There is no such thing as "a best place to pitch an angel". You fish bass where you find them...

It really depends on what your product is, but ultimately you want to learn about their experience using your product (what obstacles they've come up against, what features they use most/get the most value out of, things they don't understand, etc). You can also calculate an early NPS (net promoter score) by asking how likely they would be to recommend your product to a friend. (http://www.netpromoter.com/why-net-promoter/know) It'll be tempting to focus in on the areas that are of greatest concern to you (and you can certainly bring those up) but try to stick to open-ended questions to learn the most from your interviews. ex: Instead of "Would you use a new feature that helps you do X?" ask "How do you imagine you'd use a new feature that helps you do X?" or "What new feature would you want us to add?"

How about 'getting the word out' by talking about your startup and app on podcasts. You can start with my daily show called The App Guy Podcast. Subscribe On iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/the-app-guy/id771670010?mt=2 then contact me through my website http://TheAppGuy.co

1. Congrats on building a successful business. 2. It is important to look at your existing business and see what other services you can offer to the existing client base before you try to pivot the business. 3. What services do your customers use other firms for that you could bring in-house without increasing your overall expenses? 4. Examples: a. Translating the writing into other languages. b. SEO writing c. Developing Brand Voice / Brand Guidelines d. Ghostwriting 5. I would check out www.contently.com and some of their competitors who run successful marketplaces for writers and companies.

I'm going to answer this from the perspective of an engineer who has worked in similar environments and who has had leadership changes that went well, as well as ones that didn't Basically you're describing an environment in which people aren't doing as much as they are capable of, they were working in a hostile environment in which threats were common, and there's a sort of lack of accountability + poor communication / collaboration. Okay first thing, I wouldn't recommend using analytics to hold people accountable. Not yet anyway. It's a carrot and a stick problem and bringing out the stick first... you're likely to add demoralized staff to the list of problems you're trying to solve. What if instead you talked to everyone and explained your vision for the company and then followed up with each employee over the next week or two. Figure out what their vision for their own career is and what they want the next year to look like, the the next three, the next five. If you can align your employee's goals and ambitions to your own, I think you'll have a lot more luck getting people to solve the disfunction that they can. And they'll be a lot more understanding when you start taking measures to hold people accountable. Again, just my perspective as an engineer. I would bet you that the people you are working with are aware of the same problems as you. And they would probably agree with you that people need to be held accountable. But you need to be careful about how you do that. Accountability right now probably will look like more micromanagement and intimidation. Paint a picture for where you want to go and commit to helping your people reach where they want to go... well, then accountability isn't such a bitter pill and it will likely be seen as necessary, not more of the same toxic leadership that wrecked the culture last time.

Before litigating on one another, why don't you instruct your respective legal counsel not to sue, but rather to MEDIATE and come up with a FAIR solution for both parties based on: hard dollars invested, sweat equity and ideas. And before you even spend your after-tax dollars as an entrepreneur to do that, ask yourself: how much money did this business generate so far? If the answer is 0$ you may want to reconsider implicating your lawyers. Maybe you are chasing a FBI (false beautiful idea), but nonetheless you may think you have invested so much time, effort, money and emotions in the project so you don't want to let go. That's ok, but pick a fight that has a REAL prize to win, not some maybe-vague-possible revenue stream, otherwise the only winners will be your lawyers....Litigation: you know when it starts, but never when it will end...

I know this is a tricky problem to solve on optimizing costs and trying to get customers refer your service. Referral schemes work perfectly where incremental costs of adding additional service is marginal, like the case of DropBox. When the incremental costs are a significant portion and adding additional service is going to impact your CapEx, you need to identify the portions of the service which can be given away with less cost. So in this example, how about a free last-mile delivery for the next shipment for every friend who refereed your service to their friends? This won't hurt your bottom line a lot but brings up the top line. Another way is leveraging the social angle associated. When someone is shipping a good internationally, the next thing he want to do is tell people about their sharing. Can you actually integrate social channels to your service, so that they can share it with world easily.

Thanks for your question. If things go well the boss will find out anyway, so you may as well assume you will do well and have a conversation with him now. Now we don't know enough about your idea to really advise well enough, but in general I'd try and position it as a 'weekend hobby', and as something he/she shouldn't be worried about. Also, I really wouldn't worry about the boss doing what you do just because they can. I'm guessing anyone connected with you on social media or networking events could do so too. People are way too busy with their own stuff to allocate enough time and resources to do what you do, nor are they as advanced in the business as you have been, given you've spent valuable time gaining key insights that they couldn't never gain from hacking a version of your business. Hope this helps. Good luck!

I use CloudFlare... It works great and it is free. Really no reason to even look around.

This is a very complex question. I have personally gone through funding, I've used angellist and other platforms for this purpose. The reason for needing funds is not a concern for you at this time. Your concern is approach. Focus on that. Check out my blog Http://Unthinkeverything.blogspot.com I have some books listed there that I recommend, I particularly did benefit a lot from the Presentations one that is there on the right in my blog. Your goal is to craft an image that engages with a certain type of Persona, similar to what you should do when crafting a marketing strategy to sell your product. Then make that pitch, angel profile, landing page, pitch deck... All speak to that persona only. All you have to do is convince one person, but if you trysts focus on pleasing everyone you'll end up with nobody. That's often true because investors go for the people running the business not the MVP or idea alone. Even a great idea if not presented correctly will lose opportunity. To give you more detailed insight and guidance give me a call. This is not easy but it is a lot of fun!

Please post a specific question.

If this is your first venture, I would definitely say just pick 1. Getting even one idea off the ground will take everything you have! IF you can pull of one first, you will be able to do more down the road for sure. In the last 45 day, I've gone from $0-$12k revenue (most of it recurring monthly) offering digital marketing consulting. It took me a few months of crazy focus on getting traction, but now that I've starting bringing in revenue, I can think a bit more about if there are some other things I'd like to weave in. Get after it, my friend! Shoot me a message if you need some help.

It's really simple arithmetic. If you pay your sellers to close deals and they make, say $200k, why would you want them to spend time doing what you can hire someone for $60k to do? I've used the outside "appointment setter" companies. They usually charge roughly $700 per appointment. So, do the arithmetic again. If you close one in, say four, then add $2800 into your cost of sales and see if it makes sense.

Ad words is not marketing. It is just the beginning.. Web marketing includes SEO, SMM, ads, facebook marketing, twitter marketing, youtube, limkedin..etc. besides, it is more important to get engaged to people. Interaction in blogs, forums , discussions.. You may also think of having sales people to work with you, do some tele marketing, have promotion codes.. Depending in your target market, you may need to have printed ads on magazines, flyers, newspapers..etc or even radio or tv ads... You need to know where your customers and go to them.. Either online or offline.. Besides, you need to work on branding and also on showing how differentiated you are from the comparatives. Or if no comparatives, then show you have a solution that doesnlt exist. The 200 leads you reached, you need to talk to them and have their feedback.. Give them trials ..etc. Most people think they will make a million $ sales after making the MVP which doesnt happen. The effort you need to do on marketing and sales is even more than what you did till you reached your MVP. For a 10$ thing, you need at least to reach 20000 leads , before thinking of takin anything down. Coz till now, you dodnt reach your customers. It is time to start :) I'll be there to help... Good Luck!!!!

Why are you adamant about press releases? They are by far the worst conversion rates {unless you're a household name like the post or fool} for businesses. For our evens we do sometimes send out PRs but locally only and to those writers we know. Which is key. Also making it easy for them to pick up. {copy and paste for them} For growth hacking leverage cohort analysis, Twitter and Facebook. Create a meetup. Offer affiliates... Press releases are slow moving marketing steps that take away control from your business and gives it to an editor. Never lose control of your marketing. Humberto Valle Unthink Strategy

Several follow up questions: 1. Do you have any sort of employment agreement now? 2. Did you disclose early on that you were working on this side project? 3. What state are you in? 4. Have you taken steps to protect the proprietary info to date--such as using an NDA? 5. Does anyone else within the company know about this recipe? 6. Is the former employer in the industry to any extent? From your description it sounds like a maybe. The goal here would be to separate the proprietary details and show that this did not fall within the realm of your employment. I don't think that your employer has enough of a leg to stand on here so even going to court would not be a sure thing for him. However there are some preventive steps you can take now based on answers to the questions above. Let me know if you would like to chat more, Thanks, Madhu

You may think many users automatically prohibit the sending of push notifications and that may be the case for those who feel push notifications are intrusive and annoying. That being said, research actually indicates that app retention and engagement are up In fact, 68% of users opt-in to push notifications according to Responsys' research (http://www.responsys.com/blogs/nsm/mobile-marketing/push-notifications-marketers-new-power-tool/ ). Furthermore, research shows that engagement is up because of push notifications (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1010950). . That's why marketers are focusing in on push notification strategies according to Localytics research http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Proof-App-Push-Notifications-Actually-Matter/1011149. So if you know of an app getting poor engagement over time, the question really should be "Why is our app not engaging and what would engage users?" Also, "Is it obvious what benefit someone gets by opting into the push notifications?"

This is loaded question. Give anyone of us here with that expertise a call to help you out better and in more depth. Humberto Valle Unthink Strategy

Thanks for your question, it is very interesting and a question our client often have. I am an international business lawyer and often have to deal with this kind of situation. To answer your question briefly, in general principles, your business is resident where is located your head office (which is in most case dictated by your governing law). To answer your question fully, I think it would be helpful to know exactly why you need to establish "where is your business" since the interpretation principles may vary depending of the reason i.e. tax, corporate, contract, etc.

I've used Nationwidebarcode.com to buy over 100 UPCs and have never had a problem at Amazon or any of our 100+ SMB retailers.

I hate to be "that guy," but I'm gonna say, "it depends." What I mean by this is it is highly subjective to the market you are in and the target you're going after. However, with that being said, let me share a few of my favorite growth-hacky-type ideas that you might want to consider using to grow your customer base: #1 - Produce a TON of content. Make it valuable, and don't cut corners. Then, promote it to your existing tribes. If you don't already have a tribe, see the bullet #2. #2 - Build a tribe. Get started at a place like triberr.com where you can connect your social profiles and your blog and share with likeminded folks. It takes time to get going, but you'll thank me for it later. #3 - Test every aspect of your landing pages. Use something like Unbounce (my favorite) to strip down every element of your pages and split test constantly. Get used to the fact that your landing pages are NEVER complete. They can always be improved. #4 - Build an email list from your blog traffic by using "content upgrades" or "lead magnets." Search Google for the specifics, but basically, you create free content that is related to each post on your blog that the reader can download in return for subscribing to your newsletter. It works like a charm! Let me know if you want me to go into further detail on any of this stuff.

1. I would attend Demo days for startups and plant seeds there. Attending meetups can be very helpful as well. 2. Subscribe to Crunchbase. When you see certain companies have raised certain about of money reach out to them. You can go cold or through an introduction. I am a firm believer in doing whatever it takes. If you don't have an intro then go cold. If you don't try you will never know.

Yes FB is very strict about 20% test rule on the images. I typically do this.. 1 - Find an awesome image form free website (here are some) http://www.gratisography.com/ www.unsplash.com 2 - Add text or puzzle I want on this image 3 - Check the 20% rule using FB grid tool https://www.facebook.com/ads/tools/text_overlay?_rdr 4 - Promote on FB hope this helps :)

It's hard to give a really cut and dried answer without knowing all the details, but here are some tips based on my experience: First the bad news: from the way your question is worded, it sounds like you built the app without validating first. What I mean by that is that you didn't go out to the musician market BEFORE you built it to make sure they would buy it. And the only way to be absolutely sure that they would buy it (someone telling you, "Yeah, I'd totally buy that." doesn't count) is to pre-sell the app for real actual money. The key is to do this market validation before building anything. Now for the good news: even though your target market isn't showing much interest, it sounds like others are, so here's what you do: make a list of the folks who are interested and the industries they're from. Now research those industries and find the particular pain point that your app solves for. THIS is how you market the app. It probably means getting in touch with some of the people who have shown interest and asking them questions along the lines of, "What's the worst part about..." or "What do you hate most about..." and then listen to what they tell you. Tailor your solution to solve these pain points and you'll be surprised how receptive the market is. The critical takeaway here is validation. When it comes to app development, there really is no substitute for market validation. A good place to start (if you haven't already done so) is with a Business Model Canvas (https://strategyzer.com/canvas). It'll really crystallize your thinking and give you a specific direction. As for whether you should pivot to a new target industry, I can't think of a reason why not, especially if your app provides a unique solution for a different industry. I'm happy to walk you through the validation process and/or the Business Model Canvas over the phone if you like. Hope this helps.

You know I have never come across such tools. I did get a chance to work with an entrepreneur who has ADHD, I served as his business adviser. Our setup was that he did not spend time on things unless we talked about it first and I held him to super tight schedules. It workout great! His tool sales business is doing fantastic here in Glendale,AZ. On another note, I think every entrepreneur suffers from this but we call it drowning in opportunity! Lol. Best of luck in all that you do! Humberto Valle Unthink Strategy