Short answer, when you know it will pay off. Long answer, PR gets the word out people to your site/app. If you haven't proven (on at least a small scale) that you can convert these people to users/customers, then you're wasting your money on a PR agency, and worse, you might be doing harm to your...
One of the best ways to identify real problems in a market is to be a consultant and actually get paid to help solve the problem. Many great product companies started off this way (ex: Freshbooks, Hootsuite, Shopify, etc). They solved their own problem, and then build a solution so that others ...
DO NOT hire a BD person. First, a startup with <$10m/yr revenue almost surely has nothing to offer another company that is interesting to them for BD. Not enough attention, not enough users, not enough revenue-sharing, etc.. BD only works when BOTH sides move the needle on something important ...
Two: (a) Top-line growth and (b) Cancellations. I like businesses where "growth" means "revenue," otherwise to me it's only an indication that people are mildly interested rather than proof that it's a *business* that is turning into a validated business model. But of course with consumer often...
The key is to keep it simple at first and focus on rewarding the right behaviour. You can start by setting a gross revenue goal for the quarter, share with the team, and tell them if we hit that, that everyone will get a bonus. So in some sense, it's not about profit sharing at first. The reas...
It depends on a lot of things. This is a pretty broad question with lots of pieces. Rob Walling has a great course on Udemy on The Startup's Guide to Virtual Assistants. The course costs $99 and it's more focused on VA work than straight dev / coding but it touches on both. I took it and it was w...
High net-worth individuals familiar with the industry or credit cards. Visa can make an amazing investor, just be sure to ask for money when you don’t need it.
A few thoughts. 1) Get a diverse group (geo + backgrounds) to use it. 2) Invite people to use your product in person (on their laptops), 3) Measure the impact using www.survey.io – iterate and fix all the user flows.
You can start by personally emailing them and saying thanks. Doing something public without their permission isn’t cool. I send Direct Messages on Twitter, emails, all day thanking people.
Listen, don’t tell. Conduct it on their computer. Fix the issues after each test .. iterate like mad, especially when you’re small / trying to figure it out.