The first place to start is to get out there and meet people especially at local business association group meetings. Any place where people are networking is a great way to find someone for the team. Use the resources you already have like checking your college or university alumni association. Of course you could put out an ad on one of the online job boards, but your best opportunity will be to find someone who knows someone so that you can get a strong recommendation. There's always the obvious resources such as LinkedIn, but you'd be better off networking with people that you know to find the exact person that you need.

What sort of SMBs are you looking for? There are over 5.68m SMBs in the US and you would be hard pressed to find a public list of each one. However, if you know a location and/or an industry, you can start with a place like hoovers.com or yellowpages.com. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions about list building, it's one of the most important steps in any sales process.

I have a membership site with video training that companies use to train their salesforces. Having set up many paid and commission-based sales teams over the years, here are the main issues: > the less effort you put in at the beginning, the more turnover you're going to experience > if you don't have consistent training, the process, impression and market presence of your salespeople will be all over the place and give you a poor reputation > without a recorded (written, video) training program in place, your time as a manager and executive will be tied up by stupid questions repeatedly asked by different employees. May sound like a small thing, but this time adds up quickly. "When do we take breaks?" over and over again turns into a real annoyance and time waster. Leave your hiring, training and assessment sloppy results in sloppy market presence and execution.

Based on my 15+ years of experience in the Contact Centre technology space and given the requirements you have outlined for high volume inbound & outbound calling I would look at solutions from Avaya, Genesys or Cisco. there are others around but these have a history in Contact Centre Each of these vendors offer premise based as well as cloud based options. Let me know if you would like to have a call to discuss further. Ian Thebridge

One of the best ways is to contact those on your industry and just ask them. Contact Adam Bry from Skydio. There are working on the technology of the drones (software) so they will probably know a lot of hardware suppliers/companies and it won't be competing with them. You can even become a client of them in the future! PS: Also you should check Shenzhen in china where most drones hardware is manufactured.

This is a typical problem with any start-up, i.e. intention to trade everything for equity. I am assuming that you're trying to trade equity for cash. In that case I would suggest you to look out for individuals with diversified skills and competencies. The reason being, less the number of individuals less the amount of equity that would be required to trade. Second option could be to look out for agencies to whom you could outsource the business process. I am not at all ashamed to mention that my own company is one such agency. However, my only piece of advice to to try and add some retainership component to your model, apart from equity, as in a long term it's easier for people to lose motivation in absence of any capital gains. The reason being, people don't understand the value of equity in startup. Rather, the time it could take for that equity to turn into something big; it may not happen as well. That's why they say there's nothing called free lunch. In my more than a decade experience working with entrepreneurs and helping them bootstrap, I have learnt that the market out there is crowded with individuals with a lust to join startup as a equity holder. In a short term, they may speak all those rosy language that may sound like coming directly from the Horse's mouth. But, in a long term you realize not everything is hunky-dory. As far as finding a co-founder or a CTO or any other executive team member is concerned, ensure that you put down the roles and responsibilities attached with each title. Apart from above, ensure that you communicate your expectation lucidly and understand the values everyone is required to bring on the table. Usual people who could be a good fit for you, apart from any agency, are people who aren't big on title. Is there anything specific you're looking at? Please feel free to revert with more clarity to receive clarity. I am just a call away. All the best!!

Here are a few ideas for monetizing your traffic: - Offer a premium subscription to your site & added benefits for those folks who pay a small monthly fee. - Recommend to your audience relevant products and books using an Amazon affiliate link. - Consider charging a small fee for some of your podcast sessions, or host separate webinars or workshops that you charge for. - Reach out to other sites that are trying to get in front of a similar audience as yours, and offer to link to their site or recommend their content/product/service to your audience for a fee. Happy to hop on a call if you'd like to discuss other ideas. Best of luck!

This has been discussed many times before and rather than repeating a lot of those things here, I will direct you to one of the best resources on this topic. Clarity CEO Dan Martel recently released a video "Raising Capital Like a Pro" that covers most things you need to know about fund raising. Here is the link: http://youtu.be/7dew9hhWBB4

So the bar patrons drive the value, right? If your fellow students start using the app (and start asking the guy at the door, "Can I pay the cover with XX app?"), then the bar owners will be the easy part. Focus your efforts on driving adoption. If you've already got 2 bars on the hook, then print some point-of-sale "table tents" advertising the app. Negotiate a drink special that people get if and only if they download the app. Do non-scalable stuff like offering to be the guy manning the door at those two bars for free. Ask every single person with a smartphone to download the app and use it to pay the cover. That's how you can drive adoption: one person, one cover, one bar at a time. You've got to change students' habits, at least at those two bars. They need to reach for their phones, not their wallets. Rally all your friends, and do whatever you've got to do to turn those early adopter bars into case studies that you can turn around and "sell" to other bars in town. Don't look for shortcuts. Get to work.

If business model was all about "revenue" then you could have hit somewhere on the dart board. However, if you've passed the information to your friend under the hashtag "Business Model" then I would like to ask "What's the business idea?" I am a bit perplexed to read your suggestion about trading everything for equity. That definitely doesn't sounds like a business model. I believe, either you have missed some important information to mention or you need to be a bit crisp with your description. Quality of response (solution) will depend on the question quality. Is there anything specific you're looking at? Do feel free to reach out to me with more clarity to get clarity. Thank You!!

This is a tricky question, because it's very difficult for a consultant or PR firm to get major press like this for a startup unless the startup has an amazing, innovative product, is doing something so incredible that it has to be talked about, or has a fantastic story behind it. A PR firm is only as good as its clients' stories, and they often can't get the press the client wants. There are strategies for getting into the press on your own without spending a fortune on a PR firm that may or may not be able to get the tech press you want. As well, there are things that a consultant can do to help you build the narrative to make your startup as appealing as possible to get into the national tech press. We've gotten major national press (Inc., USA Today, Fast Company, Technorati, MSN, Yahoo, Intuit, Tech Cocktail, etc.) for ourselves and our clients. I'd be happy to talk with you about what we can do to help.

The way I was approached as a marketing co-founder is that I reconnected with a friend at our high school reunion. He was a highly technical founder who had run his business for a year but wasn't getting the results he wanted. He had no marketing expertise and offered me a majority equity share to come on board. It took me about a month of deliberation before I accepted, but I decided to accept because: 1) he demonstrated he was flexible and willing to change the business model based on my advice 2) he clearly showed that he valued my skills by offering such a high equity stake and 3) our existing relationship (we were very good friends all through middle and high school) put me at ease. I already knew his personality and liked working with him. Don't underestimate the value of personal relationships. My networking strategy has always been to start with my existing network of people and ask them to introduce me to two new people. The strength of a personal referral is much stronger than bumping into someone at an event and your contact can often be a great source of research for you before you meet with your new contact.

These are good questions to start with. I'd recommend rephrasing the first question to "How likely would you be to use this app?" (subtle but important difference - it can be "helpful" but they may not use it). And rephrasing the second to "How much would you be willing to pay for this app?" (again, idea vs. intent). You can also get a sense for Net Promoter Score (NPS) by asking "On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this app to a friend?" (Learn how to calculate NPS here: http://www.netpromoter.com/why-net-promoter/know)

If I may ask, "What's your definition of *mean* marketing?" In my more than a decade experience with companies, people have always asked for smart ways to market a product or service. I haven't found anyone trying to be *mean* with customers, as the word definitely doesn't carries a positive connotation. As far as smart marketing is concerned, designing a campaign is dependent on various factors, not limited to following: 1. Understanding your market niche 2. Understanding your customer niche 3. Selecting appropriate media and platforms to market 4. Innovating your campaign by capturing latest trends 5. Adopting appropriate execution strategy so as to keep it long enough to cover the subject and short enough to raise the interest 6. Any many more tactical planning..... I hope above to be of some help!!

Google could be a good place to start searching for the information (s). Just be careful about the authenticity of the data that pick for your business plan. One way to ensure authenticity is to pick data published by established brands. However, given my experience working with plethora startups around business planning, I am curious to understand following: 1. Why do you need info on Mobile App revenue? If you're trying to hinge your Apps' ability to monetize on generic industry numbers then you're on a shortest possible path to getting your business plan scrapped. Alternately, in case you aren't clear about your financial numbers then it isn't a good practice to reverse engineer your numbers by looking at revenue figures of other applications. Thirdly, if you're counting info on mobile app revenues as a data to be mentioned under market research/analysis section then again it could be a bad idea. The data should provide an insight around your application concept and business idea. Do feel free to reach out to me for any further help that you may need. I am just a call away to be able to provide further clarity. Thank You!!

Mike, I am assuming you'd have gained significant insights on the probable demand for your application. If I build, they will come could be a fatal proposition to presume. I am telling this, both, after having worked with numerous entrepreneurs as an independent consultant to working with startups as an agency. Secondly, as a yet-to-be-launched-startup your concern should be "How to monetize the App?" than thinking about something as big as branding. Branding is much more than mere having a logo. Continuing with sprint up to MVP could be a good idea as long as you are clear with "Objective" and "Goal" that you wish to achieve post reaching MVP stage. If not, then you should simultaneously start establishing a business model around your idea. And, don't confuse business model to means to just earn revenue. It's much more than that, and in it's absence the road ahead may be ridden with more potholes. If investment/funding is at the top of your mind, post MVP, then you should consider putting together a document highlighting following: 1. Problem your application will address 2. Value associated with your product 3. That there's a demand for such application (I have mentioned demand and not need) 4. Your strategic planning for future on utilization of fund There could be various such critical business parameters to consider. I hope above could be of some help to you. Please feel free to reach out to me for any specific input that you may be looking at. Receiving more Clarity from you will help me to provide more Clarity on way forward. We call it "Hand-Holding". Thank You!!

I've personally been accepted into two accelerators. The wait time depends on the accelerator. For one accelerator, I didn't hear back until at the absolute last minute (the week before it started). For another accelerator I heard back about a month before it started. In terms of improving your chances for an accelerator, having an alumni give you a reference is a big help. Also continuing to show signs of traction and growth is a big help as well. There are a handful of other ways to get the attention of the decision makers at the accelerators too. Call me if you need help getting into an accelerator.

Sounds like Clarity Live :)

You are 100% correct. Just like you, customers in other countries want to understand what they're buying. Studies have shown they're actually 6 times more likely to buy when a website is available in their native language, and that 85% of global shoppers will not buy at all in a non-native language. Having a translated website also helps people find you/improves your SEO, as even if someone is willing to check out a site in English, they search in their own language. I'm happy to help further. Just let me know, and thank you!

There are a few ways to track things automatically, but they get complicated: - referral program software - Give your referrers special URL's with parameters that identify them as the referrer (like http://url.com/?referrer=JohnDoe), then push that value into a hidden form field - Create a separate landing page for each referrer I'd keep things much simpler to start. Just tell your social club that there's a referral program in place, then add a form field on your signup process asking who referred the new customer. If John Doe knows that there's a program in place, when he refers someone, he's likely to tell them "make sure you say I referred you". When the new customer joins, they'll likely remember to enter "John Doe" as the referrer. It's not bullet proof, but it's an easy way to start.

Neither am I, and I work with this stuff all the time. You need a statistician and a psychologist at least. The content has to be grounded in accepted psychological terms, and proven statistically relevant. Maybe you could talk to the DISC people and rent out their expertise to do so...won't be cheap, though. The only other firm I know that has created an assessment tool that really works is Objective Management Group / Dave Kurlan and Associates. You could ask them how they developed their tool and how they proved it was statistically relevant and accurate. If I were in their shoes, I certainly wouldn't give you this expertise for free, though...just be aware of that.

As you likely know, people make a lot of decisions based on price. Having different pricing points isn't distracting, it's often the driver for making a decision - as people compare value of an offering to the price of its offer. So no, I don't think you should set all your prices at the same level. But I do suggest you put prices on them (not just free), as studies on membership sites have shown that even a $1/year price will see 15-25% of previously "free" users leave - meaning that they never had the intention of spending money with you.

I believe Quickbooks can do everything for you. Not 100% sure, but I would look into that.

Hi I have quite a lot of experience in setting up and running PMO (as a part of performance improvement and turn around projects) In short what you need: 1. Agreed with your boss framework in which projects will reported to you and steering committee or other supervision body. You need also some tool to help you with seeing where you are and making reports. I used Excel (with VB macros) and Google Sheet. For more advance solution you can use Asana, SmartSheet, Lean Kit, 2. Agree on how projects should be run – how often you meet with PM, how often PMs are meeting with their team, how team leaders are chosen, how resources are allocating to the project and who decides on this; what is the reward / motivation scheme for PMs and team members 3. Communicate it to the project leaders / stream leaders – I proposal to make a training and presentation available to everybody – record it so that you do not have to answer stupit questions time and again 4. Execute and improve That is in short If you want to have a look at the excel just write to me Best regards Asen

I've found talented data scientists in several other countries who do just as good as ones I've worked with in Silicon Valley. It is not a position one can automate away, of course - one needs to know more about the type of data that needs grooming and what types of skills best fit it (DSP vs analytics vs whatever buzz word that relates best to the science at hand). Can you speak more about your goals?