Simply put, If under 18, I'd instruct the student to persuade his parents to start a LLC, Trust, or Corporation. Analyzing what would be profitable and locating passion projects within the venture. I'd show the student how easy building business credit is when you have a business and how much le...
You need to stock the shelves with products that your customers want to buy, but you don't need to create a Wal-mart size store right away. You are right to focus on one local market first. Figure out how many transactions you need to prove product/market fit and then work backwards. If you ne...
I have found CrossComm in Durham, NC to be among the best. Sean, their tech lead, really helped us at Reveal Mobile. They are reasonably priced with an impressive client roster (Duke, LG, T-Mobile, etc...). See http://www.crosscomm.net/ and just give them a call at 919-667-9432.
Never launch before your value prop is clear. If your product is new and innovative you must pair it with affordability. If you have that even a buggy incomplete value prop will be preordered and otherwise welcomed. If your value prop is unclear you won't be able to efficiently edit and then re ...
The key to understanding if you are going in the right direction from a product standpoint is to get it in front of users - so if you haven't let some of your potential end users spend time with the product, or at least put the concept in front of them to solicit feedback - that would be priority...
One idea that's worked well for my clients has been to create a Skunk Works, which is effectively an autonomous, outside-the-bureaucracy, kinda-sorta-secret R&D team. I've been on these teams before, and if they're truly left alone with a pile of ideas and resources, they can accomplish incredib...
Nice business application! Here are my quick ideas. I recommend you treat your app as if it were in beta. Go out to relevant audiences and seek free "tester users". I recommend advertising the search for tester users by finding forums with audiences who fit one of your personas. Start with R...
Snapchat is definitely not in the same age and situation than pets.com. Look how long it took Yahoo to be forced to sell... If Twitter doesn't start growing soon, it'll be in a similar situation within 24 months. If the table turns for Snapchat and does not grow, they would force the CEO to ste...
This is not tax or legal advice. Two things stand out - usually people leave it up to the investors to ask for preference shares and also I see a lot of family members in that cap table. He could pool them into one entity to make the structure less complex IMO. You'll want to make sure typical pr...
Absolutely! In fact, this is where many solopreneurs "max out". With the Internet, as long as you have a flow of traffic of interested prospects, you can keep converting and selling, right? There's no limit at the scale an individual can operate on to that flow. As a consultant, if that's what ...