn an idea into reality whilst overcoming hurdles on its way. Looking at the different capabilities, what you normally want to have in your team is 1) a designer who dives into the customer experience, 2) An engineer who builds the product. 3) A person who can bring the product to market. Of course a slightly different set of capabilities can also do the job. 6. Team Dynamics: You can have a very capable co-founding team with deep expertise, but without the right team dynamics it just will not work. As building a new scalable venture is an extremely difficult and demanding journey, it is imperative that the people in the bus have a strong team dynamic. This means a team which is challenging each other continuously, can have strong conflicts while maintaining mutual respect, trust and camaraderie. The characteristics we seek in teams are: humbleness, integrity and trust, directness and openness, action orientation and pleasure in working together. Everybody needs to be "all in". From ideation to design to development it all requires the full engagement of all team members. An also important topic to address here is the equity split, which in our view needs to be effort and value based. 7. Energy & Execution: As the saying goes "Execution eats Strategy for breakfast". Even if you have the most perfect Idea with an even better applied methodology, if you do not have the stamina and grit to drive your idea each and every day, find new solutions for every unexpected problem, it will never work. Energy and Execution power is the fuel of any idea and team. A great idea without enough energy and commitment from the founders will always fail. However, a terrible idea fueled by the energy of a group of extremely resilient co-founders, might somehow against all odds succeed. Energy fuels everything. That is why for us this one is the most important enabler. A very nice read on this topic is "the hard thing about hard things" by Ben Horrowitz In Conclusion: Building a scalable venture is a very difficult journey. Although there are no guarantees, we do believe that the "Venture Building Success Enablers" can increase your likelihood of success. Hopefully this will help you a bit with your journey. Good luck and lets us know your feedback on the above. [link] [comments]  |
| How to charge clients for my work? Posted: 02 Jan 2021 09:25 AM PST I am developer hoping to develop mobile apps, web apps for clients directly. But I do not have a clear understanding of how much to charge for my services? I know price varies on the project requirements but how could I
How to avoid overcharging or undercharging? Charging based on the project or no. hours spent? If there are any developers who work as independent freelancers please share your thoughts. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
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