The short answer to this is to do something for your potential client first. This way you will position yourself as someone who is not just a taker. You need to build a relationship with your partners, sending gifts always works followed by a call There are some very specific strategies you can use which do go beyond a few quick typed answers here. Good luck - call me when you need me :-)

The downside is if you ever decide to sell the company, it's something out of your hands with your name on it. Jimmy Choo doesn't own his own brand anymore, neither does John McAfee of McAfee Antivirus. Simple conclusion - don't brand it to your name if you ever intend to sell the company.

Hi! I'm not sure this is the best forum for you to do this. Try quora.com or Twitter for direct questions to other programmers. Maybe even reddit. If you would like my team and I do web dev as well and can definitely do this for your products. Get in touch if you are interested. Otherwise best of luck, and try those site.

Did you try adding him on Linked In? Its works insanely well - just include a thoughtful message about why you want to be connected and most will accept

Consider reaching out to companies like Foodem and Root. Perhaps you've never heard of these names, but i've always liked Foodem's b2b model and for some reason I've always liked their videos, who knows... Root happens to have a great product (and team btw) Eric is a great guy, I'm sure he'd be happy to chat if you introduce yourself. I am speculating, but I suspect they may be able to connect you to a handful of interesting people. I am certain you can find many companies/founders in a similar space; inquire, ask, make new connections etc. etc. When time permits, I get the greatest reward from sharing and helping; we all do... While I can't be certain, I suspect many "funded entrepreneurs" share that same desire to give back and see others succeed. Good luck with Root and Foodem. They are completely different companies and hopefully offer completely unique insights/connections/perspectives etc. Good luck-keep connecting!! Continued success, Gregg M. Kennelly

As you may know, we acquired Clarity recently and have done numerous acquisitions at Startups.co so we spend a lot of time thinking about this. I've also personally been acquired a few times so I've been on both sides. With that said I think the earlier comment about how much value you can bring to the acquirer is always a great place to start. For example, if your company had $100k in sales per year, no reasonable multiple of that is going to get you into a meaningful acquisition price. So scratch that. Instead - try to determine what kind of revenue the acquirer might generate in the first and second year post acquisition. That at least gives you a starting point. What you can't do is start thinking about what Instagram sold for. None of that type of silly math matters. Those are one of conditions where a company is in such hot demand is so singular in it's value (no one else was that big at that time in that particular segment) that they play by entirely different rules. What's nice about the 'what value can we bring' discussion is that it shows that you are thinking about what's in it for them, not just what's in it for you.

Investments aren't taxable. You need to make sure you have proper documentation from your investors showing either their membership interest (LLC), shares (C or S Corp), or other article of organization showing their ownership interest in some way. You are required to pay taxes on revenues earned, but in many cases you aren't required to pay unless you cross a certain threshold. Each state has its own laws, and you can search "Department of Revenue for [STATE]" in Google and find the best way to record your revenue and taxes. Once you get enough revenue, hire a firm like ADP to do your payroll processing and also set up the corporate tax payments through them. This makes things easier, but does cost money. Since you didn't mention how your entity is set up or where you are doing business, it is hard to give specifics.

This is difficult to answer because you haven't given us much to go on. What type of hardware are they building, and how big and fast do they plan to grow? It really doesn't sound like they have a growth strategy in place yet, so my guess is you would need to create that for them, right? If that is the case, then you would need to show them how you have helped others in similar situations do the same. When I was trying to land a multi-million dollar client, I had to show how I had already helped a similar client do the same thing they were attempting. If you have that experience, then you can justify by saying, "They paid me X for that service. I know that may be high for your budget (and it should be), but maybe there is a way to work on my salary and also offer something else to compensate for that?" This gives them a framework to start from, and opens the door to equity conversations. It also puts the ball back in their court, but with a little guidance. Most importantly though, don't settle if you don't think you will enjoy the job or career. If you know what it will take to keep you engaged and happy, set that as your stop-limit and don't go lower unless the upside potential is worth it.

Are you generating 50k a month now or is it a total of 50k over 5 months? Depending on your investor they will value your business in one of two ways. How long are your contracts guaranteed? How do you intend to use the money? I have never worried about dilution in a business as its more important to make whatever % of ownership you have worth the maximum amount possible. You might own 75% of company worth 1 million dollars but you might also own 50% of a company worth 3 million if built properly. You can structure a capital infusion deal 100 different ways. Are you looking to only give up equity? What if your investor got his investment $$$ back in an 80/20 preference on free cash flow and took a smaller %. My advice is to focus on exactly what you need the money to accomplish and what value the business will have based on that infusion. Create a monthly rolling forecast for both expenses and revenue as a starting point. Good luck. Raising money is not easy and you really need your business plan buttoned up. Happy to help if needed.

Im an investor and advisor. As many people as you ask, you will get different answers. The best and most successful way to raise capital is to start with people you know, aka friends and family. If friends and family are insufficient as they often are, then you need to find angels. If you dont know anyone, network. They arent hard to find. It might be a good idea to find a few prominent local people to serve as advisors and get their help in raising money. The worst part about raising money is that it almost always deflects from running the business. If you want to discuss this further, Im available.

Great business! Why isn't sustainable? This is a great business model! Business dev and sales are often (if not always) the same thing. What you need is to hire cold callers, hire one or two sales people team and pay based on commission or base plus commission so that it saves you some money. You have a great business here and just need to be creative in growing it. Growth back it! Hire sales, make your own ad line, have dedicated markets for certain messaging (to add value to each campaign) etc... This seems like a fun product to market.

Does your business provider add value beyond money to counter balance? Normally, you would share profits according to your ownership stake. If you aren't happy with the current ownership split, maybe you could buy some of his shares.

Targeting companies with $1million+ in revenue is not ideal. For a premium content service, you'll probably need to look for companies with at least $4-5 million and a dedicated content marketing manager. Search for content marketing managers in your niche on LinkedIn. Keep in mind you'll be competing with content factories like Brafton that offer turn-key content production in volume for only a few thousand dollars per month. If you're competing on quality with a high price, you'll need to clearly explain why your service offers better results.

Before you go around announcing your brand name, PLEASE go register the corresponding domain name, WeldedWhatnots.com, which I see remains available for $10 or so. You can probably find a coupon online to buy it for a dollar. Otherwise you're a sitting duck, and it's only a matter of time before someone grabs that domain and attempts to sell it to you at some inflated price.

Create targeted Ads. What you must realize is that when you are in business, any business, you are in fact in marketing. Everything you do should be with focus on how to market it. Marketing in itself now a days is engaging your potential users. Create targeted messages for certain situations you see a 'client' needing help with. Then promote that to the best possible sites/events/meet ups/ etc where this customers with this certain issue might gather. Now, keep in mind that each platform has its code of conduct. Twitter for example is good for sharing info, links and other media. Instagram is best for imagery and hashtags that target certain needs. Not all your services should be promoted on Instagram. Facebook is for leisure so the content you share there should be minimal and native. Native means no long posts, no ads posting links and instead more posts that have minimal text within an image, short descriptions (call to actions) the content used should again be targeted. Have maybe the same image but with variations of messages, and dedicated towards each need you can think of. Likes mean nothing, if you do get paid ads, have those ads link targeted single page content that have one specific goal: get emails, get shares, get downloads, buy a product, book a call, etc. Is hard work but if you see it as a strategic approach to every effort you do it will pay back. :)

Hi! Happy to answer this question. Initially, I'd ask "what are you tracking at present?" And "what are your goals?" Software wise, I love to use a few tools for Twitter. Hootsuite to schedule relevant content (and not all tweets should be scheduled--happy to touch on this more), Tweetreach to get a feel for impressions/influencers who HAVE been engaging (in my mind, impressions are KEY, more so than Follower count because hashtags can help you reach more people) and Sprout Social for a more in depth view of your Twitter analytics. Getting more visibility/followers: what hashtags are you using? How often do you acknowledge those who follow you (new followers vs existing followers)? Are you just sharing autoscheduled content and links OR are you creating conversations? Hashtags wise: find those that have a community already centered around them! *You don't want to "hashtag hijack" however, tags like #smallbiz #blogchat #_________ specific to your industry or ideal client's industry can go a long way. Other tools that people use to track community and engagement include Sum All, and Commun It https://commun.it/ Once you start tracking impressions (and monitoring growth vs plateaus) you can then go back and look at your content to see which posts generated the most response/engagement. Again, just want to emphasize that creating conversations and asking questions are great methods to do all of the things you are looking to accomplish.

I live in Tucson when I'm not traveling. It's very cheap and very beautiful. There's a large community of triatheletes that live here for the abundance of bike and running trails as well as amazingly beautiful pools. Get me anytime if you want to know more. Hope this helps.

It is very important; security, backup, maintenance etc... The problem is there are two kinds of customers, cheap and cautious. Cheap only wants to pay $12 a month.. and does not understand or want to understand that not having maintenance is a bad idea. The cautious ones pay anywhere from $50 to $500 for a managed WordPress web hoster for their site. Why would they trust you? So what you are saying is that you want to educate the first group to understand they need help or get the second group to trust you more. Both are very hard sales... What I do with both these groups is sell them management included in the price of the full package. I don't know if your doing something else here. Another interesting Idea that I had, but don't have time, if your really good with fixing WP, let them break it and then charge them to fix it... Might be an easier sell.

Your milage may vary, but from our experience, in short (please verify with a Tax-accountant, I have one I can refer you to): if you're paying people to do work for you that do not have a U.S. Tax ID #, it's a complete write-off and you do not require a W9 from them.

You may engage an Investment Banker to help you. That will be the best option as he/she will have his/her pre-existing connections.

Ensure you register with Bing Webmaster Tools to submit your site map would be a good first step. This will show you that the pages are being crawled by Bing and that there isn't some hinderance to that.

There isn't a lot of published information that I've seen (or can quickly find) on how washio and postmates validated their business model, but I definitely agree that starting fairly lean and validating your business first even if that means a lot of manual effort up front is a better approach than investing heavily in infrastructure before launch. Of course, if you are very successful, that manual work will pile up quickly and managing it could be quite painful, but you can have worse problems than a successful launch. Maff Rigby's 7-day startup recommendation is definitely a good one.

You can live wherever you want and have a business wherever you want. Especially with an LLC. The IRS doesn't care because with an LLC, the profit flows through the business to it's Members, to the extent of their basis. So if you own 75% and another Member owns 25%, then the profits are distributed that way and reported on the "K-1" with the federal return. LLC's pay no federal income tax as it is al allocated to the Members. The only issue is at the state level wherever you live. If you meet the residency test for that State (which you can find online), then that is where your state taxes - if any - would be calculated and paid based on your K-1 return. You certainly wouldn't want it to appear you have a CA residence with their tax level! I would suggest that you establish residency wherever you live. I too have a virtual mailbox AND live outside of the country. Doesn't affect my LLC in the states at all. Feel free to reach out if you need further help.