Not sure about order management, but you should check out seopanel.in - it's a free, open source SEO management dashboard that you can setup on your own hosting. It's not very user-friendly, need to get used to it but it does track everything nicely. Depending on how you want to manage your orders, you can use something like WooCommerce that will be integrated into your WordPress-powered marketing site and allow you to do ecommerce functionality for simple ordering. Feel free to request a call about either platform or both. Depending on your budget, I can recommend few other SEO platforms I've worked with that are premium but very good.

Backwards. I'd make sure that person didn't stay in the company. "One dirty fish muddies the whole pond" It's not personal or malicious - they're just not the right fit. A great skill set, while very important is always secondary to cultural fit if you really want your company to flourish.

Start by calling SEO resellers. Ask them if they experience any challenges sharing reports with their clients. If they do, dig into what the problems are. Does your solution meet what they need? If so, tell them you are creating a solution they'd like and ask them if they want to buy it. Then you have two options: collect payment then and there for your uncreated product or add them to your list to contact when you launch. But first you need to validate that enough SEO resellers need the product you want to create. Start there.

Because you mentioned MVP, Im assuming that your current business is a service company, not a technology/product company. If that's the case, then you would definitely need to build out an MVP of the product and ideally show customers using the product as is. The major issue of a service company trying to productize their offering is that the customers actually don't want a product, they want someone to just solve the problem - so without an MVP demonstrating, it leaves a lot of risk. The more risk involved, the lower your potential valuation and quality of investors. The fact that you have $800K in revenue definitely gives your points around business acumen (history) and deep domain expertise around the problem space. The way I look at fundraising is this ... the more you have done, the easier it's going to be to raise your round from higher quality investor. Can you raise a round without an MVP, yep - anything's possible, but will you get a good valuation, and raise from high quality investors - not likely as they have so many options of other companies to invest in from incubators and sites like www.angel.co. Always up for a call to discuss further. -

Find apps that are B2B and go to the review sections. Specifically going to Google's play or Chrome store and look at reviews and follow them to Google+ to engage. I took that same angle for B2C app I was building last year. Check it out. http://blendah.com/post/37331434653/lean-startup-hack

I agree it really depends on what you are trying to achieve. It can take sometime to source the right person to do the job. I disagree that you should only outsource to a freelancer if you have a one off project. My designer is a freelancer and I have been using her for several years because I like her style and she is very fast and efficient so I end up paying a lot less for the work and there is usually very few edits. I think that for any business it is worthwhile investing in creating a good relationship with any member of your team. If the work you required isn't a full time role, then hiring a freelancer makes a lot of sense because you can build a loyal and trusting relationship with them and therefore depend on them to deliver.

I would be happy to discuss this with you. Are you looking for a prototype or a full blown product? I specialize in development, and product planning. Please feel free to get in touch.

The best thing to do to start any kind of sales or relationship building process with a Fortune 500 company is to recruit willing champions of you and your company. The good thing about Fortune 500 companies is that there are *lots* of people who you can potentially recruit. Many of them are active on Twitter and LinkedIn. I've successfully sold to Fortune 500 companies this way and I'd be happy to share relevant tips with you.

Interesting. First step is to validate your idea with the market: Set a minimum success criteria for how many customers you want to have on Day 1 to prove that the business is validated with the market. For example, set a goal to get 5 people to pre-pay for jet ski rentals and go to talk to people and get the sales. Set them in the schedule for Wednesday. Then make sure you have the paperwork and jet ski by then. Business validated. Go get more customers. Running it remotely within in a week... I'd have to think on that one a bit more.

Yes, every once in a while the planets align. Some questions to consider: Is there a significant other contributing cash flow to the home budget? Is there a nest egg? 401K or other instrument that can be cashed in if [and only if] all else fails? Define startup? Is it bricks & mortar? High overhead environment? Require major up front investment? I won't get out of bed in the morning without a Lean Canvas to guide my efforts. Have you complete this simple 9 step process? http://leancanvas.com There are few challenges in life more rewarding than starting a new business from the ground up. But it takes an inner peace! {grin} And focus. Laser-like focus. Put yourself in a position to win, even if a number of events go south. If you proceed, then commit 100%.

First, realize that change isn't an overnight process - it can take time to make the case for trying something new to your superiors. Second, try to understand (if possible) what motivations your team lead could have for being "stuck in their ways" - this can provide clues on the types of strategies you can use to help persuade them of your perspective. Instigating a change often requires understanding the context or situation you're in, which is likely beyond the scope of this question. However, a good place to start is by reading Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising's book, Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas[1]. It provides a series of change event patterns that you can adopt/adapt for your purposes depending on the situation you find yourself within. A key takeaway from the book is to keep your skeptics engaged - don't distance them from what you're doing, but also don't let them dissuade you from trying to bring about positive changes. Another is that when you start this process, be prepared for the long haul. It's a lot of two steps forward, three back. Good luck! [1] http://www.amazon.ca/Fearless-Change-Patterns-Introducing-Ideas/dp/0201741571

You need to show them that you can solve their problems. The #1 mistake made by most applicants is that they keep talking about themselves: "here are my skills, here's what I've done, etc..." Instead of talking about yourself, talk about them: "You need someone who can jump right in; someone who can start working without making mistakes. You also don't have a lot of time for training. I can get started right away." This is going to require some research. Follow the founders / managers on Twitter. Read their blog posts. Scan their error logs (if they're public). Find out where you're *needed* and highlight that. Generally it's best to do this during the application process. If you've already sent in a cover letter and resume, it doesn't hurt to send a follow-up email that says: "I've been doing some research, and I think I've found some places I could be helpful."

Only do things that move you closer to shipping. I'd also look at ruthlessly cutting scope so you can get your product out the door. Most importantly, focus on making consistent progress every day or week so you can actually ship your product and start getting revenue from it.

There are basically two types of SEO outfits. There are the "chop shops" of the world offering dated solutions like link building, etc and charging a monthly fee for supposed maintenance. Then there are credible experts who understand that the overall experience of the web assets is what catapults KPI's. One of the most important factors that's widely overlooked is technical compliance which experts adhere to and follow closer than a CPA follows tax law changes. Having said all that, ultimately, you get what you pay for. A proper outfit will charge you an appropriate fee to get your assets optimized. They will rarely charge you for monthly "maintenance" and instead may offer additional experiential suggestions for the brand. My final bit of advice is budgeting for this service so that you're not stuck learning and guessing trying to reinvent the wheel. Many try and eventually hire an expert.

First of all, you need to get really clear on who your actual customer is, and where they are. Are you actually selling direct to Gen Y (ie, internet, retail stores, etc) or is Gen Y your end user (ie, you're really selling to distributors or directly to corporations, site managers, HR professionals, ergonomics, etc) Secondly, desks are boring, but workplace fitness and holistic wellness are en vogue right now. People are thinking about this stuff, hence the major success of Jawbone Up, Fitbit and Nike Fuelband. If you are indeed selling to Gen Y directly, you're likely selling to someone who's a remote worker, an independent contractor, or entrepreneur-type. If they're a remote employee, there's a decent chance they're being given a furniture allowance to buy an office chair/desk, etc. That means they're using someone else's money. You need a story around your desk. How does it fit into the Gen Y, self-employed, mobile lifestyle? Why is it more than just a desk? How did you create the desk with Gen Y in mind. There's tons of fodder here for blog posts, product videos and even interviews with wellness professionals. It doesn't all have to be about the desk. It's about your story. A perfect example of this is the BulletProof Exec, Dave Asprey. www.bulletproofexec.com This guy is making a fortune out of selling coffee and coconut oil and other wellness products. He's got a vivid story he's telling, gives away lots of great information, and most importantly, is helping people live the lifestyle they desire. They buy coffee from HIM, because he's earned their trust. If people buy into the story, they're more likely to buy the product. I question the price point a bit. A nagging question in the back of my mind is- how could this be a high quality electric sit/stand desk at $299? You're going to need to explain that to folks. (a "making of" video) I think the average Gen Y professional will question the quality- especially given other sit/stand desks are $600-2500. Again, it's less about differentiating from your competition, more about creating a story people connect with.

It depends on a few factors. I would say that it's the investors that value your company, not you. Until there's a (first) funding event, valuation is a theoretical thing. A bit like real estate, your home is worth what the offer comes at. That said, it depends on the potential of the idea, the size of the market, how far you're into the product development, the team you have assembled, and what the investor thinks it's worth. If all else fails, pick a number between $1-7 million.

First of all BE VERY CAREFUL about exiting investors while bringing new ones on. You cannot give investors money back out of proceeds raised from new investors. It's illegal (called Ponzi). This is a VERY tough scenario since you are dealing with two substantial issues - 1) building (or rebuilding) a business; and 2) retiring investors. If the business is in fact "ruined" then you need to first decide if bringing new investors into that situation is a wise decision. You could be opening yourself up to legal problems. Investors invest in projects when they can 1) make money; 2) connect with the business; 3) add value; 4) believe in management. Unfortunately, having "previous investors" (especially bad ones) is like coming into a relationship with baggage. Most savvy investors will not want to participate. Advice: try to retire the investors BEFORE talking to new investors. Rebuild the business model and wait a few months before going after new investment. Showing that type of resilience and passion for the business could play in your favor and show new investors that you are someone who can overcome adversity to achieve success. So how do you "retire" investors? Convert the investment to debt if possible. If not, offer to sell the business to one of the investors. Do not sign a non-compete and start a new business. Also, depending on your stock purchase agreement and any anti-dilution clauses you could issue new stock and dilute everyone's shares to where the old investors shares are minimal (could have legal repercussions though so be careful).

It's very important. (first, read this article by Josh Breinlinger - http://acrowdedspace.com/post/47647912203/a-critical-but-ignored-metric-for-marketplaces) The way you achieve success in a marketplace is by driving liquidity for both your supply & demand. Demand-side Liquidity = When users come to your marketplace, they can achieve their goals. Supply-side Liquidity = When supply comes to your marketplace they can achieve their goals... which are almost always to make money. If you're making a large amount of your supply-side users a full-time income, then you're helping them achieve liquidity. Now it's not so black and white and it doesn't always have to be a "full-time income." It depends what their goals are. E.g., 1) At Airbnb, renters aren't looking to quit their day jobs and become landlords full-time... they're just look to earn a substantial amount of income to offset their rent, mortgage, etc. So in this case, I would probably goal on # of renters that earn >$500 / month... and (in the first 1-5 years) try to grow this number by 10-20% MoM... and maybe by just 5% once you're in the mid-high tens of millions in yearly revenue. 2) At Kickstarter, the goal of the supply-side is to get their project successfully funded. They don't care if the project creator is "full-time"... they just want to make sure they meet their funding goal. This is why they talk about their 44% project success rate all the time - http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats 3) At Udemy, our instructors want a substantial amount of their income to be driven from their Udemy course earnings... so we look at how many instructors are earning >$2k / month.

If you're not a coder, I don't know how you're going to publish code... but I'll look past that. The best thing to do is host the code on Github, then create a website for the project using Github Pages. At that point, gaining traction from the community so other people contribute to it has a lot to do with what the code is, and what it does. A good place to start is with solid documentation so anyone looking can quickly tell what your code does and whether contributing will interest them or be easy. As the owner of the project, it will be up to you to allow or deny the changes that other contributors make to the repository. That is how Open Source projects are managed. I would suggest learning more about Git and maybe beginning to code a bit, so you can start to see what people are really changing in your codebase. Codeschool is a great place to start if you want online tutorials. Best of luck!

Business lead generation. Give the reader a taste of the content and have them fill out their info to get access to the entire report. Then you build a list that you can market to later. Hubspot does this well - http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-resources. As a rule of thumb nowadays content should be more open and free to people. Use it to be recognized as an expert in the field and generate business that way. It is increasingly difficult for someone to "steal" or plagiarize work so I'm not sure you need to be so on top of protecting content that you miss bigger opportunities.

Topic targeting is a broad way of targeting people who've expressed interest in that topic or "related topic". It's a good option if you want to create awareness, do branding or generate likes. But when your end goal is sales/leads - it's good to go for precise interests as that's like exact match - and it ensures that you're reaching only those people which you're actually targeting - not related ones.

At this stage there are lots of decent web tutorials but I find Ryan Bates Railscasts some of the best for learning the technology. However if you want to just become better at Ruby and Javascript there is no substitute for good books. I've just been reading Avdi Grimm's Confident Ruby and I think it's an amazing book for showcasing good use of Ruby and patterns of Ruby code and API design. I wish I had suggestions for Javascript that were equally good, but I honestly have not read much in the Javascript space. I'd also suggest listening to some podcasts like Ruby Rogues and Javascript Jabber where they often review books and concepts that you can then go read. The Ruby Rogues mailing list is also a good place to discuss Ruby issues. For tutoring I can just suggest joining a solid experienced team as a junior developer and learning from them.

It depends how clear your idea value is without it, or with a rough one, or mock ups vs polished. There are a few goals you are trying to conquer with a prototype, overall its about concept clarity and valuation. 1. customer/investor acceptance: "i want that" 2. customer feedback: "you should change that" 3. investor valuation: "wow, you are that far along" vs "its just an idea" Without more details only you know what it will take to get the right clarity to the customer and investors to answers on above.

I think the main reason would be the obviously mis-perception of the value of your company. I do believe people still look at crowdfunding sites like kickstarter and indiegogo as hobby or fun-type of investing as opposed to serious investment. Another reason would be the amount of investment dollars you are looking for and the unknown aspect of whether you could hit that target or not. With some crowdfunding platforms it's all or none in terms of hitting the investment goal amount and being able to actually use the investment, which poses a concern that if you ask for $1mm and you get $990k the entire effort could be lost. All that being said, crowdfunding is an extremely viable resource and should be considered by everyone - at least for their early stages.

By not focusing on being the CEO for the name and focus on your customers, employees, and the services you offer.