In my experience, no entrepreneur is fully prepared for the journey they are embarking upon when they start a new business endeavor. You simply can't have everything you need before you begin this journey. Being an entrepreneur is about being resourceful, or as Paul Graham puts it, being "relentlessly resourceful". You'll need to solve problems as you go and you can't anticipate every hurdle you're going to have to overcome. Ask people around you if they would describe you as resourceful. Ask yourself this question. It is the one skill that every entrepreneur needs to have. That said, I think you can try to stack the deck in your favor before you begin. Money, knowledge, a head start on your product or service idea before you go full time, the right partners, and the support of your significant other are all things that will greatly benefit you. In the end, you're going to have to be willing to do whatever it takes to make your business endeavor a success. You're also going to have to be willing to work hard and live an unorthodox lifestyle while you are getting things started. If you're not looking for this kind of life and you don't want to give up a lifestyle that you've become accustomed to or if you don't have the confidence that you'll be able to figure it out as you go, then you may not be ready yet. I've always thought that you never really know what you are capable of until you are put in a position where there is only one way forward and failure is not an option. In this respect, sometimes I think it's worth a try if starting a new business endeavor is something you've thought about for a long time. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there to see what you can do. I know my experience of starting a business was one in which I didn't have many things going for me, but I still managed to find a way to make it work and find success. Work hard. Don't give up. Strive to be the best. Do whatever it takes. You can do it!

Here's a system a masterminded with Joel of Buffer (pun intended). General rules: Break the session into 3 parts and set time limits. Stick to one mastermind group partner for each session. Take it in turns for each part of the session. Prep: Have your achievements and challenges list ready before the meeting 1. Spend 10mins celebrating "achievements" from the previous week. Can be big achievements or small. doesn't matter as long as they're meaningful to you. 2. Spend 5 mins doing "reflections". These are your reflections on the challenges you had last week. 3. Challenges: 25mins. Express your "challenge" and let the other person lead you to a resolution through a series of guided questions as part of a discovery. Note: It is imperative that your partner never gives you an answer but only asks guiding questions. Joel's company uses this system amongst all his staff and the company just got valued at $60m. You can read about it on techcrunch or on his blog. If you want more detail on how to run a successful MMG or want to hear the story of how he and I spent a year doing this every week for a whole year. You know where to find me. :)

Im sure you'll will find many diff approaches but overall your main goal, once you contact, is to always be accessible, friendly and build relationships. Even if your relationships are thin, they are better quality leads for business than you simply walking into a business pitching your product. When pitching your product: Always focus in value, talk to your soon to be clients as if you deal with the issues first hand and this is how you solve them... Don't discuss pricing unless asked. Offer any help or guidance in selecting services even from the competition if they want.. Sell yourself as a rep from a company that is paid to help not sell... This approach works wonders if you can pull it off.. If you have less time during intros or pitching local retail shops you have to be more direct but still aim for a relationship than a quick sale before you move on next door. Learn a bit about their business like busiest hours, popular item or service...after your intro simply offer them more time when they are less busy with clientele to come back to talk about fuckng a certain issue (with a product you represent) :) Hope it helps a bit.

In my personal experience, I believe it is better to serve this as a PDF, since not all users will trust ZIP downloads. And even if you ZIP the PDF, when a user opens that file, it will still open it in browser if that's the way their machine is configured. Best to stick with true pdf.

I can relate to where you're coming from for a couple of reasons. One, I love technology, yet I define myself more as a creative person who loves to write. As an employee, I was on both sides of the fence. For many years I was a software developer and systems analyst. And I've also been copywriter and a merchandise assistant in the fashion industry. I was always looking for the place where I fit. I've spent time in corporate--ended up hating the bureaucracy and politics. And contracting/volunteering in non-profits, which have their own challenges. Running a business isn't for everyone, so it's good that you realize it might not be the path your want to take. A lot of people do it because they believe it will lead to freedom. But it can be another trap if running a business doesn't fit your temperament. My suggestion would be to take your time right now. Do some work within yourself to be honest about what you're drawn to, and what is a complete turn off. Don't just run to something to get away from something else. It might take a while for you to define the right move. I'd start by writing out what you dislike and what you like when it comes to work and self expression. Sounds simplistic, I know. But you'd be surprised how much comes out if you take the time to write it out. Or speak it into a recording device--whatever it takes to get it out of your head. Don't be afraid to make a mistake while you're figuring it out. Every new opportunity doesn't have to be the "be all and end all." Once I made the move out of IT, I became a contractor and also did freelance writing. Not being a full-time employee allowed me to have an income while not being committed fully to a company or job. Perhaps your ultimate answer will be to do something on the side, while you work full-time in an environment that allows you to grow and do good work. Or perhaps the freelance/contractor route will click. You'll have to give yourself space to figure out what's right--what makes sense for your peace of mind and for your financial needs. It's okay if you follow your own path. It just may take a while for you to figure it out what's right for you and how to create the fulfillment you're seeking. For myself, I accept that my path will not be a straight line. In corporate I had a career path, and I knew what every step would be. That's not true now, and sometimes it can be unnerving not to know. But I've found that it works better for me to have the flexibility, and I'm wiling to accept the "uncertainty" that comes with it. That's why you have to have an idea of what you want and what you're willing to live with, so you can express yourself in the world and feel good about it.

It stands for allowing someone to continue doing or use something that is normally no longer permitted (due to changing regulations, internal rules etc.)

Long story short: they should be written in your tense, since they are actually written by you, on your behalf. When asking an acquaintance for an intro, make sure you provide enough context for your acquaintance to justify making the connection: - clarify how you're connected; - mention the name of the startup and ways to look it up; - include a very concise outline of what your startup's capabilities are and what you've achieved so far; - end with a call to action. Your acquaintance can then either forward your email entirely or use it to quickly put together a separate message based on the information you've already provided.

https://www.filepicker.io/ is the best thing that you can integrate with this app which suits your requirement. If you are the owner of the app, you can integrate it very quickly. If not, you can suggest the app owner to do it Feel free to call me if you need more clarification. I am consulting architect for few companies in US and India on mobile, web and windows/linux/mac apps.

It's not the number of people visiting your website, it's the number of people returning, that matters; especially when you are talking about online client experience. Consider yourself your client. What would you want? 1. Easy to reach services? 2. Clear design? 3. Your friends following the brand? Fill in the blanks. It's not just about the information anymore, because there's plenty on the Internet. The presentation, the ease of getting it and relevance matters, when it comes to online experience. Lastly, and most importantly, what your client online really seeks today in the crowded world of Internet is personalized attention! Reply to him/her. Get in touch and build relationships.

The petal diagram is great for new markets: http://steveblank.com/2013/11/08/a-new-way-to-look-at-competitors/

Ensure your profile was compelling. Build a business page. Join related Google groups. Contribute to those conversations. Follow influencers in the space (sometimes they follow back, though the follow first strategy works better on Twitter). Write blog posts and share those on Google+ (and other social networks). Use other social networks and tell those followers you are also on Google+. Ensure your web site has prominent icons showing that you are on Google+ (and other networks). Ensure your Google Authorship is setup on your Google+ page and your blog. Look for other blogs in your industry that are open to guest blogging and post articles on there as well. Ensure your Google+ Authorship is linked to those. Ensure your author bio/profile on those other sites (or footers in the articles) link back to your Google+ page. Post previews on YouTube (if your courses have video material). Share those on Google+. Link your YouTube channel. Links in YouTube video descriptions to e-mail sign up landing pages. Build custom landing pages for various circumstances. Of course you're going to want to then push people to your site for the e-mail opt-ins. So keep tasteful notices on your blog/site so when people read your content they can sign up for your newsletters. I personally am not a fan of popups in people's faces. Tasteful banners and fixed position panels that tuck away at some edge of the screen are great. Give away resources in exchange for e-mails. Have some free PDF that would be useful and meaningful to people? Maybe it follows up on a blog post even. Provide a page that requires people to fill out your e-mail list form in order to download the document. In your case you might want to give away a portion of a course or something. Maybe your e-mail list highlights other courses. So now you just gave someone something of value and are leading them to more value (that they should be happy to pay for that next time around). Twitter has lead generation campaigns that work quite well and integrate with MailChimp. I know you said Google+, but you should seriously look at multiple networks. Then I'd look into ads on social networks. Extremely targeted. Small budget. This works well for optins and as a byproduct you get your name out there and do get followers from those types of campaigns as well (even though what you get charged for is leads and the goal is leads - it still brings you some followers). To sum all those steps up: You need to generate content that people enjoy so they are more interested in signing up for your e-mail mailings. People want a reason. You use Google+ (and other networks) to reach out to people beyond your normal web site traffic. You get into circles and communities within these networks (and other sites) as well. Though don't blatantly spam.

Honestly is not as hard as it might appear to you right now. I have a few Chiro friends and first met one while visiting then through one met a few more... What I've learned is that most practices are small and thus operate very quickly.. They can make decisions on the spot if they like something or remove a system of they don't... Same as hiring their staff... Call for an appointment and simply let the receptionist know you're bringing in a product to help their office... All doctor visits have a first time meeting anyway.. So getting to chat with you about a product (specially if is actually helpful) might give them a joyful break in their day... Go with a solution and maybe some sort of trial for them to experience it then is just a matter of not necessarily closing them but retaining them through that much smoother "close" via trial... There's nothing better in a pitch than a free goodie... Also, try having your pitch incorporate an existing user that might be a competitor.. No one wants to be the first but no one wants to be last either so play that in your favor...

Honestly, you're going to have a hard time getting any company to do a run this small. The main reason is that setup costs to configure and turn on their machines are going to be so high that your unit cost per box will be $10-$20. Custom cardboard doesn't really start to make sense until 500-1000 units, and even then the economies of scale don't kick in until ~5000 or so. Your best bet would be to think about stickers. With 2-4 well placed and full color stickers, you can make a stock brown (or white) cardboard box look pretty custom. Checkout Uline to see what boxes they offer, and try to think about what stickers you could add to make them your own.

This depends on your definition of popular, but I can help you out. You're not going to be getting thousands of hits per month, but you can gain some popularity. 1. You're going to need to publish two posts per week, so you better be ready to write. One for your blog, and one for someone else's. 2. You won't be publishing any "round up" content, like 10 best tools for "blank". You're going to need to deliver ACTUAL value here. 3. Make sure that the topic of your blog is first about something people are actively looking for online. User Google Trends to test out some keywords. 4. Use BuzzSumo.com to search for keywords of blog posts and check out how many people are sharing those. Take a look at the most popular posts and then out do them. Write an even more comprehensive and valuable post than that one. 5. Build your email list as quickly as you can. Use Appsumo.com and install their list builder app. 6. Provide a content upgrade for each post. For example, an eBook, a checklist, anything that relates to the value of the article you wrote. Exchange the free item for their subscription to your email list. 7. Email your list once per week with a new article you just published. Ask them to share it if they like it. 8. Guest post for the second article you wrote each week. Find popular, related blogs and pitch them a post idea. Link back to your blog, but to a landing page that specifically outlines the value of signing up for your email list. OR 8a. Link back to a landing page that gives away content bonuses that you mentioned in the guest post. 9. Run a contest where you give something away related to your blog topic. (don't give away an iPad if you're a real estate agent, you want to attract subscribers that have to do with your niche.) 10. Die from exhaustion.

Do an independent lab test of each item to test for heavy metal contamination, specifically cadmium, lead, mercury and arsenic. Better that you get this information in advance before someone else does it and reports it, which could lead to a very fast business demise. For reference, check the protein powder tested by Natural News and also Adya Clarity - both found to contain heavy metals and both with ingredients sourced from China. Good luck!

It sounds like you just have a simple sales issue, and thankfully a high quality product :) The solution is simple, and you seem to have realized it already: you need to reduce the friction in your location for getting customers into your "front door" and providing them with (what I'm assuming) is a proposal. Also, feel free to use the word "agency" to describe your combined services. It's what we do :) So, my suggestion is to try reaching out to sales professionals in your area (Paris), and more importantly, with experience in your industry. You'll need to figure out how commission or payment will work, and then let them work their networked magic. Achieving sales leads is really just about your network. So if a sales person simply isn't within your budgetary reach, the next best thing you can do is just have every employee of your agency be their own salesperson. This means reaching out to colleagues from completely different industries, friends, successful people in business that you may have known from grade school, etc.... While sales seems like a crappy process at the start (yes, you are just asking for work from people), what you're building is long term, quality relationships with these people, especially if your final deliverables really wow the end client. From there, you'll find that your happiest clients will do most of the traditional 'sales' work for you :) Hope this helps! Feel free to give me a ring any time.

You don't post the entirety of any article. You link users off to the actual site (or iframe it in even or open a new view on a mobile app with a back button). You cite the source. OpenGraph tags (and other meta tags) are typically fair game for previews and such. Saving articles for offline use is a bit trickier. So long as you aren't storing their copyrighted material on your server you might be ok. There are, after all, tools out there to save offline versions of any web page. Of course they let the user enter a URL and do not lead users to specific pages. RSS feeds are also typically ok. If you look, many sites have a policy posted about how you can use their RSS feeds. Some sites even put ads in their RSS feeds. I wouldn't alter anyone's RSS feed. They want those ads syndicated. You might have problems there. Might. Ultimately, you are pushing traffic to them. Hopefully. That's kinda how this works. You want to build something that services them and your audience. That way everyone wins and no one has any problems. So even if they might normally say something about copyright issues, they likely won't because they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. Basically, make it worth their while. Make sure they don't want to say no.

As you already found out, there is no direct way of finding download numbers for a specific app. Some companies disclose such information when milestones are reached or within interviews and blog posts. Did you try searching?. If you're just interested in how competitive a category is, for ASO purposes, you can checkout app worth per category in SensorTower. I doubt the actual figures are accurate but it will at least give you an idea of how they stack against each other. Alternatively, you can look for 3rd party articles like this: http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/27/how-do-you-break-into-iphone-app-store-top-50-try-23k-free-daily-downloads-950-paid-or-12k-in-daily-revenue/ Let me know if you want more help with you specific case.

Obviously, no 2 situations are alike; and multiple factors affect any outcome. Practically, the number of answers is infinite. But one factor I've looked at intensively, full time for years is the role played by the brand name and/or the site's domain(s). Think of doing business -- online or off -- as moving along a path. Some paths are rocky or go through quicksand. Others can be made straight and smooth. Obstacles can be cleared, or the surface may be lubricated. For most niches, you'll see brand names / domains that add friction -- friction that is compensated for by extra marketing inputs ... effort or money. Suppose your niche were nicotine patches. Well, ideally you might own NicotinePatch(es).com to simplify brand recognition, add trust, increase click-through rates, and so forth. Traffic can be built up without an exact-match domain. No doubt about that. Still, not all domains / names perform equally well online or in the minds' of an audience. Answers aren't always so clear cut. However, since the internet is built on domain names, domains and names are worth evaluating very deliberately.

I believe you may be talking about the Shoemoney tool system. I don't think it exist anymore as the link is not loading for me http://tools.shoemoney.com/

Take a look at how other companies with similar problem resolved it, for example: AirBnB, Uber, TaskRabbit and others. Every one of them, unless they were extremely lucky with timing, used a narrow geographic focus, approaching established communities and fulfilling demand for one side by hand for the first little while. In your case you can approach established organisations like universities, churches, foundations, volunteer organisations and the like to get people that would do things and do exactly the same for the other side. Initially you need to do it by hand until it starts going viral. Spreading the word through social media is great but it needs to be very targeted and approach people that can already find something in the application. If there are other organizations that do similar postings, for example if there are requests for volunteering on Craigslist, you can approach them to have it posted in your application. Narrowing on one geographic location is always easier in the beginning, because you can learn the area and all the players involved in the scene, and then maximise the output, expanding to new geographic locations when needed. It doesn't mean limiting your app, but just focusing your marketing efforts in one narrow location that can bring biggest output. Everything that I mentioned above can be applied to offline and online social marketing. Unfortunately there is no magic solution to your problem except for bootstrapping it in the beginning and finding communities that you can leverage with biggest social impact return. Good luck! Denis.

Wow, this is sort of the penultimate question. I answer this not as a founder, but as a co-founder that watched several other founders and investors wrestle with this dilemma. I've seen the pattern repeat as a consultant as well. It's an issue! The problem with this common situation, is all about information... meaning who's got what information. When partnering with a developer, there's a brutal but sobering fact that a great developer will bring up right away: "Without someone like me, this technology can't happen." Like I said, it's brutal but sobering in a good way. A developer knows better than anyone else when things are being built versus being invented. In the case of the latter, all developers feel this is worth quite a bit. Conversely, most developers don't have the business vision to create a digital version of a successful analog business process, because they're supposed to be busy coding! That's exactly why developers are very into sharing, because writing code for a living is a process to achieve some other goal, and isn't magic. So both parties need each other, but one has the execution while the other has the vision. Geez, now we've got to negotiate? Before talking shares, you as a business visionary should keep one major risk-point in mind. The developer you're partnering with MUST be personally invested in the project. The difference in the code quality between a project done to get paid, and the code from a developers personal project are monumental. You want a dev that is ready and willing to give your model heart + soul, and obsess about things you don't fully understand during your shared journey. If the dev isn't personally invested in the project, you run a high risk of them giving you the code equivalent of a 3-door coupe when your business needed a custom rally car that raises eyebrows. In a start-up, you'll have to leverage what you envision against the cost-vs-quality debacle of acquiring a skilled developer. I can tell you from experience, that no matter where you try to save, other costs will pop-up in the development process. Cutting costs in the beginning, comes back three-fold in the end if the code is not easily maintainable. And worst of all, the first build is never perfect - while the second build usually results in epiphanies derived from the mistakes in the first build. This is the sort of stuff that a developer knows well, but it never gets brought up in meetings, because the cost of programming is so significant yet typically not understood by the key stakeholders. So when you negotiate with devs, be sure to keep in mind that their role in the team is massive, and their work (in their mind) will become the entire business sometime in the future. Even if that's not the case based on your model, a programmer who thinks that way about a project will give you bleeding edge work at all times. ;) So find a comfortable fit personality-wise, and with the right shared ambition. Then treat your programmer as democratically, and as evenly as you can afford. A great programmer will by pure habit give you more than you asked for, which seems to always be something that businesses need these days. The trade off is that you show the programmer in shares, just how important their best efforts are.

There are three angles to look at this structure from: 1) Is it the best way to set things up to hold your investment from a legal perspective? 2) Is the it the best way to minimize your taxes? and 3) Is the best way to set things up from an accounting (i.e. bookkeeping) perspective? In your question above, you initially ask about tax, but then ask about accounting at the end, so I'll address all three. The first angle is best answered by your attorney, and it sounds like they've already advised you in this regard. I will say that the structure you've described is one I've seen used often and seems to work well from a legal perspective. For the second angle, it is imperative that you engage an experienced tax CPA to advise you, and do it right away if you haven't already. Know that sometimes the best legal structure is not always the best structure to minimize taxes, and vice versa. These two sometimes work at cross purposes and you'll have to strike a compromise based on which is more important to you. For instance, having the sub as a C-Corp is likely excellent from a legal perspective due to the liability protections afforded by a C-Corp. However, it may not be ideal from a tax perspective as the subsidiary C-Corp pays taxes on income and then the income is taxed again when it is distributed to your LLC. I am neither an attorney or a tax CPA, my expertise is in the third angle, how to set up your financial accounting to track your financial results in a way that gives you useful information you can use to make decisions. From a financial accounting (i.e. bookkeeping) perspective, this setup should serve you well. It segregates the revenue and expenses from the new project from the operations of your own LLC, allowing you to separately measure the operations of both. Of course having two separate entities to track is more time consuming, and therefore involves more expense for accounting. But it's necessary based on the fact that you are going to have a different ownership structure and different owners for the spun out entity than the original LLC. In summary, I'm not an expert on legal or tax matters, I know just enough to know that you need good advisors talking to each other and you in each of these areas. From a financial accounting perspective, I think your set up is a good one because it segregates operating cash flows and allows for different ownership classes. I can consult with you if you need some guidance in how to set up the recordkeeping properly. However the legal and tax questions should take precedence over financial accounting. Helpful? Let me know if you need additional clarification, happy to help answer further questions. Also let me know if you'd like to set up a call to discuss further.

There are so many tools its actually difficult to make a final definition of which one would be the best. My team uses google drive, but dropbox also works. Here is a short list, you would want to go with the corporate version of each 1. Google Drive 2. Dropbox 3. Box.com 4. Basecamp.com 5. Prezi.com