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I don't have any of that information yet as I'm in the very early stages still, but your post gave me a lot of food for thought. Next month there's a fairly big motor show in the city I'd choose as my location. I plan to attend and do some polling. Would the percentage of people who say in the poll they'd be interested be a reasonable indicator? Besides pricing and demographics, what are the main pitfalls of applying that percentage to the target market size?
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Mar 12, 2017 09:44
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You could always do as much research as you can. Lay it all out and work through a calculation, pull numbers out your rear end where you have to. Put it all on a slide or similar so its really clear how you got there and then go ask an investor to give you money based on it. They'll happily point out your mistakes.
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Mar 12, 2017 10:05
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:I don't have any of that information yet as I'm in the very early stages still, but your post gave me a lot of food for thought. From what I learnt, any question that involves future actions or interest does not reflect your actual market. Someone could say they are interested in the product but when it comes time to take out the wallet, you will find that interest was only just that. A better indicator is past actions; what did they do or ended up not doing.
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Mar 12, 2017 10:17
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This isn't related to founding a startup, but does anyone have suggestions on evaluating startups you might work for? I'm having a tough time learning much about the early stage startups I am looking at.
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Mar 12, 2017 23:51
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:I don't have any of that information yet as I'm in the very early stages still, but your post gave me a lot of food for thought. e: and do not advertise that your business is "coming soon". Your goal is to gauge people's interest now, not to have them to stick a brochure on their fridge for three months and give you no useful information about your market. Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 12, 2017 23:55
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Fusion Restaurant posted:This isn't related to founding a startup, but does anyone have suggestions on evaluating startups you might work for? I'm having a tough time learning much about the early stage startups I am looking at. If your compensation includes equity, look at the agreement very closely. If there's anything you don't understand or aren't sure about, it's worth paying an independent attorney review it. Set clear boundries about work-life balance, the founders are probably working 80 hours a week or more, if you don't want to work that much make it clear right away and don't work more than you've agreed to. Be absolutely clear about when and how you are getting paid, and if there is any sort of delay, run away. Startups are often cash poor and you don't want to work for free.
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Mar 13, 2017 01:28
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So I got a weird question, is there a way to tell if an investor is credible? A bunch of investors have been quite cautious and have pointed out some serious concerns that need some validation. Generally they are all good points and their unease I feel is justified at this point till I have more measurements. Agriculture can be a bit unfriendly if you are more "environmental" than usual. I have one investor though who is super excited and quite interested but hasn't said no to anything. His promises are too good and considering the caution of the other groups, I don't trust him. He has also been weird with phone calls, such as messing up the timezone for a phone call even though he arranged the time, losing documents and asking us to call different numbers than what is on his business cards or within his Email. They are supposed to be set up in Vancouver, right in the middle of downtown in a quite expensive building. All things considered, I didn't expect the building to sound like a child's birthday party in the background during my conversation. I was thinking of playing 20 questions with them to confirm that the location they say they are set up in is real and not just a nice facade they have going. My other thought was to call their other supposed clients and see if they actually exist, though they haven't gotten back to me yet. I have no idea what their angle is but everything just feels wrong. Maybe they just REALLY don't understand the industry or are a level of techbro I have never known to exist? Any other ways to find out if they represent something credible, like some kind of angel network agency? I'm in Canada if that helps at all.
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Mar 13, 2017 06:36
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Hypha posted:So I got a weird question, is there a way to tell if an investor is credible? A bunch of investors have been quite cautious and have pointed out some serious concerns that need some validation. Generally they are all good points and their unease I feel is justified at this point till I have more measurements. Agriculture can be a bit unfriendly if you are more "environmental" than usual. I have one investor though who is super excited and quite interested but hasn't said no to anything. His promises are too good and considering the caution of the other groups, I don't trust him. He has also been weird with phone calls, such as messing up the timezone for a phone call even though he arranged the time, losing documents and asking us to call different numbers than what is on his business cards or within his Email. Having said all that: if the other investors have concerns that this one doesn't, raise them. If they're competent, they've thought of them already and have a good answer about why they're willing to take a chance that the others aren't. If they're not competent, and they haven't thought of them, they're not someone you should be doing business with. Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 16:09
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We're pre-revenue and a good ways away from having a complete product. We're also in an area with a lot of hobbyists and people trying to break into the industry. After talking to some students in a related university club I have a dozen undergrads offering (practically begging) to work for free. We could really use the help--bootstrapping seems just out of reach but possibly achievable. If one of these students can grow into a "first tech hire" type role it would be ideal, but I want to do this right. Obviously I'll talk to a lawyer about internships and employment (I expect we'll have to pay at least minimum wage) but I was wondering if anyone had any advice. At this stage I'm mainly concerned about deciding how many I can manage and who to move forward with. They're all very impressive and they all know each other which makes this potentially difficult to navigate. Also looking for advice in demonstrating traction to investors at this stage. We're a high-ticket B2B item; just one client would give us a nice boost. Due to industry experience we have a good network and several customers who are interested. This doesn't seem to mean much, though--understandably. Are there ways to demonstrate traction at this point? Is it a thing to get a proof-of-interest document that says "if this product with these features is available by this date we are committed to spending $X on it"? Are there better options? We have also tried to sell it in advance but that seems impossible without giving exclusivity and basically becoming an in-house thing.
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Mar 15, 2017 20:14
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At what point in your start-up process do you take into account branding (logo and subsequent pieces)? And if it's a physical product, packaging? I've been in the design business for almost 20 years and started my own thing a few years back. It seems the numerous start-ups I contact have already completed that step or haven't even bothered and have no budget. Do you find it important? Is that aspect being taught in all these resources out there?
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Mar 15, 2017 21:09
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Vulture Culture posted:It's better than nothing, but it's not an organic indicator. The best way to gauge organic interest, if you don't need to operate in stealth mode at this point, is to act like you have a fully-operational business, especially if it won't take long to actually bootstrap once you have funding. Set up a phone number for your business, even if it's just a Google Voice mailbox. Have brochures ready to go at the show you plan to attend. Put up a website with a clear call to action, like asking for calls or contacts through a form. All of these things will test the first stage of your conversion funnels. If nobody tries to buy your product, or find out more, there was no interest in the first place. You dust yourself off and try again. If you do get calls, those are leads you can call back once you're operating. If you've really cracked a good market, those leads may spread news about your business through word-of-mouth before you're even operating, broadening your base of leads. You're super helpful. Thank you. So, the motor show got back to me and while they would allow me to poll, they wanted a fee that is more than I can afford pre-investment. So now setting up a site to take email and preferences is the next step. What are some very low cost ways to get traffic to the site? I'm operating on the assumption that social media is the only real way, and the plan is to start putting in work to build brand awareness through that channel once I get some graphics finalised. Are there other avenues to explore that I'm missing? And lastly, a perhaps somewhat naive question. I don't get how not to advertise it as coming soon. Surely, if it's a landing page rather than a fully fleshed-out website it's very apparent it's not ready? And if I can get around that, wouldn't advertising it as ready when it's not create a negative customer experience? I'm sorry if those questions are all basic. I really appreciate the input.
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Mar 15, 2017 21:50
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:You're super helpful. Thank you. Marking it as not ready corrupts your results. You're trying to figure out if people will go to the order page. No one will try to buy things they know don't exist.
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Mar 15, 2017 22:34
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:What are some very low cost ways to get traffic to the site? I'm operating on the assumption that social media is the only real way, and the plan is to start putting in work to build brand awareness through that channel once I get some graphics finalised. Are there other avenues to explore that I'm missing? Zeppelin Insanity posted:And lastly, a perhaps somewhat naive question. I don't get how not to advertise it as coming soon. Surely, if it's a landing page rather than a fully fleshed-out website it's very apparent it's not ready? And if I can get around that, wouldn't advertising it as ready when it's not create a negative customer experience? If you actually sell anything at this point, great. You're basically going to be making things up as you go. That's fine. The dirty secret of most early-stage startups is that they all do this. There's been more than one electronic concierge service that launched where the "electronic" part was just a human working on the back end until they got their technology stack in order. Think like that. And if you don't get any phone calls despite your best efforts to tweak and tune your messaging and drive traffic to the site, that's good too. You have, as cheaply as possible, tested yourself out of your business plan without putting any actual money on the line. You want to succeed, but if you're going to fail, fail fast. Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 05:09
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:What are some very low cost ways to get traffic to the site? I'm operating on the assumption that social media is the only real way, and the plan is to start putting in work to build brand awareness through that channel once I get some graphics finalised. Are there other avenues to explore that I'm missing? content marketing. start a blog talking about the incredible experience you had driving some classic/luxury car around where ever. or pay someone to write the blog for you. try and figure out how you can get jalopnik or whatever to link to you. talk up your blog on forums and fb groups and twitter. start an instagram account where you post pictures of your trips make sure all of these things are clearly associated with your service quote:And lastly, a perhaps somewhat naive question. I don't get how not to advertise it as coming soon. Surely, if it's a landing page rather than a fully fleshed-out website it's very apparent it's not ready? And if I can get around that, wouldn't advertising it as ready when it's not create a negative customer experience? your initial goal should just be to get people to give you their email address and/or mailing address if you plan on offering your service in multiple locations give people a box to enter their location and then tell them sorry, you haven't launched there yet but you'll contact them when you have
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Mar 17, 2017 02:19
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A little off-topic here, but I suppose the right people read this thread to answer this question. I've been at a startup for about two years now. I negotiated a higher up-front salary instead of getting a higher stake in the company, but I'm still on a 4-year vesting schedule for 1% stock in the company. When our founder gave me this, I was thinking, "well, if I get some value from this stake, great, but I'm not going to plan on receiving anything," and I naively assumed that this stake couldn't possibly have any negative implications. We've been doing well and our valuation is going up pretty steadily. The company got a bit behind on accounting and tax, but we're finally formalizing documents regarding the vesting of early employees' stakes. It turns out that, depending on the type of stock I receive, I might end up having to report capital gains based on the increasing valuation of the company - possibly to the tune of $150,000 in capital gains between 2016-2017. He was vague about these options, but has promised to get back to me within a week in writing as to what my options are. My question is about strategies to mitigate this tax burden. Is there any good place where I can read about what my options are here? Are there any particular options I should be pushing for personally to minimize whatever tax burden results? Should I be hiring a lawyer or account here?
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Mar 23, 2017 19:29
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I thought you don't need to pay tax on capital gains until you realize them, i.e. selling your stake?
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Mar 23, 2017 19:56
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I'm glad that you think that, because that's what I thought too. I'm hoping this is all just a miscommunication between our lawyer and him.
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Mar 23, 2017 20:04
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The Gay Bean posted:My question is about strategies to mitigate this tax burden. Is there any good place where I can read about what my options are here? Are there any particular options I should be pushing for personally to minimize whatever tax burden results? Should I be hiring a lawyer or account here? Go see a tax accountant that understands this stuff. There are big implications depending on subtle differences in how that 1% stake was given. e: Nail Rat posted:I thought you don't need to pay tax on capital gains until you realize them, i.e. selling your stake? Absolutely don't assume that. Cap gains on $150k is like $35k, you don't want that surprise.
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Mar 23, 2017 20:05
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Gounads posted:Absolutely don't assume that. Cap gains on $150k is like $35k, you don't want that surprise. Yeah I wouldn't assume it either, but it seems there has to be something else going on if the gains are actually being realized. What happens if the company goes under tomorrow (hopefully not obviously) just after he's paid six figures in capital gains taxes on unrealized gains?
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Mar 23, 2017 20:10
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Thanks guys, tax accountant it is.
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Mar 23, 2017 20:14
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Nail Rat posted:I thought you don't need to pay tax on capital gains until you realize them, i.e. selling your stake? Realization can mean a few things with equity. Like, you don't realize a gain when an option vests, but you do when an RSU does. And there are other possibilities that I'm sure I'm not even aware of. Bottom line, you need to get EXACTLY what type(s) of equity you were granted, when they vest and bring it to a proper accountant BEFORE any paperwork is filed that locks you into a decision of declining the equity (which you may or may not be able to do depending on what you've already signed) or paying taxes on it.
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Mar 24, 2017 05:21
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Hello thread, I have a question about startup marketing. I'll give some background, I hope it's not too wordy. My partner co-founded a software startup. The product is a cloud-based business reporting program that pulls data from Excel and other SaaS suites like Xero, ServiceM8, Unleashed, MYOB etc and integrates it into a live report. Our website is here: http://winkreports.com/ At the moment, I'm running the social media marketing. I'm about to complete a master's degree in organisational psychology but apart from this, I have next to no marketing background or experience. Everything I've learned about marketing has been on the job. We have a twitter, facebook, instagram, linkedin and Google+ page, and these are mostly used to share content related to SaaS and fintech. Over the last six months, we've built a small social media following. It's still growing, but very slowly. We receive roughly 95% of sales leads through our listings on cloud services directories and websites, for example the Unleashed add-on directory or review sites such as the Xero add-on marketplace. So I'm focusing my efforts on contacting our customers and asking them to leave us reviews in exchange for a discount on their next billing cycle, and looking for other suitable websites that we can get listed on. However, the managing director (who is not my partner) seems very preoccupied with writing blog posts for our website, posting things on all the social media channels, and doing other "cutesy" things like temporarily changing our company profile picture on holidays and special dates (for example, making it green on St Patrick's day). Personally, I think this is a waste of time as so little traction is coming from those areas. It's using a fair amount of my time and effort to be doing all these little things and I think it's not an effective use of time or effort. However, the MD seems to think that it's worth pushing as hard as possible. We can't afford to hire a dedicated marketing person at this time. We used to have one, but he got too expensive and I don't feel like he really did anything mind blowing that increased our sales. But the MD has bought up giving up some of his equity in the company to the ex marketing guy to get him to work with us in lieu of a paying contract. I think this is a terrible idea. In particular, MD wants a concrete marketing strategy to be created for us which involves a social media plan/strategy. So this leads me to my question - how critical is it for our startup to have a marketing strategy, in particular in regards to social media at this point in time? I'd really appreciate some outside perspective, thanks!
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Mar 28, 2017 03:18
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Oh yeah "cloud-based business reporting" just screams Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to me. That is really the thing I'm going to remember right amongst all the posts with pictures of someones lunches, people whining about politics, and check-ins at airport lounges. Have you thought of focusing on something besides social media. You yourself said most of your sales leads come from elsewhere, why are you wringing your hands so much over an Instagram feed?
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Mar 28, 2017 05:02
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zmcnulty posted:You yourself said most of your sales leads come from elsewhere, why are you wringing your hands so much over an Instagram feed? As I said, I look after the marketing but I have zero background in it and essentially, I'm just taking orders from the director on what he thinks needs to be done. I guess the director sees Xero posting a million things a day on Twitter/Instagram/etc and thinks we should be doing that too? I don't agree with him, but I have no prior knowledge of or experience in marketing, so I don't know whether my thoughts on the social media aspect of things being a waste of time are justified.
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Mar 28, 2017 07:51
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bee posted:So this leads me to my question - how critical is it for our startup to have a marketing strategy, in particular in regards to social media at this point in time? I'd really appreciate some outside perspective, thanks!
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Mar 28, 2017 19:11
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bee posted:So this leads me to my question - how critical is it for our startup to have a marketing strategy, in particular in regards to social media at this point in time? I'd really appreciate some outside perspective, thanks! Understanding who your customer is, what they want, why they think they want it and what they might be willing to pay for it is like one of the most fundamental aspects of the startup process, so if you say you don't have a marketing strategy this raises a little bit of a red flag to me.
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May 2, 2017 17:39
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I have a question that might be a little bit left field but maybe you guys will have some insight. I am in the process of building a startup that aims to substantially decrease hospital costs through a relatively-low-cost, totally-novel administrative intervention. So far, we haven't enrolled anyone (patients are "users" in our startup) in our prototype, but have nailed down the workflow pretty clearly. Because I work at an academic medical center, I have been trying to get my place of employment to be our first customer (hospitals, who realize the savings, are "customers"). Individuals I contacted during customer discovery have found my solution very compelling, with buzz traveling up and down through our institution, and now leadership have requested to meet with me (the meeting is myself - a junior level guy - and the COO, division director and surgery director) next week. My startup is pretty early stage (like, concept), but if our solution works like our customers have told us it will, we'll be incredibly valuable. 1) I'm worried that they'll just assign this to me as a project, using company resources, and not pursue this from the angle of being a customer. How do I make a compelling case that they're better off pursuing the value of this opportunity as a customer? 2) Should I offer them MORE equity? Because I came up with the idea as an employee, I had to disclose the idea right away, but since there's nothing patented it doesn't qualify as "true IP" that they can seize 50% of (they're entitled to like, 1% equity of the startup only). 3) How should I arrange the topic of pricing with them if they agree to act as customers? Should I price at our costs, so that I can get proof of concept and leave them as much value as possible to make the deal "sweet?" Should I price the product fairly, so that I can use revenues to grow? I don't want to burn any bridges here, since my job is quite good on its own but I would like them to allow me to run this experiment, get proof of concept and then enjoy the rewards together. 4) Should I just tell them "I would like you to allow me to trial this intervention, get proof of concept and then enjoy the rewards together?" EAT FASTER!!!!!! fucked around with this message at 17:55 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 17:53
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:2) Should I offer them MORE equity? Because I came up with the idea as an employee, I had to disclose the idea right away, but since there's nothing patented it doesn't qualify as "true IP" that they can seize 50% of (they're entitled to like, 1% equity of the startup only). There's a red-flag if I ever saw one. Any code written is copyrightable and is intellectual property, I have no idea what "true IP" is. You need to triple check your employment contract now. Be especially wary about anything along the lines of "any inventions made while employed..." Building a startup that is directly related and used by your employer. Maybe you'd even be paid by the employer to work on it... um... Go talk to a lawyer before going any further.
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May 3, 2017 16:32
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Gounads posted:There's a red-flag if I ever saw one. Lol I exempted about 30 things on my way into my current job because they have draconian BS like that. They assign any non-exempted invention built during or prior to employment. I asked to add something to it (after getting the OK from my chill manager), and HR said "wow you have a lot of these" All I could think was, "and still not enough".
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May 3, 2017 17:20
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Gounads posted:There's a red-flag if I ever saw one. Our startup employs a process that doesn't seem to be copywriteable or patentable, so it doesn't actually constitute an "invention." Despite this, I'm in the process of contacting an attorney, and thank you for your insight.
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May 3, 2017 17:21
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Our startup employs a process that doesn't seem to be copywriteable or patentable, so it doesn't actually constitute an "invention." Despite this, I'm in the process of contacting an attorney, and thank you for your insight. If you're in the US, almost everything you create is copyrightable, and you own a copyright by default without doing anything at all. Write a document explaining the idea? Copyrighted. Some code to implement it? Copyrighted. Doodle a logo for the company? (you probably do have to take some steps if you want to actually enforce those copyrights, but they do legally exist) I did a very similar thing ~8 years ago. I started a company that made a product while working for an employer. I made very sure my employment contract didn't give them any ownership first. I went out and got a few other users before checking with my employer to see if they wanted to use it. This helped to establish the fact that I wasn't making the product solely for my employer. When they did want to use it, we made up a little 1-page contract/service agreement that stated: 1. Ownership in the product was to my own LLC that I created 2. The employer had a royalty-free right to use the product for some limited term (maybe 2 years?) 3. I wouldn't spend any time working on the product during work hours 4. That it was a mutually beneficial agreement - I'd get feedback and the employer would get valuable services for free. 5.The normal terms of service of the product still applied
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May 4, 2017 15:56
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Thanks to the Kickstarter community, I never really had to bother with attracting customers to buy my product. Now that my Kickstarter is over and I have an electronic storefront on Tindie, I'm realizing that I need to figure this out. Do you guys have any resources I should check out either in book or video form?
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May 6, 2017 20:40
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