I started my business unexpectedly in 1994 when I found myself out of a job with $70K in debt. While it took me 90 days to land my first client, I picked up a job supervising a catering kitchen, and also went to teach evening education classes at three local universities in Atlanta. It is often b...
You may regard this as general advice yet is is not as trite as you may think. The reason is that your question is very general and can be easily be answered by 'that depends' and 'how long is a piece of string'. To answer the vital questions that lead you down a journey of what you should do, ...
A pre-launch raise is really hard but not impossible. I raised a seed round for a mobile app that hasn't launched but it was quite honestly incredibly difficult and I wouldn't recommend others trying it! I answered a question about when is best to raise under what circumstances here: https://...
One is a SERVICE. Services sometimes have issues with profitability when scaling. You end up managing people and profit margins stay the same or decrease. The other is a PRODUCT. Products generally scale better as the cost of product remains more or less the same (COGS). Many people start cons...
When you do the interview you can show a mind map to show what you can do for them, printed out step by step, laminated. Just how you can achieve their business goals. If they ask to keep this print out, you tell them no this is "propriety" to my business. (PROPRIETARY 1: one that possesses, o...
It's not the number of people visiting your website, it's the number of people returning, that matters; especially when you are talking about online client experience. Consider yourself your client. What would you want? 1. Easy to reach services? 2. Clear design? 3. Your friends following the br...
I think as others have said, that idea itself may not be quite right and you are looking to us to brainstorm. However, I do know someone who does exactly this, for free. He makes his money by facilitating the ability of others to think outside their proverbial boxes, using what at the core, is ba...
Look--there's risk EVERYWHERE. You've already pointed out the hazards of developing a marketing strategy dependent on a single platform. You've also noticed that you need to set your price to buffer against rising short and medium term costs. Startups should test and scale with whatever promot...
The "important attributes" of any product are typically determined by your target market and vary significantly, but broadly speaking "ease of use" for the customer could be added to your list.
I agree with Shannon, I think the first thing you need to understand if what is the goal for the SWAG you are selling. If the goal is a secondary revenue stream, and you believe it can be consequential towards your bottom line, then you can do the following: 1. Do some quick research on other s...