The application you're describing is probably useful, and can probably be sold... but that's not the question :) The question is what it will cost you to acquire a new customer, and what you can charge that customer. Before actually BUILDING this thing, see if you can get 10 potential customers to at least SAY they're interested. In exchange for their feedback during the development process, offer them free use of the product until it's released, and then for a year thereafter. If you can't close that sale, then either you or your product has a problem. If you CAN get a handful of customers to agree to this "free participation as a development partner" arrangement, then move on to step two: get yourself a HUNDRED signed up. This is a larger number than you can pursue manually, which means you'll have to develop your sales pitch as a landing page on a website, figure out what language will be effective, decide where to advertise, and so forth. Again, if you accomplish this, then you're very well along the way to making this project feasible. But if any part of the above seems impossible, or too expensive, or too confusing or scary, then don't bother wasting your time creating the system. In other words, I'm saying you need to test whether you're capable of building a marketing engine to support the sales of this concept. I *assume* you're capable of creating the underlying product, but that's far from the only challenge. I hope the above was helpful, and of course do feel free to look me up for a call if you'd like to discuss further.

Hi, I don't have a simple solution that I could suggest to you now. But I have a question for you: if you found a product, that would do that for you (a computer software, that would get all the information/updates from different websites, combine it in one place and optimize for you to absorb) would you buy it? I am a data analyst and my specialty is text analytics. I can take large amounts of text and find some meaning in it. For example, get a set of law documents and programmatically analyze it to build an argument; or I can take pictures of food from someone's instagram account and predict person's weight in 2020. So, I have an idea how to solve a problem like yours. What I can recommend for you right now, is a VA (virtual assistant). I have one myself. She takes care of the information flow. Reading, summarizing, writing lists and notes, making charts, etc. It isn't very expensive, and you can hire some great, highly educated people that are undervalued by an average employer (stay-home moms, fresh grads, people living in remote locations, etc).

Throttle the time in your business and be brutal about saying "No." Be ultra-clear on expectations with every single client. "This is how I work. At X'oclock, I am offline and no longer available. I check emails and messages at these times only: X,Y, and Z o'clock." If that doesn't work for them and they want someone who says "How high?" whenever they say, "Jump!" you say, "No Thanks." But you'll find people like expectations, They like knowing there is a consistent process, an established way of doing things. Also, find people you can trust and delegate to them.

Start with allocating about 1-2 hours a day to reach the industry communities you are affiliated with. We recommend to our clients to work on 1) Twitter 2) LinkedIn and 3) Google+. Our research has shown that the reach on Facebook is not as effective as it is on Twitter. We have clients who have a 85% lead finding success on Twitter. You should create content value by sharing this content and your industry knowledge. There are very specific social media campaigns that will drive traffic to your website through social media. You can also look at joining trade show chats and communication platforms there. Attending you industry events, conferences, trade shows, and other multiplier meetings, is a good way to spread the word about you. Each industry is very different and you need to focus on these differences. We are working with clients who are looking to enter the global markets. The approach is different here as well. At the end of the day it all comes down to your willingness to spend time and be creative about the on-line world. I hope this helps to get you started. If you are interested in a more company and products specific session, follow up or schedule a call. Let us know how we can help you.

Some of these have been said already, but I think there are a number of ways to stand out as a (to this point) not well known professional. This is basically the strategy I put together and followed to get well known as an SEO and now a growth marketer: 1) Teach others. Start by blogging your experiences and showing them what you are learning and how you are doing it. Don't be afraid to admit your mistakes. 2) Give others tools to succeed. When I was blogging at least twice a week on my personal site, I often would create tools in Google Sheets or elsewhere then give them away for free on my site. People love free things. Do you have an email template that converts incredibly well? Share it. 3) Build friendships online. One of the best ways I've had opportunities open up for me is by engaging with the broader digital marketing community online. This really took off once I started blogging a lot, and then by going to conferences and connecting with others (and writing lengthy recaps which I became known for), then I started getting more followers and making more friends. Many of my best friends now I met through the Internet, specifically Twitter. 4) Speak. Whether you are terrified of speaking or love doing it, this is a great way to build your name as an expert. When you speak at conferences (though you should start at meetups in your area if possible), people then often write about it and mention you online, which keeps that flywheel going. But make sure you have an online presence where they can find you (and subscribe to your email list!) 5) Find distribution channels. There are the usual ones of Twitter/Facebook/etc, but platforms like Medium are also amazing for building your brand and reputation. Medium basically has a built-in RSS feed that emails all of your followers when you've published a post. If a post of yours is popular enough (which you can also help along by emailing your friends and asking them to share it), you may have a publication reach out to you asking to republish it. This is a mega win! These are hopefully 5 actionable tips for you. Good luck!

I help clients leverage and monetize their patents in a variety of ways. One of the best methods is to attend and exhibit at trade shows in your field. Targeting startups may be one approach, but that's not the only market for your patent. I'd be happy to talk with you about identifying the best trade show and working the direct solicitation angle as well. Let me know when you're ready to get started!

If you are going to lead the workshops: Start with personal branding. Workshops and coaching are by experts and I'd recommend building a personal brand first. People should build trust in you. Then your offerings. Each offering that you have - a workshop, a coaching program etc. - should have it's own branding. You may even have separate websites for each of your offerings. If you are only organizing the business and not going to lead the programs yourself: then you got to do a corporate branding. So people relate to the organization more than individuals delivering the programs. The coaching / self help / personal development / health industry is full of examples of both branding strategies. If you study a few cases, and their business models, you will gain better insights on why they chose their branding strategy. And you can even question if the strategy worked or not. I hope this gives additional perspective to what you are thinking. Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss this further.

Do you know how your best customers are finding you through adwords? If you have a big enough data set there's likely some commonality. It's a gross oversimplification but if you can track them from start to finish, there's no reason you should have to continue acquiring the $30 customers.

If you are based in the USA the Small Business Administration is an excellent source. I have found excellent literature on their website. They also have a group called SCORE which will provide free business consulting and startup classes. I have read a book "Start Your Own Business" by Peter Shea is an excellent source. It is part of the Entrepreneur Press series. There are several automotive aftermarket associations in the USA that have a lot of excellent information on their website. Check www.autocare.org and www.sema.org. The USDOC has a great website called www.export.gov. Worth looking at. I have worked with a client based in Southeast Asia who worked in a similar field, expanding into some specific markets. I hope this helps.

Hi, you can find some open articles from Euromonitor (although most are not open), internetretailer.com/trends/consumers/ , Forbes, https://blog.vendhq.com/ or BCG reports.

Have you talked to a Salesforce rep? Seriously. They would be best and most knowledgeable to tell you whether their software can do what you want. Business-wise, your post frightens me with the impression of unbridled, "The customer wants it? Let's build it--who knows or cares if it's profitable!" That's great if you've got a giant pool of money to draw on and are specifically looking for the winner solution that will take off and hit mass market success. Which highlights the real problem I see here: your firm seems like it is doing far too much custom work. Without some repetition, using work you've done before, you're reinventing the wheel every time. Unless you're getting paid highly to develop these custom solutions, you're blowing cash and sinking towards debt every time you "buy a customer." From what you've shared, it looks like there are critical issues with your business model. Yes, you need some kind of analytics backbone to give you the data you want. But first, you need to identify what measures are important to you--and buying customer and playing with apps is not where money is made. How long have you been in business? What's your average cost of customer acquisition? And fulfillment? Are you making a profit? Do you know? From your post, it sounds to me like you understand the *technology* of your business, but not the *processes* of your business. It sounds, honestly, like a snarled-up mess of day-to-day firefighting. I'd be curious what your accountant has to say about cashflow. Have you mapped these processes out? Developed some KPIs to figure out what's going on and what needs to be kept tabs on? Figure those out first. Processes flowcharted and measures determined first, tech to manage them last. Technology (your CRM, software etc.) comes last. Technology is glue. What do you get if you apply glue first? A mess. I think you need more than a CRM consultation.

If you're CAN-SPAM compliant, showing unsubscribe links, physical address etc, you don't have a policy problem. You have a relevance problem. Frequency and chasing prospects are not bad, as a matter of fact they can be quite good. But you have to be relevant to what the customer expects to get this to work. Let me go through a purposefully ridiculous example: let's say I run a pet store that sells dogs, cats and fish. You're in the market for a puppy. So you click on my facebook ad for the puppy owner manual (or the google ad, or the list drop, or whatever) and enter your email. You get your puppy email but you also start getting cat and fish emails. 2 out of 3 emails are about litter boxes and aquariums. Worse yet, it's international cat week and I'm hitting you every day with a liquidation sale offer for kittens. You unsubscribe. And you hit SPAM. Because you never asked for that. On the other hand, if you happened to get dog emails, you would probably be interested in them and stay on the list. In fact, since you're in the market you would probably take as much as you can get. Same frequency on the surface, totally different story with relevance. You don't have to have multiple products to take advantage of this. You always will have multiple customer motivations and often will have separate avatars. It boils down to marketing strategy and is implemented throughout your customer acquisition process from inbound/outbound lead gen all the way through marketing automation.

Hi there! This is a great question - I actually started an apparel company that sells through Etsy about a year ago. We looked in to quite a few different fulfillment options, and, because of that, I've developed a really extensive list of resources and companies to do this. The answer to this really comes down to how much you want to spend per shirt, as well as the quantity of each design you want to order. Some companies use a process called Direct to Garment which allows you to order one item at a time as orders come in. This process is usually more expensive overall, but you don't need to order a bunch of the shirts before you know if they will sell through. Your margins are reduced though, and you need to wait for the shirts to be printed before shipping them, adding to the turnaround time after each order. Another option is Screen Printing, which can get you much lower costs per shirt, but you need to order in much higher quantities. This method is great if you have only a few designs that you are trying to sell, but becomes less feasible with more designs. As I said before, I have a really extensive list of companies that I've tried, so I know which ones really provide great quality, which ones are lower cost, and which ones do direct fulfillment. Let me know if you want to talk more!

You’re asking some great questions, and beyond the fact that there is no teacher as great as experience, it seems tragic how common this experience is, and making great investments is hard even for seasoned professionals. But it’s incredible how often the only two factors used to assess an investment are how much it will make, and how much they like (or know) the people running the deal, when just a few additional questions can often make all the difference. When looking at a new opportunity, the first thing I do is ask if I believe management’s story. This is really about getting a feel for whether you believe the people running the business or opportunity are qualified to exploit whatever inefficiency they have identified in the marketplace. If they can’t express in simple terms what that opportunity is, why they’re qualified to take advantage of it, and exactly how what they do will generate returns for the investor – run away. This is different than asking if I believe in the management, or like them – it’s about their ability to state in plain language their investment thesis, and back it up with the skills and tools needed to execute. Next, put it in context - consider the size of the opportunity and this investment’s place in it. Is it a big market, or small? Lots of competition or not? Does this investment bring something new to the space and will gains come from new business or is the plan to take it from existing competitors? If there are no crisp answers to these sizing questions, consider it a big red flag. The next bit is about understanding the risk of the investment. The single most common mistake made by investors is mis-pricing risk. Markets are pretty efficient, so there has to be a reason someone else isn’t already doing whatever this investment proposes to do and understanding what this dynamic is can be the single difference between good and bad investments. It may be that nobody has thought of it, or no one can do what this will do at the same low cost. Or there is an asymmetry of information, where you know something others in the market don’t yet know. Whatever it is, trying to understand the risk of the investment is key: understanding the timing of the probable returns, appreciating what could go wrong and how management will respond if it does, what change in the environment (like new laws, new competitors, new technology) could turn the deal on its head, and what assumptions need to remain true through the course of the investment. I’m not sure there is any way to get all of the right before making an investment, and surprises always happen, but the more work done to figure this part out can help determine whether the investment is worth making based on what its expected to return, and it often highlights something just plainly wrong with an investment. Finally, know that there are very few great investment opportunities relative to the number of absolute junk stories out there, and finding ones that make sense for your risk tolerance and timeline just takes work. And experience. And even when you get everything right, sometimes good investments still go bad.

It's good that your app has some traction. I have a classifieds ad site too (targeting Canadian market). Initially I was wondering if I should use WordPress or created it using MVC I picked the MVC approach. The thing is when doing the MVC you have to implement most of the functionality yourself (or your dev) which is time consuming. In hindsight I think I should've used WordPress and then bought some plugins to add to the missing functionality. I'd say do the incremental improvement approach because the things you listed would take time & cost a lot. By 7.9M do you mean 7.9MB ? The app can be 50MB in size but what is important is what the HTML it is generating. About the monetization you can do some contextual ads and some affiliate links. You have to be specific when talking to your dev what you mean by analytics. Say when a user does this I want this and that to happen. You can list some scenarios and how the reports should look like. Good luck! Slavi Marinov, Orbisius

I wish I could give you the perfect answer-- we are using Infusionsoft + CustomerHub, which is NOT the best solution given they don't have a forum feature-- we have had to tack on "Tender" which is built as a support ticket/help desk engine and we've had to modify it quite a bit. I think it's ridiculous that CustomerHub doesn't have a forum given they are a membership site platform--!? Anyway, I can speak to Infusionsoft-- yes, it is expensive and yes, it is complex, but I am happy with their ability to handle VOLUME and their ability to customize and refine to infinite possibilities. There is a lot of power in that and it's built for growth and seems very sustainable. I have had a membership site for 9 years, and believe me, you don't want to move your entire platform when it becomes obsolete-- that is a huge job. You do need some assistance setting it up, but after that you can maintain on your own. I also love the way I can run multiple businesses/income streams all through one Infusionsoft account. That is valuable too. Hope this helps.

Others have addressed social media here. Sure, that is important, but is only one piece of the puzzle. A comprehensive --- and tested --- marketing plan is the key. As a former CMO for an international higher education student-centric nonprofit that depended on direct/integrated marketing for 80% of its success, I suggest that looking at any and all channels is imperative. If you do not have a quality direct marketing list, then going to where potential students --- and their parents --- are going will be the biggest key. On the web, that will be the most-visited relevant sites that enable you retarget via companies like AdRoll. The other concern is the ever-expanding use of ad blockers. Therefore, simply "advertising" is not as powerful as it once was. Becoming a resource that will draw people to your site and blog will naturally increase your exposure via Google and other search engines over time. This is just a cursory overview, since I do not know your exact product and business plan. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to further discuss your challenges.

Are you pursuing a for-profit or non-profit model for your school? Do you have an education background? Are you certified to run Montessori school? Initial recommendations: •Investigate the California Department of Education requirements for operating an educational institution. •Investigate the requirements for the two accrediting bodies for Montessori: AMS <http://amshq.org/School-Resources/AMS-School-Accreditation> and AMI <http://amiusa.org/>. While not required, private schools are reputation-based and accreditation plays into your brand equity. •Investigate the requirements for the regional independent school accrediting body. While not required, many Montessori schools struggle to keep enrollment through elementary and middle school as parents expectations shift to college preparation, which Montessori does not have strong brand recognition for, and adopt a academic rigor / progressive education model of education accredited by a regional independent schools association for credibility. While starting with kindergarten frees you from the state early childhood childcare regulations, which can be onerous, it also cuts off your funnel. As a school brand, Montessori is precisely strongest at the very early ages, so you may have a challenge attracting families who already started their child with a Montessori school that has a preschool. Many Montessori school start with 18-month infant & parent programs. Best regards, Keith Gillette

One of your big opportunities is positioning yourself in the B2B rather than B2C space. I've consulted for a bow tie e-commerce retailer and one thing I know from that is just how competitive the B2C space is for men's accessories when looking at SEO/SEM etc. as a promotional method. One major opportunity for you as a manufacturer though is in the positioning yourself as a distributor and even dropshipper if you have the capacity. Suppliers and manufacturers are notoriously poor at promotion and hence a lot of e-commerce startups looking for quality suppliers will have difficulty finding them. This presents you with a great opportunity to acquire customers that are going to give you far higher lifetime value of customers than pure retail transactions and without the immense competition of the B2C space. As I've had a lot of experience in both the e-commerce side and in working with distributors and manufacturers, I'd be more than happy to discuss further with you a strong go-to-market strategy. Cheers, Mike

To build on what Sarah said - you can also look within channel if you have access to someone with the technical chops. Some ad groups or campaigns could be driving "worst" leads and others could be driving "best" ones. To cut off the channel is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. UTM tags in adwords (or any other platform these days) will be key to figuring this out. If you get leads on the phone, there are awesome solutions out there as well.

Hey there; I've helped quite a few tech startups (mostly in travel & SaaS) nail down their value propositions, especially as it relates to copywriting & conversions. Just a guess, but could it be that you're focusing too much on differentiating based on your website's "features" or what it does? If the core of what you offer isn't all that unique, try looking at other ways to differentiate. For example: - customer service (Zappos) - world view or business POV (Tom's one-for-one strategy) - personality (Mailchimp) - product design - the audience you serve (niche out) - how your website is created/run Not all of these type of differentiators will be "game-changing." But if what makes your service/website unique resonates deeply with your target audience, maybe you don't have to be a "disruptor" like Uber or airbnb. Tough to say without knowing what industry you're actually in. If you want to chat, feel free to contact me. Hope this helps. Dustin

Great question - I have worked on several projects relating directly to what you are describing (based on my initial understanding) including providing software interfacing for mobile/PC/TV for large-scale hardware manufacturers as well as for mobile devices connecting to sensors and translating/reading data sent from equipment buried several feet under the ground to track eco changes for contractors. Assuming by device we are referencing mobile/smartphones (and possibly connectivity with hardware on two different platforms?), in which case I would imagine Bluetooth connectivity should be able to get the job done for you. There are really a lot of factors that could go into either how to utilize Bluetooth, or if an alternative path towards connectivity would be required (the device types you're connecting, their congruence/similarity, if there are prompts on the push/pull pinging, where the data from each activity is being housed once completed, geo-relevancy and latency requirements to name a few.) I'd be happy to set aside a few minutes to talk about the details of your project and provide any additional insight I can on how can you connect these devices and build out your system.

You need to be analytically strong and understand financial concepts. The basic building block is understanding time value of money, discount rates, cash flows etc. Essentially, that will be your main job, to understand a firm's value. You'll have to say more on what you know so far (educational background etc) for me to dig deeper in this field.

Few things to consider here, definitely would want to be looking at vesting the equity, good article on that here to get you started: http://thestartuptoolkit.com/blog/2013/02/equity-basics-vesting-cliffs-acceleration-and-exits/. I'd also be looking at a technical gun to be reviewing him from a technical standpoint, if you aren't a developer yourself it's difficult to review him from a code standard type standpoint, so I'd get that checked off also. Regarding salary, % of equity and all of that, it's just what is the expected increase in business value through his contribution and then work back from there. Performance and bonus structures work well to incentivise without risking a large salary portion. Also be wary of your fixed costs basically doubling if you're used to only paying yourself a salary and all other costs are variable i.e. development costs based on customers etc. Few points that hopefully help out!

Unfortunately you have to file your taxes for every year even if you do not have any business activity as well as to comply with your state fillings and the filings for your Secretary of State. You cannot add the activity of 2 years together, there has to be a filing for every year, in this case $0 revenue for 2015 but you still have to file it with $0