NO, it's in no ways normal. In reading how you have framed the question, this investor sounds to be acting in bad faith and is also setting you up to fail by introducing terms that are not standard to how quality investors interact with their investee companies. It is however very standard to h...
Move quickly and build a brand. Leave them a step behind trying to copy you while you define the market.
Looks like an e-commerce platform, so you'd be well suited to AngelList (angel.co), where there is a lot of expertise on Web2 and SAAS. This is really the best platform for making yourself visible to investors.
I specialize in investment real estate; more specifically short sales and flipping houses. However I have friends in the industry that do specialize in storage units. I could point you in the right direction for sure. Are you only considering storage units?
As former CMO of Expedia I can tell you that being focused will trump any theoretical upside of having different names. To this day there's a struggle to build daylight in meaning between Hotels.com and Expedia's core hotel business - and there have literally been billions spent on trying to do t...
Startup recruiting is really a full-contact sport that must be played to win by the Founder(s) of the Company. If you want to hire the best possible talent, you must be as focused on this task as you are a fundraising round (in other words, completely focused on it until it's DONE). Great techn...
Interesting question - curious as to why you want to start this business if you have no IT background? Ultimately it depends if you're bootstrapping to start with or have a lot of capital to invest - broadly, unless you have a technical cofounder I'd say you have a fairly daunting task ahead of y...
I have advised a number of Clarity members on this question exactly. LinkedIn can be a great place to find your technical cofounder. I would look for someone who has been at their current company longer than 18 months and has relevant experience or interest in the problem you're looking to solv...
I have worked on projects handling transfer of large image files across multiple vendors and being served on web for different targets (mobile, web etc.). I have also implemented cloud and DevOps solutions for high volume/scale of data and transactions. While I could tell you a list of technolo...
That's usually the case with early start-up entrepreneurs wherein every one struggles to create a "Happy Equity Index" to be able to decide the right proportion of equity division. In your case, it seems there are too many stakeholders with diverse contribution to the business. Hence, all of yo...