Startups Onboarding a non-tech founder in a tech startup |
- Onboarding a non-tech founder in a tech startup
- How to offer customers products from different suppliers without multiplying delivery charges?
- How to make the jump from academia deep science to startup
- Advice regarding co-founders. What can I do if others do not contribute? Any capital structure advice?
| Onboarding a non-tech founder in a tech startup Posted: 06 Sep 2021 06:12 AM PDT We're building a startup with 4 founders total. One founder and myself have professional experience in technology (basically covering everything from UX to DevOps). The two other founders are proficient in running a business from a strategic, operational and financial perspective. Plus, they bring a ton of domain knowledge for the market we are about to enter. During our meetings, however, it's become clear that those last two members are lacking a lot of technology knowledge. Which I think could start to hinder us in our efficiency and speed. Now, instead of me writing an entire knowledge base to get them up to speed, I am looking for tips, recommendations or resources (books/courses/podcasts/videos). Anything that could help bring us a bit closer in jargon and mental models. I've looked around for books, but either I'm searching with the wrong keywords or there just aren't too many resources specifically for this topic. [link] [comments]  |
| How to offer customers products from different suppliers without multiplying delivery charges? Posted: 07 Sep 2021 01:44 AM PDT Hi everyone, I am starting a small business to sell toys online locally. One of the ideas I came up to just start selling, is to get the products from existing retailers and stores and just resell it at the same price no extra charge, and I would only charge for delivery. The whole thing is locally, and I will be buying and delivering the products myself for a small circle of customers who are friends and friends of friends and family. Now I know this is not the most profitable business model, but I'm not looking to make big profits at this stage, I want to start and start learning and also building a customer base. Later on, I will be working on getting margins and deals with suppliers to make some profit from the process. In the meantime, I realized that for the online retailers that charge a delivery fee, they will add up to cost double or triple the delivery fees that I would charge the customer if the customer chose to buy 3 different products that I would get from 3 different retailers. Example: I charge a $5 delivery fee, and customer went on my IG page and ordered the following: Item A (Store A charge $5) Item B (Store B charge $5) Item C (Store C charge $5) The total is $15 and I would logically have to charge the customer $5 only; costing me $10. So, since this is obviously not a sound way to offer the products and services, · what would be a smarter way that I can take to sell the products directly from retailers to customers? · Also, how do you deal with keeping up the product availability with the supplier so that customers wouldn't order something only for you to realize supplier is out of stock? P.S: If the retailer would offer pickup I would take that of course. [link] [comments]  |
| How to make the jump from academia deep science to startup Posted: 06 Sep 2021 07:13 PM PDT Hey everyone, I saw a post about a startup in academia a while ago and decided to do a long post to seek advice as well, so here is the story: Context: European background, not located in the US, not exactly in Europe either. Researcher in a specialized "deep" science field for more than 3 years in a world top ranked research facility. Before that my expertise was in a different field of science. I found a way to make a product/material way cheaper, better and greener. I see a few applications that directly lead to commercial products in established, growing or high-end industries. I talked to my manager who was super interested at first and we published some of the findings (peer-reviewed). Since then he has no interest at all and even said he is not paying for me to continue in this direction. My manager has maybe 20+ years of experience (but not in this area), he is renowned but neither me or my colleagues trust him too much. I talked to a few researchers and industry experts and all said it was worth continuing and could be a game changer. I even applied for a national grant and the assessors were also enthusiastic but due to me being junior still, the grant failed. Because of the grant process I have been sitting on my idea for almost a year now... So now, I want to develop my idea. There is a startup incubator on-site but it's all tied up with my manager who is involved in a few projects already, so I need to avoid this. I worked for a startup in science before and could seek advice from them but also I don't know about that... My questions: Should I try to develop something in common with my previous job and give up being a founder? Is there any other type of infrastructures for startups funding in science except national labs and universities? I have been listening to some podcasts and one in particular was mentioning some US funds investing in this kind of startups. Should I try to send cold emails with a one page concept pdf/infography and ask for a quick meeting? I only attended some virtual events last year in related fields and can have the contacts of a few innovators with relatively big connections in the industry. Should I just cold emails them? Compare to most of the hard sciences, I believe the equipment and material investment would be minimal but still it requires some kind of research infrastructure. To give you a reference, a current industrial development in the field would cost many millions, in my vision it would be a fraction of that. Any advice? Cheers [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:14 AM PDT Hello! First of all, I would like to thank you for reading this, r/startups has always been very helpful. During last semester, I took an entrepreneurship class with a top VC managing partner. The whole point of the class was to form teams and launch a startup, so I teamed up with four other classmates. For me, it was never a school assignment but a huge opportunity to actually build something big, so I worked my ass off aiming to achieve that. However, during the semester, most of the work was done by me and another member of the team, while the other three did almost nothing. Our project ended up being a quite successful (still in a very early stage, but with great feedback from our professor), so I decided to keep going with the idea. The thing is that, after realizing how big it could actually be, the three members of the team who did nothing suddenly decided to be a part of it (still doing close to nothing, but claiming they are co-founders too). I do not really know how the legal and ownership part of a startup works, so I have several questions regarding these points. First, do they actually have ownership right? Taking into consideration that no legal contract was ever signed and their contribution was marginal. How can you kick someone out of a startup? And second, in general terms, what advice do you have for future founders for establishing the capital structure? Any legal instruments that can help avoid a situation in which a co-founder is only a burden? I think it is very important to emphasize the fact that they did nothing. I hope you understand how angering it is to work as crazy in something you are passionate about, while others enjoy your success without contributing a thing. It just seems unfair to me. [link] [comments]  |
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