If I'm understanding your question correctly, you're asking if it's a good idea to use a video to explain to potential crowdsourced investors how your platform works? The answer is yes. Video content is an excellent medium for conveying a succinct, compelling message in a crowdfunding campaign. However, the quality of the video must be good so you don't convey mediocrity. No video is better than a poorly made video. I'm happy to hop on a call if you'd like further guidance.

I have built several multi-million dollar businesses using (2) very simple questions: "What makes you say that...." and "Tell me more...." No matter what someone says to you, you just keep asking one (or both) of the questions. If you do it 4 or 5 times in a row you'll learn everything you ever wanted to know.

In terms of technology and metrics you'd be looking at probably these guys: http://www.mybasis.com/ These guys received indiegogo funding but havent' launched yet: atlaswearables.com

Purchase the building as a corporation. Each of you owning 25% of the corp. I would also suggest detailing the business agreement within the corporation. Seek the advise of a lawyer to do this properly.

You've received good advice. I'd just add one thing. We recently interviewed dozens of developers. After narrowing it down to a handful of individuals that had personalities and resumes we liked, we paid a developer friend of ours a few hundred bucks to interview the developers and thoroughly vet them from a technical standpoint. It was well worth the money to have someone more technically skilled than us contribute to our due diligence on the candidates.

I've been in the picture messaging space for a while now with my apps Lutebox (voted one of London's top ten most loved apps) and now Click Messenger. I've written a few articles about the space including a recent post about the Future of Mobile Messaging. Snapchat started out as an app called Picaboo, which pretty much did what it does now (prior to the latest update with chat and video calling). They quickly rebranded but saw a little uptake in user numbers and had quite low downloads for several months. Then around Christmas 2011 one of the founders' mom had told her friend about the app, who told her kid and her kid basically then spread the word throughout their high school in L.A. That was what really blew up their download numbers as it spread across teenagers at local high schools. As far as I know they didn't advertise in the early days, relied solely on word of mouth. Also it is assumed that they have a solid user base. Comparatively speaking, their user base may be in the low tens of millions, which may a great base of users, but nowhere even close to being as big as Facebook or Twitter. I'd be happy to speak about this in more detail or about the picture messaging landscape and what I believe to be the future of mobile messaging.

When someone invests in your business they aren't actually investing in your business, they are investing in you. It's good to keep that in the back of your head. From that point then when they say "go prepared" it probably means in relation to how well you know the person. If you're asking your super rich Uncle, you probably don't need too much more than a good idea and a smile. If you're asking angels, then you want to impress them. You want to convince them that you are a "winner". An amazing pitch, an amazing product, knowing all your numbers, already have raised 10%-50%, those are all things that impress. So when you are thinking about getting prepared, you want to do whatever you can that you think is going to impress the person you are pitching. For an experienced angel/entrepreneur that will probably mean knowing your numbers super solid & have a bunch of great charts/examples.

Non-US profits are generally taxed only if the cash is repatriated back into the United States. So, for example, Coca-Cola's profits that it generates in countries outside the United States are not taxed by the IRS until that cash is moved into an account that is domiciled in the US. Of course, this gets very complicated very quickly, isn't necessarily appropriate for an early-stage startup, and is the kind of thing for which you need to have accountants and tax attorneys on retainer or in-house to properly advise you.

As someone who has founded and fundraised for a social venture, I can tell you that the fundraiser must be the CEO or President. Fundraising for a non-profit is all about building a relationship with your donor base, and the donation is often as much because the donor likes the person & people as much as they like the work being done by the Foundation. One of the most difficult paradoxes of raising for a non-profit web platform is that the more someone becomes excited by the potential of the platform, the more that they would prefer to invest cash for equity than simply donate and looking back on it, I think that would have simplified things for my social enterprise and would have been able to attract far more capital. The other avenue that you can explore is to build in tipping or crowdfunding for your operation directly into the online experience but that will only be a viable source of funds with significant traffic and thus, the operating capital required to grow the business requires proactive outreach to supporters. Happy to speak with you about this in more detail in a call.

Even more so in a global economy. Both skill-sets are required in varying percentages, depending on what's going on in the business. Effective leadership is about inspiring and instilling confidence and "followership" in your staff, and demonstrating strength of character, conviction, and stability to customers. "Managing" is the set of skills needed to competently run the business. You have to have both, in good measure, to succeed.

As the owner of a web development firm, I am always inventing our own digital products and services. Any service that is web-based and accessible to mobile devices work as long as they solve a business need. The digital products I wish would exist are: 1. Home building services including videos by experienced builders 2. Mail and package weighing digital services 3. More security services for document transfer services. Bruce

You are facing a classic chicken and egg problem. You want premium projects but cannot get them because you haven't done any yet. To solve this, you need to think from your target customers standpoint. Why would a customer buy from you? What do you offer that others don't have? Once you define that, the second thing you need to understand is how companies acquire their services. The buying process in a company is different from consumer buying cycle. So you need to figure out how you will play this dance. Lastly, to acquire customers, you will need to do some marketing and network. LinkedIn would be a good starting point. Another option would be to start out small and bid for projects on oDesk, Guru or other similar sites All the best.... Happy to talk if you have more questions.

I have more than 7 years of experience in digital marketing, managed over $50,000 in ad spend on various social media networks and currently managing over 30 Social media assets for various clients. You can add as many Funding sources to your Facebook Ad account as you want but all campaigns in your Ad account would be charged to the Primary funding source failing which the secondary and so on. The best practice when you have multiple clients is to ask your clients to setup their own Facebook Ad accounts, add their own credit cards to their own accounts and then give General user access to you to enable you to manage their account and create ads on their behalf. Facebook is all set to launch the Facebook Business Manager which according to Facebook themselves would be a way to help businesses and agencies manage their Facebook Pages, ad accounts and payment methods in one place. You can find out more about the Facebook Business Manager here: https://www.facebook.com/help/businessmanager If you have any further questions, I'd be happy to answer them for you here: https://clarity.fm/gs.gill/expertise/use-facebook-ads-to-meet-your-business-goals

Great question! I am an attorney, and have experience from both a legal perspective and a business perspective. I hope my thoughts on the matter are helpful. In a situation where the integrity of your business is called into question, and the trust of your customers has been shaken, you need to avoid doing anything that even hints at an appearance of impropriety. This means your approach should be as forthright and upfront as possible. No hiding the ball, and no avoiding the issue at hand. Equivocation will be seen by your customers as consciousness of guilt, or at least an attempt to sidestep the problem. You can't do that. I'm of the opinion that all advice needs to be clear, practical, and actionable, so I love lists. Here's one. 1. Communicate to ALL of your existing customers that an alleged criminal act may have been committed by an employee, but that you as a conscientious business owner have taken steps to insure that the alleged act doesn't happen again. Emphasize to your customers that their trust in your business to provide the service that you provide is paramount, and it is critical to you and your business that that customers be comfortable with you. This incident is an anomaly. This could be by email or snail mail. 2. Personally call all customers that have expressed an interest in getting a refund. Obviously, I don't know what business you are in, but nothing is more important in this day of faceless email and text than a personal phone call, or even face to face meeting. Emphasize that you are a person-like your customers-and that you hold their interests in the highest regard; without them, there is no business. They need to know that you above all else, you care about them. That's more important than than the money. 3. Offer the refund when asked. You hate to see them go, but if the relationship is broken beyond repair, part ways as amicably as possible. They (or their friends/relatives/associates) might be customers again down the road, and they will appreciate you handling the matter professionally. Through it all, customers will appreciate your meeting this issue "head-on". Take the initiative. Feel free to request a call if you need anything. Good luck, and good business.

Because you are still in the idea stage, the first thing you'll want to do is ensure that you have product/service-solution fit. You need to validate that your service solves a real problem and that there's a big enough market to develop a successful business around it. I recommend conducting research on achieving product/service-market fit, and actually establishing it before focusing on marketing tactics.

Enter your answer issue a press release and try to solve the problem, you can use press release services or ask a reporter of your local newspaper to do a story on the solution. Bad press and bad things can happen, it is the manager job to do crisis management, repair the damage, and regain reputation

In my experience, the longer sales cycle requires more attention. The metrics will be unique to your business, but you can't go wrong with these: Marketing & Sales Metrics Look at metrics that will help you scale and project growth, and then accelerate opportunity to close velocity #s and conversion rates of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) #s, time, and conversion rates of MQLs to sales qualified leads (SQLs) #s, time, and conversion rates of SQLs to opportunities #s, time, and conversion rates of opportunities to sales Customer Success Metrics An ARR SaaS business may have a guaranteed 12 month customer lifespan, but that doesn't guarantee the customer actually uses the product and won't churn at renewal time. Measuring product usage will help you discover patterns that cause churn, increase the perceived value of the product, and improve the customer experience. Financial Metrics Each Reporting Period (I'd recommend monthly) look at Values & Rate of Change Customer Acquisition Cost Average Value of a Customer look at Values, % of total, & Rate of Change Revenue from New Subscriptions Revenue from Renewal Subscriptions At the early stage, businesses will see new Subscriptions significantly outpace renewals. As the business matures, the % of total ARR from New Subscriptions will begin to decline, assuming churn rates are good.

Here are some answers for you that I believe will help you. 1. You should implement a long term and short term strategy right at the beginning. What I mean is that there are essential parts to your marketing like SEO and content marketing that you need to implement right in the beginning, but will take a while to filter through, but these are essential if you want to have organic traffic. That would be L-T. The best for Short term for a newly launched site is ad's. Word of warning though. Know your customers demographics such as age, income, education etc, know your competitors demographics and then find the platform (such as social media channels) where your ideal customer is based on those researched demographics and then roll out targeted ad's for them. 2. You have to implement social media strategies right from the beginning of course, based on your demographic research. 3. Get busy Blogging - start with content marketing now. 4. Sweepstakes - start a giveaway to get traction with clients and create awareness. 5. Make sure you collect emails as these are like gold dust for future email marketing. 6. Video marketing is essential for competitive retail space and very powerful to get found on search engines like Google. Prior to me launching my digital marketing business 5 years ago, I built an online retail business and made many expensive mistakes. And they can be costly if not implemented correctly from the beginning. So in summary: SEO - very important, Ad's, Social Media, Sweepstakes, Blogging, Video & email marketing. I trust this will assist you. Let me know if you wish to have a call to discuss these or have follow up questions. Regards Kenneth

"Is it worth my time?" Given that the compensation from an advisory board is equity in a private company with no actual market for it's securities, this is really the most important question. The likelihood that advisory board compensation will result in real financial compensation is very low, and yet the demands on your time are very real and can be significant. Is your time better spent in other areas? "Is this company the most deserving of my generosity?" Because I enter into advisory relationships understanding that the likelihood of real compensation is so low, I evaluate whether to have such a role more from a perspective of how much I like the founder(s) and how much I want their product in my own life. If I don't really enjoy spending time with the founder(s), it's really not worth my time and energy. If I don't want the product in my own life, why would I spend time thinking about it and the business behind it? To get clarity on those two main questions, I don't enter into advisory agreements immediately. I only do so after I have spent some time with the founder(s) on more than one occasion. And what I'm particularly observing is the founders' willingness and ability to receive feedback. Ideally, the founder updates you specifically on the actions taken and not-taken from the last time you were with them. We all observe differently, but I think it's paramount that you trust the advisor actually can implement your advice and counsel. Is the Company "hoarding" advisors? More than 3 advisors to a Company is generally indicative that the founder is more interested in building social proof than getting advice and counsel. That can sometimes be acceptable in industries where proven expertise is really helpful and almost required in the early days of the business. "Are expectations aligned?" Has the company articulated clearly the expectations of your time and involvement in a way you feel comfortable with being able to deliver upon? Happy to speak to you in a quick call to answer any further questions on the topic.

In my experience, and based on the way I coach my clients, creating a pricing model without first creating a business model is an indication of a poor strategy. That said, here are my thoughts based on the information you've provided: 1. You are incorrect about your assumption of "the less the fee, the greater the potential # of clients". What you will very likely discover in practice is that there is a "sweet spot" in pricing such that any price above or below you'll see a drop off in members. In other words - any price LESS THAN or GREATER THAN your "sweet spot" price will result in FEWER members. This is one of those "non-intuitive" components you'll run into as an entrepreneur. 2. If you choose to price based on "competition" you are all but announcing that you are a commodity. Once again I'd suggest that this is a poor strategy. Instead consider your USP (or if you haven't yet done so...create one). Once you are properly differentiated YOU control and set pricing based on the VALUE you provide to the marketplace that they can't get anywhere else (i.e. Ferrari and Harley Davidson and Starbucks, etc). 3. Even with a solid strategy, a strong USP, a great product and a well-thought-out business model - you will likely still need to do some market testing (i.e. A/B testing) to find that "sweet spot" price I mentioned earlier. (I have yet to personally see anyone hit the mark right out of the gate.) 4. The last piece of info you provided - regarding monthly vs discounted annual membership pricing - would be a part of your OFFER. This is NOT the same as a pricing strategy - which should ideally be developed FIRST (at least conceptually). This is not to say you couldn't launch with the offer, but I'd suggest you figure out pricing FIRST and then develop offers based upon your deep understanding of your market. For assistance with any / all of the components I mentioned - give me a call. And be prepared that (in my opinion) whomever you decide to enlist this is going to take several calls to work out unless you have much of the groundwork already figured out. I apologize for this assumption - but I'm basing it on the information you provided and with hopes that this response will be helpful to others. I wish you great success!

Hi, Nice to meet you. I manage all marketing and sales for Ometria a SaaS Ecommerce Intelligence platform. What technology are you trying to sell? Would you be able to tell me more about your current business model, product and goals? Regards, Ed

Dakno Marketing...I was a very successful Realtor in Phoenix for 15 years and I was on the 1st page of Google for a lot of Luxury Home cities in the area. Dakno seems to understand the entire process better than anyone and they have been focused on it for probably all the years I was n business which was quite a few :-) Hugh

If they aren't willing to provide transparency and full disclosure - allowing you to complete your due diligence - you might be better off to move on. In other words - based on their elusive behavior and lack of willingness to cooperate - the egg you are looking to crack is likely a rotten one. Of course you can always try to get this info from the broker (it wasn't clear in your description whom you requested the info from - the owner(s) or the broker). If they are uncooperative then the whole deal should be rejected by YOU. In any case - Best of luck!

If you have zero resources, this is exactly how I would proceed. Especially without technical skills. 1.) Go to tomodo.com 2.) Skin the growthhacker.tv site. with your own graphics. 3.) Manually reach out to people on letslunch.com who are developers and show them mockups of your site that you've built on tomodo and ask for advice. Do this 3 times and collect their feedback. 4.) Keep talking to developers until you find one that is as amped about building your site as you are. 5.) If you book me, I can walk you through more trips and tactics as a non-tech person.

Hello - I work as an in-house transactional attorney for a US-based website with 20 million monthly unique visitors around the world, and I've worked on several licensing and ad-rep deals for several countries in Europe, South America, Australia, etc. There are several ways to protect yourself, but at the end of the day you have to trust your partner that you they will want to be honest so you can continue doing business together. That said, you should give yourself an audit right. Not sure what the software is and if it directly correlates to sales, but if so see if you can track yourself or use a third party's tracking software so you can compare numbers with theirs. Also consider including in the agreement a dispute clause, something to the effect that if you dispute their report for a quarter they will have x days to provide you with sufficient evidence to reconcile the dispute to your satisfaction - if not, you can terminate the agreement. Another way to protect yourself would be to ask for a minimum guarantee, but depending on the deal that may be difficult to work in. As far as working internationally, I think the hardest part there is ensuring collections and that you are paid in US dollars. Stand strong on keeping venue and choice of law in the jurisdiction in which you reside, not in theirs. If you'd like to schedule a call to further discuss, I'm happy to chat, let me know! Best, Jeff