I think you will likely get many different answers to this question, but my personal believe is that if you are building a software-based business and you don't have experience and you don't already have the right connections, your best shot at success is going to be if you do all the technical work to start with. I would even recommend that if you have zero technical experience right now. You may read about other people that somehow start businesses without doing this, but either A) they are extremely lucky or B) they already have connections/experience/a network that they can rely on. It is going to be a slower process than you would like because you are going to have to get your hands dirty, but this is going to greatly increase your odds for success in the long run.

Your on a good track. One Thing I would highly suggest is setting up some organized goals not your business plan but something for you and who ever you are working with. I would be happy to talk to you and help you get things started so you get out to the colleges on an organized and efficient path.

Obviously the answer to this depends on a couple of items, but an Angel round depending if it is a priced or non-priced round, the valuation is usually dependent on traction, market size, team (history of success), unique IP with a high barrier to entry and growth rate.

Take a look at Moz and RJMetrics. If you are a sizeable company, RJMetrics is a great option.

I owned an SMB in the health & fitness space and spent several years running a SaaS/PaaS startup in the business productivity space. There are lots of WP developers out there, I'd start by looking at elance. Have you done mockups so the developer can accurately quote the work? It's worth a little design expense up front to make sure your vision is communicated clearly. I'd also make very certain that an off the shelf solution won't work. Zenplanner and Mindbodyonline are two cloud-based CRM/studio management solutions tailored for fitness businesses, I assume you've ruled those out. There are many generic SaaS CRM solutions out there as well so I'd really make sure that the "ideal" experience is really that much better than "good enough". I used MBOnline and it was not perfect but it certainly didn't hold back my business. I'd also recommend finding someone else in your space who has what you want for customer experience, and just ask what they use. Assuming they are not a competitor they will probably be forthcoming with the info. Happy to jump on a call if you'd like to discuss further.

You know, I think your question has been sitting here for a while because you are in a very niche market. I apologize for not having a prompt response. You are right the equipment for this is expensive. Do your homework and post ads through craiglist. Ask on Quora about where to find or who has a piece of equipment that you can get for cheap or free. You will be surprised in the engagement. Try also, reddit. The magic in starting a business w/no cash is just pure networking but that takes a lot of effort and more time. But not more time than working and saving up to then pay up... So what's best? Well I think in most cases spending the time meeting people and making friends and spreading the word about your future business is better than saving up and just paying up. As far as the trike (assuming you are using a trike) you can get one built out of pieces with about $150 here in the U.S. not sure about over there. Get a small business loan or sell something for quicker funding. Sorry I couldn't be of any more help if at all. Best of luck :) Keep me posted of when you "move your coffee" my twitter is @officialunthink

There are legal, regulatory and risk implications to retaining and handling funds as a marketplace. The good thing is with marketplace platforms becoming more mainstream, the payment solutions ( such as Stripe, BrainTree, WePay etc) have also evolved to support their unique needs/services provided. Depending upon your marketplace model you could choose to just transfer funds to the Seller minus your fees/commission OR hold onto funds (for a certain period) giving your users the ability to withdraw funds upon their choosing. The payment solutions you choose vary by the use case, and the solution providers take responsibility for legal, regulatory and risk implications. I have experience in payments for maketplaces and would be happy to share more feedback and suitable solutions over a call.

Typically yes. And the more traction you already have, the more historical info you have on sales, the farther into the future you should model. 3 years is typical if you have traction and knowledge on which to base your projections.

Here is your 1-2-3 Punch answer 1. Use unbounce to make the page and select the best template for you from their template library here http://unbounce.com/landing-page-templates 2. Once setup make sure the leads are going into some sort of CRM system so you can make the most of them personally I prefer Salesforce. 3. Track what's happening on the page with Google Tag Manager + Google Analytics + Crazy Egg (or Session cam) Google analytics will tell you the data about the technology used, browsers sizes, time on page and crazy egg will give you heatmaps of what people did on that page. Based on that information tweak your landing page until it gets to a point that it's converting at around 1:5 (the $1 you spend on marketing should be making $5 in sales). My personal ratio is 1:10 but I know way more about split testing then can be explained to you in a simple reply. 4. I Know is said 1-2-3 Look at google analytics data is the bounce rate high? make the page faster split test different Call to actions. Don't stop testing till you hit your preset benchmark. Josh

Hi! For starters I don't think clarity was meant really as a C2C (customer to customer) consulting platform. I'm pretty sure it was meant to be only for experts in a topic to provide expert advice to non experts. Now we have a ton of non experts providing their opinions. Some are great while some are just wrong or provide no real guidance. With that said, this issue leads me to my response to you. With any consulting service what you need to focus on is validation from either your peers or clients you have successfully helped. I for example spent about 2 years building my reputation through local circles in Arizona, California and Texas by helping entrepreneurs, non profits and even coaches grow their businesses and in cases build them. Once your reputation is there you can begin crafting a brand for yourself. A logo is not a brand tho, neither is a website. But your name value. How much leverage does your name have in your local network? For most consultants this is when they see their business really take off. If you're planning a third party platform like Clarity, where you don't do the coaching this would simply require a startup's take on growing it, marketing it, funding it, and most importantly building a community. Each of this would take significant effort in explaining or laying out for you so it would be best you give one of us a call or look for a local mentor that would meet with you on and off for guidance and to hold you responsible as you move forward. Humberto Valle Unthink Strategy

Probably the training from Google for the Google Partners Exam heres a link to more information: https://support.google.com/partners/answer/3153810?hl=en

Angel groups don't necessarily get that involved. You would want to look for angels that have that background and are looking for active engagement with it's clients. I actually work in this space on behalf of some investors if you would like to talk.

Try local Meetups and local chapters of Startup Grind and Founder Institute. Many of the ones I attend here in Orange County start with pitches from the floor, and there are often several events a week. Bear in mind that all investors are looking to eliminate the following so make sure you address all of them proactively: 1) Market risk 2) Product risk 3) Execution risk These typically map to your deck slides as follows: Market Risk • Problem • Solution • Market Size Product Risk • Product • Competition • Competitive Advantages Execution Risk • Team • Business Model • Go to Market • Traction • Financials • Funding

Social media is very useful for B2B SaaS companies. The level of targeting on places such as Twitter and Facebook are very useful to hit the right people/companies. LinkedIn is also another useful tool for B2B Advertising. On Twitter/Facebook, you can potentially target users of your SAAS, or create look-a-like audiences of your existing users by uploading custom audience lists. You can potentially target business handles on Twitter, targeting people that are part of say a marketing group facebook page. There are a number of targeting possibilities to hit the right audience. Remember that the users of your product use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn specifically. To be honest leveraging Facebook and Twitter is probably as useful and sometimes more valuable LinkedIn Ads. You can also work to build a social community within Facebook and Twitter, potentially, to engage with your current users, and potentially run promotions, engagement campaigns, etc.

Let's take the example of a single keyword, which we aren't sure how it'll perform. We'll need to make a few more assumptions to get started. Hopefully, you can produce these based on similar activity in the account, or on your site. You'll need an Average Order Value assumption first. If you're targeting a specific product, that product's price is a reasonable place to start. We'll assume $150. You'll also need a Conversion Rate. You can either use data from a similar campaign, or your site's average. Don't worry--it can be a ballpark, as this will correct course quickly enough. We'll assume 3%. You'll need to know how much you're willing to pay for advertising, as a percent of revenue. Too high, and your margin erodes. Too low, and you give up market share. This figure is called your Cost Of Sale (COS), and is just the reciprocal of your ROI target. Let's assume you're looking to spend no more than 15% of revenue for these ads. Now, with the COS and the AOV, you can arrive at a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) target. This is how many dollars you can spend per conversion. In our case, it's $150 * 15% = $22.50. That's how much we can spend to generate the clicks it takes to produce a conversion. If we have the Conversion Rate, then we know how many clicks (on average) that takes. At 3% conversion rate, we average an order for every ~33 clicks, so the $22.50 is all we can pay for them and still hit our goal. That's $0.68 per click, and that makes for a GREAT starting point. But how do you know when to give up? You can use Wolfram|Alpha to find out how many clicks it would take to get to 95% probability of a conversion: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281+-+.03%29%5Ex+%3D+%281+-+.95%29 The .03 is our conversion rate, and the .95 is the certainty we'd like to hit. This solves to ~98 clicks, so we'll run our test to at least that many. If you get a conversion sooner than that (with some sort of upper bound), you can bid based on the real conversion rate. For example, if you got a conversion after 25 clicks, you can bid using that 4% number. If that's actually too high, you'll have collected the additional clicks to know that fairly quickly, so it turns itself back down before it spends very much. If you aren't getting a conversion, you can also bid as if you had only one. If you are at 90 clicks, for example, and still haven't seen a conversion, you could bid as if you had one, bid using the 1.11% rate, and your bid will be cautious, skeptical even, and your spend will be controlled. Now, this was all for a single biddable entity, perhaps a keyword. What I'd recommend is to keep your long-tail keywords separate from your higher-action keywords, in different AdGroups. As you sift out higher-performers, move them to the main group. Slower-action keywords can stay in the long-tail. You may not even need to bid at the keyword level, if you use this strategy, as you can apply exactly the same logic to the AdGroup level. If the entire Group is a new test, then this will accumulate clicks more rapidly, and reduce costs. Now, how ever broad you go will set how much risk you're taking on. If you have one keyword, like this example, you're probably only going to spend about $50. If you do that thousands of times, then that number goes up with it. If you'd like to talk through this, I'd be happy to do so. My VIP link is: https://clarity.fm/roysteves/statbid

Hi. I am a business coach and mentor and have started a number of successful businesses. There is no reason why you can't have two different businesses in the same location. There are two questions I would ask: Will the two businesses work to complement each other? Are there aspects of either business that will adversely affect the other? E.g. The smell of nail products/cleaners in the same area as fresh food products. Could there be questions of hygiene, depending on how the space is separated? I hope this helps give you food for thought. Regards Rick

While you are considering bringing all the Content Marketing & Measurement features and capabilities together with Project Managment ( I am assuming some type of cohesive management Dashboard with combined analytics ?), you might want to consider the following: - the integrated product should not make it a challenging user experience overall - is this something the customer/client needs, do you have relevant feedback to validate such a move ? - what might be the benefits to the platform & users by such a change It is hard to comment regarding APIs without more context on your goals. I have leveraged publicly available connectors & API modules to connect CRM, marketing automation and payment functions successfully. Happy to discuss further over a call and address your questions

Hi. This is always an interesting question. What are the opportunities that are possible in Romania? I presume the cost of investment is relatively low compared to the UK. What returns do you see there being for investors and in what types of business. Regards. Rick

It is hard to give specific advice without specific information. Many of the pointers I see can be applied to non-tech startups. In the end, it is about knowing your customer's needs, partnering with those who complement your strengths and weaknesses, listening and evaluating feedback, getting to market efficiently and effectively, and always be innovating. Feel free to book a call and we can discuss more in confidence. -Shaun

Bill for the project and set clear expectations of the number of revisions, etc. Extra changes are charged at a pre-determined rate (hourly, per change, etc). The idea is to keep the objective of the project in the forefront. Rather than "designing a website", you are improving the website the meet the goal of the client (perhaps to improve their conversion rate, for example). It gets very muddy when a client who doesn't know what they want starts getting involved in the design; "what if we change this from black to blue? Can we add a little more space between these lines? I like that picture, but can it have more pop?" These types of changes dilute the primary reason the client chose you -- for your design abilities. That is a main reason you charge for the project: a website that (we can all assume it will be fully functional, attractive, and in line with best industry practices) meets their goal of conversion. If you have done your due diligence, you will produce something that captures the "voice" of the client brand and the back and forth design changes will be avoided (in truth, they don't add or take away from the primary function or objective). This approach *only* works with clear communication and expectations upfront. Have wireframes approved early. Have mock-ups/colors/photos/text approved early. Explain that, once approved, any changes fall outside the scope and will be charged at XYZ rate. We don't go to auto manufacturers and ask that they change the size of the radio dial nobs or change the pitch of the seats. We are buying a product. Custom work can be spec'd out accordingly, with the appropriate price figure. Clients should not expect budget prices and unlimited revisions. Let me know if you have other questions -- happy to help.

A lot of the decision involved in this depends on the job functions and sometimes, the state you are located in. There are many legal issues surrounding hourly vs. salary. There is "salary-exempt" and "salary non-exempt". Exempt employees don't receive overtime pay; nonexempt employees do. The classification criteria for exempt and nonexempt workers are part of the Fair Labor Standards Act, or the FLSA, which is the federal law that governs minimum wage, overtime pay and working hours. The general federal guideline is that if an employee is not managing or supervising, he/she must be paid hourly. There are exceptions to this for certain sales and other professional positions; however, use caution as there have been many successful lawsuits against employers over the years for abuse of salaried positions. I would recommend you first make the determination as to how to legally classify your employees, then consider the impact on service culture. Feel free to contact me to discuss this in further detail.

Bookkeeping and Admin roles are completely different, if a person knows debita and credits doesn't mean that he/she is a good bookkeeper, sometimes there are situations where you need expert advise which an experienced bookkeeper can provide because they are experienced and skilled. Sitting on two hourses very rarely makes sense. If you hire somebody to manage both roles you are going to feel stress over a time because in this situation you have to invest more of your time along with that person to manage things in organised way. I would suggest to hire seperate individuals for these roles because of the price variation, time required to manage specific tasks, expertise etc

Hi! This is a very ambitious question! Good for you but you weren't as targeted/realistic as you should be asking the question. Growth hacking is not magic, it works but not over night and not specifically for a set number of users or conversions. Ultimately what you want is number of users daily rather than downloads. Even if your app was for sale and all you care is downloads if your app is not good or provides no incentive for daily use your sales will dwindle off after that initial spark. A good growth strategist will take his or her time in evaluating the UX of your app, flow, customer acquisition, trends online, craft personas, measure bounce rate your apps landing page, etc, then work out a plan to get you exposed just to the right group of people and providing them with set of tools for easy conversion. I hope that helps in helping you understand how GH works a bit so that you can maybe craft some ideas on your own and have an idea on how to get started in your own targeted marketing tactics, because at the end of the day that's what growth hacking is... Physical World Business 101 applied in the Digital Marketplace. Humberto Valle Unthink Strategy

Okay so I am going to lead by saying I have a bias regarding crowdfunding. Now on to my answer: Kickstarter is for products not companies. If you create a good product and do a kickstarter campaign you will be able to use the funds raised for the product to build your company. https://www.crowdfunder.com/ however is for businesses so it might be a better bet for you. https://www.prosper.com/ would be my recommendation because it is crowdfunded loans. This is real money without strings attached other than the fact that it is a loan. They cap out at 35,000 so if you need serious capital then you should look at a bank or an investor. In general (with prosper being the only exception) I hate crowdfunding sites. There are a couple of reasons but this article sums it all up pretty well: http://www.zdnet.com/article/despite-its-popularity-i-hate-kickstarter/ Prosper is very different in that you are getting a loan, a non predatory interest rate (6.68% to 35.97% APR depending of course on your credit score, the amount you are asking etc.) and you get the cash in days that you can use without lifting your skirt so to speak. To disclose here, I am a member of Prosper and help fund loans. However the only reason why I do is because I believe in their company more than any other crowdfunded site out there. Unlike sites like Kickstarter, the site is overseen by the SEC, has accredited investors, people that actually put there money into the site to fund loans have to deal with the IRS and the SEC so you as one getting a loan are protected like crazy. I would love to discuss more about your business and help guide you through the process if you are interested. Give me a call.

Hi there! In my experience, governance is often considered a function of a legal department, so approaching a VP Legal, or an Ombudsman/Business Compliance Manager may be of value. They'd warm to a risk-reduction positioning, with the compelling factor of avoiding legal issues, government fines, etc. Change Management; however, is likely driven by the functional groups, so their specific leadership (Supply Chain VP, Finance VP, etc) would be the place to start. They'd likely warm to an efficiency, cost-savings, employee productivity positioning, with the compelling factor being them getting their change in place and reaping the benefits ASAP. I would recommend approaching the groups (functional v. legal) one at a time, starting with whichever your company feels the strongest affinity towards and positioning for. If that doesn't click, you can try the second avenue. (I'm not quite sure what you meant by involving auditors - but would be happy to explore your question further!) Devon