Making a new company will cost some money up front with no certainty of commercial success. A simple workaround, if you both know and trust each other, is to make a shareholder's agreement for the company to be incorporated and a contract saying how the shares will be divided. Since you're the developer, writing code before you incorporate puts the risk on your partner since the work will be your property until you put it into a corporation in which he is a shareholder. The critical thing is to determine how many shares you will get for the work you've done and what exactly he has to do to acquire his shares. You'll also want to know what your responsibilities will be after the business is up and running and what compensation you'll get for 'working in the business' at that point. I've helped a lot of people unravel their partnerships because these things were not thought through properly at the beginning and would be happy to discuss your specific situation in a Clarity call. Thanks and good luck. David C Barnett

Hello! This is a very good question, my name is Humberto Valle, and I'm the founder of www.Unthink.me a small globally known inbound marketing agency. We have helped many tech-related companies such as Software Developers who work on equity as well as traditional payments. For our marketing agency, we have also taken equity in combination of 'cash' payment. So yes, there are many opportunities for startups to hire or partner with an individual or agency on equity. The trick, I would assume is where in your lifecycle do you approach someone to work with you/for you for equity promise? At the end of the day, marketing agencies are not a hail mary approach to growing or making a company sustainable - its all about management and strategic market fits - if your plan is to hire an agency to have them do what you want, you may not find anyone who would be interested, possibly not even for payment. It is very understandable that you want to save your burn rate but you have to be respectful of someone's skillset - for example you mentioned doing 75% equity and the rest based on results - so commission? A good established marketing agency is not in the business of a startup, so unless they have a CEO who gets distracted, any good leader will not take on 'external opportunities' from what they are doing right now - aka a marketing agency won't work on hopes and dreams - which is what this is right now. As a business owner, startup entrepreneur and leder of your team you have to make critical decisions and hiring and spending on marketing is one of them. For example, I would consider myself to be globally recognized ( not a lot but decently enough) on topics that revolve around marketing strategies - my suggestion to you would be to look into marketing agencies and hire them directly while you are also focusing your expertise (is it manufacturing? logistics? sales? what is it? focus on that and outsource/partner the rest such as for example you could look for an existing expert in cosmetic distribution or connections at some of the larger retailers, give them that structure (% equity + commission %) butkeep that that equity to a minimum (don't offer, ask for them to value their own worth and negotiate from there)

If you're willing to simply get by while you work on your dream, look for an opportunity to get paid to work on that dream. Look around. There are jobs that are incredibly boring and even afford the chance to read while you're on the job. That would be a great time for research, catching up on emails, etc Night watchmen, late night store clerk, overnight hotel front desk person. You see these roles all the time and hardly notice. Good luck David C Barnett

Yes; if you do a presale, those buyers will get the book immediately upon release. Include a message in either the front or back matter that encourages them to leave a review once they finish the book. You should also encounter them to join your mailing list, that way you can continue to build a relationship with them.

I will never recommend you to stop ever. Stopping is not the solution, pivot also may not be the solution. All you need is to 'Focus' and little motivation. You thought it right, you need a mentor, a consultant or a guide who can identify your strengths and let you focus upon it. A daily dose of motivation will take you towards your aim. You may talk to me if you need any further advise, I am expert into it. Many thanks Shishir

Impressions typically refer to the number of views or visits your profile or page received during a certain time period. For example, I received a few hundred impressions on my Clarity profile this past month, but as you may also see I don't get calls, that's because people email me or google me instead and reach out to me or my marketing agency www.unthink.me that way. If you are trying to grow calls, don't take that approach, instead consider SEO value, and see it as inbound generation. I get a lot of great results from Clarity, but I have been here since it launched. I have also been on Quora for a while now, just last month I received 4k+ views on my responses and profiles, but as far I know we haven't received leads from any of the answers I have published there, I know they are helping people because of the up likes and the follows and the number of views. Impressions are only basic data that make a larger picture - regardless of what you are expecting out your effort. :)

As an agent for 20 years, I have represented several life coaches. much of the 'niche' you create is based on your own personal life experience. for example, i worked with someone who started off teaching young men to have confidence. later he realized that what he had learned from all those coaching sessions is that he really understood how men worked. so he transitioned his coaching towards women and how they could improve their dating skills, because he had so much insight on the male human psyche. hope that helps, happy to discuss further. good luck.

Linux + MariaDB (Fast MySQL). Enterprise level throughput + scalability. Cost == $0. Well, cost included with whatever hosting you're using. I run a private hosting company. Some of my machines are running 250,000+ uniques/hour + have been for months. MariaDB can handle whatever load you throw at it... Well... so long as your coders know how to write high speed code. Most coders are clueless about this. Tip: Pay for expensive developers up front + you'll save huge amounts of money avoiding rewrites.

Likely you best rethink this. You've already used the work "employees", so you've already proved your workers aren't 1099 contractors. The rules a person must meet to be a 1099 contractor. 1) They have no supervision. 2) They have no set hours. For example, I have a 1099 contractor who runs one of my businesses. His direction is "get all the orders out as fast as you can." He has no set hours. He has no set workplace. Sometimes he works from his home, while he travels, sometimes in the business office. This is a true contractor. If you meet these criteria you're good. If not, you best search for what happened to Microsoft when they paid a bunch of employees on 1099 for years. When you read this suit, you'll be inspired to avoid their mistake.

You're going to want a comprehensive marketing strategy that determines where your likely customers spend their time online and you'll want to focus on one to two channels that you will work to their maximum benefit until you feel they are saturated. You probably also want to think about enabling technologies that will allow you to scale your inputs so you don't have to wear yourself out services clients while your business development suffers. There are a lot of "it depends" in your question. It's not enough to "find" if you don't have an engagement strategy of what you will do when you find them. I'd be happy to talk through this with you and point you in the right direction. All of my work is related to B2B sales of this nature.

At Gun.io we're about to replace our legacy home-grown system for these items with Hubspot. So far we are happy with it. It doesn't do _everything_ but it does enough and it's easy enough to use for non-technical staff. We got it up and running with about a month of dedicated work, mostly on developing the content.

Mistakes are good for those who learn from them but there is no logical explanation why you would choose to go through a long expensive and time consuming learning path filled with mistakes and 'lessons' when you can just learn as you go from an experienced individual who can help you reduce that path and minimize errors. When I was launching my first startup, I reached out to a few connections of mine, including Craig (from Craigslist) and Aaron (CEO of Jobing.com) - it was them two whom I worked with shortly and still failed that startup. It wasn't that the idea failed, but I learned so much on different perspectives that I completely abandoned what I had to refocus and launch a completely different business. Sold that business a few years later. When you reach to mentors however, it's important for you to consider their history, their connections, their level of involvement and the closeness to your own business model - have they launched something similar? do they own a business which you can partner with once you have built a relationship with this mentor and built a good product? Also, don't go with hard headed individuals who think they know best - no one knows best, what they are supposed to bring to the table is an experienced different perspective on the same situation you are going through now that they have gone through themselves - give you their perspective, introduce you to the right people, give advice and let you make your own decision with all things considered. I have a friend who launched a very innovative mobile app, I think it could be huge if well played, but due to them having influence from so many 'mentors' they screwed up their own growth and now the guys are doing 'marketing' to try to get revenue - not realizing that in it self is a business that distracts from the long term. My name is Humberto Valle, I'm the founder of Unthink, a digital marketing agency that is now globally known as the most helpful. If you would like to get in touch or need anything related to marketing please visit us at www.unthink.me.

Just do it. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Actual implementations are rare as Purple Lemmings. If you do something... anything... to move your startup to the first sale mark, you're well ahead of most. Only real consideration is massive action generates massive cash.

https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl is the tool I use for this. You can download a single video or an entire playlist. You can also use Firefox + http://www.downloadhelper.net extension. The Downloadhelper extension also allows scraping HTS streams, by playing them + recording the stream + dumping the stream into a file.

First define what you mean by boosting + your goal of boosting. For example, if you're running paid traffic to your agency home page, consider if this is useful (monetizes). Likely best to "boost" (I'm guessing you mean running traffic to) artist pages + then have artist pages point to a category (containing related artists) + have category pages reference your home page. Google the term siloing for more information about various silo strategies. Start with how you expect to monetize your efforts + design your site silo.

Hey there - I work with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley but mostly with what I call the Big Dreamers - people that would never be able to hold down a job, but can go out there and do something magical with their unusual talents. I am working on 2 books with different people, marketing their products with them and coaching Executives. Startups suck, man. Teams don't work, engineers don't stick around, you need connections for money and yes, it is risky. So what should you do? Three words: Online Home Business. Many examples exist of regular people - Dads, Moms, even teenagers - that started up a blog/website/social media/youtube channel with a passion of their own and posted fun, fresh, unique content regularly building an audience over time and making a tidy income - more than by driving for Uber or having a retail job. The best ones cross six figures and more with a little luck and good timing. I knew an example where this young man loved Disney and all things related - so he built a Disney fan website and got all this ad-click money plus affiliate marketing money and before he knew it he was on the news. So what's your burning interest? Let me help you figure it out and position yourself in a spot where you can actually still spend time with family and friends but live a comfortable lifestyle. I can help you understand your talents and how to relate them to the wide world out there! Call me and we can get started right away! Sincerely, Arjun Buxi

Hi, I've helped a lot of entrepreneurs with partner issues. The fact is that equity is divided in whatever way you negotiate. Rights such as first right of refusal are normally dealt with in the shareholder's agreement. Certain clauses or rights can certainly be unattractive to investors but these agreements can always be amended. Again, it's what you manage to negotiate for yourself. Arrange a call and I can help you with the specifics of your situation. You may find these two videos of mine informative: This one on partnership agreements https://youtu.be/WvLFlct227o and this one on share structures https://youtu.be/1EjKjSAd1F8 Cheers David Barnett

Happy New Year (2020) ! Do Feel (Perfectly) Free to Contact Me ; for a (Legally-Compliant) Digital Clinical Marketing Plan. Sincerely , Professor Obi

Rarely will you ever "live well" working a job. Trick to living well without a job is to treat your work like farming. With farming you prep your dirt, plant, tend, after sometimes a long while, your harvest is ready. How this translates generally, "provide massive value, in your niche, every day + eventually your harvest will be ready." Simple way to do this might relate to your writing. 1) Attend Meetup groups related to writing. 2) Speak to Meetup groups about writing. 3) Develop a course about how you monetize your writing. If you make $1000/month writing, develop a course about... "How to make $1000/month writing." People how make $0/month from writing, will be interested in your course.

This all makes sense. The only additional things you will want to consider, if you haven't already, are: - An SLA - to agree on the level of communication provided throughout the project to the customer This is because emails, calls, meeting can vary dramatically for each customer and/or project - Tool costs Factoring in the costs of any additional tools you might need for this project, in case you don't have them already - # of amends - I'm sure you get this already but just having something written upfront which factors in the cost based on X number of amends or iterations - Hosting costs - Security costs - Imagery and Iconography I see this missed from website build projects a lot. It can be a big cost and worth factoring in if it hasn't been done already - Integrations So not just the page functionality but also any backend integrations the customer requires. - Ongoing maintenance Just making sure you have something in place with the customer that gives them idea about future maintenance costs and what they should be expecting to pay out for In short, everything you've said looks along the right lines, but what I see missed most often are the above costs. This can impact your profitability on a project but also can be frustrating costs for the customer if they're not made aware of them early on. Good luck with the project!

All your questions predicate/depend on site's monetization strategy. For example, if current pages all have great SEO traction in SERPs than any site change best be well thought out + in general the HTML structure should... 1) Only fix any existing HTML errors, as reported by the W3C validator. Never. Ever. Introduce any new HTML errors or site's SEO can circle the drain. 2) Only lower page weight, so the ratio of cruft (non-content) to content, should reduce. So decreased cruft, which will increase content. For example, converting a well SEO'ed WordPress site to use a Genesis theme can potentially destroy all your site's SEO traction, because Genesis (at least last time I checked) can produce a site which is 98% cruft + 2% content, due to all the CSS classing + attributes + other non-content junk injected into pages. When I take on a project for one of my clients like this, first I require them to host with me... Because wrestling with broken hosting introduces so much noise into analysis, I just refuse to deal with slow + glitchy hosting anymore. Next I have my client walk through their entire money flow, end to end. After I understand site monetization strategy, then we work through small increments of change, constantly tracking when GoogleBot visits the site + how page indexing is effected in searches after a 48 hour period. If it's a hobby site, all this is overkill. If the site measures profits by the hour or minute, then any change can potentially zero out all income, so in this case best to proceed slowly, with great care.

I love this! Congratulations on a smart approach to launching a startup. I got a chance to talk to DHH - founder of Basecamp and hacker. (read about it here: http://blog.unthink.me/what-i-learned-in-1-hour-with-basecamps-founder-david-heinemeier-hansson) One of his biggest pet peeves is the idea spreading like wildfire that entrepreneurs need to jump head on an idea and let the wind take hold. What he suggest and what is greatly showcased by you here is to hold a job and take your startup as the side business until it can sustain itself off sales alone. Don't give equity left and right because if it does take off the last thing you want is to build something you don't own. If you have been acquiring customers for your product before it's built - that means that it should be relatively easy (compared to most) to get sales once you launch. You are already doing the bulk of what needs to happen which is marketing - simply boost your focus on getting referrals and case studies off the initial sales, ask clients about their core reason for handing you their money and drive that message/reason home on everything you from website to branded material to PR articles, etc. If you end up hiring a marketing agency to help with the next steps, look for the added value of programmers in staff so that they can coordinate what's needed once things are rolling. Essentially consider the fact that you need to start marketing it and positioning the product with the right prospect clients, get it launched onto product hunt (i could add it for you) because the truth is that you have 3 months to create a marketing system that is helping you sale. Don't be too afraid of jumping in full time if you can afford at least a few months solvency for yourself and if you are having sales.

You do not have to request permission to e-mail customers; however, you must provide them with an option to opt-out of receiving your electronic communications, in addition to the other requirements to remain in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act. Here's an excellent resource for your reference: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Get investors to be able to visualize as much as possible. Tell a story. Focus on the solution it provides. Make your story relatable if you can. If you can get their buy-in on all these things (the problem, solution, common ground, good delivery of the message, etc) the prototype becomes less important at this stage of the game and all of those other variables will overshadow the thing you don't yet have. In your story/explanation, provide as much visual detail as possible--while still keeping it simple. Remember your ABC's and 1-2-3's.

It is a very vague question..like "What clothing suits me ?" Well.. I can try to answer. Question - Why do you want to move to cloud. Have you already decided it is Azure (not the competitors like AWS or Google Cloud, which is totally OK. I am a Azure fan. Just wanted to know) Businesses (sometime business units / specifica application) moves completely/partially to cloud for 2 reasons - Convert capital expenditure to operation expenditure - Build solutions or part of solutions that are scalable, available and reliable without breaking the bank. How to Prep - Answer varies based on if you are a IT Boutique shop, Enterprise IT solution provider or a Non-IT business with IT teams. If you can be little more specific, may be we can chat and find a way through it...