The number one would be shipping product (or anything really) out in front of a customer. If you can't work together to get something done fast, that is usually a huge indicator that somethings wrong. That usually means your values or mission aren't aligned.

2 thoughts (as I've invested in and been part if a few real estate development projects). 1 - ask around and try and find friends who know people in the industry and ask for an intro. Don't go in asking for money, ask for advice - it works way better. 2 - search on Clarity for people who live in your city that have real estate experience, call and ask them for advice. The key is to talk to folks who have done it, ask a lot of really good questions - and if you listen carefully and do what they say, they might actually ask to be involved but it does take a couple meetings - so don't blow it by going in for the ask the first time.

That one question entails several separate answers. .TRAVEL is little used and practically unknown to the general public, even though it has been around for 7 or 8 years. Partly that's because the .TRAVEL registry mandates a special application process that confines use of the extension to particular kinds of entities. Have you ever visited a .TRAVEL website? Most people have never seen one. And so, with negligible public adoption of .TRAVEL, you'd find yourself almost entirely alone explaining your name / web address over and over again. Names that require long explanations are cumbersome and forgettable. There's an added burden with vanity extensions such as .TRAVEL. Suppose you name your company or website "Exotic Travel". If you use Exotic.Travel because ExoticTravel.com is too expensive or else in use already, then you will either face a competitor who uses ExoticTravel.com or else you will need to purchase and maintain both domains. Owning a vanity extension without a matching .COM is almost always a bad idea. Some major websites have learned that the hard way -- often paying 5 or 6 figures to acquire the .COM domain they hoped to circumvent. I'm not a .COM purist. In fact, I'm fond of some domains in vanity extensions. But they should be used as a pair with the .COM most of the time. .ORG can be ideal for certain kinds of projects. But it's impossible for me to give an answer without knowing the name in question. If .ORG is part of the brand identity -- meaning that you're proud to display the .ORG -- then it can work. Nonprofits are especially well suited to .ORG for this reason, as are some other websites. However, if using the .ORG is merely a cheap knockoff of your first-choice domain, then people will perceive it rightly as just a cheap knockoff. We'd have to discuss the name specifically for me to give any meaningful feedback, though. Of course, you began by saying "there are no quality .COMs available". Frankly, that's probably not true. Availability comes in all shapes and sizes. It's certainly the case that most of the good .COM domains already belong to somebody. After all, the internet has been around for a few decades. Just as with the North American continent, every vacant lot has an owner by now. But many good .COMs, though owned, are nevertheless not in use -- and therefore available, depending on your budget. It's dangerous to settle for the first .COM you find that's available for $10. Almost by definition, those are precisely the domains that have interested nobody alive at all for 20+ years. However, I've been exploring the name space every single day full time for some years now -- often for myself but frequently for clients. And a small percentage of good domains do remain available. However, it takes experience to find them and tell the difference between fool's gold and the genuine article. With my last naming client, I'd say that less than 1% of my name ideas were unregistered. That's a long answer. Since it's now 1:17 a.m., I'd better cut things off at this point!

It's unlikely that companies would look to outsource such a critical component and also it would be near impossible to create trust around 3rd parties accessing their data especially via an intermediary service.

This really depends on the type of e-commerce platform and the platform on which it is built. For my e-commerce clients, with less than 1,000 products, the best business plan reference book would be The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. However, you must first understand the triggers you would need to captivate and persuade your audience to purchase. For that, I would recommend Fascinate by Sally Hogshead. When you start to get into the larger e-commerce retail websites, you run into more dynamic data and database strategies to ensure that your website runs smoothly and can be indexed by the search engines properly. The book recommendation would depend on what platform your website is built. However, Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug would be a good starting point as the business plan would be contingent on the flow of the website and customer purchase power. If I can further help you in any way, contact me. I'm always here to help.

It's never too early to bring in experienced people. At an early stage company you're operating with limited resources and you can't afford to waste time making other people's mistakes again. Bring in experienced people as soon as possible. If you think you can't afford them, try to find people that will share their expertise with you for free.

If you're looking for Ruby folks, go where they go - local meetups. Second would be online but you will need to mine Stackoverflow, Github and similar sites and realize that they get approached regularly so start engaging early (at least 3 months before projected start date.)

You mentioned they were a new client. What type of company are you? With that info we could help more. “However, they have also produced hundreds of copy-written material on their blog that are replicated all over the web ( other dental sites mostly.. ). Some of the content has been taken directly out of published medical journals and pasted word for word on our client's site.” > You can't do anything about other sites as you don't control them. You could send an email to the webmaster and alert them to what is going on. You can sometimes find the webmaster email by a WHOIS search. This will not be counted against you and may even be helping you. I have seen many duplicate content pages rank above the initial post/author of the content. If it is on your site you will want to remove it or rewrite it as soon as possible even if you are ranking well for the content. Once you have all your own content on your site do implement the Google rel=author mark up so you are know known as the author of the content on your site and will receive the credit. This is not something Google states publicly but once you are the author of the content you will be seen as the originator of the content. “We asked for logins to all the accounts they created, which they refuse to provide. We've heard the horror stories about canceling services with firms like these where they nuke everything.” > Most like those listings will stay and they won't be able to nuke them. There is a number of reasons for this. 1. most of the important listings like G+ will require a postcard or a phone call to happen to the office phone# in order to edit the listing. You mentioned the phone was not changed for their tracking purposes so you should be good to go. If they cancel your Yelp listing...if they have access create a new listing and let Yelp know of the situation and they should be able to restore reviews, etc. *It may take a while, but they will understand and it isn't their first time dealing with this. **I am not sure on this but you may also be able to ask them to 301 redirect the old listing to the new listing. This could also be wishful thinking. 2. If you are referring to other sites like directories/citations (DMOZ, BOTW/ local.com, superpages.com) they will have a tough time taking the listing down. They would have some work to do and some “properties” are totally automated so even if you wanted to take a listing down you couldn't. We would need to know the specifics to guide you there. "We have also asked to provide proof of ROI, but they decline because we declined using registering a call tracking number that they can use in the directories. " > They have a valid point there. Without using a forwarding phone numbers it is tough to verify the organic call leads unless the receptionist asks verbally. They should have Google analytics goal tracking set up for any contact form submissions that come through. This will let you know whether the submission came from organic, paid, newsletter, referral, etc,. but it won't get down to the keyword level. New Google changes hide the keyword referring data. You could use some advanced analytics tools (KISS Metrics) to get a better idea, but not sure if it is worth the time for your dental practice. You could also ask your future SEO/marketing co. to let you know of the call tracking software they want to use and then sign up for the account under your own name and be in control of it. Then you could track the metrics and be in control. I wouldn't suggest placing them on scam sites. This can surely backfire and cost you more time and money than starting fresh. TBH most of your properties will stick that they created. It would take a decent amount of work for them to go through and remove them all. Just in case go through and grab all your current properties like citysearch, kudzu, etc. and copy your descriptions and phone and address data so you can quickly implement it back in the case that some are deleted. *They probably didn't do a good job on the listings if they are being this stubborn. I suggest not using a business descriptions for these listing more than 3 or 4 times. Most likely they use 1-3 on every property they built. There is some tools that will show you all the citation listings you have. Pro tip* On any future directories/citations always make sure you name address, phone is exactly the same on each listing. This would get right down to where a period, comma, suite vs. # is placed. It is best to just make it all consistent. The big take away here is the use your own email account, phone tracking, Google analytics, server, CMS, etc. you create in the future for any tasks that your SEO/marketing firm will do, Check it regularly to make sure no passwords were changed and include your rules in any agreement you sign. Feel free to get in touch anytime. All my Clarity time goes to charity.

Maybe hire a freelance market researcher to find out? ;) Generally, something like this is going to appeal to fortune 500 companies. Smaller companies and entrepreneurs are going to be doing market research themselves. From the question it is difficult to tell if you have come into possession of such a platform, or are thinking about building one. Regardless, to succeed it's crucial that you deeply understand who your target customer is and what pain you are solving for them. Most ideas for a business stem from the entrepreneur's discovery of a solution to a problem for a certain group of people. Since who has the greatest need is unclear to you at the moment, the best thing to do might be to contact people at companies who you think have the greatest need. Find a way to get in touch with someone at the company involved in hiring market researchers, and ask them what challenges they face. You can also talk with a few market researchers themselves to get an idea of where they see the greatest demand of companies looking to hire them. Hope this helps.

I'm both an active angel investor and entrepreneur who has recently raised capital. I'll start with what is standard in Silicon Valley and then apply various multiples and discounts where relevant. For an angel or early seed round, the current going rate is $3m-$5m pre-money via a capped note or priced round. Priced Rounds typically most often use the "Series Seed" docs and Convertible Notes typically are 18-24 month terms with a 15% discount. I don't mean to be argumentative but Marco is incorrect that valuation can be avoided by a capped note. And in general, there is no way to avoid setting a valuation except via an uncapped note, which is almost unheard of. Setting your cap and discount will have a significant impact on your cap structure, the same (and in some cases) worse than a priced round. This $3m - $5m range is what I'd call current market value in the valley for "ideation-stage" capital. This is that there is a team in place, typically some form of MVP and in some cases some very basic market data supporting the general thesis of the raise. In the other market I'm familiar with (Canada), the range for the same stage of capital is $1m - $3 with most being in between $1m and $2m and most preferring priced rounds over notes. These rounds rarely have a real lead since the raise is typically $500k or less, so if you price it reasonably, most (good) angels will accept the terms as is. The low and high end of the ranges are discounted and pushed by the credibility presented most often by the team (done it before, worked for a notable company, had some relevant success) or strong evidence of the thesis being correct. It's also the Founder's option to price the round at the top end of reasonable or provide what you might consider a discount, depending on the kind of investors you are courting. So while this is what I'm seeing as "current market conditions" there is price elasticity in any market. The best way you know if you've priced it right, is if people are buying. Any angel investor should be able to give you a conditional answer after the first meeting (subject to playing with the product, reading terms, meeting the rest of the team). Any angel investor in ideation stage capital who can't give you a yes, no or subject-to yes in the first meeting is not worth pursuing IMO. Any investor who can't close within 3 meetings or conversations won't close (9 times out of 10). Happy to talk to you about the specifics of where you're at, what might help you improve your odds and generally get you closer to the point where you're ready to raise.

I'd avoid the cold email. The best way to get inside big companies like distributors is to "social engineer" a connection to someone there. Find a 2nd or 3rd degree connection on LinkedIn. Hang out at a restaurant near their HQ and look for people with the right badge on. Ask your potential angel for help connecting you. If they can't, they might not be the right investor for your company at this stage. Their investment should get you more than money, it should come with connections, advice and mentoring. Basically, there's no easy way to do this and every situation is different but it's going to take a lot more than a cold email or phone call.

If you and this person, *know* they won't be the CTO, then absolutely not. If there's an understanding that the engineer you are working with is going to "cap out" soon beyond the MVP, why would you ruin your cap table? This *should* help you get a reasonable amount of equity. http://foundrs.com/ The most crucial question is where this current contributor is likely going to be out of their element. Are they only front-end and have no back-end ability? If so, you really should raise (from a friend or family member) or borrow the money necessary to pay this person a reasonable cash rate. If on the other hand, they can take a successful MVP and build a reasonable back-end but will cap out on scaling it past 100,000 users, or for example, you're an enterprise company and you know you'll require a technical person to be part of closing early sales, then it's ok to give up meaningful equity. But another key question is: Are you ok to let this person define your company's engineering culture? If this person isn't capable of or comfortable managing your tech team in the early-days, this person should have no more than 10% equity. Of course, your shares and theirs (whatever you decide) should be subject to a vesting agreement (minimum 3 years and preferably 4). It's easy to give away equity when it's worth very little but as I've said here before on Clarity, imagine your company today being worth $100,000,000. Can you imagine this person contributing $20,000,000 worth of value to achieve that outcome? $30m? $50m? Here's the thing though. If this person can grow into a CTO, and wants the chance, and there's no warning signs that it will be a tough slog for them to get there, and they're a passionate believer in what's been built to date, then it's entirely reasonable to bet (with equity) that they can get there. I know a lot of CTO's of great Series A and beyond companies with amazing traction that started off as lacking a lot of the criteria of a great CTO candidate. This is an area I've helped coach a lot of startup CEOs through and have experience in myself. Happy to talk through in a call to understand the specifics of your scenario and provide more detailed advice.

There is likely a lot of background to this question, so it's difficult to answer online with one specific solution. To begin, "control freak" and "abuse of power" can be quite subjective terms. Objectively, in what ways do you feel he is overstepping his authority? Is this a recent event, or an ongoing concern? Has he been formally spoken to or reprimanded by senior management in the past about this behaviour? Hopefully your organization has policies in place to address behaviour like this. Setting clear expectations around what is and isn't acceptable, and turning to progressive discipline if necessary, often help the employee to understand the outcomes (possible suspension, demotion, termination etc), should they continue down this path. It's important however to first understand and deal with the root cause of this behaviour, not just the symptoms. Speak with the individual candidly and honestly, and ask them if they feel it's appropriate to behave like this, and try to reveal WHY it's happening. Perhaps they're having difficulties in their personal life, or they're stressed at work. Be respectful, and work with them as best you can. If you would like additional help, please arrange a call with me. I would be very happy to help you get through this in a way that is best for the employee, and your company.

It depends a lot of in the skill sets and experience of both people but in most cases the ux designer should be controlling the developer pretty heavily in order to make sure his ideas come through properly. The UX designer may just need to work on his approach so people don't feel bossed around and more like they are working together. In an ideal world, there would be a project manager who makes sure everything is communicated well and keeps the dynamic feeling great.

Hi! First of all, keep going. There will always be dark days, no matter how well funded you are. In fact, once you accept growth capital for equity, you bring on a whole new set of expectations and challenges. Running a startup, as you know, is never easy and it's never as smooth as people make it seem. Trust me. Some days are really brutal. The number of times I wanted to just throw in the towel is more than I care to share. But I don't. And that's why persistence in the face of adversity is crucial for entrepreneurs. Those are also the days when it's so valuable to have a co-founder, so you have someone to pick you up and help you remember your vision of how you're going to make the world a better place. This brings me to the most important question. Do you really believe in what you're doing? And above all, are you and your co-founder a great team? Be honest. Ideas come and go, but if you and your co-founder work well together, you're hungry, tenacious and bold, you'll make something happen. I know it's harder in communities where there isn't as much local support. This is why resources like Clarity are changing the face of entrepreneurship across the globe - giving teams like yourself access to the the support you need and otherwise might not be able to find. The best thing you can do is surround yourself with great people. In this case, it sounds like you'd benefit from a great mentor. I can't help in the email marketing space, but I know someone who's pioneering a successful startup in the space and I'd be happy to put you in touch. Here's my VIP url: https://clarity.fm/alexandraskey/onbeingremarkable Please call me for a free 15 minute chat, anytime. I'd also encourage you to analyze the runway of your company. How much time do you have before you need to generate an income for at least you and your business partner? There is nothing wrong with taking contract work on the side to keep the lights on. In fact, if you're worried about paying the bills, it will be hard to fully invest your energy in your startup, making it even harder for you to realize your goal and fulfill your potential. One more thing to think about. How you get your first 5, 10 or 100 customers doesn't need to be scalable. So if you're not keen on doing a sideproject to increase short-term cashflow, look at ways to bring on new customers faster, even if they're not something you will do in 3 months time. Day by day my friend, day by day. Have courage, and be bold. A p.s. I'd also actively check your local community, as there might be more happening than you realize. You can start by researching online, reaching out on Twitter or visiting a community center. For example, I found some organizations by doing a simple Google search, so I'd encourage you do to your homework. http://macedonia.startupcup.com/ http://eleven.bg/ http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-pages/197266283722139-eleven-startup-accelerator/last-month http://www.startup.mk/

When it comes to raising money you must remember that risk is a perception. Your job is to drain the risk! Below is a link to a resource I provide my investors. The 50 questions are specific to product design/development but the 15 categories are questions that apply to any industry. If you can answer these questions about your deal you will have gone a long way to "drain the risk" for your investors and get funded. http://www.jaredjoyce.com/freetreats/50questions.pdf Once you have answered the questions for your deal schedule a call with me and I can help you integrate the answers into your investor pitch.

After reviewing your site I found there was a potential for confusion with openup.com which is a completely different site. How does the name reflect what you are providing? Would be good to explain this somewhere. I also found the About Us page was way too vague and the FAQ's, while better, still did not really describe the value for the various stakeholders. The tabs are almost hidden down at the bottom right so the first impression a person gets is that I need to sign up to find out what it is all about. That can be a tough sell today. Suggest shouting the message of what you offer and why you're offering it on your home page so people can see the value before they commit a link. People are hesitant to give you a personal link before they know what you can do for them. I, like the previous response pointed out, that you should really focus on the companies that would be willing to use a new methodology for finding potential employees then perfect the process with a few clients. Finally, when I looked at the Contact Us page I found it very sterile. There is really nothing on the site that indicates who is driving this concept and therefore gaining trust may be difficult. People want to exchange trust before they commit personal information. People buy from people the like and trust, what can you do to encourage that trust?

i think is common, I know I have. specially in situations when dealing with deadlines and or pivot phases... such as product validation or growth... even pitching angles to VCs. best thing to do is reassure your leadership position, understand values and come to a mid point agreement that reflects the majority's vote... hopefully all in your team has value and that's why you have them, so listen to them eve if you disagree.

I like to take a rule from the Steve jobs playbook and use simple circles... one larger than the other but no more than 2. your most immediate target (realistic reachable) and one of the "enemy" competitor company. or overall untapped market cap. **for this to be effective you must provide as accurate projections as possible** no bar graphs and as little or no text as possible... remember that a deck is a companion to the speaker... avoid bullet points and use the deck to entertain rather than educate... is not a class is a pitch. :)

Several things to consider when coming up with your product's brand identity: 1) Who is your customer? That will drive the look and feel, as well as the language of your brand. 2) Who are you? If at a gut level, you and your company(employees) are rednecks making the highest quality broadheads for elk hunting, you aren't going to button up your brand in a shirt and tie or develop an artsy-fartsy website. (See Duck Dynasty) 3) What specific aspects of your product and/or service are different than the rest of the market offerings? Ie. Why are you special? These 3 questions, answered candidly, begin to make up your brand story. The most powerful brands have learned that their messaging, packaging, sales process and customer experience delivery is less about what their product or service DOES, and more about how it makes the customer or user FEEL. Branding a product or service is about carefully crafting a story(or a promise), that you are confident you can deliver on once they choose to buy. In other words, branding is the discipline of aligning what you say about your product, service, team... with what customers actually get on the back-end. Once you get really clear on these big picture questions, then the tactical stuff becomes rather easy (what should our website look like, colors, advertising channels, promotional pricing, referral programs, warranty language, etc, etc, etc.) Of course you may be smart to hire a specialist to help you brainstorm and execute on this stuff- but the actual decision making becomes pretty obvious: which option in front of us best reflects who we are?

I would add in the Do # 2, ask the employee to paraphrase what you're requesting. It's a common problem that people say that they understand what you say, and when the deadline comes, the result is not the expected. I call this practice "duplicate".

Hi there, I am a former PWC Chartered Accountant now helping small companies and accountants improve their business. Check out our websites www.theprofitablefirm.com (for accountants) and www.financedirectorservices (for small businesses - under construction). It depends what sort of workflow you are looking to automate: 1) For accounts production and other "back office" workflow there are some good software available. I'm not sure which country you are in but in the UK Iris is the market leading solution. Sage also has an offering for practice management 2) For general systemisation of activities Basecamp is a very good and cheap solution 3) If you're looking for automation of your marketing workflow, Infusionsoft is very powerful Not sure if that helps but happy to chat if you need further help. Kind regards, Shaun

Why do you ask? Are you trying to understand if you need/should seek startup capital for your venture? Or are you trying to understand how companies are leveraging the cloud to dramatically reduce startup costs? If it's the second, you're right re the capital requirements are lower. It's easier to start a business today than it has ever been. We have more access to resources and mentors than we've ever had, plus the costs to start a business keep falling due to cloud and crowdsourced technology. Just look at the price of 1 GB of storage – 30 years ago it was $300,000, the year Facebook started it was $1 and today it’s <10 cents. If it's the first, that's something only you and your team can decide. There are *a lot* of opinions on when/if/how much, and a lot of resources and people you can chat with to help you come to the best decision. You can use these articles as a starting point: Venture Capital, Angels or Bootstrap? via Gigaom [http://gigaom.com/2008/06/15/venture-capital-angels-or-bootstrap/] Should You Bootstrap Or Raise Money For Your Startup? via Forbes [http://www.forbes.com/sites/stellafayman/2013/07/01/should-you-bootstrap-or-raise-money-for-your-startup/] Why Bootstrapping Is Just As Over-Rated As Raising Venture Capital via TechCrunch [http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/07/why-bootstrapping-over-rated/] Why You Shouldn't Raise VC Money via Inc [http://www.inc.com/mark-peter-davis/why-you-should-not-raise-venture-capital-money.html] The amount of money a startup raises shouldn’t be the only metric of respect via Pando Daily [http://pandodaily.com/2013/05/30/the-amount-of-money-a-startup-raises-shouldnt-be-the-metric-of-respect/] Best of luck!

Why do you need them to be? Do you intend to deliver the courses under their name? And you feel they're not or they said they're not? Have you talked it over?

First, I agree with Chad in that the pure pursuit of money is unlikely to render anything significant. By using a monetary value as a primary goal, you're only diluting the real drivers of success: passion, crafting great customer experiences, building an incredible team and culture etc. That said, making $1m isn't that hard. :) I love this thinking by Amy Hoy and that's how I would go about making $1m: http://unicornfree.com/30x500. Using that logic, this is what I'd do: * To earn $1m in a year, I need to earn +- $80k a month. * To earn $80k a month, I need 1600 customers paying me $50 per month. * So what can I build that could attract 1600 people to pay me $50? * Or, what could I build that could attract 400 people to pay me $200 per month? This logic works on two drivers: * Cumulative revenue and growth. So SaaS works best in this regard, as you only need to focus on having new signups that are greater than your churn. * Building something that people are willing to (really) pay for and going for quality over quantity. If you are building something that sells for $5 pm, you'll need to sell at much higher volumes (which are tricky). In terms of doing that, these are the areas of my business that I would prioritize: 1. Build an awesome team that do things they're passionate about. 2. Prioritize customer experiences above anything else. Do everything in your power (regardless of whether it can't scale) to add value and help your customers. 3. Build a brand and reputation that has long-lasting value.