Since you mentioned you're raising a seed round, I strongly suggest not using an investment banker. At the seed stage, VCs are investing in you more than your business—putting a banker in the middle will do you a lot of disservice. IBs are typically used for Series B and beyond. I also noticed that you call yourself an engineering services firm—typically services companies don't make good VC fundable businesses. If you have a product that you can spin off and raise money for, that might be more attractive. Happy to chat in more detail about the fundraising process if you wish.

Clarity's terms of service state that: "You (as a Seeker) may cancel an Appointment without penalty; provided, however, that you have not already initiated the call with the Expert via the Services. You (as an Expert) may cancel a scheduled Appointment without penalty at any time." I personally think that if the cancellation is done up to about 3-4 hours before, then it's reasonable not to charge, but anything less than that should come with a partial cancellation fee. I personally spend anywhere from 10-30 minutes preparing for a call in order to promise the most value for the caller. I don't expect to be paid for this time, but if the caller doesn't cancel and just doesn't show, there should be a cancellation fee. Alternatively, each user (including experts) should have 2 'no-shows' after which they get blocked. If it gives you any comfort, I know that the caller's 'Clarity Score' is negatively effected.

I think it makes total sense. If you provide some standard dashboards with number of messages over time and similar, you can get everybody started. And it will give you a platform to interact with the subscribers. In my view, that is the cheapest and most low-risk way of developing it - to work with your customers. No way to know now, whether high level of sophistication is needed. Consider doing your interaction as a blog, a support community or something similar to formalise the interaction. That would push yourself forward as well, and put a face on your service. If you are cloudbased, you can do frequent launches of small changes in the analytics, and talk about them in your community. Also, consider looking into the thoughts of Design Thinking, which would give you different tools for teasing out the thoughts in your community. Good luck with your subscription platform!

Oh man, this is such a complicated question because it depends on the industry. I've worked with dealerships to OEMs to gyms to dentists and retailers - and it all depends. Doing a combination of digital and direct is always a great place to start because you have options under both categories. Try running a Google campaign while also cold calling. If that doesn't drive results, try Facebook and networking. The point is to experiment to find what works for you. You might have a strong in-person skill set where others might excel with ad copy. Use what you do best and keep at it! And keep trying new things. You'll find it!

I've had great experience as a user of Udemy and write my own courses but offer those privately for my clients. It's always better to build a course that answers a specific need. Think about the avatar for your business. You can't meet everyone's needs. Build a course with no more than 8 segments or modules with 4 - 8 learning segments within each module. You will allow the user to achieve rapid and measurable results by completing each section and ending each module with an assessment (quiz) that further validates learning the skill. Udemy is easy to use so you will have a broad audience looking for specific needs.

Hi, the essential thing before fundraising is to understand if you are "investment ready." Fundraising is a full-time job and a lot of startup waste time and resources trying to fundraise when they can't (the basic metrics are not there). So step number one is to check if you have the essential elements to start the conversation with a potential investor. Then you need to start working on all the investment material. When you have all the investment material in place you can start connecting with investors.

I would try to contact lawyers directly, pointing them out to specific potential clients on your platform. It's a labor-intensive job but be sure that after they get their first client on the platform, they will stick around. I would target "fresh" independent lawyers that are trying to build a career. They are looking for a client base and are hangry.

Hi, you need someone that has done investment before. An investor is better than a startup founder that has raised capital. An investor looks daily at a startup pitch and knows exactly what are the key elements that a pitch need to be interesting. Fundraising is a full-time job and a lot of startup waste time and resources trying to fundraise when they can't (the basic metrics are not there). So step number one is to check if you have the essential elements to start the conversation with a potential investor. Then you need to start working on all the investment material. When you have all the investment material in place, you can begin connecting with investors.

Read Dan Kennedy's + Bill Glazer's books to start with. Speak at https://Meetup.com events + tech/niche related conferences.

Interesting question, but I doubt anyone humble enough will be able to answer it in a few lines. I'll use an example from sports to answer: all baseball/soccer/football teams have the same amount of players (on the field) and the same roles/positions. They usually also have a similar amount of managers. Why then do some teams succeed and others fail? The answers are one, and most often a combination, of the below (the bigger the organization/team, usually the more reasons): 1. Individual talent (of the employees and/or of the managers). 2. Lack of experience (of the employees and/or the management). 3. bad fit of the business for the market (this could be a bad fit in general, or just at the present time). 4. (the manager) Not knowing how to inspire and motivate your team. 5. The manager's managers not knowing how to inspire and motivate the manager. 6. Not enough money (this is often used as an excuse, but can often be a legitimate reason - there is only so much a person can do with a limited budget) Many excellent answers have been written on the subject, and I am sure that they are more elaborated that mine. A good start would be "The One Minute Manager" - it's old, a bit 'corny' and has some generalizations, but as I said: it's a good start. I've successfully helped over 300 entrepreneurs, and I'd be happy to help you if you need. Good luck

You can easily search online + find individuals running Solo companies (0 employees) making 6-7 figures/year doing this. Just find a few. Pattern your business after theirs.

Don't start with the KPIs, start with the responsibilities. Think of everybody in your business and list out what your performance expectations are of each person. Then determine how you will know if those expectations have been met: what are the outcomes you will track for each. Those are your KPIs. For example: you expect your sales people to sell. That is a fine starting point. But what does that mean? - Do you expect new clients? And if so how many? At what value? - Do you expect return business? How much? How often? - Do you expect up-sells? How often? - What activities to expect to see to lead to these results? - How many clients do you expect to see? What percentage of business is new, versus old? Are you high value low volume or the other way around? This will be a more effective way to find realistic measurements that are both easy to track, and easy to share and "sell" to your employees.

You may want to look at other lenders and options. See if you can find one that will allow you and your friend to set it up the way you described. Another option is to look for private lenders to fund your deals. Hope that helps!

I had the same question. Clarity told me it was a bug in their system right now and it will be fixed soon. That was a month ago.

Having effectively run a young digital agency as well and growing revenue by over 400% within 6 months, I will share what worked for us. Word of mouth remains your best customer acquisition channel. Referrals paved a way for us in an industry that was already overcrowded. How did we achieve this? We did three things. 1. Niche Marketing: We offered our services strictly to the growing startup community in our city. This tightly knit community who watched each other's moves closely began to notice our work on other startups and reached out to achieve same results. We spent $0 on marketing at this point just by doing this. 2. Free! Free! Free! - Give out free items but be strategic about it. A unique way we applied this was by finding influential business leaders within the startup community and offering them our service for free - A free explainer video. Who says no to free stuff? Most of the CEOs and founders we reached out to were 'delighted by the honor'. In turn they became our brand advocates as they were very pleased to tell other people about us, most especially at speaking events. This strategy alone accounted for 40% of our revenue. 3. Brand Positioning: This strategy is the most effective. It hinges on the idea that by making your agency an expert in a certain field, you make your agency a lead market. People like to share their problems with experts who they believe know and understand the problems best. You can easily do this through many ways, here are some unique ones: 1. Industry thought leadership Articles. 2. Gaining massive press exposure (Everybody wants to work with the popular brand) 3. Distributing Free guides on topics your target audience cares about. I hope this helps.

The same way companies grew before there was the Internet — boots on the ground, people-to-people networking, outbound sales outreach and time.

Hi, First of all, based on the informative manner in which you phrased your question, you seem very intelligent and business/internet savvy - so either way, I'm sure you'll do great. Answer: I would go for both. Why? Because they are not exclusive to each other. Some people will just want to read about a specific subject/issue/solution within the field, and others will want to read the entire e-book. Also, some people like to have a book layout, versus others who prefer reading short posts. The online concern with an e-book is the re-publishing of the content by a third party - but if you release the eBook only after you publish most of the content on your website, this won't be a problem because Google recognizes who published the original content first. If the above us not an option because of the specific subject you're covering, then I would go with the online resource option (and not the e-book). The eBook is a once off profit model, whereas you could probably sell numerous products/services on the website (I would of course need to see all the numbers to give you a 100% answer). p.s.: if the business has a lot of potential (backed by numbers), I would be willing to consider a small investment (if this interests you). I've successfully helped over 300 entrepreneurs, and am happy to help you as well. Best of luck

Great question! This is a similar issue all enterprise-focused companies face, which I've experienced many times. I'd recommend creating content that leverages your experience: 1. Create detailed case studies about each of your large projects, featuring the customers branding clearly. Seek permission before doing this, 2. Create white papers for each of your key learnings from the project. For example, I'd love to know how Russian law impacted your project - "Developing software that complies with Russian data protection law in 2019' 3. Create short blogs which summarise the white paper, ideally with a video. Offer the whitepaper as a download in exchange for an email. 4. Promote the blog posts on LinkedIn with paid advertising, aimed at your ideal customers. Happy to jump on a call and discuss how I've successfully used to approach to win customers.

Hello! Firstly you need to decide whether you're targeting larger or smaller corporations. Approaches will need to differ because the larger the organisation, the more formal the process and the more gatekeepers to go through. I've noticed you mentioned Russian legislation - I successfully sold in the CEE market before and can share my expertise of both selling into CEE and the wider EU. I'm now in a position where I pick vendors and approve engagements so you'll get a 360 degree perspective on that. One thing to mention is that retail tactics won't work with most corporates. This is true the bigger your target client is. The main angle to play is specialism and delivery efficiency - happy to expand on both.

I would directly contact a list of companies and try to get a direct answer. Of course, you can try googling since you can find just about anything on the web. Give me a call for more advice.

Quickest way to drive traffic is either Google Adwords (SEM) or Facebook Ads, however, with a limited budget you can't guarantee sales (you will be paying per click). This is also a great place to test different copy, images, or audiences to see what works best for your website. A great way to spend marketing budget when you are first getting started and on a limited budget is affiliate marketing. Basically you pay a commission to other sites that drive sales for you (pay per sale model) or when someone submits a lead form (pay per lead model). This is not the fastest way as you need to structure your program and find affiliates, but you typically don't start spending your budget until sales are coming in. Niche markets are usually a good fit for this so your yoga should align nicely. Shareasale is the largest when you are just getting started but this article has an aanalysis of some other options as well. https://growtraffic.com/blog/2016/09/affiliate-alternatives-shareasale

Hello! You need to consider where UI and UX come in and why. Typically, by the time UI/UX is designed and then reviewed a range of activities must've taken place, e.g.: (1) Someone defined the proposition, product or service which the UI/UX is supposed to satisfy. (2) Someone created a project around the UI/UX design and implementation. (3) Someone created a blueprint for integrating the UI with existing systems and thought of ways to streamline UX across products or services. If you provide services in any of the above, they will constitute a value-add to UI/UX. One obvious angle to play, if you're doing reviews, would be to try and determine why UI/UX fails to achieve what your client wants. This presents a broader methodology improvement opportunity for your client - a valuable lesson. More than happy to share some of my experiences delivering UI/UX changes as parts of digital transformation. I've also authored standards and guidelines for UI/UX design for large corporations so know what can go wrong and what would sell as a complementary service to your reviews.

Setup your business as a pass through. You run the transactions + charge a fee. Likely, for the businesses you mention, they'd be happy to pay a premium fee... as you will be the only payment processor to accept their transactions.

It depends on your budget. Companies like Nielsen or other international market research companies had offices in these cities and they offered professional research services. However, many successful teams in the region would build their own research projects in-house. If you are in a budget, you can try free tools like Statista to get a sense of the publishing market. If you want to dive deeper, you can come across with a bunch of Chinese content (e.g. http://ipubl.com/site/gjcb/bg/info/2017/840.html ), which you may need some help; for user interview services, that is not as popular as the west, it may be better if you just hire some part-time helpers to conduct interviews for you. Marketing channels are highly diverse, there are lots of "agencies" in the region claiming they offer "all-in-one" packages, but they are more focused on executions/ creativity inputs instead of the actual outcome, which should be aware of.

Hi First of all, the fact that you're asking this question is very good (stage one of the solution). Second, without hearing more details, it is very difficult to provide an educated answer. Therefore, I am willing to offer you the following: 1. Send me more details of your business + what you think the problem is + what you think could be a solution (I intentionally want to hear YOUR take on things since business owners usually have good insights to their own industry). 2. I will then probably follow up with 2-3 clarifications questions. 3. Then, if I feel that I can be of value, I will suggest a short call during which I will give you my advice. If I don't think I have any valuable advice, I'll just give you my humble opinion by email, and all the above is free of charge (except for the few minutes that you have to invest in writing the emails). I've successfully helped over 300 entrepreneurs, and I'd be happy to try and help you. Best of luck