Hi there! Best of luck as you complete your college degree. From experience I will try to give you some insight into the world of startups and mobile apps. First some things to consider: 1. You live in a world of social klout 2.Apps must (specially iOS) must be very well developed, otherwise the users themselves will filter you out. 3. Apps must be relevant if you want to succeed. You've have probably seen this, a lot of paid apps go for free for a while when their sales begin to stall or never actually make any pay back to the developers. Free is an easy way to get users and thus paid advertisements or in app purchases (if they are good enough to keep) Assuming you will have all 3... Let's move on to your question: Most investors won't entertain an idea alone, specially if you haven't any prior successful experience in running a startup or app development company. Some do however, consider depending on your social klout, learn about growth hacking and consider growing your social relevance before the completion of the app. As mention by Ryan Holiday, a blogger not too long ago got investment for a book from a simple screenshot of his followers' requests for the same topic... he decided to write a book and through his community market it. This was a no brainer for the publisher investor. With that said, an often unspoken rule of networking is that you don't ask for favors in your first intro. You don't do that in your personal life, you shouldn't do that in your professional. Make friends in the right place, build relationships with a backbone in honesty, mentorship and through time as they see you work and guide you they themselves begin to entertain the idea... In the future, when you ask, your chances are much better that way. Get yourself a team, find a developer to mentor you and help you improve as you learn. Most new entrepreneurs think that their product at launch is their "final-good enough for a while- product" and is not! Complete opposite, you must realize that your initial launch is nothing more than the 1st iteration of the many to come if you want your community of users to stick with you and share their experiences with others as you help them and improve their lives by listening to their suggestions and issues with your app. If you have a developer this will become easier in the long run as well as tell an investor that you are capable of being a leader, even if is of 1. Best of luck, give me a call if you wish to talk a bit more :)

To effectively track leads and opportunities one should consider a centralized web-based CRM solution such as Zoho or SalesForce.com for team collaboration, data preservation and relationship management. A static spreadsheet risks data loss if your computer crashes before hitting save and version control is a challenge. Since your contact data is constantly changing with tasks specific to each relationship and each lead's time frame, your method should include a task management system enabling notes and task scheduling for timely follow-up. Spreadsheets or websites lack these dynamic features.

When considering the future of marketing, with an eye to the year 2020, I think you are close to the right idea. Marketing as a business initiative will most likely cease to exist, and product placement and promotion will happen seamlessly in an immersive, highly personalized experience that bridges the real and the digital. As a serial techie, a massive sci-fi geek and entrepreneur, I can see clearly that the future of any initiative to drive awareness - be it marketing, promotion, direct sales or driving brand recognition - Will be entirely driven by 3 factors: 1) Mass-market adoption of the technology required to access the new experiences - e.g. the internet in the "old days" and mobile in recent years 2) The social acceptance of that technology. Mobiles are ok, but currently Google Glass (potentially more immersive) is not socially accepted 3) The ease at which people can create and publish content within the new medium - If creating immersive 3D experiences requires expensive equipment or skills, it will always struggle to get mass adoption and social acceptance. Well done on being so much of a forward-thinker - I'd love to offer my opinion in more detail via a call, but it is very much a speculative topic at this stage.

So the question is what are your "Plan B" options. Let's assume for a sake of argument you've weighed the options (build your own, buy from an established competitor, partner with this startup) and you've decided that partnering is the best option. One way you could protect yourself in the event this company either shuts down or pivots and no longer supports what you need, you could negotiate to have the code put in an escrow account that has triggers to release the code to you. You of course will be restricted to the usage (e.g. you couldn't take it and compete). I've used escrow agreements in past deals and can discuss the details if your interested. Caveat, I'm not an attorney so can only provide business advice. Good Luck!

Mobile app that has launched: You need ALL of the following: 1) Trending towards or at 100000 installs within first 90 days of launch; 2) Day 30 retention rate of at least 20% 3) Core "MTM" (metric that matters) healthy (dependent on business model, usage model etc) 4) Evidence that growth is just "getting started" with plenty of upside left. Happy to talk more in a call.

I'm a licensed real estate agent and multifamily unit rental property investor in Georgia, as well as an internet entrepreneur. You're correct; you must hold a real estate license to collect a referral fee. However, this isn't the only way to monetize your website. You could select from a wide variety of monetization methods, such as CPM or CPC advertising, charge a flat fee per listing, or use the site as a lead generator for webinars, seminars or premium material. In short, there are many ways to create revenue streams from your site that go beyond simply collecting a referral fee. (Bear in mind also that referral fees on rentals work differently than referral fees on buy/sell arrangements). If you'd like to discuss these ideas in greater detail, I'd be happy to speak with you by phone. Thanks!

First of all great job on the traffic, 20,000 DAUs is really good. I have a lot of experience in the mobile game industry, specifically in Word, Card, and Casual titles. My answer is based on that experience. I have a few ideas on how you can monetize your website. I will put them in order of what I think would be most effective for revenue and retaining users. 1) Incentized Ads - This is a great way to use ads without turning your site into an "ad kingdom." An example of this would be to ask the user to watch a video ad in exchange for playing the game. For example they enter your site and start playing the game and when they are done you ask them to watch a short video to play again. The advertisers will pay you for every video play and the user takes the action. 2) Subscription - This model is best used by Netflix. Get them to play the game for a trial basis and if they want to continue they pay a small subscription free. 3) Donate - This is the least lucrative. Wikipedia uses this model and asks users to pay to keep the service going. If you need more details please let me know. Take Care, Jonathan

Hi there, Raad here from LawTrades (on-demand legal service for startups). If you're looking for a fast and affordable way to get those drafted by experienced legal professionals, then have a look at http://www.lawtrades.com. It's free to request price quotes and you're in no obligation to hire. We've processed dozens of Terms of Service and Privacy Policies for bootstrapped startups. But if you're pursuing the free route, then a simple google search will yield you a bunch of free templates. The problem is those boilerplate templates may not cover all the rules a user must abide by in order to use YOUR particular service. This leaves you with adding in terms which may or may not appropriately address all of your businesses legal issues. Some of these topics include: Definitions of certain keywords Accountability for actions/conduct Opt out policies Payment details Procedure Clarifying the sites legal liability Notifying the users of any modifications of terms In the meantime, here's a helpful guide about protecting your website from liability: http://blog.lawtrades.com/protect-website-liability/

Denial of Service protection is a key component of your perimeter defense along with your firewall, intrusion detection/prevention and continuous monitoring. There are several managed service providers that you can choose from. The first vendor you should contact is your Internet Service Provider (ISP), they may have DoS services available as a component of your contract or they will have DoS providers they partner with. Once you have identified the services your provider offers or the DoS protection partners they have you can evaluate which is best for you. If you have more questions on this or other security, data protection or regulatory requirements, PCI may be important for you, feel free to let me know. Best of luck in your venture! -Steven

I highly recommend YouTube. You can configure the embed video to hide the YouTube watermark, autoplay, hide the controls, and hide all related videos (that show up after the video is done playing). This will make your video look amazing on your launch page. Here is a link on how to configure the YouTube embed code parameters - https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters If you do your keyword research and optimize the Title, Description, and Tags when uploading to YouTube you can take advantage of more search traffic from Google and YouTube.

Have you thought about social media (i.e. twitter?) I rely upon twitter for feedback on a regular basis. Another option is to create a targeted list of the 500 people/organizations you specifically want feedback from and send out via email, though as we all know the response rate on something like that is quite small. There are groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc as well that you could tap into.

Large corporations will have their own process and procedure for purchase orders and if you want to do business with them this will be what you can expect. If you feel that the terms and conditions that big corporations are giving you are not acceptable for your small company then your alternative option is to not sell to big corporations and to focus on smaller companies. Something to keep in mind is that your purchase order terms and conditions may not be perfect yet. Until you have processed hundreds of them you will not know if your terms and conditions actually work. As you fill orders or experience problems filling orders you will want to change your purchase orders to cover this. Working with big corporations can be like drinking from a firehose and they have structure in place for a reason. As they have grown they have developed processes to protect themselves and to make sure they are always in control. Once you are confident that your company has a good process for delivering its product you won't need to be concerned about the ridiculous terms and conditions that big companies give you because it will be irrelevant. You might be frustrated right now because they have not accepted your terms and conditions which are probably based on how you want to do business. Remember "the customer is always right" or at least you should try to remember that and maybe change how you work with big corporations who don't care about your process and only care about their's. Schedule a call if you want to chat about this further. This is a great opportunity that you have uncovered to make your business better and more profitable - you just don't realize it yet.

Keep your head down and work on your own project. Stop being a spectator to what other people are up to. Ignore all the noise. Start unsubscribing from mailing lists. Delete your memberships at social media platforms, or at least stop logging in. Stop paying attention to Twitter feeds. Treat them like TV channels. Watching TV and following tweets is not entrepreneurship! Want to read? Read a book. Divide your email into critical and non-critical inboxes. Make yourself a rule not to check the optional inbox except on Friday evenings between 4 and 9 p.m. With any luck, you'll be enjoying life too much to bother. Friday nights are a good laboratory for testing those priorities. Force your inbox and twitter feeds to compete for attention with your significant other, and see who wins! Soon you'll recognize how unimportant that stuff is. Information overload is an excuse addicts make for their addiction. It's akin to compulsive rubbish hoarding or an all-day TV binge. Endlessly following the latest startups is no different from endlessly following celebrity gossip. Just because the people you read about are accomplishing things does not mean you are. If you have any ambition, then you can create something while ignoring what other people are doing and saying. A novelist or an inventor will keep busy on their own work to an almost hermit-like extent. If 100 people started throwing 100 objects toward you simultaneously in a hopelessly mismatched game of dodge ball, why would you be under any obligation to catch them all? Stop paying attention. Stop following. Lead! Do something!

What city are you in? Are you talking about your product or do you keep it secret? Finding a team is one of the most difficult parts. Make sure you ask friends of friends if they are interested. People often forget to tap their network to find talent. There are a lot of events that help find startup co-founders. Cofounders lab does a meetup group, you might want to check that out. Hope this helps.

Not necessarily. What's key is to build relationships with the organizations that work most closely with the munis and local leaders. Often times the money comes from them (i.e NGOs, local companies, social ent orgs). In some cases software can be piloted at low or no cost with muni leaders and from there, government sees value and invests accordingly. Where will you be working? Of course every region and location is different but building relationships with organizations that work globally and know how to tap into the local groups is a great first step. Happy to chat further if I can be of help.

This blog post https://attractgroup.com/blog/modern-devops-solutions-for-healthcare-from-compliance-to-enhanced-efficiency/ on modern DevOps solutions in healthcare is a must-read! It effectively highlights how integrating DevOps can streamline processes, enhance compliance, and boost operational efficiency in the healthcare sector. The real-world examples and focus on regulatory challenges add depth to the discussion. It's inspiring to see how technology can drive improvements in patient care while ensuring safety and compliance. A valuable resource for industry professionals!

You didn't provide much information about your startup. This I think is critical to properly answer this question. Be analytical however. Put yourself in the investors position and determine with each investor if they would entertain that idea, as you put it. If not, don't risk losing their investment altogether and just avoid asking for personal investment. After all this is your troubles not his/hers, if the investor joins chances are is because they like you and your business potential. Once you have them your commuting can be accepted as far as the burden it might put on your business growth and attention. But as far as financing, I would say that if you find one, you're luck is better than those who win the lottery. As an investor myself, and entrepreneur, I find to difficult to justify how commuting or relocating a startup is good for business. If you absolutely have to though, your goal is to focus on pitching that value... The relocation. Once that value is sold to the investor the obvious "I'll have to move and thus need basic living expenses covered" becomes an easy natural sell to an investor who likes your original idea and understands the value need for relocating. Work around the personal needs with driving home the value of relocating the startup and paying full attention to it once is moved. :) Have a great journey, keep us posted! Email me at iwill@unthink.me to let me know it goes, is always exiting and great learning exp. to see what works with investors and pitches look like.

As in most investing questions, it depends. I have seen many, many variations, but the basic designs are made up of debt instruments and equity instruments, usually with a combination. The decision on how to construct the "deal" is all around risk and yield. The higher the risk, the higher the yield. With a debt instrument, the loan note here, the investor is trying to recover his cash and interest at an exit, for your right to use those funds until that occurs. For consideration of risk and use of their funds, the investor wants equity. It is very common for investors to want a note instead of only a piece of the company. In many cases, conversions can occur at revenue targets, next funding round, etc. In your case, with the loan payout at the exit, it is pretty lenient and that investor is willing to take a lot of risk with you. The faster the investor wants their money back, implies the less risk they are willing to take. Also, in your case, it sounds like the investor wants equity upfront for just setting up the loan note and funds; again, not unreasonable (but it may complicate their tax situation by owning equity outright versus a right to convert later). If you have any other questions, or would like me to review your specific documents and provide advice, please let me know.

First let me start by saying that is impossible to guarantee any certain percentage in growth. Growth hacking is about viability, not traditional marketing alone if at all (depending on your GHacker) When it comes to growth hacking, the GHacker is responsible to helping tweak all parts of the business from pricingn to management styles, product/service development ( is not about what your market hears, but what makes them truly want to share your culture, product, and their rxperience with their friends) and once you have them as paying customers what's their K factor (conversion rate of their fellow friends). The "magic" of GH is that it embeds virability into your products making it not only enticing to share but easy and rewarding. GH is about unthinking traditional marketing with a low budget, measurable conversion and fun approach to gaining new customers and their friends. Is not about simply increasing a budget and exposing everywhere. If you would like to brainstorm and evaluate your clients' situation better give me a call :) Fellow Growth Hackers, -what else would you add? I don't want to assume and answer with ideas (the way traditional marketers would do) but I'm sure we all have something to add :)

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I have been approached to advise companies with this arrangement. In the arrangement I was considering, the options simply turned to ownership but there was an end date by which the distribution had to be paid. Hope that helps!

It can be as simple or as complicated as you need it to be. For my first startup we have a few board members, compensation was .5 to 1% equity for monthly meetings vested at 1 year. They are advisors and as such you should ask them what they expect from you, you from them and provide a framework of the future together - let them know what to expect - don't waste their time and only bring them in for meetings when you are absolutely confused in your immediate path or long term goals and have them provide feedback & their network

The first question I would ask back to you is how many clients you have currently. What is your retention rate? Your capture rate? From there you could develop a strategy to capture the next 5,000. If you haven't enlisted certain marketing channels or networks, you may be able to make a prediction about how many add'l clients that will bring you. Hope that helps!

Start with your needs. Do you need a subscription service, or just the ability for people to pay one-off? Do you need fast and easy, or robust and integrated into an uncommon business accounting software? Is the product digital download or a physical product you're shipping out of a warehouse/store? I've worked with over a dozen of the leading ecommerce payment services, and will walk you through the best options if you set up a call where we discuss your needs.