I don't think this is a name that will receive many unsolicited bids, so you'd be best of identifying some potential buyer and setting a Buy Now price along with requesting offers.

Impressive journey thus far! Sinus the enterprise resources your B2B offering? Or is that just developed for your own use? Either way, there are many investors out there who would consider SAAS services, india is a hot market right now actually even for those of us here in the United States. Assuming you have gained the results you've mentioned and not having loans or otherwise large expenses from your internal investment you could consider financing yourself a firm to get your firm to a small cap public offering (IPO) and get funding that way. There are several marketing agencies doing just that right now. An ERP could be used for various processes so that gives you advantage in 'qualifying' potential investors in makerting, SaaS, HR, sales CMS, etc... Investors can be other founders of successful companies who are involved in your industries... Aim to connect with those who would benefit from your success and not see you as a threat at some scale. You can also go on Quora and ask for leads there, many investors are involved there and some have even given out their contacts there. Angelist is another although you'll be lost within that community because of the size of users, but it does help! You can also take the most direct approach: look for a current larger business that operates in an industry that you can add value to but don't compete for and offer the company an opportunity to own stake of your market offerings. Consider a cell phone service merging or acquiring a cable company. You might look for a company could in the future benefit from acquiring you completely- but approach them offering only minimal stake. You get your funding that way as well as gain a marketing partner and market share, not to mention the potential of future full acquisition.

We used this article last year, to value a startup I was working with and it worked out quite well. The investors own valuation was within 10%. http://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-calculate-the-value-of-your-early-stage-startup--cms-65 Best of luck.

It IS about hiring. And that comes from the attitude of the leadership. If you have lazy workers, have a look at the hiring leaders. You can easily adapt methodologies like SCRUM or SREDIM to your situation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29 Instead of project manager, the team members can assign roles--advocacy roles--to themselves.

Get this book: http://www.amazon.com/Selling-Local-Advertising-Insider-Secrets-ebook/dp/B00B5KPMRA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433335127&sr=8-1&keywords=advertising+claude+whitacre (not an affiliate link) I'm a sales trainer, but Claude has put everything together in this book already so why reinvent the wheel?

Fast growing, UK B2C SaaS doesn't really give me enough information. The most critical piece of information is your revenue/growth rate or valuation. That's going to determine both who your potential acquirers are and who the best type of firm is to help you sell. M&A firms tend to be broken into four big groups, generally based around size: full service investment banks, boutique investment banks, M&A advisors, and business brokers. At the top are Full Service Investment Banks. These are firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanely, JP Morgan, etc. They work on the biggest and most complex deals, usually nothing less than $1 billion in transaction value (their 'midmarket' teams will do $500M transactions occasionally, but not often). They also tend to offer more than just advisory, including providing funding, other capital markets transactions, banking services, etc for massive corporations. When Dell was taken private by Michael Dell and Silver Lake, bankers from Barclays and Parella Weinberg advised them. JP Morgan Chase advised Dell, the company. Barclays was also one of the four banks to provide the $15 billion in loans to finance the deal along with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital. Parella Weinberg is an example of the next level down - a boutique investment bank. Boutique investment banks tend to focus on larger transactions as well, usually in the $300MM-$50B range. Some firms, like Parella Weinberg, Jeffries, Moelis, etc will be the boutique bank attached to a very large deal like the Dell deal. Most often though, boutique banks are running their own transactions in the $100MM - $1B range. Boutique banks also tend to focus on a few industries where they have expertise or will have teams of bankers focused on specific industries for mid-market companies. Piper Jaffray and Cowen both have Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) focused banking teams, for example. Boutique banks won't provide financing most of the time, unless they're a merchant bank, as they're specifically focused on helping you close a deal. Below boutique banks is a group of people called M&A advisors. They'll often refer to themselves as investment bankers, but in most cases they aren't actually registered with FINRA as an investment bank. Or they will be registered, but through a different firm. M&A advisors tend to work deals in the $20-100MM range, though they will occasionally work larger deals. Typically the larger, more complex deals are run alongside a boutique bank, in some ways similar to how boutiques will run alongside a full service bank. Once you get to this level of advisor/banker, there starts to be thousands of bankers who all have different expertise. Some of the advisors used to work at boutiques or full service banks and decided to go out on their own so they have very good contacts. Others started out in a very small advisory and have worked their way up. You're going to want to make sure you really vet their contacts and understand what deals they've *closed* in the past (not just worked on). GrowthPoint Technology Partners is an example of a good bank of this size that is focused on technology deals. M&A advisors tend not to have a lot of deals happening at once, so they'll spend more time with you helping you value your business, structure the pitch deck, etc. The bottom rung of the ladder is what are called business brokers. Brokers tend to be more focused on volume than strategic buyers. They're going to help you widely advertise that your business is for sale and then will help you manage the process of dealing with buyers. Relative to the other options, they're going to feel a little bit more like a real estate agent. A technology example of this is FEInternational. They'll help you sell your website/business by advertising it widely to other individuals who would potentially be interesting in buying from you. Their average sale prices are in the $100k - $10MM range. At this level, they'll have expertise helping you close the deal, but mostly as a straightforward transaction. It's unlikely to be a stock for stock sale or have any complexities other than some sort of escrow and a bit of due diligence. One of the best ways to figure out how you should value your business, who you should be chatting with, and how to get the most value for your business would be to work with Axial (http://www.axial.net). They have a network of 20,000 investment bankers, private equity groups, and corporations. Axial has put together a very good guide that will help you better understand your options, what you should be doing next, etc as you prepare to sell: http://www.axial.net/forum/ceo_library/ I hope that helps. I'm happy to chat more in-depth if you have further questions, just connect with me here on Clarity. Good luck selling your business.

When I do this I use Elance.com or another similar marketplace. They handle all the logistics and payments through escrow. I've been doing this for years if you want to have a call about it. I have workers all over the world doing different pieces of my businesses and it's quite effective.

Yes. While Experiments reporting is session based, a user is kept into the test, seeing the same variation the whole time, so when they convert, they will be attributed to the test variation they have been seeing. This is limited to the same browser on the same device, so if the user changes devices (20% of the time for average eCommerce sites by my estimation) or clears cookies (1%) or changes browsers on the the same device (?), than Experiments (and nothing else legal) can track them. Hope this helps. PS(I suggest you look at other tools, as Experiments is the last tool I would recommend right now).

Absolutely. I would focus as much as possible at raising the least amount of money possible while still optimizing your businesses ability to execute on its strategy. Money isn't free, the cost is the equity, interest, etc.

If you have an existing space, why not consider leveraging the current tenants for part of the money needed? Spend some money (tenants can pitch in for that instead) in a fundraising party! Invite local band, caterer (ask for discount in exchange of promotion) have some context for the event such as idea pitching, or brownbag, etc... as the main entertainment... sell tickets for that event. Might not give you all you need but will help get there. _ aim for double what you spend at a minimum! Try gofundme.com Get in the news and ask for community support. Get infront of the local development offices ans ask for grants (this is common) as it helps development. These are just some ideas. best of luck

You can create a free limited functionality version on the WordPress repository. Then inside that app try to upsell to premium version.

Use Delighted: https://delighted.com/

If the transaction happens on the same website, as the test, you don't need to do anything. The user has a cookie that attributes the version of the test to the revenue tracking in your testing software (Optimizely, VWO). Once you connect the Google Analytics with testing software, you should be OK to go. If this is not the case, then you need to setup two email subscriber lists, one for each version of the test. Then manually tag email links in the emails to attribute the ecommerce revenue directly to the version of the test.

Quickest way to keep your content is to use the same inbound strategy you have had success with but "pay to play" use a small budget and you can start with $5 on most ad networks Facebook might actually be a good spot as you can target the fans of your industry magazines and your great promotional article will appear as a sponsored article You can also buy access to press release syndications which gets your message out there for your business launch. You can also start contacting the local news networks for local TV spots if you really want to pursue this direction as well as one of the many radio and TV slots that require great content and interviews each and every day. The education lead in sounds like a good starting point for your as it will outline and highlight the awareness of who you are and what you do and how you can help. This content is really very simple and const effective to "promote" in front of your audience. Call me if you need a more detailed and structured plan of action to move forward with your project Good luck

Hi.. i 've been doing project management for years. Moved from project management to product management to program management. Managed lots of projects, software and non software stuff.. I worked on CMMI / Agile ( Scrum , XP ...etc) and also on PMI schemes. Although you are working under Agile, I HIGHLY recommend you attend the PMP courses, for the PMP exam. Even if you are not interested in sitting for the PMP exam. PMP gives you tons of knowledge on time management and cost management , which you don't have in this way in scrum master certification. PMP gives you the high level broad spectrum helicopter view of projects, also project valuation and business perspective.. Once you get familiar with these concepts, you can then apply with the Agile approach. Which, I believe is a tweak of the concepts to match an agility needing environment, mainly used on software projects. But the solid foundation you will have from PMP will give you more confidence when you apply Agile. Coz, in agile, the whole advantage is you don't need to apply the process by the book. You can still tweak it to tailor something specific for your team and project. So moving from a too-strict approach ( like CMMI or PMP) to Agile ( which is more flexible ) will be good for you. The strict approach in PMP will also give you the alarm you need to see when something go beyond control. And remember.. Be a result oriented person. There is no point applying any process if it doesn't improve the performance, reduce cost and achieve the targeted result. So you will hear a lot about the illusion that Agile is the best which is not true. Agile is IDEAL for the projects that need Agile. Widening your project management schemes will help you always make the best decision for what to use to manage a project. Let me know if you have more questions. Good Luck!

You're not asking a very simple question here. It sounds like the correct answer is to train users better, but that may not be the right approach. There are many different ways to look at the issue. One of the most important questions is who is deciding on the tool set. Some IT deployments look great on paper but when users get to use them, these same tools become too much of a hindrance and get abandoned. At the same time, you don't want to ignore things like safety, security, etc.. so a little hindrance may be necessary. And if the tools are in fact useful and necessary, what else are the users employing to get their work done without them, and why? Are you solving more of the trivial problems the users are having at the expense of bigger issues. Is a corporate revision of procedures etc... a better way to achieve objectives? These are just some of the immediate thoughts that I get when reading your question. It seems like the time to have monthly user education meetings and start listening.

Square is great for that. It lets you customize your emails, logo, charge id claim, etc. I used that both as client and provider. Stripe is amazing for an ecommerce platform, but i find some programmers not able to implement API right half the time... You can learn it however through one month http://mbsy.co/c6bPT Hope it helps

For four years, I was the marketing manager at Axial, a two sided marketplace that matches investors with companies looking to sell their businesses. We figured out the chicken and egg problem, then figured out how to market and sell each side in a way that scaled. When you think about building a two-sided marketplace it seems daunting, as your question reflects. It feels like you need to get everyone active all at once in order to create any value for anyone. But the truth is that you really only need to get one side engaged. The way I think about two-sided marketplaces is like a grocery store. A grocery store is one of the original two sided marketplaces: there’s a customer who needs fruit or milk or something else and there is a farmer who needs to sell fruit or milk. The grocery is the conduit between them, the two sided marketplace. If the farmer (or other vendor) can’t consistently sell their goods at the store, they’ll sell somewhere else. If the shopper doesn’t find the fruit or bread or other products they’re looking for on a regular basis, they’ll go somewhere else. The value of thinking about a two-sided marketplace like a grocery store is that it’s obvious who needs the product now and who is willing to wait awhile. The shopper has a very time limited window to buy the product - they’re going to be in the store for a half hour then they leave. If the product isn’t on the shelf, they’re not waiting for it. If the fruit is bad, they’re not buying it. The product on the shelf, on the other hand, can wait around. But each product does have a shelf life - some products, like canned foods, might last years while others, like fresh fruit or bread, might last only a couple of days. So, while the times need to match up, each side has different time requirements. In hacking a two-sided marketplace it helps tremendously to figure out which side of your market is the shopper and which side is the product. It’s not always obvious though. Sometimes what is being “bought” on your marketplace is actually the shopper. In the case of Axial, we were helping investors buy companies. It seems like the shopper is the investor. But it’s not - they’re actually the ones willing to wait around for the right company to come to them. The company being sold actually has a very short time frame to find the right buyer - usually a two week window in a well run sale process. On our marketplace, the two underlying assets were investor profiles and company profiles (to simplify everything). The investor profiles actually became our product on the shelf while the companies became the shoppers - even though it was the investors buying the companies. The investors were more willing to wait for the right company rather than the other way around. That insight helped us understand how to hack the marketplace to success. The side that is willing to wait around longer is almost always the easier side to collect. If you’re starting a grocery store, it’s always better to go talk to all the vendors and fill your store with product before you open it to shoppers. Leading shoppers through an empty store doesn’t meet their immediate need of needing to make dinner tonight. Talking to a farmer about the neighborhood customers you’ll have as soon as you open is a lot easier. And the farmer is more willing to have low sales at first in order to secure his spot on your shelves so his competitors don’t get the prime space he’s going to want later. If you think about Uber, which is clearly creating a two-sided marketplace of drivers and riders, they operate exactly the same way. In Uber’s case, the driver is the product on the shelf. The rider is the shopper. The drivers are willing to drive around for hours looking for rides. A rider will open the app, see if they can get a ride quickly, and if not will go to an alternative like Lyft, a taxi or the train/subway. That’s why Uber is spending so much money to acquire new drivers. They’ll pay drivers thousands to join, even buying them cars in some cases. They’ll sign limo drivers up as Uber Black drivers, convincing them that they’ll make as much or more than they are in the limo business. Then, when there is only UberX riders around and not enough drivers, Uber will eat the cost of paying an Uber Black driver to drive an UberX ride. Uber realizes that riders (shoppers) only use Uber (visit the store) if they’re confident good rides available when they want them (products they want are in stock and fresh). So Uber is hacking the product and letting it sit on the shelf (drivers driving around looking for rides) because that’s the only way to make sure they don’t lose to taxis or Lyft. I hope that gives you a framework to use as you think about growing or starting your two-sided marketplace. If you’d like to chat with me as you think through your marketplace, I’m available as an expert here on Clarity. I’m happy to make specific suggestions for how you can structure and grow your business. Good luck.

Having gone through this multiple times either in new startups or for side projects, here is how I would approach turning your idea into an app. 1. Defining the Minimum Viable Product Your first goal with any new idea should be about proving the idea and finding a market that wants the app you want to build. Achieving that quickly is probably one of the most important thing. To achieve that, you will need to write the specifications that will constitute your MVP. The MVP is basically the simplest expression of your idea to prove it. This step should not cost you much as you can do this on your own. 2. Design the app Before starting any development work, I would suggest you work with a good UX/UI designer to create wireframes and mockups of the app based on the specifications you came up with in step 1. You can find good designers in meetups & hackathons or on website like Dribbble or 99designs. If you want to reduce your costs, you can give shares in the project to the designer. Otherwise, it really depend on the size of the MVP but I would say it will probably cost between $5K-$10K. 3. Develop the app Once you have the specifications and the design of the app, you now need to find a good developer that will build it. Again, you can find good developers in meetups & hackathons or on sites like Github. If you want to reduce your costs, you can give shares in the project to the developer. Otherwise, it really depend on the size of the MVP but I would say it will probably cost between $10K-$25K. For this part however, I would recommend the developer becomes part of the project as his engagement will most likely be higher. 4. Test the app This step is not only about making sure the app is bug free, it's also making sure the app does what was intended in the specifications. To test the app, you can use platforms like BrowserStack or SauceLabs which gives you access to multiple devices/browsers. You can do this step on your own so the cost will be for the subscription to the test platform which would be around $100/month. Hope this helps and good luck with your project.

I have overcome a similar issue with a client in the past and it could be one of several issues - but without knowing more and based on the information you provided. 1 - Targeting the wrong people for demos. Find the right people with the problem that your tool helps solve is critical. This is the downfall for many businesses as getting this part wrong makes everything afterwards extremely difficult. It no longer enough to be general with who you help - you need to be VERY specific. 2 - Is a good a step by step education on how your clients are going to be better off with your services than without part of the trial experience...? Consider also that most people who take a trial that arent really the right fit for you want to click a button and have magic happen for them 2a - following up with a good education driven promotion will be beneficial for your prospects to try again when they need what you have. This is preframing the sale 3 - Are you clear on a demo call and that it is available to your prospect..? I might come back to point 1 targeting the right customer... if you are putting what you have in front of the right people at the right time - you will see a lift in your trial to call sign up... educating on the benefits (point 2) will also help with this. 4 - whats your end objective...? no mention of it.. a sale is what I presume... Is this the actual purpose of your 1on1..? Do you have a sales process or a script template for your calls to convert caller to customer...? This seems to be where you could convert more of the people you are talking to better. Quality not quantity 1 - target the right people 2 - educate with results driven expectations 3 - talk & convert with a structured sales call. Feel free to call if you need a more detailed outline of any of the points mentioned

Loving something and being passionate about it, doesn't always mean you are good at it. Fictional writing and professional commercial writing are two separate things. If you are a good writer, there are opportunities for freelance writing gigs (copywriting, technical writing, catalog work, long form, short form, blurb, sales, etc.). It is a competitive space, but a good online portfolio with writing samples and consistent perseverance can lead to more work. If you don't have any commercial experience or samples, proof-reading jobs are a good place start.

As you've proposed, if you're willing to give that person a C-Title or equity it's probably doable. However, an investor could perceive your reluctance to pitch as (a) an inability to sell or (b) a lack of passion, or (c) a lack of ability to push through in areas where you're not comfortable. All of those perceptions, as unfair as they might seem, reduce the likelihood of them investing. I would suggest that you take a training on high-stakes presentations from a company like www.distinction-services.com where you are coached (with video) to learn how to present and make an audience feel comfortable.

It really depends on what specific topic you're interested in. There are specific websites, distribution lists and blogs for many topics and nice sub-topics. There's even paid reports on 'insider' information. We'd suggest our blog for hotel tutorials (www.hoteliyo.com/tutorials). Also, check out Skift.com. If you'd like to know more, we can offer a short call to assist.

I think the closest analogy would be - the same way you're flirting with a girl. Like, if you know she's really interested you call the next day. If she's not then you "play hard to get" and wait the standard 3 days. You have to look at their indicators of interest, whether there's a specific timeframe involved, etc. Either way - it helps to follow up as much as every 1-3 days - you want to get the conclusion to a simple yes or no as soon as possible. Hope that helps!

First thing I might comment on here is are you absolutely certain this is a new product? From what you describe its a new angle on an old idea. With that more in mind if you think people are unaware of your view point then education based marketing seem the most relevant starting point. You see this style of "advertorial" or article style promotions in health products all the time so there should be plenty of good examples in most womens magazines laying around. What do you need to do..? 1 - education based marketing 2 - give your book away - free pdf version - $1 kindle options - $4.95 hard copy option all your efforts should lead back to your central location to educate your audience further on your approach. Start with the top 10 things you deal with & you have 10 good articles to educate with. In each article you have a - For further help with this go here [link to book]" What are you doing after this...? Consulting...?