Yes, zoning laws generally frown on improperly zoned home businesses (although they rarely ever actually enforce it unless a neighbor or homeowner's association complains). However, there is a ridiculously simple workaround for 100% online businesses like yours (and mine) - get a private mailbox or virtual office & register your business to that address! I've gone through the same process multiple times, both for myself & a for a few web design & marketing consulting clients. (note: I'm a startup & entrepreneur consultant, not attorney, so my legal knowledge is limited to what I've learned from both my own clients & working at legal startups Lexicata and LawKick - an in-state attorney will have more specific advice) While you're right about state variations, generally speaking it doesn't matter where you're actually working from - what matters is where your business is registered. If you don't have any inventory, customers actually coming to your house, etc. (in other words there's no actual business taking place at your house), then you're technically on "Online Business," regardless of the address on your business license. It's not uncommon for online businesses to register themselves using the address of a private mailbox (e.g. from a local UPS store) or sometimes a virtual office. If there really is absolutely no physical front to your business, many startups get a mailbox & incorporate in Delaware or Nevada for their business-friendly state laws. Think about it this way: if your business isn't actually registered to your home address, zoning isn't an issue, because at that point you've essentially made yourself a "remote employee" of the company (even if it's registered in Nevada). Feel free to reach out if you'd like some resources on the topic or to hear how the process worked in the long-term for myself & my clients.

This is a very important issue. Vesting and commitment should be decided upfront and in consensus. While I could tell you my experiences with founders, I would encourage you to first read this two posts on vesting: http://www.feld.com/archives/2005/05/term-sheet-vesting.html http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2007/04/05/startup-stock-options-vesting-schedules-acceleration/ If you want help or advice on how to deal with it please give me a call. I would be happy to share my experiences around this subject.

The idea is a very small fraction of what it takes to earn the first million. Certainly billion. What actually matters is your ability to *execute*. Entrepreneurship means "having the talent of translating opportunities into money". Or, as Alexis Ohanian of Reddit said, "entrepreneur is just French for 'has ideas, does them'." As much as it may seem that transitioning off your 9-to-5 is the biggest hurdle, it's not. If you can't "get out of the gate" then you're also not ready to deal with the real challenges of business, like "competition that has 1,000x your funding" or "suppliers that jerk you around" or "customers who steal your intellectual property". It's easy to have a "billion dollar idea". I'd like to mine gold off of asteroids; I'm sure that would be worth billions. I'd also like to invest in Arctic real estate that will become coastal vacation property after fifty more years of warming. And, of course, to make a new social network that everyone loves. But saying these things is very very different from accomplishing them. Prove your concept by first taking a small step, such as making the first dollar. (Maybe try Noah Kagan's course at http://www.appsumo.com/how-make-your-first-dollar-open/). If you can't figure out a way to "make it go" without a giant investment, then you're kidding yourself about your ability to execute the business. If you *can* figure out a way to get a toehold, then by all means do it now! Happy to advise further, feel free to contact me for a call.

Congratulations on the opportunity...! I've seen situations like this from the other side, working for a big ERP vendor. To try to answer your questions out of order: How to structure? Based on the info provided, the simplest thing would actually be no specific arrangement at all. Lots of ERP add-ons are sold to ERP customers without being "contracted" by the vendor. However, if they want to work with you directly then a contract (not a joint venture or anything else) is the best place to start. A contract ensures all factors are on the table such as your investment to provide the integrated product, and so on. Is the arrangement month-to-month or for several years? Is there any guaranteed volume, or is it just "best efforts". And so on. What's realistic? Again, for two companies that don't really know each other and with a size differential, you're unlikely to get anything you'll like other than a contract. The exception is if they see you as extremely strategic to their future, in which case you might swing an acquisition -- if you actually want to lose control in exchange for equity in their company. What key factors? It's hard to say without knowing more. I'd say stick to a simple contract unless an outright acquisition is likely. Make sure you don't put too much in up front without a reasonable guarantee of return; a bigger company can easily change direction six months from now and leave you hanging. As soon as you have one customer in common, you'll be stuck to this other company for years, so play fair! If they are not good partners, consider walking away. ERP has a very long lifespan. I'm not sure what you feel you might lose control over (you think they might copy your product?) but if you negotiate a reasonable contract, you shouldn't have too much exposure. Hopefully this is useful; there are a lot of issues that will be specific to your exact situation.

Since no one has actually answered your question, let me try and give you some specific guidance: The "fair" range would probably land between $5m-$15m pre-money. For the low-end ($5-6m) to be fair, you'd be in a tiny (measured by total addressable market) with slow growth on that $2m as measured by either Year-Over-Year or month-over-month, depending on the sales model. Add a million to two million to the total pre-money the higher the TAM with no obvious incumbent to beat. Add an additional million to four million for better growth and proven, scaleable low customer acquisition costs. So that's how you would scale up or down a generally reasonable valuation. I would answer your question with more specificity had you provided the important contextual details like industry, where the company is located, business model, but at the very high level abstract, this should be helpful to you. Happy to do a call and give you a much more narrow range based on understanding the details..

Here you can find a solution: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/03/19/eliminating-dumb-ghost-referral-traffic/

It sounds like you have a lot going on. I think you might find some better momentum if you chose one to focus on. In the mean time I'm sure you face the dilemna of supporting yourself while your app gains momentum. I was recently in a similar situation with developing and selling a CRM software tool while also running a service company. For us, it was very helpful to keep distinctly separate brands for each company. It helped to provide a laser focus with our marketing messaging and didn't blur the lines between the two entities. Even though our service business provides consulting services that include the software product we're selling we don't want other service providers to be scared away from promoting the software brand thinking that we have an unfair advantage in access to client sales. Overall the more focused your brand messaging is the better you will be overall, even in terms of SEO and traffic. I think it is definitely worth it to lose a little momentum to refine the focus of your branding and marketing.

Good luck! Forget about SEO. This is just a temporary improvement. Not worth your effort right now specially if you have to pay. If is free, take it as long as it doesn't distract you with "useless busy" work. Focus on the emails. This has huge upside potential!! A video is a powerful tool that automatically enables you to connect with those who share your interests and can make people find you simply because they like you. This also reassures them that you haven't forgotten about them, that you are doing what you can but also need the communities help. Share this on all your social networks. Leverage the power and newly harnessed interest of Periscope or Meerkat of both and announce(schedule) through Twitter a video pitch of what you trying to do. This will get you potential viral spread if you ask your viewers to use a hashtag or to simply tweet your live streaming. If you have backers you're doing something right, you just have to now drive traffic to the campaign. Not really work on the pitch itself... Now you're in the numbers business... :) Humberto Valle Best of luck.

I value your request for help. However, my experience is that a straight barter of design services for development services is not necessarily equitable, as design is most often a fraction of overall development effort and cost, albeit, design is critical and sets the stage for success in a project. At DVmobile, we believe that the first 15% of a project (including design) is what make the remaining 85% of a project successful. Bartering often implies very low revenue potential in the relationship. It begs for similar circumstances in your partner, a willingness to work for services vs. cash payment. My recommendation would be for you to attract multiple partners that can leverage your services on a part-time contract basis. If you are attracting customers with your design skills, many development firms, including mine, are willing to do subcontract or partner based work. It’s usually easier to market great design skills in today’s market, than coding skills.

Unlike most answers on Clarity, where the experts share their grizzled, hard-earned experience, and seek to guide others to success... I'm not sure there are many of us with the experience to guide or advise you in such a personally challenging and difficult cultural environment. That said, we may not be able to guide, we can seek to inspire! The answer you seek is right there, in your own question, your own words. The opportunity to change the world that you're looking for is right in front of you. The words I mean are these... "My friends/acquaintances have been subject to similar experiences as well." It's clear to me that though you may feel down and defeated, you are already in a great place to effect change - With those friends and acquaintances you mentioned. You're already in communication with those people, you have a shared bond of common experience, and you want to make a difference. From such small seeds of determination, great change can be affected. There is a quote, which I am heavily paraphrasing and I cannot attribute properly, that I want to share... "Great leaders create a space for others to succeed" I want you to focus on one idea... "Creating a possibility space for others" What I mean by this is to imagine, discover and create ways for the people around you to feel better about life, to create spaces and opportunities for them to contribute to each other. This might mean organizing people so they can walk around together (assuming safety in numbers, and not an increased risk of harassment). Or a way for people to get together to share meals, or resources in some way. You might seek out experienced members of your community, who can help teach others to be safer, more secure and self-reliant. And you can help to teach others to do what you're doing and make the world a better place for each other. I don't know the individual challenges you and your community face, but I know who can fix them... You. And if you want to make a difference in the world as a whole, to inspire and illuminate others? Do everything I just suggested, and write about it. Anonymously if needs be. I for one would love to read a blog about how you're implementing change in such a challenging and hostile political climate. The world has enough productivity startups, mobile agencies and clever apps for first-world problems - We need something real, to remind us there is more to life than the latest Apple product, or viral video. You can do it. For yourself, for your community, and for the rest of us who might often take our lives for granted.

Hi Kristin! So, I take it you have your firstnamelastname.com AND firstnamemiddlename.com You can really go either way. However, whichever way you go, it needs to be on all of your branding. For legal stuff, contracts and etc - you will need to include your last name. So even if you use Kristina Blair everywhere, for legal stuff, you can add your last name so that it's Kristina Blair Colpitts. Hope that helps! Let me know, Nicole

To start with, create a "No-To-List" of non-action items. It will help you keep your focus intact on the actual and planned goals. It will also help the team's focus to move in unison. Talking about "To-Do" list of laundry items, start with assessing your internal capability, external requirement, and map the two to find the loosened nuts and bolts. Once you finish up with above exercise, create a list of action plan items that could help you move from possessing idea to establishing business. However, do ensure to plan your business model in the beginning to prevent from doing recurring redundant task. Let me know if you've tried creating any such checklist. You can DM me the same or we can hop on a quick call to discuss the fine prints.

I work closely with an events agency in the UK, and have helped them manage the digital side of some massive events for clients like Samsung and Oracle. I'm also an official TEDx organizer, so I know a bit about the non-digital side as well. I've not come across many social media accounts or blogs that are platform-agnostic - The vast majority out there are product related and are always seeking to push the agenda and worldview of that particular product, business, agency or organization. Considering that at this stage, I know nothing about the size of your event(s), the potential audience, your admissions/attendee model and ideal target income for your sponsorship budget - My advice to you would be to research events agencies in your local area, or in your audience space, that could help/advise you. Here is the approach I would use: 1) Start small. In the events space, even small agencies can pack a big punch, and they are usually friendlier and more flexible. 2) Ask them for advice. If you're serious about organizing an event, they should be biting your hand off to advise you on what to do, and what to charge. 3) Offer them whatever you can to get the to buy-in. They might halve or waive their fees entirely if you can offer them an opportunity to speak, present or sponsor themselves. 4) Do a beauty parade. No matter how much you like an agency, always talk to more than one when you are planning and researching. You need to compare like for like. 5) Seek independent guidance. If you're new to the events space, then you run the risk of being taken advantage of. Once you have some options on the table, and you are looking at making a decision, run it past an independent advisor (like me) to get validation of what is being discussed. I'd be happy to discuss this with you on a call, if that would be of benefit - I have a few more negotiating tactics up my sleeve that may prove useful.

You may regard this as general advice yet is is not as trite as you may think. The reason is that your question is very general and can be easily be answered by 'that depends' and 'how long is a piece of string'. To answer the vital questions that lead you down a journey of what you should do, you need to go through a Business Planning process. That process provides you with the functional steps you are after. The Business Planning process helps you to explore necessary avenues and to ask the right questions. Your first port of call is to research. Some ways (not all) are to look at the current environment, look for models you admire and look for gaps and ways you can be unique. Look at what the market wants. What is the burning problem they experience? Envision with clarity about what you really want to achieve. Is there a match and how can you match the market need? Is there demand? (Creating demand for something new is extremely expensive in terms of time, energy and cost. Oh how I lived this problem!!!). Or can you piggy back off current trends? To answer this question it would take consulting of $5-10-50k of work.

Hi, so I've been part of multiple startups, successful and "failed". The pattern with most is that the originators of an idea tend to be the ones wanting to be the CEO... If the originator is a team, together you guys need to honestly answer each other questions such as: 1) who handles pressure better? 2) who is COMFORTABLE speaking to random people 3) and able to articulate clever responses and craft a pitch that hits the right spots to a variety of people. (This people could be in some sort of leadership/marketing- the vast majority of a startups effort goes to marketing and development) 4) Who is the technical person available to solve technical (or coding) problems? 5) who can bullshit their way through situations? 6) which one has sales experience? Training? Or management? 7) who is willing to work and earn the equity over a period of 1 or 2 years to be fully vested? Whoever is not, prob aren't as committed and thus shouldn't be on leadership.. 8) does the team really need everyone on board full time? 9) putting ego aside, would your mom see you as a leader of others? Can you make tough decisions when needed? Or do you get pushed over? A startup is an experiment, just because you structure things a certain doesn't mean your stuck with it. It's a mantra for a product and definitely more for the management. sometimes the ideators are not even the best option or is the leader the best CEO. Best of luck. #unthink

Founder: When a ship fills with water and sinks.

I think that Eventbrite is your best solution. It's simple to use from an organizer and user perspective, and there's little fuss in taking payments. No reason to get fancier.

I have several years of experience in marketing and optimization in the eCommerce space for one of the largest online jewelry retailers in the U.S. I also have several year of experience working with online retailers that operate under a subscription models. In order to answer your question, you will need to consider the following: Will your subscription revenue generate enough income to maintain the operational strains of this business model and be profitable? If you do not know the answer to this, you need to work backwards to arrive at the monthly pricing for your subscription service. Some things to consider: 1. Cost associated with operational logistics like shipping and fulfillment (assuming customers have to receive and ship the jewelry back to you) 2. Carrying costs associated with holding on to inventory on consignment. (assuming you will not own the jewelry outright) This may come with other contingencies like having to carry insurance and the operational aspects that will help you handle recovery of lost / unreturned inventory, etc. 3. Costs associated with building a transactional platform that is built for the monthly activity you will have with a subscriptions service. If you take Macy's for example, most customers place online orders 4 times per year or so. In your case, the nature of your model requires a different platform as you will be taking recurring payments, arranging returns, maintaining credit card / payment information, etc. In short, its a different animal that your startup eCommerce type platform. If you'd like to get more details or insights I'd be happy to hop on a call and chat.

This isn't what I normally do for clients ... at all. But I write Excel formulas and custom-code databases every day and have a solid background in statistics. Sounds like what you're asking could be done in an hour using Excel ... and in such a way that you'd be able to enter future data in the spreadsheet on your own and have it analyzed automatically. Maybe software exists. Maybe you can hire someone on Fiverr. But if neither of those options works for you and you're willing to overpay someone overqualified for the task, I suppose I could set it up. Might be a nice break from real work!

You may want to purchase a media list to get more chances at press. Services like Meltwater (which is subscription based) allow you to search via keywords and gives you the ability to export the direct email and phone numbers of these individuals. Would be happy to export you a couple of media lists if you are interested at a very reasonable rate. Additionally, twitter strategies for crowdfunding work very well. This video we did might help you further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBGypRKBUD8 Are you doing email marketing? http://intercom.io is a great service to get to the inbox and bypass the promotions folder of gmail. Hope this helps!

If you are really investing in a strategic partner (one that will provide mutual benefit in the end, either in terms of revenues, access to financing or other resources) then revenue sharing isn't absolutely necessary. In the partnerships I help to form, they are often around shared value (http://www.fsg.org/OurApproach/WhatisSharedValue.aspx) which means shared revenue isn't the absolute aim. What is the aim, however, is sharing information, knowledge, technical assistance, operational help, etc) and build a lasting framework for engagement together into the future that will benefit both parties. I am happy to help you negotiate these types of partnerships (it's what I do!) so feel free to get in touch.

Hi, check outmy response to another question similar to yours. I hope it helps. Overall what you need to do is grow your community of users, or depending on the app generate enough sales or interest typically before any investors considering joining you. Not impossible to get investors early on, but your best bet is through kickstarted if anything. My responses tend to get UpVoted by other experts. Check it out https://clarity.fm/a/8032

The question that pops up for me from your question is, "Why would you trust someone who isn't behaving like a partner?" How common is this situation, where a licensee declines to share buyer contract info with you? I'm guessing very infrequent from your description of "one" licensee behaving this way. If that is so, and the far more common situation is a licensee agreeing to share the end user contract data with you to have fully accurate revenue data, then I would simply screen out those potential licensees who won't cooperate and not work with them. If, however, your marketplace sees the resistance to sharing data as being more commonplace, I would review the structure of how your software is being delivered. The software licensing program could capture this revenue data so you wouldn't have to worry about trusting licensees. An example of a third party licensing program I've seen (to which I am not in any way affiliated) is https://www.licensecloud.com/ As another option, you could also dispense entirely with the idea of following licensees around and making sure they're telling you the truth about revenue. Restructure your billing system so you charge a profitable flat fee per end user, and leave it up to your licensees to sell the services for whatever they are able. This keeps you out of the business of looking over your licensees' shoulders and in my opinion is healthier in many ways over the medium and long term. Revenue models are tricky to calculate and many intelligent people will miss expensive cost factors on the road to developing a price that truly makes them money. I help businesses who have any kind of problem on the path of competently delivering a product or service to their customer. If you'd like to discuss this further, reply here and send me a message because I don't always check previous threads. Thanks, Jason

I think we'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are not promoting here through a question it appears to me that there is a different issue at hand. Could be branding, positioning, market focus, pricing or wording... Could be a number of things more suitable for a call I think. Also, Angel.co is a community, it doesn't call itself that. You can label whatever you wish but it has to embody how your customer base feels, often times this issuing does not come until you have a large user base and they themselves will give you the answer. Branding is often a waste of time for most startups because the fundamental value of a brand come through user satisfaction & engagement. Here is where growth hacking comes in for most startups. A marketplace is a common name for digital services however unless and until you have an established branded service that people know you for a marketplace label is more confusing than anything. Again, it appears that you have a positioning, marketing, possibly pricing and maybe even management since all these relate to growth and sales. Give me or anyone else here relevant to your issues a call :) Claim your 10 minutes free with me using this link: www.clarity.fm/humbertovalle/Unthink Humberto Valle

Angel Investors will understand that you have a need to draw a salary... but the idea of taking their cash and putting it to personal use would be a "no-go". If you were on your Series C of Venture Capital, raising $100M and you wanted to sell $3M of shares to buy yourself a nice house, for instance, that might be okay. But if you're raising $500k and you want to pocket $50k of that to clear your credit card debt (for instance), that would be a deal-killer. Two reasons: (1) it shows the investors you're not great at managing your own funds, and (2) it's hard enough for a company to survive and grow with the investment that Angels provide — they definitely expect every penny to go into the company's growth. That said, if your profits are strong and the reason for the equity sale doesn't set off 'red flags' (i.e. family medical expense?), maybe you can get away with it. But remember: investors get pitched by hundreds, even thousands of candidate companies. That's your competition. Some of those companies look just like yours, and *don't* have a founder who's looking to use some of their cash for an early exit. So, it would be a significant strike against.