Startups Why are some startup founders so unprofessional towards people who are offering their time to help? |
- Why are some startup founders so unprofessional towards people who are offering their time to help?
- Looking for a team to join my clothing brand, Higher Vision. Realized it's not smart to waste my time trying to do this by myself. Entrepreneurs/designers/anyone that can add value to Higher Vision, holler at me. Let's create something huge.
- How do you measure your contribution to your startup other than time?
- Does having an option to work remotely improve your work/life balance?
- Start Ups and Resumes and how they are perceived
- Got my first paying customers, what to do next?
- Early Employee with no salary or contract?
- Any Legalities in Posting My Pitch Video on Social Media
- Strike price for equity after 1 year of working at seed startup?
- Space Startup + Co-founder Issues
- How much equity to give for service in early stage
- The startup I just got hired at is getting acquired
- Finding a contract manufacturer to work with
- Startup on H1b (US work visa)
- Former cofounder who did nothing is claiming shares as part of a nullified vesting agreement
- How to grow the startup further?
- Small grants for UK startups?
- Cofounder won't pay legal fees
- You just raised your seed round. What should be your main priority for the next 3 months?
| Why are some startup founders so unprofessional towards people who are offering their time to help? Posted: 27 Apr 2021 11:50 AM PDT I was cold-emailed by a startup founder, and it was by far the worst 30 minute conversation I've ever had. I am a PM working in a very large healthcare enterprise who wanted to help and answer whatever questions she had. After I talked to her about what I do, she not only was disrespectful but also was condescending of my background and experience. She doubted my accomplishments, while I was offering her my time and was being completely professional. I'm not going to use this time to vent, but I would love to hear if any person can justify this. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 11:54 PM PDT I believe I have a great business model that will set us apart by miles. Without going too much into it, our business model is built on our cash giveaways and what we will do for our community. We pride ourselves on showing people that they don't have to have a mediocre life and that they can achieve their Higher Vision, whatever that may mean to them. At first we are going to start off POD until we get the capital or funding to do drops. Even while POD we still plan on doing 1 drop per month. Can explain more about all this and the giveaway in dm. Our vibe is Zumiez/Pacsun type designs with fun graphic logos and bright colors. Already have a lot of ideas for designs but don't have a designer yet. Anyway, thanks for reading, and if this sounds like a project and mission that you would love to pour your heart and soul into, and be apart of something bigger to do something good for humanity and being part of a fucking awesome virtual community, while providing sick ass designs and apparel, then holler at me. Bonus points if you're located in Austin TX! [link] [comments]  |
| How do you measure your contribution to your startup other than time? Posted: 27 Apr 2021 08:11 AM PDT I am currently using time as a goal to measure how I am contributing towards my startup with x hours a day. What do you think about this? Is there a better way to measure my input? There is an unlimited number of things to do. There is a long road ahead. How should I settings goals for making sure I am contributing the right amount? Is there a better measure outside of time? [link] [comments]  |
| Does having an option to work remotely improve your work/life balance? Posted: 28 Apr 2021 01:22 AM PDT Remote work has many benefits, but it makes it more difficult to "unplug" when done with work. When working from home, it's a lot easier to take the call from a colleague at 7 p.m. when you've already been answering their telephone calls all day. When you work and live in the same place, it's harder to create boundaries between your professional and personal life. In extreme cases, remote work can lead to someone working even more hours than when they regularly went to the office. In my company, we can work at whatever time we want, but not more than 8 hours (Overtimes are not a "cool thing" here). We have the rule to write work hours in a Slack status every morning. So if you want to reach out to someone, you can check if this person is still "at work". So I believe work remotely doesn't affect the work/life balance of our team much. And what about you? Does having an option to work remotely improve your work/life balance? [link] [comments]  |
| Start Ups and Resumes and how they are perceived Posted: 27 Apr 2021 03:22 PM PDT Hi All, So for the past 2 years i've had an idea for a web app and with covid locking us down I decided to pick up learning how to code and go at it I've built my backend using java and front end using angular. I've integrated security into it (Okta) and payments (stripe). Needless to say, I learned a lot. I've gone through the works of getting insurance to cover any unexpected issues and plan on spending a few dollars on marketing. Just to really see what it's like. I say all that to ask, is what I did actually impressive to put on a resume? I only have two users (people I know) and I never meant for my web app to replace my job it was really more or less something I wanted to do and so I feel proud. If it ever gets to the point where I can break even with hosting and what not even better. Running the app doesn't cost much so I don't mind letting it run. But is that actually an accomplishment I should put on my resume and if so how? I work more in the Project management side of things as a business analyst and scrum master and am currently looking for work. Do companies see this more as a you're not really invested in us or do they see it as a wow factor? Thanks for any advice! [link] [comments]  |
| Got my first paying customers, what to do next? Posted: 28 Apr 2021 12:33 AM PDT So I have a startup with 10k MAU and I recently launched a Premium Tier. I got a few paying customers but I'm confused on how to get more. I obviously understand that I could try to drive more users to my website but the problem is that my Premium conversions are pretty low. I guess the best thing to do would be to improve my website so that more people convert. The problem is that I have no idea what to work on to achieve that. Do you have any advice? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Early Employee with no salary or contract? Posted: 27 Apr 2021 04:54 PM PDT Hi guys, I joined a tech start-up three months ago which was co-founded by one of my good friends. When I joined, I joined with a team of 10 others. At this time the company was an idea with a logo and some very basic market research. Over the last few months, I have done a few hundred hours of work as I have been loving the team. We have developed the beginnings of a product, done plenty of market research and have been working on building a community surrounding our product for first users in a few weeks time. This has all been really great, however, recently it was clarified that we are 'early employees' who will get some stock options and potentially a starting salary in a few months if we make it to a funding round. None of us in the team have any startup experience so we don't know how these things work. I don't have a contract and the founders (my friends) have told me not to worry as they will reward each of us according to what we give to the project once we reach a series round of funding. Since the beginning, our team has constantly changed and we have gained and lost many people. We now have a total of 18 members, however, we are still developing the product and have no revenue. There is currently talk from the founders of a potential seed investment this week and I am concerned that as things start to ramp up I might not be protected without a contract of some kind? I understand that a start-up shouldn't only be about making money, but this is a lot of work and I want to make sure I am secure to be rewarded for my work on the project. We have a lot of employees for such an early stage and I am worried that a big investor would see this as a liability, will I be protected with the salary and stock options I have been verbally promised if the investor wants to cut back the team? Any advice would be great, I don't know how any of this works and don't want to ask my friends the cofounders about this without knowing how this normally works? Please let me know what you think? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Any Legalities in Posting My Pitch Video on Social Media Posted: 27 Apr 2021 04:05 PM PDT I've got a 3 minute pitch video for a fintech incubator that I am in - which includes My Ask at the end for Angel Investment and the amount I want to raise. For some reason, I think there are some nuances about posting those kind of details on social media.. Am I correct? We're based in Canada - but not sure if that makes a difference in this case. I've seen plenty of pitches, with asks, on podcasts and TV shows, but rarely have i seen them posted independently on social media. Just dotting some i's before widely sharing. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Strike price for equity after 1 year of working at seed startup? Posted: 27 Apr 2021 07:48 PM PDT I am working at a pre-seed startup and about to approach my 1-year cliff. We tried to raise a size-able round last Fall 2020 (part of money was to convert to C corp), but didn't work out so we pushed raising our bigger round this early summer 2021. This has complicated my options and delayed my ability to become a W2 employee (we are all still considered "contractors"). 2 questions,
Thank you in advance. Would greatly appreciate any advice. Legal agreement; equity compensation text: — Subject to Consultant's employment with <Company Name>, it will be recommended to the Board of Directors that upon conversion of <Company Name> LLC to a Delaware C corporation (the "Company"), the Company's Board of Directors grant Consultant an option to purchase 2.25% of the fully-diluted capitalization of the company (or 2.25 million shares of the Company's Common Stock, assuming a fully diluted capitalization of 100 million shares at the time of conversion), at a price per share equal to the fair market value per share of the Common Stock on the date of grant, as determined by the Company's Board ofDirectors, calculated at the time of the conversion to a Delaware C corporation [link] [comments]  |
| Space Startup + Co-founder Issues Posted: 27 Apr 2021 05:56 PM PDT Hi all — I am working on a space hardware startup in the US, and have been for the past 6 months. I met and started working with my co-founder last August. Both my co-founder and I have experience in the aerospace industry, I have 8 years of experience and my co-founder has 15 years. From a technical perspective, I although I could do some engineering, I am relying on my co-founder to be the CTO. I am working on it full-time, and my co-founder is working part-time. Good News
Bad News
If my current co-founder did commit, I would be ready to go raise our pre-seed. So now I am at a cross-roads. I could try and find another person to replace my current co-founder and I've gone through my network, friend's networks, and advisor's networks and haven't found someone that has the right experience, and be willing to join a startup. We've also gone down the blind reach out on LinkedIn, but I don't have a lot of confidence in this just because its starting a whole new relationship and that person may or may not work out. It's still an option, but not one that I really like. For me money isn't the issue, I have enough saved for the next year, I could go on the next year building the company. I just don't want to waste time and without a sturdy team it makes it hard to convince myself that we can actually get this show on the road. I know this is a long post, but I am lost and just want to get others' thoughts on how they would handle this situation — keep pushing and try to find a rando or call it quits? [link] [comments]  |
| How much equity to give for service in early stage Posted: 27 Apr 2021 11:04 AM PDT I'm the (solo) founder of a small startup built around a mobile app. I'm working with a friend and his firm that does the app design, user stories, landing page, market analysis and focus groups, pretty much everything up till the actual coding. They're asking for 33% equity instead of $$. Truth is their fees for this would probably be around $100-200k which I don't have and would rather save for the app development which will run about the same. How much equity would you give this early for service like this? They're genuinely interested in making it a success but it's too much to give this early. I'm bootstrapping so far and don't have quite enough content for VC. Thanks all! [link] [comments]  |
| The startup I just got hired at is getting acquired Posted: 27 Apr 2021 03:54 PM PDT So a couple of months ago I got hired at a startup and this week they announced that we will be acquired by the end of the year. I don't know what my stock options are and assume that it will not be much since I am a new employee. I am aware that most startups that get acquired loose most of the employees during integration. What would you do? Should I start looking for a new job? Help me please! 🥺 [link] [comments]  |
| Finding a contract manufacturer to work with Posted: 27 Apr 2021 11:29 AM PDT Im searching for a domestic (US) contract manufacturer but really having a hard time finding one. The product i'm trying to develop basically consists of an electric heating element, thermoelectric cooler, controlled remotely with an app. Whats the best way to find a contract manufacturer to work with? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 07:36 AM PDT Greetings everyone, I have been reading and exploring posts on this sub from a long time and have learned a lot from all of you. Thanks a lot for the detailed responses on the posts here that have helped me get my confidence to work on my idea. I am currently in the US working on my H1b visa (work visa). I do not hold a green card. I have started working on my idea for my startup and have made great progress. I have a prototype ready, I have the initial business documentation ready that defines my roadmap, finances and team requirements. I have designed the base version as well. All your insights from other posts have helped me a lot. HOWEVER, the biggest question/roadblock for me right now is - how do I start my own startup when I'm on work visa? If there are any insights here or someone has experienced the same and has accomplished the feat, please guide me in the right direction. I have enough saved to quit my job and work full time On my business. However, if I quit my job, my work visa becomes invalid! So I'm kind of stuck on how to proceed. Appreciate any guidance/tips on this. Thanks.... [link] [comments]  |
| Former cofounder who did nothing is claiming shares as part of a nullified vesting agreement Posted: 27 Apr 2021 12:54 PM PDT Hi, Tl;dr I am a naive idiot who was manipulated and bullied by a prospective cofounder who failed to deliver until myself and my other cofounder kicked them out. After many months of rebuilding the project under a completely new team with new design & tech, we have retained the brand name, logo and domain name of the project that this person joined. I would like to still use them, although I don't have to as we have not fully launched. No company was formed at any point, as we just had vesting agreements, although some of this person's shares did vest. In fact, the logo icon was on our vesting agreements. Question is: Can I still use the brand name, logo and domain name of a defunct project under a new company name not associated with this person? Long version: I started working on a project 5 years ago. I spent years searching for cofounders, collaborators and investors, and last year I found 2 cofounders after having invested a significant amount of money (to me) on developers. One of them was a very experienced business analyst, the other a sales person. I signed vesting agreements with both of them and described their roles and responsibilities in the agreements. The business analyst was amazing, and I still work with them. The sales person proceeded to do absolutely nothing but complain. I needed the latter person to build relationships with partners and investors, to be a strategic thinker, so that I could focus on the product design. The vesting agreement was based upon a 1 year cliff in 3 month tranches, and by the time I finally realised this person was never going to deliver two of those tranches had lapsed, so they could technically claim ownership of half of the shares that they were allocated, even though they barely sent a single email on behalf of the company. I had asked them to do a lot of things over the course of the 7 months, and I had written evidence of them rejecting my instructions. They would pass me all of their work or else dispute what they were supposed to do until in the end nothing tangible was delivered. So I told this person that they were out of the project and that they would not receive any shares. In fact I was much more fair than this. I offered to convert their shares to a contributors agreement, where they would earn an unstated amount relative to their contribution. They rejected this offer. In our vesting agreements we had a 'bad leaver' clause:
I told the person that their conduct amounted to "wilful or gross misconduct" in an email and left it at that. They have no evidence of having delivered anything during the project. These were his responsibilities:
No company was ever formed out of this project, although we did use a brand name and logo icon, which is in the letter heads of the agreements amongst the cofounders at that time. Also, I am not based in the US, but they are, and in the agreements we had stated that any legal disputes would be resolved in the court of my home country. I had looked up online a specific definition of gross misconduct that includes not delivering on the role or rejecting instructions, although this may be related to employment law, so I don't know if it applies. What do you think? Should I just plough on and ignore it, moving the ownership of the domain and logo to the new company once formed under a different name? Or should I start everything fresh so he has absolutely no claim on anything? It wouldn't be devastating to rebrand, but I would be quite sad. [link] [comments]  |
| How to grow the startup further? Posted: 27 Apr 2021 05:32 AM PDT I am the co-founder of an edtech startup in India teaching coding (DSA) for jobs in companies. We have around 300 students as of now. Our price for the course is around 200 dollars for 6 months. We have a really good word of mouth with awesome success stories and almost all the people registered are from word of mouth/social media. From word of mouth, around 10-12 new users join every week. We experimented a bit with paid ads for around 4 months - google and instagram. We started getting lot of leads, had to make a sales team. Now, although the number of leads is high, conversion is really low and we are actually going into loss. If we look at they keywords, they are expensive costing around 10-11 dollars per lead. Now, even if we get 5% conversion from ad leads (which currently seems crazy high), we will get breakeven only. So what should I do? Closing the ads will make us stagnant at 10-12 users per week. Doing ads is increasing the number of people a bit but increasing cost of acquisition to a whole new level. Are there some other options as well? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Apr 2021 03:44 AM PDT Does anyone know of any small, non-dilutive grants available to UK startups that are not impossibly difficult to secure? There seems to be a few things on offer but it is hard to know whether these grants are very difficult to secure. I also hear that the applications can take a long time so I would rather not commit to something without some chance of success. Many thanks :) [link] [comments]  |
| Cofounder won't pay legal fees Posted: 27 Apr 2021 05:01 AM PDT I run an early-stage startup with 2 other guys. One of them has decided to leave the team since he can't handle the stress of things. There are no hard feelings as I feel the same way about it, he's just not cut out for startups (which is fine). I'm currently looking for a lawyer to draft an agreement to buy back his stock in the company and obviously, we're going to have to pay fees for having this agreement made. We had already come to terms with how to get this stock back from him but when I brought up splitting the legal fees involved he said, "I thought that would be a company expense." I told him we're not doing anything until we agree to split the legal expense. The only reason the company has to pay this is because of a decision he's made. To me, it only seems fair to split that cost evenly between him and the company. Keep in mind he doesn't have his own lawyer, he'll be treating the lawyer we hire as his own. What is common practice for splitting legal fees in a situation like this? [link] [comments]  |
| You just raised your seed round. What should be your main priority for the next 3 months? Posted: 27 Apr 2021 04:18 AM PDT Assuming you already have an MVP... They threw a pile of cash at you and your quest is to spend it smart. Some of it will go to distribution, but not much before there's a clear PMF. So most of it is going into the product. That means people. But when you hire your first few employees you want them to be the best for the job. And that can take months... So what do you in the awkward period between getting all that money and completing your dream team? [link] [comments]  |
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