Lots of ways to do this, including many that I'm sure I don't know about. One place to start would be to research local search volume for "Sushi", "Sushi restaurant(s)", and related phrases -- both in Canada and within comparable regions outside of Canada (especially the USA). You'd want to pay attention to multiple search engines, especially Google and Bing. That's only a subset of the data you'll need, but it's an important component in the overall picture.

Go onto https://dribbble.com and scour the place for quality design work. Once you've found some great pieces, look at what else those designers have done. If their portfolio fits well with your requirements, contact those designers and tell them about your project. Avoid sites like 99designs.com and oDesk in my opinion.

eBay is a great starting place. Would love to help you create a store and market it effectively. I have done this for years in other related business.

I can't say what is 'best' but can suggest Criteo as a reputable specialist in this area.

My experience is mostly related to Open Source ERP systems (and eCommerce systems). The two options you have are: 1. Go with an ERP system that has inbuilt eCommerce. There are several ERP systems which have this feature. Netsuite is a popular commercial cloud based system that has a built-in eCommerce system. Tryton and Nereid is an Open source alternative (Disclaimer: I work for a company that works on this stack). At advantages of an integrated system are: - One database to manage everything from sales to gift cards to refunds to shipping - Order updates reflect real time across the customers my account page and your ERP. - No more asking for credit card information when customers want to change orders. - Shipping (fulfilment) status reflects realtime - Pricing updates have to be done only at one place - Possibility to have additional sales channels like a point of sale, a marketplace etc. 2. Go for an eCommerce system that has known integrations with ERP systems. This is a popular approach too and there is a large plugin ecosystem with most ERP systems that provide integrations. The tricky aspect however is that no integration can be a 100% tight. So you need to analyze if the integration covers the features critical to your workflow. For example, most integrations provide importing of orders, but if your business uses gift cards extensively, you might want to make sure that the integration handles gift card and related accounting well. A few disadvantages of the approach is: - Maintaining integrations when either of the softwares change is costly. - Introducing a feature on either systems will need development on the other. For example, if you want to use reward points on webstore, your ERP might need it too. I will be happy to take a call to understand your use case.

Really depends on the type of product and the standard within that industry. As an example, furniture items can take months to deliver. On the other hand, if you're drop shipping, and customers can get the product cheaper and faster from somewhere like Amazon you may have some challenges. The key in dropshipping is to distinguish yourself from an authoritative, content or other standpoint so that customers are willing to sacrifice cost or delivery efficiency for the security your "brand" represents.

I'd recommend finding a qualified operational advisor and offering some SMALL level of equity to keep all interests aligned, as well as bring further credibility to the business!

I think Alessandro has read the question wrong. An angel investor rarely invests in a plan. They invest in the entrepreneur and any evidence that the entrepreneur is on the right path. This is ideally expressed in some form of early traction, or at least early external validation. Early validation in your case would show that you've already run customer acquisition experiments and proven a stabilized CAC. And that you've run some basic experiments to show that acquired users are willing to transact in some way. In other words, a plan is likely not enough to convince investors to invest.

Typically, establishing milestones and the credibility you can accomplish them is what enables an investment. People want to know what you are going to accomplish with their money. I find it's usefule to report your progress toward milestones and as well as any new information that would be useful in suggesting that new milestones may be more important than those on the current plan (pivots, new strategy pending, etc). I always assume you want your current investors to be future investors and that you should treat them the way you would wish to be treated in their shoes. On one hand its' seriously not OK to offer milesstones you have no intention of working to hit. On the otherhand, it's not OK to continue to work toward milestones you have learned will lead nowhere. Be forthcoming in what you want to achieve and put investors on notice that learning may change the milestones.

This depends on your business, of course, but typically you will want to show that you are running as a viable business on the operations side (that you have clear processes and team members have defined roles and responsibilities). You will want to have established your market (i.e. have some customers) and demonstrate an ability to both retain and attract new customers (i.e. grow). If you do not yet have a product that is launched or ready to launch, you should probably show that you are working on an iteration or maybe even a pivot, if you're really not getting anywhere. How a startup deals with failure in the first year often says more than how it deals with success.

There are 100s of companies targeting the exact same market with a very similar product. Do you have a very different offering? Do you compete on anything other then price? I suggest picking a niche other then startups. Pick a market that is less well served and has larger budgets.

One of my clients received $500k funding ONE week after we did our pitch coaching session. What they learned from our session is to be 100% focused and not to follow the "scatter gun approach" that they had for the 9 previous months. If you're looking to fund a startup, or even an existing business, there is no chance you will interest all investors. Some investors are only going to be interested in seed funding, other will only be interested in medical, others in mobile technology, etc. The questions become: 1. Why do you want to find ALL NYC investors? 2. Who do you REALLY want to get investment from? 3. How much investment do you want? Another client was looking for 50 investors, and after our coaching in 3 weeks he raised 65% of the funds he needed from 2 investors! He said "After our coaching session, the big change was that I realized that I just needed to approach confidently the bigger investors first." And then you can start creating a more effective and efficient investors pipeline. Other questions that spark to mind become: 1. How do you create a dynamic in which angels and investors WANT to meet you... rather you wanting to meet them? 2. What is your strategy for meeting angels / investors, for having conversations with them and for building useful relations with them? 3. How do you present your pitch? 4. What kind of questions do you ask angels / investors? If you want to dive in further on how you can raise the money you're looking for... or if you're looking to create this list of angel for another reason, get in touch to arrange a call. Read more here: www.about.me/noamkos

You can try either Tableau or Qlick software. Both work amazingly well with diverse set of data sources.

Alexa is probably the worst tool you could use specially if you are trying to gauge international traffic. Try something more advanced like similarweb.com to measure traffic volume and geo breakdown. Appannie.com will help you to analyze apps on itunes and google playstore.

On paper you have the advantage but after several startups control resides in he who knows how to execute the vision of the company.

Angel.co and gust.com are two places to start. I would also buy premium access to matermark.com provides a full list of Venture Capitalist by sector who has invested in what and what are their portfolios composed of

Having been in the position as an advisor, this is what I think an advisor expects: a. Equity Ownership. This depends upon how much involved an advisor into the start-up. b. A flat fee and a percentage pie on every transaction the stat-up makes(Not the profit margin) c. At my early stage, all I want is a testimonial from start-up n how I helped this business. In my early stages of adviosrship, I want good customer testimonials. This is a win-win situation for both of us. I get to learn from him many things which I couldn't have done myself. d. It is strategic importance to my own idea and I would love this company to scale and raise the funding and in this case I would expect a contract from the company which I helped.

This is always a chicken and egg problem. You wont attract customers if you don't have sellers on your market place and sellers won't join unless they see numbers. This is how I would approach(I won't call it optimal as there is nothing like optimal here as strategies will change based on time, place and demand dimensions) 1. Start from a locality or a city with sellers who are known to be providing good service to their existing customers. Go and pitch to those customers on how they will benefit on their supply chain if they choose your market place. Now once they are on-board to your platform, go talk to their customers on how you are making their life simple by coming to their platform. 2. Slowly expand to other localities and make sure that you add varieties to your platform in the process. Choose the sellers who will provide a wide range of goods in the process. 3. Expand this at a city and then go for state, country and cross-country level. As you build up the model, make sure you respect the credit cycle of buyers and delivery cycle for customers.e are nuances you want to take care at each level.Setup a call and we will go over this in detail.

I have not heard of the $1,000 rule; however, the determination for the need of a business license will come more from the requirements of your local government. Check with your local economic development office to determine what licensing would or would not be needed for the particular type of business you have in mind. Another factor would be the type of legal structure you intend to operate under (e.g. Sole Proprietor, LLC, Corporation). The corporation and LLC would have to be registered, while the sole proprietor may not have to. Schedule a call to discuss your options in greater detail.

This all depends upon where your business is located. You may have to pay local, state and Federal taxes. You may also be looking at sales and use taxes as well, depending upon location, product and service.

In theory they could own the business as long as the profit of that business were used to further the non-profit work of the school. The bigger question would be whether the school actually owns the business or whether you as a separate non-profit were operating within the facilities of the school.

How did you come to the $10K number? Based on revenue? Each of your contributions? Tough to answer this without understanding if the app is on the upswing or on decline etc. So... Does he want 5% equity of the app or 5% residual royalties? My guess is that he wants to participate in the revenue. If that is the case, I would structure an X-year sliding deal that eventually worked him out of the app. It could be something like Year 1: 5% of PROFIT share. Year 2 3% of PROFIT share. Year 3 1% of PROFIT. Year 4? Nothing. It has to be based on PROFIT not REVENUE. Structuring a company and then issuing "shares" in an app is insane to me given the likely lifespan of an app. Too much hassle.

Some options off the top of my head: > Google Alerts and pick from there, to do it manually. > If you have specific source sites in mind, you could use iframes (though I would consider this "ugly". > Facebook widgets are used in Wordpress to pull FB content over. Using that as the beginning of a search term, I came up with this: https://wordpress.org/plugins/feed-pull/ > Look into "full content" rss feed plugins, which is likely what you want. From what I've read in my quick checking just now, the variables are a bit tricky to figure out if it's new to you.

I'm not sure of any service for hiring an SEO beyond the standard marketplaces like oDesk & Freelancer.com. I've worked with a handful of "SEO experts" over the last few years and can tell you that it's important to be careful. I've wasted thousands of dollars bringing in "experts" when things get busy and the results have been everywhere from horrid to exceptional. For me, the best approach is to take the time to scout out talent as if you're scouting for a professional sports team. Refuse to take the easy approach by putting an ad on oDesk and hoping that the right people respond. Instead, visit communities like Inbound.org, GrowthHackers.com, Moz.com or even Clarity to begin your hunt! The community on Moz.com is likely going to provide you with the easiest route to finding talent. You could upload a post in their community section asking for talent and likely have a decent response. On the flipside, you could also do the heavy lifting on your own by browsing comments and other threads to find people who responded with insightful & high quality information. I've hired SEO's and marketers everywhere from Europe to Canada - Happy to help out with resourcing or helping find the right talent if you ever want to chat.

While I don't specialize in band management or promotion, I have some second-hand advice as my boyfriend is a signed musician to a major label. From my understanding of your question, it sounds like they have some sort of following already - from here, I'd identify within the US or Europe where you strongest following is - then target that area first for a more local-focused tour. For example, an LA-focused tour, New England or Midwest tour. This will help keep costs low while creating more fans that can act as band promoters. If there is no following at the moment, you should consider shopping the band and their cover for press coverage to some major music blogs such as pitchfork, ear milk, indiecurrent, etc. Here is a great list of music blogs: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/03/26/20blogs. I also know that Perez Hilton often writes about covers that he knows will resonate with his readers. You could also identify music tastemakers for their style on Spotify and build a relationship with them to see if they're interested in including the band in some of their upcoming/new playlists. Many of these folks like being the "first to" knowledge and up-and-coming bands, so this can be a great and sort of easy go-to. Find some of the influencers who are a little lower down on the influence-scale (think a 6 or 7 instead of 10's like Pitchfork) and see if they're interested in interviewing the band via Skype, in person, or would provide coverage for "first access" to new releases. Great examples of these blogs are are "We Found New Music" or "Obscure Sound." Lastly, you could always try to have them signed to a booking agency that best represents their style. Some examples are Windish (https://twitter.com/windishagency) which is large and known for more indie bands. A some new ones like Boston Music Scene (https://twitter.com/bostonmusicscne). I hope this helps! Promoting music now-a-days is a totally different beast from what it was several years ago, but there are more channels/mediums now, which create more opportunities for them to get heard. Good luck!