Hell no. I've been in the startup world since 1995, and no one has ever asked me for such a thing.

Here are some Blogs & Websites to start off with: - Hubspot - Quicksprout - Moz - Copyblogger - Search Engine Land Also the free course at QuickSprout "Double your Traffic in 30 Days" is a great place to start off and also read the following post on QuickSprout: http://www.quicksprout.com/2013/02/07/how-i-grew-quick-sprout-from-121311-to-244923-readers-in-30-days/

Here are two possible avenues: (a) ExitRound (b) Listing profiles as team of developers available for hire together on DeveloperAuction

Surround yourself with people who have done it before. Not consultants, not coaches, people who have walked the path you are embarking on. The good news is that the startup community is the most helpful business community of any industry, by miles. I'd be happy to do a call to help you figure out how and where to identify these supporters and champions. Good luck!

I'll answer the question two ways. First, to give you the answer you're asked for: The best way to promote a brand story today is through short (under 2 minutes) video clips. If your products are being prototyped, it's an opportunity to shoot video of the process, you and your team's passion for the products, and even allow for (if you build an audience) some form of group decision making (e.g. should the first widget be red or green?) I think also if you're creating physical products, running a Kickstarter (or similar crowdfunding initiative) is another avenue by which you can bring a product to market with a built-in audience who are enthusiastic about it's potential. But, and now to answer the question a different way, the idea that your brand story (over the product and it's benefits/values) should be front and center might be ill-advised. Hard to provide more specific advice without knowing more about what your products are but I hope that helps. Happy to do a call to provide more specific advice.

Is there any sort of auditing or quality control for subtitle files added to your database? If you are able to review, edit, and 'certify' some premium subtitle files that might be a reason to go premium. You could offer one free premium subtitle download pack for every free user. What do you have in place for usage tracking in your app? Do you find that users download the same subtitle files in multiple languages? If you have some usage tracking in place it'll be easier to see what some trends might be.

100M+ in revenues in 5 years or less does not happen very often. As an example of one sector, here is an interesting data visualization (circa 2008) of the 100 largest publically traded software companies at that time that shows their actual revenue ramp-ups from SEC filings (only 4 out of these 100 successful companies managed this feat, which themselves are an extremely small percentage of all of the VC-funded software companies): How Long Does it Take to Build a Technology Empire? http://ipo-dashboards.com/wordpress/2009/08/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-technology-empire/ Key findings excerpted from the link above: "Only 28% of the nation’s most successful public software empires were rocketships. I’ve defined a rocket ship as a company that reached $50 million in annual sales in 6 years or less (this is the type of growth that typically appears in VC-funded business plans). A hot shot reaches $50m in 7 to 12 years. A slow burner takes 13 years or more. Interestingly, 50% of these companies took 9 or more years to reach $50m in revenue."

A good advisor can help a startup in various ways. Here I describe what I do: I work quite a bit with pre-angel/pre-seed/pre-accelerator US-based tech startups (or sometimes even executives/scientists/technologists in corporate jobs toying with a startup idea that they'd consider leaving their jobs for), and have done this now for well over a decade while founding/growing my own companies. Most of these founders come to me from hearing about me from another founder, so I am assuming that founders are finding some value in their interactions with me. At this early-stage in the game, one of the key things I try to do is to separate founders' assumptions about various aspects of the business from facts that they have validated. Another thing founders find useful is examples/ideas of how other startups solved a similar business problem in a creative manner (my voracious reading helps a lot here.) Finally, I also try to take the devil's advocate position on key assertions that the founders make (e.g. why are they & their product uniquely suited to tackle this problem in face of competition) in order to point out counterarguments with the eventual goal of helping them strengthen their case. My engagements with founders tend to take the form of intense 30-75 minute brainstorming sessions (1-3 sessions), which typically provide them with enough food for thought to start executing on various fronts. A small percentage of these startups continue to make great progress over a period of 3-9 months and keep me in the loop via brief email updates. Those ones, I help by providing them critical feedback on their pitch decks (multiple iterations until I think that it is crisp and powerful) and then bring on the radars of my early-stage investor contacts (US-based).

The specifics of what an investor might try to look for may vary depending on whether the startup is, say, a daily deals play, a chip company, a mobile app, or a genomics startup. In general, here are the key things being examined with respect to a technical co-founder. Different investors might give differing weightages to these factors: (1) Technical vision for the product and their ability to actually deliver on it. (2) The unique technical/scientific insight they bring to the product and/or what are the confluence of technical factors/trends/improvements they are capitalizing upon. (3) What have they done prior to the startup that can provide some degree of confidence for item #1? (e.g., companies they have worked at, schools they have graduated or dropped out of, etc.) (4) What are the dynamics between the technical and non-technical cofounders? Have they successfully worked together before in another intense setting? If not, are there signs that can work together now? (5) Will the technical co-founder be able to attract, scale up, and manage the tech team? (Many VC firms are increasingly helping out their portfolio companies in attracting top tech talent these days.) If there is interest in continuing discussions with the co-founders, a VC firm will often have CTOs from their existing or past portfolio companies have detailed discussions with the technical co-founders to get deeper insights especially on items #1 and #2 mentioned above.

Angellist is a good platform for startups, job finder and investor. I see there are lots of job opening there https://angel.co/jobs

I'd suggest doing three things to narrow down the field: 1.Try to sketch the business model for the startup idea http://businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas 2.Get good at doing quick and dirty market sizing of opportunities 3.Check if you are passionate enough about the idea to potentially spend the next 5-8 years of your life in making it successful Based on a collective evaluation of the above three, you might be able to zero in on a few ideas to investigate further (e.g. building a prototype, customer development, etc.)

Here is my list of seven recommended books: (1) The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company - Steve Blank and Bob Dorf (2) Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup by Bill Aulet (3) The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup - Noam Wasserman (4) Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers - By Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur (5) Here's the Pitch: How to Pitch Your Business to Anyone, Get Funded, and Win Clients by Martin Soorjoo (6) HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations by Nancy Duarte (7) Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist - by Brad Feld et al

Go with the company you're most passionate about and you'll make a living or more. I wouldn't do B just because you think there's some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Your health and sanity isn't worth that trek, especially if you having some else you love.

The USPTO website. But, in all sincerity, you might need help with that. The actual trademark is simple. Patents are tougher.

It's not unusual at all. If you do outsource, try and make sure you have a project lead that you can trust. Once revenues get up to a certain point they might want to see the project through and come on board full time OR they will have enough pride in their work to make sure a proper transition takes place. As far as security, make sure you have an airtight non-disclosure/non-compete agreement with a penalty clause that includes financial remuneration.

always save the original profile as a backup. that said, this is an easy problem to solve. you just need to use this line of code above the "trackpageview" line.... _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'example.com']); here's an easy tool to help http://gaconfig.com/one-domain-with-subdomains/ here's more details for your developer https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingSite

This sort of depends on how established or large your company is, and what you want as your messaging. A good copywriter can certainly help you find *a* "why", though it might not be *the* "why" you actually began with. For example, if a web hosting company got started because two college roommates needed money to pay for tuition, that's a very important story, but it doesn't really sell as a "why". A good copywriter would come in and put some spin on it like "Steve and Dave knew starting their own business together would be hard, so they wanted to create something that would make entrepreneurship easier for others. At ACME web hosting, we make this our mission every day". It's now a great story, and sounds like a caring company... and it can even be true... but it's not actually the real reason the company started. A good strategy is to cast your mind back to the feelings you had when you started your company. Just write them down as one word emotions, and then on a separate page, write down the emotions you feel about your company *now*. A good copywriter should be able to find a story in there, and help you position your company in the best possible light, even if through rose-tinted lenses.

I think you should first really step back and ask if you need that role filled. Are your sales growing? Are they growing as quickly as you'd like? Do you think someone could push that needle? I've worked at companies with strong focus on sales and some where there were no sales people at all. It depends on your niche and who your customers are. Depending on your outreach methods, perhaps you need to hire someone with a strong sales background who's going to pick up the phone and start cold calls all day, or maybe you just need someone to handle your marketing better and help you out with some Adwords campaigns. Business Development is a big term, and it can cover a lot of things, most commonly sales... but salespeople aren't right for every business. So, look at your existing success. What sorts of things bring in the money now... and look to amplify those existing efforts before you go breaking new ground. You should be looking for someone who complements your existing success and can continue to tell that story, in your existing playing fields, and gradually moving into new areas. I know this was a vague answer, but I hope it helps.

Do you have any internal sales professionals? You should at LEAST have an internal sales director who sets the strategy for a sales force. Then you determine if the proper path is a contracted sales force. I've known companies that have used outside sales teams however NONE that have seen the type of success that outweighs having an internal team.

I'd suggest forgetting about trends, and instead focusing on finding problems that lots of people will pay you to solve for them. Here are some ways to get started: (a) Have a clear idea of the few areas where you may have a view of what lies just beyond the edge (technology evolution, market needs, etc.) (b) Identify problems that need to be solved, preferably using primary research (i.e. talking to people). (c) Remember that sometimes people cannot easily articulate what the problem is, so understanding what the problem is might require some effort. (d) Figure out if the problem is big/widespread enough that it is worth solving. Am happy to talk if you'd like to brainstorm your early-stage venture ideas.

If you want long term evangelists you're going to have to think outside of the relationship between your product and the customer and focus specifically on the customer. Identify the influencers who are already engaging your brand through social media channels and see what you can learn about them. If their profile picture is them playing an instrument, you might send then a gift card to Itunes or Guitar Center. In Short: Spend a little money and show your interest in them instead of just rewarding their interest in you. I had Wheat Thins send me a box of crackers and that was cool but I sent one tweet out and was done. General Electric saw that I was wearing a Batman shirt and sent me a really cool book as well as a hand written thank you note. I regularly engage and promote content about GE.

AngelList is your best bet. Since you're asking the question, chances are you don't have a way to get introduced to these investors. The simple truth (like it or not) is the chances very low that you'll get a deal done without an introduction from someone they trust. AngelList can help with that, so can going to networking events. And finally, If you're the introverted developer type, you can also get their attention by just building something really cool on your own, followed by some serious traction. Arguably the best strategy of them all.

The viral strategy needs to be a natural extension to the app that requires SMS - not sure you want to just use it for the sake of it being viral (seems forced). A perfect example of this is the Twist app. The app tells someone you are meeting with when you will arrive. When you set up a twist a text message is sent to the person you are meeting with (if they don't have the app installed). The message says you are on your way and if they'd like to know when you will be there, download the app. It has been effective because it solves a problem, gives the end user an option and extends the usefulness of the app's original purpose. Hope this helps!

Typically open-source projects that end up generating a profit have an active product that's already being used. So step 1. Is to open source it and see if anyone uses it - then you can make money in a bunch of ways. Checkout Wordpress, MySQL, Linux for examples - but typically it's providing paid devices for either hosting, managing or customizing the software. The hardest part is getting others to use and contribute to it.

One option is to provide dedicated support while letting the code be open. There are plenty of businesses that run on open, freely available architecture, and they make all their money by selling a "Pro" plan that allows people the security of being able to pick up the phone and ask a question. However, you have to give away your product on the front end as a loss leader. This is essentially the "Insurance" business model. It's how Circuit City rose and fell. Be careful, and good luck.