1. Get an introduction 2. Be clear and short with your request.

1. Be relevant. 2. Be personal. 3. Be clear. 4. Show what's in it for them. 5. Be appreciative.

The best thing to create is User Stories regarding the functionality that you would like and use an Agile Development process to prioritize and refine things as you build it. That will act as your todo list for functionality. I would also highly recommend wireframing all the major parts of your site using something like www.balsamiq.com so you ensure it works the way you expect. It's hard to use words to describe a painting, same thing applies to software development.

I'd ask the customers you do have why they downloaded the app, what they were looking for when they found it, how they heard about it, what they like/don't like about it, and how they think you could reach more people. What pain are you solving, who experiences it the most, and how do you reach those people?? Answer those questions and you're on your way.

You might be somewhat in trouble. You'll want to consult a lawyer, not to be adversarial, but rather to ensure you do things that are legal and are best from a tax-consequence perspective. You can't back-date option grants or stock grants, for example. There are recent scandals reinforcing that statement. And if you don't back-date, your stock (or options) is worth something now, and might even have to get a 409A to ensure it's valued properly. (That's a 3rd-party stock valuation report, typically costs $10k-$30k, which companies with ESOPs are required by law to do annually, but I wouldn't be surprised if this company hasn't yet.) There's all sort of other boogers which you couldn't even know about. For example, if an outside party made an informal written offer to buy the company, even if it went nowhere after that, that will change the 409A valuation. So this is why, in short, I'm giving you the unsatisfactory answer that you'll have to use a lawyer to make sure everything is done properly. This is, sadly, a object lesson in getting paperwork done properly from the start. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

Ask your current clients what they value the most in their relationship with you; use their answers to describe what you provide to others (note that it may be a "feeling" or "outcome" rather than a "service"!). Also, give your consulting process a unique name to differentiate how you do what you do well.

Yes, that's extremely common and expected. Generally you charge 3x the rate you pay.

Hard to determine best, but how about: * YCombinator - Pebble, Upverter, BufferBox * Bolt http://bolt.io/ * Highway1 http://highway1.io/ * Lemnos Labs http://lemnoslabs.com/ There are probably others.

It really depends on what you're looking to offer, but generally you should allow people to try before they buy, encourage and help them while they try it out and then ask for the business.

Microsoft Azure. For startups they give you a ton of stuff for free, and if you talk to someone there you can probably get even more. And when you're eventually ready to pay, you can just continue with them. Google's cloud offering is also free or cheap, but it's unclear what the future of that is, and it's much more limiting. If you don't want to be a member of any special programs, then design your system to be deployed directly to S3 so you can serve from there. That's cheap, and you get arbitrary scale built-in, and you can add "speed" to that by fronting with a CDN when you're ready to pay a little more. In general, though, video-streaming is NOT FREE. You should design for the video-streaming part to be hosted by someone else -- YouTube, Vimeo, anything. That's a whole business in itself, and bandwidth is expensive until you're very large (and even then...).

If you charge a subscription then I wound't have ads - it breaks the social norm for paid memberships. If it's freemium, then add ads to the free accounts.

Read Tribal Leadership, a great book on culture and Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, a great book on implementing change when it's difficult.

Type of shares are generally split into two: common/ordinary (depending on the jurisdiction) and preferred. The former are granted to founders and employees (most commonly as options with a right to purchase common/ordinary shares). The latter are generally issued to investors and include special rights such as liquidation preference, anti-dilution protection, etc. Preferred shares reflect the fact that the holder (investor) has paid a premium in consideration for issuance of such shares. Don't forget to consult with a lawyer.

To answer this question, I would need to know a lot more (how many other founders, employees, background of the CTO, etc.). A great resource for thinking through founder equity is this post by Joel Spolsky. http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a-new-software-startup-how-do-i-allocate-ownership-fairly/23326#23326

The best way is to offer early adopters a discounted rate and lock it in for life. Make it a no-brainer for them with the understanding that they are your beta group and that you will ping them from time-to-time for feedback on concept improvement.

There are a lot of tools designed to help "sketch" business ideas and business models. You need to be able to define and refine your ideas with a pencil and paper at the best. Other tools like Business Model Generation are great at sketching and documenting business model assumptions. I'm a huge fan of Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences and you can find his talks at http://www.billbuxton.com/#talk For UI work check out: * http://www.onextrapixel.com/2010/09/29/40-brilliant-examples-of-sketched-ui-wireframes-and-mock-ups/ * http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/18-great-examples-of-sketched-ui-wireframes-and-mockups You goal is to be able to effectively communicate your ideas, your business and the next steps.

If you're looking for another crowdfunding platform, Indiegogo has the second best platform and user base, after Kickstarter.

I have found that the best way to create demand for a product that does not yet exist, is to capture the interest of people who experience a common pain that *does* exist. Focus less on selling the non-existent product, and focus more on clearly articulating the problem your product will solve. And, make it extremely easy for people to: (1) Tell you they have that problem too. (2) Realize there are a lot more people like them. (3) Evangelize a potential solution to all their friends. I am extremely biased, but http://launchrock.com is a great way to start capturing this list, and enabling them to share. Look at Mailbox.app and beachmint.com for inspiration.

I have had very little success allowing subcontractors to talk directly to clients. As much as it's annoying to play telephone, typically the subcontractor has less skin in the game, less communication skills, etc., and it reflects poorly on you.

I think you might find more luck with a question like, "How do I sell a dream?" or "Want to know how I can make you rich?" I am going to assume you are looking for funding, because you are trying to capitalize an idea, and that you'd rather convert someone else's money into energy and acceleration than to spend your own money to maintain 100% ownership. (If my assumption is wrong, I'd love to hear why you are looking for funding?) There is only really one way to create wealth: take a certain amount of capital (money, blood, time, expertise) utilize a particular market advantage to increase the value of that capital, and then withdraw the added value. So, I assume you are going to invest your time and skill and blood and sweat and tears into your venture. And, I assume you want one or more other people to invest their time and skill into your venture (those are called employee's). But, you might also want some other people to invest their money into your venture (these are called investors). Just like you, and (hopefully) like your employees, they want to get more out from whatever they put in. You need to convince the investor that you have the ability to utilize a particular market advantage to increase the value of their capital. Just remember, with early-stage investors, they are generally looking for your venture to produce a 5x or 10x return. (I put 100k in, I get 1mm out.) Because they know most of their investments will fail. So, get a 14% return across all their investments over 10 years, they need a few of them to make it big. So, now that you know all of that, let's answer your original question: "how do i get funding?" To get funding, you need to know why your venture can give a 5x-10x return on investment, know why you solve a problem in a market, and know what your unique market advantage is. Then, sell the dream.

Like any sale, it's all about building a funnel and identifying qualified buyers. The best way to do this is to ask, who do we share a similar customer with that would like to sell what they do to our users, or that our product helps improve their product. Companies get bought when there's overlap in the customers, or you fill the white space in their strategic map so they can move faster by buying vs. building themselves. Once you have the list, then you'll want to create a spreadsheet (hopefully you have 12-20 names) and then identify these 3 people at each company. CEO - making the final decision. Corp Dev - it's actually their job to buy you! Product Manager - internal champion that will decide if you're the right fit for them. Sometimes these can all be one person (i.e. the CEO) or only 2 people - either way, you'll want to build a relationship with each on quickly by getting an introduction. You don't want to come off as "hey, we want to sell what we've built" but more, "hey, I think we share a similar customer base and could do something together that would be mutually beneficial". That will get you a meeting. If you start with 12 companies and do the work, you should be able to get 3 of them competing to purchase your startup and you can use this as leverage. The key is to get them all to the same point, at the same time (i.e. giving you a term sheet or offer). You don't want one to move to fast, and not let you get the other interest going - or they might pull out of the deal from your lack of decisiveness. I've written about this in more depth here: http://maplebutter.com/7-tips-for-getting-acquired/ Hope that helps.

You can read about Zaarly, which was a 2-sided reverse Craigslist, and their struggles with pricing and the ultimate impact it had on their decision to change to a storefront only tool. * http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/09/zaarly-shutters-its-reverse-craigslist-marketplace-goes-all-in-on-virtual-storefronts-as-co-founder-exits/ A better read is "If You Think 10% Is A Good Transaction Fee For Your Marketplace, Then It Will Struggle" by Sunil Rajaraman * http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/16/marketplaces-businesses-are-tough-to-build/ "it would be to start your transaction fees higher than 10 percent. I understand that companies start here to deter competition and provide a better deal for suppliers. But imagine having to build a business that completes $1 billion in annual transactions within five years in order to build a $100 million top-line business. Start much higher than 10 percent. You can move down eventually, but you cannot move up" And Bill Gurley's "All Markets are not created equal - 10 factors to consider when evaluating marketplaces" * http://abovethecrowd.com/2012/11/13/all-markets-are-not-created-equal-10-factors-to-consider-when-evaluating-digital-marketplaces/ Pricing is key to proving your revenue model.

As someone who's already sold to that fashion company who makes the decision. Just go and see what product their selling, then ask the product companies vp of sales or CEO if you can get 10 minutes for advice on your business. As for intro, get advice. Ask for advice, get intro.

Connect with the CEO of 3 non-competing products that already sell to those stores and ask them for advice on the process, the people involved and things to consider. That's always the fastest way in my opinion.

Have you considered using https://appsocial.ly ? They can really help increase downloads and sharing right within the mobile experience. [Disclaimer: I mentor this team through 500Startups.]