Simple: The right investor is someone who wants to invest on standard terms at a good valuation relative to your current stage. Extra bonus points for someone who has relevant industry connections that could accelerate your business and is willing - at the right time - to make introductions for you. But you should have really quite low expectations of most angel investors. Certainly they should have NO operational control of the business. Although I want to be as helpful as possible to companies I invest in, it's entirely for the entrepreneur to drive me, not the other way around. There are very few exceptions to this rule, for example when angels who actually do have very recent and relevant experience want to back someone who is inexperienced and need oversight in order to feel comfortable investing early. But this is a real rarity. Finally, to answer your question about what entrepreneurs do when they receive funding, they should spend it in the best possible way to accelerate the success of the business. I'd be happy to talk to you in a call to provide more clarity on the matter and also discuss when is the right time to accept investment. If you have people willing to back you, that's great. You want to make sure you have a clear plan and set expectations accordingly.

Names are not so useful, emails yes! Export their emails in Linkedin and then upload to Facebook "audience" targeting and then you're good to go:)

You should remain focused on what you do best. Have a broad approach on different markets/requirements from your clients (current and to come) and same time have few employees specialized in the most demanded fields. As a general rule, a professional which provide results in a mixed environment is to be preferred to one which excels in just one field. Is about adaptability and the ability to get the things done in the way to produce results. There is another issue: could happen to design a campaign which you know for sure that will produce results, but your client to dislike it. If the client is big is difficult to convince about your opinion. Bottom line, work on a wide spectrum and have few collaborators specialized in niche markets - even just for ideas and insights. Another useful approach is to design several drafts for a campaign, which to be as simple as possible, only to show the direction and reaction of your client, and to refine that one which have the biggest chances to balance your gut and clients desire. If you need more let me know by email at bogdins at gmail dot com or by skype at technobogdins.

1. 4 year vest with 1 year cliff 2. Your option pool is based on what you and your lawyer have allocated. 3. Usually it is a 10-15% option pool for future employees. 4. You can grant more options to each employee based on performance. Many ways to do it. There is no one size fits all.

Here's my top 10 list, pulled from others. 1. *Know where you are going and why.* Apple, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Wright Brothers did not start with what they were doing or how they were going to get there. They knew their purpose first and the rest followed. Watch Simon Sinek at TED: How Great Leaders Inspire Action (http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action). Internalize your mission daily so that everything you do will get you there. 2. *Have the perseverance to keep to your mission daily.* You'll have a ton of great ideas, eventually the right one will stick (assuming you take the time to listen to experts, to your followers, to the ones paying you to do great work). But you've got to go through a lot to get there... and keep pushing. Every failure, ask yourself if the mission is worth pursuing and if you are going about it the "right" way. If so, keep going. If not, adjust and keep going. Angela Lee Duckworth: The Key to Success is Grit (http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit#t-226166) 3. *No excuses.* Apologize for mistakes you are at fault for. Nobody has a perfect life and all of us are faced with occasional injustice and variables. Man up and deal with it. Read this excerpt of Fear vs. Anxiety from Seth Godin (http://www.sethgodin.com/bigmoo/free/fearvsAnxiety.pdf) 4. *Have a balanced life.* Successful individuals do not bury themselves in work all of the time. They set apart time for their family and themselves. They learn that they are physical, emotional, and spiritual creatures and that by neglecting one, it kills the others. The problem most have is they think their priorities are linear. Instead, think of them as circular. There are moments when you need to sacrifice time with your family to time spent on the business. Conversely, there are moments when you need to sacrifice time spent on your business for time spent building yourself up spiritually (more on this later). For the most part, this is just learning from those who've gone before you and figuring out when you need to put your efforts on the right things. 5. *Invest in yourself* - If you are burnt out, there's no way to be able to help anyone else. Spend time educating yourself, investing in relationships (business and personal), spiritually reflect on the things of life, and take care of your physical and mental health. Check out Dan Cathy's Leadership Toolkit (especially the Oxygen mask). http://www.cathyfamily.com/resources/leadership-toolkit.aspx 6. *Money and materials isn't everything.* Jim Collins stated, "Profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body. They are absolutely essential for life, but they are not the very point of life." The really successful people in life always get to the top because they made changes in the lives of others, not their own. But at the end of the day, when we die, what then? I understand some may give me flak for this, but this is why religion isn't just a crutch for the weak. Rather those we may view as "poor and weak" may realize that there's got to be more to life than the things of life that only satisfy for a moment. Don't believe there is a God? Tim Keller challenges Google employees on why not only is believing in God reasonable, but believing in God is more reasonable than not believing in God (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxup3OS5ZhQ). Figure out your true priorities and invest in them daily. 7. *Plan your day and your priorities.* Even if you are a one man show, you need to know what your values are and why (see points #1 and #2). Then you need to actually invest in those things with your time and your money. Aaron Ginn gives 6 great tips on how to focus your company values on growth (http://www.aginnt.com/post/49186721872/6-company-culture-attitudes-that-kill-growth#.VHekjTHF8ZM). 8. *Never stop asking questions.* The things I hold most dear to me are the things that I have tested and proved time and time again, whether that be my beliefs, my business strategy, or even my relationships. In order to do this, often it starts with asking probing questions to get at the answers. The prideful person assumes they have everything figured out and so they never dig deeper and they stop growing. Quick word of caution: Not coming to conclusions about the questions you ask doesn't make you intellectually more "rational." It would be asinine to assume a wife is always cheating. Sure, ask the question from time-to-time. And when the evidence points out to her faithfulness, shelve the question. Same applies for the other areas mentioned above. 9. *Let go of past mistakes and move on.* Dwelling on past failures will restrict your openness to continue to think about future opportunities. The things in the past are great lessons with the tuition already paid. Get the most that you can and move on. 10. *Be a principled person.* We live in a society in which morals and principles are seemingly nonexistent. Part of the problem is we live in a culture that believes whatever is right in our eyes should be good (or, if it feels good, do it). Back in the 1980's, Chuck Colson gave a speech to Harvard why they should not be teaching MBA's business ethics. The reason? They don't believe in absolutes. In order for there to be a coherent and consistent morals to live by, it cannot be something that changes. Read a transcript of Colson's speech here (http://www.breakpoint.org/features-columns/articles/entry/12/9649). Identify which principles you have to guide your life by and keep to them daily. Your morals and principles should not change, no matter what. --- Now that you've got your pep talk, go out there and create something worth sharing!

there is Balanced, Dwolla, Braintree but none of them seem to work in India yet.

Hello! Check out Shake, they have an app with a ton of free contract and terms templates. They're great with startups, so I'm guessing if they can't help you out they might be able to point you in the right direction. Cheers!

Some people will not recieve the email without an spf record. You are correct, the best way is to add any domain the emails appear to come from. If you run your own server and have WHM then you will need to enable SPF for each cpanel account that needs it. Then in cpanel under Email Authentication enable SPF and then add a record in "Include List (INCLUDE):"

Well first off I wouldn't recommend trying to power your client's database with the standard WordPress database instance. They can use WordPress for the website all they like. But with millions of records like that, you really don't want to move those data in with WordPress. For that matter, you're probably gonna want a dedicated database server to answer those questions, if the client doesn't already have one. You might also need to investigate something like Elastic Search, depending on what your search requirements are and what sort of database they are using (pay close attention to whether or not it provides full text search ability). Beyond that, and somewhat obviously, you're also gonna want SSL on the website and to make sure you're up to date on federal and state privacy requirements for data like this, as well as best practices for securely transferring data over the web (port configuration, ssh keys, etc). The privacy concerns would raise a flag for me. If those data have anything personally identifiable in them - which they very probably do - then you're really gonna want to make sure you do your research on security of personally identifiable information. Government specific privacy /security /auditability requirements may also apply, so double check that too.

Yes they are. Insurance covers the car,truck,or van you are using for business.A bond covers your customers if you or an employee damage his or her belongings. Many times an insurance company in your area will have a policy that will fit your needs and these two types of policies.

Disclaimer: I am not a corporate lawyer, I do however own LLCs and C Corp as well as have degrees in business. The nature of an LLC is specifically to protect the small business owner by encouraging individuals to launch a business without fret of losing it all due to an unhappy customer or freak accident. With that said they are very strict with how this structure is ran and requires you to be extremely diligent with every dime spent and earned. You are protected as long as you follow their rules. One thing I've seen done is own an LLC that holds other LLCs... This is something the upper middle class or lower upper class does often and helps protect investments and personal assets a lot more. I recommend talking to a lawyer - in my experience most lawyers are happy to spend an hour or two discussing possibilities if it means them more business. Best of luck!

Great Question! First off - where do you have your blog hosted? Most blogging platforms (Wordpress, Tumblr, etc) provide automatic RSS syndication for posts and content. Best of luck! Let me know if you have any questions!

There's no "reliable" way to do this, as you're interacting with one or more shippers. After shipping physical product around the world since... 2003... every shipper only gives ballpark windows of when they can complete a delivery. Using Amazon FBA will likely provide fastest delivery times.

Tip: Have you tried creating Facebook ads with "WooCommerce" (and variants) as Interests? Campaigns with specific interests and a few demographic filters are quite effective. Especially now that Facebook aggregates data from other online and offline sources. Good luck! Let me know if you have any more questions!

It depends on the potential for growth of valuation in your business. If 5 years from now, you think you think "moderate" success is most likely (a few million in ARR as a Saas business as just one example), then using your equity to buy services might actually be *worth* it. But if you're pursuing a fast-growth, VC backed business where you aim to create a 50x return (minimum) on your current valuation, then spending on services with equity is really not advisable, or at the very least, I'd recommend you do it very sparingly. I would also say that the absolute maximum in a venture backed business that is tolerable for a good cap table would be 8%. Tipping beyond that leads to a messy cap table and lots of small share holders, which you generally want to avoid. Finally, I'd be sure to get your Service Level Agreements really nailed. Meaning, you want them to commit to a minimum number of hours that equates to the right valuation, and have provisions for these shares to be canceled in the case that you dismiss them before they create full value. Happy to talk this through in more contextual detail to your business in a call.

In my experience there are two things that hold an entrepreneur back from taking action... But before you read them please understand that EVERYONE experiences these things in their life at one time or another. So this is NOT a judgment call but simply an observation. Realize that if you react defensively to either of these (more likely to happen if you are stuck due to the first one) then you may just need to "take a step back" from your situation to be able to assess things less emotionally. Ready... Here are the 2 things that hold most entrepreneurs back: 1. Fear - If you are worried that you will fail or that you aren't "ready yet" or you are literally paralyzed because you "don't know where to start" and feeling overwhelmed - then this could be why you are stuck. 2. Complacency - If you are comfortable where you are and If you have the calm attitude of "I'll get to it tomorrow..." then this might be the reason you are stuck. To move past these roadblocks try the following: 1. Find your "Reason Why". Re-visit your personal goals and reconnect with why you are doing this. Get excited by your future - so much so that it pulls you towards it. Include your personal goals - like the financial and time freedom you will accomplish and what that will mean to your life. And make sure it's more than just about you... Why will the world (aka the world of your customers and clients) be a better place because of what you do? 2. Inventory your strengths and resources. What are you great at and passionate about? What resources do you have available to you that give you the edge? What could you start doing TODAY that would both begin to move you towards your goal AND that excites you to be able to do? If you found these tips to be helpful - let me know how else I can help. Perhaps you need some guidance on how to put together your business model or your marketing plan or to simply create a business that replaces your current "job income" so you can REALLY get to work building a business that creates financial and time freedom for you! In any case - I wish you massive success!

Since you're already using metals for naming your packages: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum...it only makes sense to add a Titanium package. The names you are suggesting are good, but you'll need to change your naming convention to something like: Basic Partner, Standard Partner, Collaborative Partner, Exclusive Partner... Keep all naming conventions the same. I hope this helps.

Delaware C-Corp I usually Delaware is the best choice for any startup looking for fundraising with a US focus. However, if you are a remote and global team, an overseas or foreign corporation or US tax purposes might make sense. You'd have to talk to an advisor who can dive into your situation, but it would be more difficult for the US owner come tax time, as he'd likely have to file form 5471 to the IRS for any controlled foreign corporation, and form 90-22.1 for any foreign bank accounts. There are a lot of other concerns I didn't hear you raise that entrepreneurs usually have and ask me about, namely banking and merchant accounts/ payment processors. In terms of accepting online payments, any US corporation or LLC is far and away the best option for a company. It's difficult to suggest without knowing more about the company but you might explore Delaware, Wyoming, Hong Kong and other offshore jurisdictions for your legal entity. Each tend to have positives and negatives and there is no one size fits all solution. I do write about issues of incorporation quite regularly on my website FlagTheory.com - so you can read those articles for free, or we can schedule a call - Clarity.fm/incorporation when you have specific questions. Thank you and hope this was helpful!

I'm not an immigration attorney, but I have made trips to Canada to find clients, and this is my understanding of the laws. If you are a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, you do not need a visa to come to the United States as long as you will not actually be working and receiving payment from U.S. businesses or employers while in the U.S. For example, you can visit the U.S. to attend trade shows, meetings, conferences, etc. without a visa. Here's a publication from the U.S. State Department that may help: http://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/BusinessVisa%20Purpose%20Listings%20March%202014%20flier.pdf

Anybody who was ever a child (which is everyone, obviously) or read a book (which isn't everyone, unfortunately) has benefitted from others' knowledge and connections. Most of us human beings mentor others off and on in various capacities. But it's pretty rare (outside of parenthood) to find a long-term, personal relationship with a mentor. I'd recommend not seeking one. Why? Because I don't think you can find one by asking around. And if you put your energy into or base your plans on finding a mentor, then you won't develop the skills of self-sufficiency, resourcefulness, and cooperation that ultimately determine success. Think about it. Any mentor relationship is (by definition) not a balance of give and take. Many people have the experience and even the leisure time to act as mentors; but unless they're personally interested in mentoring someone, they will regard overtures for advice in a business-like consulting sense or else (much worse) as impositions on their time. Assuming someone has climbed the peaks and is now looking back to see whom he can help climb up after, then that person has no shortage of less experienced individuals to mentor. Whether he will pick you is mostly a question of chance. But it also depends on what you've accomplished on your own. It's mostly out of your control. So I'd recommend concentrating on what you can do independently and on the usual give-and-take relationships that exist among peers. If a mentor relationship evolves, great! But that's out of your hands, I'd say.

The quick and honest answer is - you don't. In games, as in many places in the software industry, ideas are worth nothing, only the implementation counts. In addition, ideas tend to evolve during development and the design you end up implementing in the final game is quite often very different from the one you started with. To be even more honest - it's likely your idea is not as original as you think. I'm not trying to suggest you're not creative, just that there are a lot of other creative people in the industry and we all have tons of ideas. I have written several game designs in the past, then found that other people implemented the same ideas a while later without knowing me. Sometimes I even discovered my ideas were implemented years before I had them by people I never heard of. That's the life in our business. Another tip - don't try to sign people on NDAs just for hearing your idea. NDAs are fine if you expose them to code, art and data you have already prepared/collected. These are "implementation" products. Trying to sign people on NDAs for hearing your idea is a newbie move and no industry professional / investor will do it. It will make you look like an amateur. Ok, so this was the discouraging part, now the encouraging one... If you have a game idea that you think will rock - just go and try it. You don't need developers to try out a platform game idea, just use one of the MANY quick-builders tools out there. Game Maker is a good option as well as GameSalad Creator. Often you'll find that what you imagined to be a cool idea might not be as fun to play. Sometimes you'll find that combining two genres into one game, as many ideas tend to be, misses the fun factor both genre had. Games are about finding a fun factor. Identifying a pattern players enjoy recognizing and following over and over. This is immensely hard, but so rewarding when accomplished. I was in charge of the final project workshop of the Game Studies program in collage for 6 years. I went through this process with many students (including the fear of 'idea theft' at the beginning) - it is worth it every time a new game is born. As to finding developers - look either between your friends or on internet forums (gamedev.net, indieteamup.com). Both places are good, but projects done with friends have higher success rate by far. You can also locate the nearest IGDA Chapter / Game Hackathon (like Global Game Jam) and befriend people there. All in all, I hope you proceed with your game project. Feel free to contact me if you feel I could help in any way.

That is an interesting situation and I am sure many others share a similar concern. I would recommend trying out Podio (free), it lets you create all sorts of templates to capture and work with information (text fields, categories, dates, etc). You can set it to receive e-mail for you and it will automatically insert the appropriate information into the fields (including attachments). You can decide if your staff only sees the name of the student and the attachment if you wish. You can also create a workflow that informs you when your staff members finish the corrections and are ready to be sent back. You can even use it to keep track of all pending essays, their progress and due dates so you are always on time. Let me know if you have any questions!

I guess this depends a lot on what sort of questions you are talking about. If it's life and love and "soft" things like that, intuition is probably better than any decision based on "data", what ever that would be. On the other hand, if you just have an intuition that you should set the price at $1,000 rather than $99, it might be worth at least exploring your own thinking. There is nothing wrong with having strong intuition and then looking for data to back it up with. It's a sound psychological foundation -- read Antonio Damasio's book Descartes' Error for a fascinating exploration of this idea. However, intuition can be wrong. "Following your gut" is sometimes praised as if gut feelings are some super natural source of knowledge. They are not. They should be guidelines, but you should still question them and be open to new realizations. Besides from conversations with people of different views, 5 whys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys) might be a useful tool for this.

Congrats on both building your product and getting it out there! I have 2 tips for you... Tip #1: Consider a shift in the way you are thinking about this... Your question states that you are looking for an "outstanding idea" to monetize your app. So here's the shift in thinking: Consider that the "best" ideas are those that your market loves (and not necessarily the ones that YOU love). In other words - you don't choose the best idea and then the market buys your product... It's the other way around! Your market buys your product AND THEREFORE it's the best idea. Once you "get" this shift in thinking it frees you to start really getting into the heart and mind of your market. Only then will you be able to tap into what drives them to buy. In other words - where the monetization of your product really is. Tip #2: Realize that no one is in a better position to create the components of success in your business than YOU. YOU created the product. YOU solved a problem. And YOU will have to create the business model and marketing plan that leads to your success! A good coach (like what you are looking for here on Clarity) will help you discover and create this outstanding idea (versus "give" you the great idea). Tiger Woods' coach doesn't play Tiger's shots FOR him... He helps Tiger play HIS best game. If these tips make sense to you - then send me a message and let's schedule a call to get you on the path to making some money with your amazing app! In any case - I wish you massive success. Cheers, David

Great Question! I see you are not looking to spend too much money on this so my recommendation would be to use free tools that will only cost you the time you take to set them up yourselves. 1. Accommodating contacts (engaged vs not engaged, segmenting, custom fields and flexible reporting). For this I would recommend you use Podio. It is free for up to five users and will let you do all that and more. You can set up your templates with all the fields you want (drag & drop) and they are completely dynamic so you are welcome to change them at any point in time. 2. One Place to See All Interactions. I would use Mandrill (from the makers of Mailchimp) to send and track all mail related interactions. They have webhooks that you can use to create all sorts of custom workflows behind the scenes. Of course this also means you can integrate it with Podio's excellent API to keep all your data in the same place. Eventually you could even code in a workflow that would drip customized your content to subscribers using Mandrill. Essentially removing any need for additional software. Best of luck! And let me know if you have any more questions!