Give them parts of the product for free and if your product is great they will see the value in spending in you. The reality is that even free costs people time and effort, once you have provided them with value to return costing them money is not that much of a risk because they are already vested in you.

This is a great idea! You are essentially guaranteeing our success by providing the demand search capability that users will build for you to promote to car dealers. Having the search traffic, it would be extremely beneficial for dealers to want to partner with you. You can go a bit further and provide with them the yelp model so they in return help you by pulling their own traffic to your app thus monetizing from both traditional ads and paid dealer memberships. You can also simply offer white label services to dealers. Great entrepreneurial spirit! Love it! Humberto Valle #Unthink

GoToWebinar all the way. It's a bit pricey (but not too much), but it's by far the best solution out there. The last thing you want to do is use a free/cheap but unreliable provider and have your webinar experience massive connectivity issues or drop half way through.

Yes! But is very tricky. I have a C Corp own two LLCs. You should have separate board of directors in the C Corp that are not owners in the LLCs. Pay through bonuses rather than salaries and aggregate expenses of the LLCs as op. expenses as SBUs of the corp. The reasons for having a C own LLCs can vary, my reasons were that it allows me to join or create new ventures without having to formalize them with dedicated teams, just cycle my team to different efforts while seperatig expenses, not reporting publicly what is being worked on, and if the product takes off the formation is already there to grow the product into a division or umbrella product of my main company. LLCs are easy to form, while C corps are not... One example would be having a conglomerate of investors under a c corp and have advisors and creating an LLc for each new rental construction development project completed. Each is his own, if something goes wrong the LLC covers the C entity- this protecting its investor members. Best of luck! Humberto Valle #unthink

How can someone be an expert at iOS anything? Particularly with 12 years of experience. When did the iPhone sdks become available? 2009?

It depends if you're solving for quantity or quality. If your goal is to get the highest volume of traffic possible, then it sounds like search isn't going to be your primary channel, and targeting broader audiences on social media might be a better option. However, if your goal is to get qualified leads, it may be worth going after those long-tail keywords (more specific, lower search volume) - you'll likely pay a lot less for them in Adwords, and the folks who do search for those keywords will be a much closer fit for your business.

Being an entrepreneur requires a lot of different personality traits. You mentioned having lots of ideas and being creative, which is what most people associate with being an entrepreneur. What I've found is that being creative and having great ideas may be well suited if you want to be an inventor but is not necessarily the best trait for an entrepreneur as you clearly are aware from your post. In my opinion, you need to develop thick skin to bounce back from failure and be incredibly resilient to keep pushing through when things do not go well, and trust me this happens in every business or venture. Having that type of never give up attitude combined with being able to sell yourself, your idea and your product is more important than having great ideas. Plenty of people have amazing ideas but never do anything with them or they start but give up quickly when things don't go their way. I hope this helps.

My first startup was exactly in this space. We topped out at $500K/year before the 2009 recession trashed our client roster. I'd be happy to discuss what worked for us.

Great situation you have found yourself in! Good for you! What your friends are doing and putting you through is common. When I have given out shares I calculate several things: 1. time they will be involved in the company. 2. the value they provide in the scalability of the business - not their current offerings (this helps give out additional after certain time frame) 3. Consider their current value, how easily replaceable is their skill set.Be honest with yourself because this can cost you. 4. Have they been heavily involved since the beginning? 5. Do you want them around? 6. Did they directly help win part of the contract? The truth of the matter is that a lot of startups would have maybe considered them as advisors and granted them no more than 1% of the company. I did this as well with my board. Early partners in my case one had 30%, while another had 5%, several had no more than 1%, I had 50% and we left 10% available for investors. However the reality of this is that they are now employees, you can however consider them partners and provide incentive to stick and keep working harder. Not stock all granted at once though. So, to clarify- are you filed as a Corp? the laws (if you are in the U.S.) are different for partnerships between LLCs and Corps... LLCs lean more towards all owners/partners having equal claim but under contracts could have limited representation and salary draw. If you have any further topics to discuss feel free to give me a call! Humberto Valle @officialUnthink Get 5 Growth Hacking Tips & Trends http://Newsletter.unthink.me

Hello, I am not too sure on the US postal services. But 1 option could be to find a fulfilment partner in the regions you are looking to target and ship a box of your best selling lines (via recognised carrier) and then when the sales come in fulfill locally. For example in the UK, the package you have, would cost as low as 0.65p ($1.20) to ship standard post, if you wanted it tracked then you would need to add an extra £1.20 ($2.50) Thanks Sam

There are several ways to leverage an existing email list to get more email addresses and/or customers. First, I'd make sure that your emails to these folks are optimized for sharing. Include a call-to-action at the bottom to share the content/product/offer with their friends by posting to social media or forwarding your email. A referral program is another great way to incentivize people to share. It's tough to give more specific suggestions without knowing what type of product/service you have and who your audience is, but try to think about how you can provide additional value to your customers if they sign up X new customers or share your content with X friends. If you're using content marketing as a way of attracting leads, you can run a test where - instead of filling out a form to download your content - they have to share the content on social to unlock the download (called "share-gating"). If you do set up a referral program, using Custom Audiences on Facebook is a great way to target ads to your existing customer base - use this and email marketing as your channels for growing awareness of your referral program. Hope this helps - happy to hop on a call if you'd like to discuss further!

It's great that you have a ton of experience in sales and business growth, and this will likely boost your credibility in many ways. However, startups are often looking to hire folks who can be extremely agile and switch to a new strategy as soon as they learn that the current one isn't working. I'd be careful, in communicating your background and deep experience in the industry, that you don't go saying something like, "I know exactly what tactics will and won't work," (because at a startup, you really don't know til you try) but rather, "Because I've done sales at companies of different sizes, in different industries, some of which have failed and some of which have succeeded, I know how to quickly identify when a given sales approach is or isn't working, and shift to a new approach to better target that particular audience and increase close rates." Give examples. Talk about deals you've saved, times you've had to change your approach. Also, chances are - if you're joining an early-stage startup, you'll play a key role in helping define their sales strategy as the company grows. Have you done this before? Talk about how you've approached this at other companies. Hope this gives you a better framework for thinking about how to communicate your value. Best of luck!

I would reach out directly, especially to some of the gaming companies who have got this process down to a fine art. Network on LinkedIn and you'll be surprised how helpful some of these folks will be, especially in the nordics where there is a very open culture of sharing , even in some of the biggest players. Hope that helps.

I've heard really good things about Ruby Receptionists - http://www.callruby.com/. The should be able to cover all the needs you outlined. - mike

Xero's subscription model helps them grow sustainably. They have trained and positioned Xero experts around the globe. The experts serve a region and sign up subscribers underneath them. By targeting professionals who may already have a client base that is in Xero's target market (for example, CPA's who advise startups or Bookkeepers who may be searching for something more user-friendly than Quickbooks) they have been able to scale quickly. It helps that their user interface is intuitive, as well.

There are good approaches for Elance/Upwork/oDesk if you approach the job req. correctly. There are also private agencies. I've hired account reps more often via virtual assistant agencies directly than from Elance and it's ilk, but many times I'll use that platform to isolate good candidates and then work with them on small projects to test them out. I look at the platforms as mechanisms to help you sort out the best candidates from the also-rans. I use small projects to attract candidates and essentially pay them for real (small) projects in order to interview them via their work. Then I make sure to talk to them in the process so everyone's happy with potential future opportunities. You can break "sales" into different channels such as phone, direct, indirect, etc. VAs have been very effective for me as account managers since that's really their job as a VA anyway. I'm happy to discuss tactics with you.

I do similar work. I don't always find that inbound startups and founders know as much about how to really do an "MVP" as their using the language of Lean Startup would suggest. There are certain pockets in major startup markets that do understand the language, but in those cases you're more likely to find a technical co-founder who does this work. The biggest challenge in a business like this is going to be your business development and deal flow (i.e. "gig flow"). Yes, it's a compelling concept, but it's going to be all about keeping the gigs flowing and as a small shop the biggest challenge is going to be doing enough business development work while also doing the production work yourselves. I have done a lot of thinking and work about this for freelancers, myself included. I have some good solutions if you'd like to chat about it.

The answer is: as soon as possible. Trademarks can take 1-2 years before you go through the entire process. You can apply for a trademark yourself on the USTPO site. Might help to have a lawyer or paralegal help you if you are inexperienced. A simple filing costs a few hundred in fees depending on the nature of the filing. (not legal advice).

Disclaimer: I haven't checked out your site. Response is based off what you wrote. To start thumbtack is a free service to customers providing gigs. Contractors must pay to place bids. Clarity is free for consultants/experts and customers pay. There are issues with both: TT: Because is free for 'giggers' they often don't think through what they are asking for and how willing they are pay. This causes contractors to have high expenses here. They even mention that it takes 10bids to get one client.. That's about $100 spent first. They have users because is free for giggers and where there's a demand there will be a supply. I personally think that if they improved their contractor side to be cheaper or more flexible in what is expensed they would have more contractors bidding. They attracted the demand first- find contractors and have them bid or you helping you get better pricing, for free. Clarity, I'm not sure how it stated getting traffic, I think it was through getting 'experts' first. I for example signed up early on and let my account kind of just sit there until i later became more engaged. The demand however is gained through paying customers but their funnel system is designed so that people come here for Q&A and leave it to us to sell ourself and thus get their revenue... A while back I helped curate an idea from Clarity that, although I never got follow up on my consultation, led to the now offering of videos on demand. These videos help in that transition from a call or answe to now paying for a video. My personal opinion that is a bit of a problem for us as consultants- is that experts aren't really curated as much. This dilutes the possibility of some being able to make decent income continuously rather than as a weekend money resource or marketing for our actual businesses. If Clarity curated more I think the quality of answers would go up, paid calls would increase, and definitely some 'experts' would be vetted out, maybe even myself. I'm an MBA, serial entrepreneur, current business owner, previous small cap investor, marketer, web developer and sometimes i see answers that just surprise me! Some do state they provide opinions and some give hard advice but their advice is wrong, worst thing is that they have more calls than a lot of us. So whatever they do it works for them, and great for them, but again the vetting is an issue. For clarity users this in it self is not a problem beucause they may get their motivation up or get more guidance than what they currently have, even if is not the most accurate, because of this the level of 'expertise' is not an obvious problem. (( If your an expert i don't intend this to be a rude assessment of your services or a blanket statement, I pointed that out just not to ignore that fact. )) If you grow a consulting or crowd sourcing service you need to ensure quality quality from the ground up. Quality helps overcome the trust hurtle, make sure that your first chefs are amazingly friendly, qualified and available to your other market. For leads you might feel like your dealing with the chicken or the egg, right? But the truth is that you can build both sides through dedicated marketing. As you expose your general branded service people from both ends will see their own value (if they are in the current situation and thus recognize the market need or opportunity) and become your users. Bootstrap it: visit chefs and introduce yourself and your business. Find chef bloggers in your market, find pull marketing partners- third party business that might benefit from their own chefs exposure through ok your site and thus they they do the pulling of chefs for you. I hope this helps at least a bit! Be creative, have fun and get some users! Humberto Valle

I've built a load of apps over the years and tried out many of the major providers. Currently I'm the CEO of a startup making advanced email technology, which is incredibly server intensive, so I feel I'm in a good position to advise! I'm not sure from your question if you're looking to host the backend or frontend of your mobile app, but what I have to say applies to both really. I'm going to assume that you're not a systems administrator, and have no desire to be, so I think that rules out self-hosting and colocation. That's when you buy servers to run yourself or rent server space in a shared facility. You'd need to spend a lot of time maintaining these servers, fixing bugs, etc. and it's basically a full time job. Next up we have the option of renting space on shared servers. You can get instances on Amazon EC2 or Rackspace fairly cheaply, and you'll be able to start out with a default configuration that has an operating system loaded for you already. You'll still have to maintain these though, and the way I look at it, do you really want to be responsible for installing updates and 0-days on a server if you're at an important event, or in the middle of something? I sure don't. Then we get down to PaaS (Platform as a Service) offerings like Amazon Elastic Beanstalk and Heroku. You'll rent small amounts of scalable space from them which you can increase or decrease at any time. So if you get a spike in traffic, you're covered. You'll get more transparent pricing, more support, and you're not responsible for updates and server maintenance. You get less control of the stack this way (for instance, it's more difficult to install custom packages) but it's far less admin than any of the previous options. This is where I think you're at, and having used the two I think you'd be best off with Heroku. They have good and bad points (doesn't everyone) but I've been using them for some time now and haven't had any major problems. Deploying code is a couple of lines in a terminal - it's super easy. And maintenance is all taken care of for you. Some companies have taken PaaS to the next level and just provide you with an API and a nice web interface to interact with them, like Parse. You can host Javascript on Parse, but not PHP, so it's not a good fit for you. There's other cheaper options too, like shared hosting. As you're using PHP you could host on the majority of web hosts (1and1, Hostgator, etc.). This is a terrible idea, and you shouldn't do it. You'll hit memory limits and other nasties really quickly, and you'll not get the developer support you need. There's a ton of other hosting companies out there that I didn't mention, and it's a massive topic. You'll also need to think about databases and storage, and who's going to manage the deployment of code. I'd love to talk to you more about this. Schedule a call if you have any other questions, or if I can explain anything more thoroughly for you.

My go-to is Gun.io. Good experiences all around.

Why not try Freelancer.com or Elance, one of those type of sites. Surely you can find someone skilled, with past experince easily viewable, looking for something a little more "ongoing". Best of luck with it!

It depends on the stage of your company, your vertical, and finally, your budget. All of the aforementioned networks have hundreds of thousands of affiliates, but finding those key affiliates who will help you move the needle is a challenge - regardless of the network. It's a long slow process, that can take months to cultivate. CJ is the largest network, but also one of the more expensive options. Typical costs would run ~10k/year w/setup and monthly minimums. They cater to e-commerce sites doing at least 1mm+/year in sales. They offer full service management. Linkshare is one of the larger networks, but is also relatively expensive. I'm not sure how their pricing model compares to CJ, but from clients I've talked to, it's comparable. Like CJ, they cater to sites doing 1mm+/year in sales. They offer full service management. Shareasale is much less expensive - $650 setup fee, and $35/mo (I think) or 20% of affiliate commissions (whichever is greater). They cater to small to mid-sized online merchants (but work w/larger merchants, too). They don't offer full service management, but do offer services/products to get you in front of affiliates (e.g. targeted emails, etc.) ClickBank is best for digital goods. Like Shareasale, it's mostly self service, but relatively inexpensive to start. Moving from an agency to an internal team can be a good move if you have the internal resources to recruit, train, retain your affiliates. Best of luck with your program transition! Best, Jeremy

You're dealing with the "fast follower" concept, here. To me the biggest issue is planning ahead since you know this is going to happen. If you are entering the market without a defensible position then it's going to be easier for someone to clone you and try to hack their way to faster growth. I think the real question is how do you build some competitive advantage into your business model that cannot be cloned. In essence that's the "secret sauce" that most pitches say they have, although many of them don't turn out to be actually a defensible position. Perhaps there's some value in being "the original" or positioning yourself as the high quality solution. The question becomes is the competition as good or better? There are a lot of great businesses that entered markets because they could make iterative improvements by learning from the mistakes of the first mover.

It's a crowded market, simply because it's easy to get signed up as an affiliate like you did, or through many other services with white label offerings. Most knowledgeable buyers are going to be going straight to a provider themselves, so you are looking at a less educated buyer. As you likely have found, the AdWords around a space like that are expensive and crowded. I left this business about 5 years ago because of these issues, largely the saturation of folks just like yourself who were all entering on these types of deals. My best advice would be niche services where you sell your hosting "specifically" for a type of professional group who maybe isn't always the most technical. An example might be, "We only host dentist websites." Now that's not a suggestion, because I'm sure that's also saturated, but maybe there is a group you can target in that way. I'd be happy to brainstorm with you about options, with the caveat that you are in a tough space.