Hi. I'm a Business Intelligence consultant with most of my customers being call centers. There are definitely guidelines you can apply but it will be based on several factors. Your question references ratios, which I assume means you would like to know how many agents per customer. That number...
The idea of an MVP is 'minimum, viable' ... If you feel you need a "good amount" of funding, I would challenge if you are minimum enough. Obviously, without knowing the details of your product, your ideal customer, or what need you will solve, it is hard to help expose what is necessary in an MV...
Do not consider this as a fixed and rigid decision. Consider this more like an opportunity to realize that you should test your pricing strategy as early as possible or at least now. Every pricing strategy you choose does work, the question is can you find your optimum? In your position, I'd re...
It's not foolish, but it's going to be extremely hard to pull it off. I would consider starting with a beta program so you can have some paid clients to pay for the company's expenses. After you have some traction, you can raise a seed round.
I think the closest I know of to what you're describing is Influitive. Influitive is SaaS software for advocate engagement, including discussion forums. They have a widget that can extend their experience into your app or website.
If you direct message me I can help show you a simpler more efficient alternative that may be helpful :)
There is no valuation until you sell something. An idea or a company is only worth what its sales are. Once you have your initials sales, sales strategy and forecasting length (ie 9 months from first customer lead to close) then you have a formula for valuation. Valuation for start-ups is gene...
Most Software as a service vendors generally don't book annual deals except in highly specialized cases. Most customers prefer to be able to cancel/change anytime they choose. Also, deals done "offline" end up actually often being more trouble than they are worth to administrate especially for ...
Because the startup costs to get a lot of their customers actually set up on their platform are too high, so free trials for say, 14 days, are out of the question. For example, take a look at http://www.curalate.com/ which uses some really amazing technology to track a customer's brand imagery ...
There are no real "hacks" to reaching customers. It's just a bunch of hard work -- in 4 real steps: 1. Strategy -- identify what makes you unique / how you drive unique value to that "dream client" 2. Process -- put in place the steps to email / call / connect with them 3. Tools -- use smart to...