In my experience, yes. Dropbox did this with great success.

I spent 10 years building a digital agency so I've got some experience with client acquisition. The short answer is - client work leads to more work. One way to start the pipeline going is to pick up small jobs from any number of project sites and to build from there. Chances are if I have a small project I'm working on, there's more work to be had. Most big engagements start with a small project. If you give me some ideas of what you've tried in the past perhaps I can refine the approach a bit. Happy to help.

Hi, I understand that it feels that it makes no sense, but you are right that it feels right in some way. I actually wrote about this, How is SaaS different from MRR? People get confused a lot about it and think they can adapt monetization strategy to the model. Please read https://medium.com/@JDcarlu/how-is-saas-different-from-mrr-9e7a7edd0edb Also I did a small study on a SaaS company called Mattermark, and talked about this too. Maybe it can help you as an example https://medium.com/@JDcarlu/mattermark-for-everyone-b9d92e6a8831 Hope this help you!

Here are some things you should read to start making yourself an idea about it: http://businessofsoftware.org/2011/09/from-0-100million-with-no-sales-people-the-atlassian-10-commandments-for-startups/ http://nukemanbill.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-sell-your-software-for-20000.html Also you should everything here: http://tomtunguz.com/categories/sales/

In almost any business your first clients will come from the network of people you know. Be bold in letting everyone who knows you know what you are up to and why you are good at it . Once you have your first few under your belt you will have a better sense of what makes you unique and spatial. Also you will hopefully start to get some word of mouth referrals from people who like your work. Additionally look for people you know or are connected to who have influence the people who know lots of people with the problems you solve and offer them a free consultation. Have some good materials about your offer and give it to them once they love your work. It's like starting a campfire, one you have a flame it's easy to fan, it's the first flame that takes most of the work.

Myself and friends have had great success meeting technical folks and candidates for co-founders at networking events such as Start-up Weekends (http://startupweekend.org/) and local networking events you find through www.meetup.com such as Hackers and founders, Startup Meetup, Minnesota Entrepreneurs (Check within your state). If you are unable to network at events like this there are other avenues such as co-working space (In MN we have - http://cocomsp.com/locations/minneapolis/, Startup Loft - http://www.svl.mn/ etc) Good luck.

There are tons of Free QR code creators (or low cost). You could create a coupon, assign unique QR codes for each affiliate (place them on cars), and scan them in store to give proper credit to the affiliates. The only problem I see with this is: human nature. We forget things, lose things, and show up asking about "that deal that some guy told me about." Or Personally, I would want email addresses to communicate with the folks. (to really measure the effectiveness of this promotion) I'd do this: -Create a different bitly (www.bitly.com) link for each affiliate. -Place them on a coupon that has a great incentive. -Write on there- redeem your coupon by visiting (the bitly link) -This should take them to a simple opt-in page (to gather email addresses- you can use www.leadpages.net) -They give you their email, you deliver their coupon AND you are able to continue communicating. (since most sales take 7 touches before a decision is made anyway) -AND your affiliates get the credit without error. You'll get the most qualified leads and you can judge for yourself how effective this will be moving forward. :)

Just be frank and flexible. Say: 1. We don't have that stuff. As a startup with customers that love customized solutions, we've tried to be nimble. 2. But I can see that your organization needs a streamlined process. We can deliver. 3. This stuff isn't for us internally. But show us some examples of what you'd like to receive, let us know how it's used, and we'll produce whatever is needed. In other words, treat your big marketing partner as a client. Bring a white board, listen, and produce!

Yes. You don't have to have a location to have reviews displayed as a rich snippet in search results. There are a number of resources you can use. Schema.org can help you learn how to markup your HTML so that Reviews are labeled properly. This site makes it even easier by populating the code for you: http://schema-creator.org/review.php Once you have your code, test it with Google here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets To learn more general information about reviews, visit: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/146645?hl=en Keep in mind that even if your code is accurate, Google might not display the snippet in search.

Depending on Canadian law, you will most likely need to close your business and establish a Non-profit. They will need to be two separate entities if you want to do tax deductible donations. Are you worried about protecting your IP? Your customers? I would need to know a little bit more about what you are trying to do in order to give you a more in depth answer.

Let's be clear that there are two types of angel investors: Experienced angel investors (they have invested in 5+ startups) and people with money who *might* invest in you and your startup. Generally speaking, you should focus your time in getting meetings with experienced angel investors, as they generally follow clear protocols, whereas the other group are highly unpredictable. Whichever group you choose, you ought to filter based on relevancy. Approaching someone whose entire experience has been with games, as an example, and thinking they're going to get excited by a marketplace for construction materials is a stretch. I've found that the more someone can understand the need for the product, the more likely they are to invest. People really don't ever want to be "pitched" They want to build a relationship with someone who they believe in, who they feel they have helped and can continue to help become incredibly successful. So starting with asking for advice is usually a great way to commence a relationship. But of course, you must be genuine in your respect for that advice.

A good name is unique, and stands out but should ideally create a positive association with it, especially your target demographic. When it comes to naming new products, companies will spend sometimes months and go through thousands of options before arriving on the one that they'll ultimately go with. Don't rush this process because its ultimately much more costly to have to go back or change, or ultimately fail because the name did not resonate enough with your target demographic. The name is not everything but it's a huge part. Go to techcrunch or cruncbase and look at any number of new start ups which are probably all great ideas or products but because they have either a dumb name or a not so unique name, they can fail. My personal pet peeve is the stilted and formulaic neologism of adding "ly" at the end of any noun or verb---perfectly hilariously noted throughout HBO's Silicon Valley. At this point, we are all more clever than this. Anyway, when you have only seconds to make an impression on a consumer, the last thing you want is cognitive dissonance caused by the name. Cognitive dissonance occurs when the signifier is not what is signified and vice versa; you're looking at a bicycle but someone insists it's a fish. And you're like, wtf. This happens when you're looking at a great product but then it unexpectedly has a weird or dumb name, a range of slight neorological impressions then occur, effecting the emotional relationship between consumer and product: confusion, annoyance, distrust, etc. All of these slight negative responses are not what you want associated with your product when you only have seconds to make an impression. That's why a good name matters. Now to your name: Dude Undies. Scrap this immediately. First of all, when it comes to men's underwear (I'm assuming this is your product), this is dangerous minefield territory because whether you like it or not, you're automatically dealing with issues of male insecurities involving self worth, virility, potency, etc Some light word association exercises (maybe among your friends) might be helpful in yielding an alternative to "undies" which i associate with: children, bedtime, potty training, etc.Absolutely not what men want to be wearing. You can see why this word next to "Dude" is cognitive dissonance in and of itself, never mind your product. I suggest you go back to the drawing board on this. Think about what makes your product different from your competitors', what value are you bringing to the market? Play with these ideas make a list of at least 50 words (thesaurus.com is very helpful) find a word or words that at least create that same impression. From my own observations, I've found that men love products with as few syllables as possible. If this is too daunting for you, enlist the help of a good copy writer with experience in product naming (I know a few if you need one), they should be able to give you a list of ad campaigns that they worked on. Paying them $100 for a good name is worth it in the long run. I hope this helps, best of luck to you!

Can you explain a bit more about what you are doing? There are a number of established ad servers, but I am unclear on how you are going to work with them to provide a service that is not already provided.

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.