Craig is right, you'll need 3-5 year (you might aswell do 5 year btw) financial projections; a spreadsheet of course, with summary yearly costs/EDITDA etc on a slide in your deck. The plan can take the form of a slide deck. Use something like this as a template: 10 to 15 Slides COMPANY PURPOSE Define the company/business in a single declarative sentence. PROBLEM Describe the pain of the customer (or the customer’s customer). Outline how the customer addresses the issue today. SOLUTION Demonstrate your company’s value proposition to make the customer’s life better. Show where your product physically sits. Provide use cases. WHY NOW Set-up the historical evolution of your category. Define recent trends that make your solution possible. MARKET SIZE Identify/profile the customer you cater to. Calculate the TAM (top down), SAM (bottoms up) and SOM. GROWTH Go to market strategy If viral, why will it be viral? ('Sharing' is not an answer) COMPETITION List competitors List competitive advantages What is your unfair advantage? PRODUCT Product line-up (form factor, functionality, features, architecture, intellectual property). Development roadmap. BUSINESS MODEL Revenue model Pricing Average account size and/or lifetime value, LTV Sales & distribution model, CPA & CAC Customer/pipeline list/status TEAM Founders & Management Board of Directors, and any key Advisors FINANCIALS P&L Balance sheet Investment to date The deal (EXCLUDING valuation OR completion date) AND financial projections/cashflow (as excel s/sheet, ideally 5 yrs but atleast 3) ** You'll also need, for review before investment (due diligence): ** - Company formation docs, any trademark, patent, etc certificates - CAP table (current shareholder ownership to two decimal places % - Contracts of employment (Founders should have these also, and you should have founder vesting agreements) - IP assignments for employees/contracts current & previous if not included in their employment contracts - Any insurances, atleast the minimal required by law (i.e. in UK employers liability if you employ anyone, public liability insurance if members of the public visit you at your place of work or if you perform work at places of work owned by third parties, and Professional negligence, not mandatory but sensible (covers you for eg. making a mistake in a piece of work for a customer, Loss of documents or data, Unintentional breach of copyright and/or confidentiality, Defamation and libel, Loss of goods or money, your own or for which you are responsible). - In the UK, registration with the https://ico.org.uk/ (illegal not to if you store peoples data) Slide headings based on an amended list from Sequoia. Long typed out business plans cloud the precision that data and specifics provide. A deck as above with few words, forces you to get to the crux of your business and your go to market strategy and will be valuable both internally to you and your team and of course to raise funding. If you can't make it concise and clear, you probably have not thought it through enough.

If I were 18 again, I'd tell myself, "Don't waste time chasing women you aren't going to marry." Ha. That was probably the single biggest waste of my time, creativity, and money. But to get more serious, I wouldn't focus too much on finding your true passion. You will probably have multiple true passions over the course of your life. Rather than wait for "the one," try a bunch of different things. You probably won't find a really good fit right away, but you will eliminate some options. For example, you may quickly discover that you do NOT want to start a dog walking business. If meeting like-minded people is your goal, then go to conferences, seminars, and meetups. Take notes. Look for patterns. I take it you want to start a business. So before you try to create a product or service, look for a hungry crowd. Focus not on what you enjoy, but focus on what people will pay money for. We can discuss that in more detail later. Anyway, eventually you'll need to pick something and finish something. Then do it again. Assume you won't find your "true passion" until you're in your middle forties. What will you do in the meantime? What is the very next step you can take? By the way, college doesn't necessarily equal debt. If college interests you (aside from debt), then hack college: http://riskology.co/hack-college/. Send me some times, and we'll get on a call and discuss in more details. Cheers, Austin

I'm not trying to be a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian, but can you afford to NOT do proper screening on VCs? If you're averaging $100K/month in revenue, then you'll be the pick of the litter, assuming your pro forma, etc., add up for the investors. A bad fit in an investor can hurt you just as much as a bad fit in an executive, or a dishonest manufacturer, or a lazy employee. Money typically equals acceleration. So a dollar from Investor A might be worth more than a dollar from Investor B if Investor A has domain expertise, can make introductions, or can set up strategic partnerships. You don't want any ole investor. You want strategic investors. The thin-slicing needed to decide who is more or less strategic must be done by an executive or founder who knows the company's needs intimately. Someone else can't do your dating for you. That being said, you could delegate the initial research phase. Hire a virtual assistant to compile a list of the top 200 VCs in the United States. Build a spreadsheet listing their portfolio companies. Use Techcrunch and Angel List to identify the companies that companies that are hardware startups. Now you can make a shortlist of target VCs. This process will have the added bonus of providing your lead-in when contacting VCs: "We noticed that you invested in [such-and-such hardware startup]. Our company, XXX, has created proprietary hardware that helps [your customers] with [customers' problems]. We're going after [market size] because [market potential]." If you want to discuss in more detail how you can save time while creating a high-quality list, give me a call. Cheers, Austin

Trust me ..It is a blood bath... Sites like freelancer have already capitalized the labor arbitrage business model.. I joined 2 groups but lacked motivation when it The only way it would work is 1) Get higher in value chain - Management consulting , roadmaps etc. The labor arbitrage still works there .. 2) Cutting edge and non-commodity services like IoT, Cloud, Hardware 3) Niche technology like NLP (natural language processing), Machine Learning, Computer Vision etc.. Please don't start another website development company using PHP , net .. The world do not need one more.. You still want to start, better have a behance portfolio that is killer quality .. QUALITY IS NEVER CHEAP !!! Need help in exploring option, feel free to place a call.. and if can'tr afford $, let me know.. will arrange a 30 free call..

My agency, along with fellow agencies are using Periscope as a part of an integrated marketing approach. There are many creative uses of Periscope that will drive traffic + conversions, it is all about finding the right solution that will provide the most value for you leads. Some of the ways Periscope is being used: -As a live consulting "show" where experts answer questions from social media sites such as Twitter. -To provide behind-the-scenes content. -To humanize themselves, further build relationships with their customers, and cultivate loyalty. Those are just a few. There are many more applications depending on your industry and business goals. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to reach out!

As a startup freak myself, I am always looking for new ways to make the company better and communications between the teams easier. I like Slack as a communications tool as well as Asana. HipChat is pretty slick for instant messaging and integration with inbound customer service live chatting forums. As far as CRM I happen to like Close.io which offers calling directly from the CRM but also tracking of all emails in & out. Easy User Interface and they are slowly getting the tools needed to compete with the big boys.

The Systems Mindset would work for your personal life. Consider the following quotes from Sam Carpenter's book "Work the System" : "Unhappy people are not in control of their lives because they spend their days coping with the unintentional bad results of unmanaged systems. Happy people are in control of their lives, spending their days enjoying the intentional good results of managed systems." ..."each of us is a system of systems. But here’s the rub: some of them—each of which, always remember, can be visualized as a distinct entity—are headed in oblique directions, confusing our efforts to reach our conscious goals." So basically, we act as Project Engineers who constantly work to tweak and perfect the various systems that make up the various aspects of our lives. To move forward in an integrated manner rather than "firefighting" or constant crisis management. We start this by taking a stance "above and apart" from the issues so that the distance gives us the detachment to study the various systems that we are part of. Think about the 3 main documents that Sam Carpenter talked about in the book which he says is vital for business. These are :- 1. Strategic Objectives 2. Operating principles 3. Working procedures In your personal life, your strategic objectives would be your ultimate purpose or life mission. Operating principles would be the principles you use to make decisions and should be congruent with your strategic objectives. And working procedures would be how you do any specific "thing". For instance, if one of your strategic objectives is to live with integrity, your guiding principle for that would involve asking if a particular action is congruent with your sense of integrity. Then one of the working procedures for your relationships would deal with honest communication. Eg. in your "Late going home" procedure, you might have the following steps : 1. Call spouse 2. Inform true reason 3. Inform what time you can be expected back. "Inform true reason" would be congruent with your objective. You would communicate the true reason and not an excuse. The above is a rather simplistic example but this entire approach can be useful to all areas of our lives even if we don't create detailed working procedures as we would for businesses. This is how the Systems Mindset can be applied to our personal lives. It would help us identify our values and live more in line with them. And to live more effectively and efficiently too.

This is a very vague question .. and sorry to say I wont be able to answer you in a better way... For the sake of conversation , lets say you own clarity.fm and see how we can fit semantic and AI on to it... I had once started a similar idea in past on yelp reviews.. Semantic - In layman langugae, you are breaking down large language pieces to small sentences and making a meaning out of it...and tagging them.. E.g If there was an sematic alogorithm you had run on this particular question , then the results would be Vagueness = 10, topic = technology, industry = web etc.. TO get this done, there should be a lexicon database that you should seed and curate. AI - This is more about applying data science and doing doing deep linking, mapping between all the raw data points (like User details) and derived information (like semantics) and identifying patterns. This is just one example. One practical example using clarity as case study using this clarity question --- If today you want to make a call for some help, calrity can use its AI algorithms to to identify who would be the best person to answer this..(based on the answers made in the past). This is a vast topic... To have a better answer , you need to share more info.. Feel free to talk. Not sure where you are based but if you can't afford the $, ask from me for a free call.. more than happy to help for 30 mins.. love the challanging part.

I am answering with the assumptions that A) Bangladesh's population is as much your demo as USA B) You eventually want to have presence in both countries So here's some numbers- B'desh has only 7% internet penetration, but 80% of those use it at least once a day and the country is overwhelmingly a young country (under 55). If your service is youth-driven, that's a plus for sure. As a result, web advertising through Google adwords is 79% less in Bangladesh compared to the US (http://tinyurl.com/nfqzxjc) so that is one outstanding plus - save money, get eyeballs. This high percentage of under-45 year olds makes social media and share-ability a big piece of your marketing (more free advertising), as well as the celebratory factor of a local person (your co-founder) having 'made it big'. Without knowing much more about the product/service I'd say social virality and lower cost-per-click by 80% are two major points in favor of a Bangladeshi launch. The decision is yours :), happy to have a chat with you on a call this week! We can talk about the urgency you are facing, and how you could translate the momentum from Bangladesh to the US market (short answer: depends, but can be done). Best, Arjun

Beware of generalizations! Translating a brand name is always a very unique situation. It depends very much on the languages, the audience, the product, the branding goals, and the name itself. Sometimes transliteration works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes translating the underlying meaning works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the original brand name can be left intact. Sometimes a separate brand name for a separate language audience is a good idea. Give me a call, and I'd be happy to advise you on your particular case. Brand names are my full time job. I'm also familiar with the challenges of translation and localization, since I speak Arabic and Spanish and report weekly on brand names in Chinese, German, Italian, Portuguese, French, etc.

There are only tax implications for the business in it's domicile of jurisdiction (where the business is organized). Contractors in US will have US tax implications, if they actually reside in US. If they live outside US, for more than 330 days/year, they qualify for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, which is detailed here: http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Foreign-Earned-Income-Exclusion

Most podcasts like you're describing start by using the audiences of their guests. This makes it tricky, because you're effectively asking someone to come on your show to leverage their audience for your growth. That's still a value proposition for the guest, however, because it's back links, external content, and more credibility to their own audience. (Assuming they don't already have a podcast.) Aside from leveraging your guests' platforms, you can also use standard marketing tactics to create your own network: guest blog, get active in the community, and do whatever else you can to generate backlinks and buzz. I'd be happy to go over strategies that have worked for me and my clients if you need a starting point. Just let me know. Good luck!

Kind of depends on who those 120,000 people are, doesn't it? Ask yourself what they have in common. And ask yourself what it is they want ... or would want if they knew about it. Then figure out what you can give them that (1) closely matches what they want and (2) can pay you for your time. Don't look at this as a short-term sales pitch, a single email blast leading to 1 transaction. Rather, look on it as your chance to build up to 120,000 ongoing relationships with new people. Before you try selling them anything, introduce yourself. Pretend that you're talking to an individual. Present yourself as a brand and as a person. Explain the ownership change. Explain your tentative plans and what you hope to offer them. Ask for feedback. And listen to it. Those who engage are your audience – not the full 120,000, who have mostly moved on by this point, I imagine.

It's extremely hard to sell something you're not passionate about. Have you looked into other options, such as selling the company or hiring a sales team? With only a few clients it probably wouldn't be a huge sale, but someone who has connections in the education space could further monetize it, and you'd be delivering a working, proven moneymaker. A sales team would be riskier, but if you like working on the company and just don't want to deal with sales, you could figure out a way to pay other people to sell to administrators. It would require an upfront investment, but you just have to do the math: "if I hire this person for three months at $5k/month, how many clients would they need to bring in to make it worth doing?" A salesperson with passion and connections in the space can likely sell far more than you could (given your lack of passion). The question is: if you could grow your user base without doing the selling yourself, would you want to continue working on this company? I've started and sold (or folded) several SaaS companies, and I'd be happy to discuss my decision-making process, strategies, and outcomes with you. Just let me know if you'd like to talk. Good luck!

Rainmaker is designed specifically for the tasks you're looking to perform, and it's focused on conversions. Frankly, you can do all of that with great plugins with the WordPress platform, but you're definitely better off going with Rainmaker if you're looking for an "out of the box" solution. If you prefer to have the ultimate control over how things work, you go with WordPress, if you're looking for a pre-built rocket, go with Rainmaker. If you have any more questions, let's set up a call and we'll get you where you need to be.

NO, there no current tools available.

Hi, Membership site is a great idea.. I hear about it a lot at the Mixergy Interview. So many signle founders who are bootstarpped started with Membership.,.. I have listened to atleast a dozen of them.. Now the fun part -- Most of them who started with wordpress were not happy. It is a good way to test the idea..But the moment you gain traction you will have to get on to a membership SaaS or tweak wordpess a lot to make it one.. Even if you decide to go with wordpress version check if you have the following features. Wishlist is a wordpress plugin I am aware of..http://member.wishlistproducts.com/ (disclaimer - i have never done but heard a dozen founder speak) Membership Levels - Create “Silver”, “Gold”, “Platinum etc Integrates With Your WordPress Site or blog Flexible Membership - Trial , Paid etc Member Management - like registration, activate, upgrade Payment gateway integration Content Protection There are non wordpress too ... One of them is http://www.subhub.com/features/ .. If you already have a email list, influencers, would-be moderators etc, I would say start with a niche tool rather than tweaking wordpress. Hey if are looking for any idea storming related to growth, content stratgey, marketing ..feel free to chat.. Don't worry about the phone fee.. I can send you a free call pass ..happy to talk 30 mins. Also, do take a look what other membership sites for recipes are doing , the pain points etc..

Hi, So ou are building a loan marketplace and instead of being the middle man, be a platform provider. 2 Issues 1) It is a 2 sided market place which are extremenly tought to build 2) This is a Red Ocean with tons of competition and dozens of playes already in. You should be doing this if you have one of these 1) You have tons of money that gives you a long runway 2) There is an innovative angle to it.. E.g Peer 2 Peer or Micro crowd financing were a novel idea some time back. I did a random search and there are tons of services that are walking zombies that are in loan for students, house, boats (niches like that) and also based on crowd and p2p. Having said that, I do not your big idea and vision in detail, So there could be something really unique AND VALUABLE that you are planning to offer.. Happy to talk and idea storm.,. if you are not in a position to pay, I am more than happy to do a 30 min free call.. Let me know... Or message me if you have specific question.

Here are two things I might try if I were in your position: 1) One idea might be to partner with a chef and host a "open house". Send the invitations out to owners of other restaurants that are doing well (pitch it as an expansion opportunity), and also commercial real estate agents. 2) Reach out to your local restaurant associations, offering to host an event. Hope this helps!

It's certainly not unusual to see debt on the balance sheet when we look at opportunities. I wouldn't let it hold up your process of trying to find additional new investors, as it can usually be worked around to all parties satisfaction. Having said that - a specific answer to your question would depend on a number of things, including the payback terms, cash on the balance sheet, amount you intend to raise, strength of the underlying business etc. VC's will not fund you $500K just to have $300K walk out the door in 6 months for example. Have you considered having your debt holder convert to equity along with the new investors?

Did you checkout http://www.angelfairafrica.com ? http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/23/u-s-investments-surge-for-african-tech-entrepreneurs/ It does not matter where you are. Most of the Angel or Seed investors associated to startup accelerators in US or UK are accessible to anyone in the world as long as there are no Trade embargo or sanctions. Also you or team should be able to travel to these countries on business or tourist visa in person if selected. Process is easy 1) Create a POC/Mockup or working protoytpe 2) If you can sign up early customers..nothing like it... 3) Assemble a pitch deck Feel free to talk to me... Incase you are not able to pay, just let me know.. I will get a free pass for you and we can talk 30 mins .. happy to help.. I am in contact with people who work for Pencil of Promise projects in Ghana.. Are you familiar ? Nefin

No idea is a bad idea !! And what works only they (world) can tell. Who knew the 140 characters could have revolutionized the world creating a parallel universe... So.. try it.. you never loose.. My personal opinion - I like it. There are some startups I have heard of who are doing the same thing for Social causes. E.g, I can give away my time, or service (book keeping if I am an accountant). Money etc. In nutshell, unlike Fiverr, freelancer or Guru, you currency is not money but "sweat currency". I am sure there would be marketers who can ask a programmer to create a website and in return help them with building there social media profile. I would do it .. so you already have 1 customer. I am willing to pay $9/Mo just to be on a platform, if there are more people. Revenue Models - 1) Advertizing - this is for the dumbest of all.. Spoils the user experience. Had it been year 2000-2005 , i would have said ..go for it !! 2) Feature lock Freemium model - Like linkedin 3) Mail chimp model - where you limit the numbers for free customers I see a potential. You main concern here is not the revenue. I guess , it is the growth ! 2 sided market places are the toughest ones . If we want to talk to me .. feel free.. I am willing to spare 30 mins (free) if you are not in a position to pay.. I love idea brainstorming :-) get a high from it !!!

You might want to try unbounce.com they have a free version that has their branding on it but allows for the use of most features and if its for a course then when they are done they can upgrade if they wanted to get rid of the branding. Just a thought take a look. Might be easier to setup then WP for some students,and built more specifically for landing page conversions.

As I understand , you have domain expertise in travel industry and have a unique idea that you think will is needed in the market. I also assume that you did some study and came to conclusion that website is what you need (Not mobile first .. re-think !!) If you are a first time found I would strongly suggest you to understand the "Lean Start-Up" way (http://theleanstartup.com/) . I have developed products for big enterprises and for small businesses and and done my own couple startups in the past that ended up in the graveyard (No product market fit). Step 1 - Put up a landing page and validate your idea (https://medium.com/@joelgascoigne/how-to-successfully-validate-your-idea-with-a-landing-page-mvp-ef3c2d02dc51) You probably can do this under $50 Step 2 - While your idea was getting validated, you would have collected some emails. Talk to them and figure out the appetite and try to pre-sell the product or service.. Step 3 - Create an MVP. Unless you have something totally unique and unconventional, most of the data driven web products can be created using a word-press or any similar frameworks. Step 4 - Consult a technologist on how to go about it and get a landscape and roadmap developed. Ask for help to vett the right freelancer or part timer for this job Step 5 - If the version 1 makes you any money..man !! you made it.. double down ..At this point you can think of rebuilding the backend etc with the better architecture. These are no 5 magic steps .. I wrote it as I was thinking it loud. Feel free to contact .. ..and good luck !!

Having looked for something similar for a number of our own clients, I feel your pain here. You've got a couple options here depending on (1) Your level of Wordpress Development Experience and (2) Your budget to provide those features. For our agency, we use the Hubspot Platform to deliver "Smart Content" Call-to-Actions which change depending on a website visitor's current lifecycle stage in our sales process and allow us to target any metric we'd like to track through automation. These can then be embedded in a Wordpress site. If you're looking for a Wordpress-Only solution, I'd suggest starting with the LeadIn Plugin: https://github.com/wp-plugins/leadin. This plugin (also developed by a team inside Hubspot) will track and create profiles for any website user who interacts with a form and let you track their behavior across the site. Tie this information in your database along with the ads you want to display, and you could roll your own affordable solution with a little PHP help. LeadIn also ties into MailChimp which could allow you to do email marketing automation at the same time. Happy to chat further if I can help provide further detail about either solution!