Ultimate Guide to SaaS Pricing. Startup Business Development Posts. The Startup Business Development Handbook Below you’ll find articles that contain plug and play strategies you can use to become a startup business development force. The articles are broken out into 6 categories: ProspectingThe Approach and Getting A MeetingPitchingIn the Funnel and Closing the DealBD NetworkingStrategy and General BD Enjoy ; ) Prospecting How to Find Anyone’s Email Address How to Find Corporate Phone Numbers Guerilla Tactics: How to Find A Decision Maker Part One Guerilla Tactics: How to Find A Decision Maker Part Two A Favorite Linkedin Hack Awesome LinkedIn Hack Part Dos One BD Mistake that Can Crush Pipeline Dreams Less Obvious Ways to Find A Decision Maker My Business Development Toolkit The Approach and Getting A Meeting One Way to Write A Powerful Cold Email How to Cold Email Prospects How to Ask For An Email Introduction What Not to Do When Cold Calling How to Follow Up to an Unanswered Email What to Avoid When Getting That First Meeting Quick Trick To Increase Cold Email Responses.
Taking payments online (in Europe) in 2013. In order to make money online a business needs to be able to take payments. This may sound like a simple thing to set up - but it can be rather complex, and disruptive US companies such as Stripe and Square have yet to launch in Europe. Finding a way to take payments for Vinetrade has been one of my biggest challenges (from which I've learnt a lot) and I thought it would be worth writing up my thoughts on the card payment market, where it's going and what Europe needs. The easiest way to take payments online is via card (credit or debit). Behind all card payments are a number of bank transactions. Consumer protection laws make it possible for buyers to claim a refund from their bank if something goes wrong (e.g. they pay for goods that never arrive).
If the bank can't reclaim those funds from the business that took the payment, they'll make a loss. This means that banks will put a lot of effort in to minimising their risk. GoCardless (UK only) Braintree Payment Solutions Paymill. How to Configure Your Startup Team. I am fond of quoting that about 70% of my investment decision of an early-stage company is the team. My rationale is simple: everything goes wrong and only great teams can respond to competitors, markets, funding environments, staff departures, PR disasters and the like. Final startup grind from msuster How you build out your team in the first few years can have a huge impact on the trajectory of your company. So I naturally spend much time with the companies in which I invest helping them: recruitfigure out rolesmeasure performance / quality of teamidentify gapsdebate the right structure and so forth.
There are no “right” answers – just opinions. Quick summary: Be careful not to have too many co-founders. it’s the most expensive dilution you’ll ever face. It’s all in this deck in a prettier format. I’d love to hear your view on the presentation. Should Your Startup Have an Advisory Board? This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. Many startup companies hire advisory boards. It’s very tempting. It’s mostly done by first-time entrepreneurs who want to persuade (bribe?) Prominent industry luminaries to be closely associated with the company. It’s done partly in hopes of gaining their wisdom but it’s also done to portray the company in a positive light through association. So do advisory boards really add value? And if you decide to have one how do you best implement it? In my experience most advisory boards under deliver relative to expectations.
If you plan to set one up – no problem. Advisory Board Problems: There are several problems that I have encountered myself and in my many discussions with CEO’s who have set up advisory boards. 1. 2. 3. You prepare materials for them the remaining advisers to read through. 4. My view on how to best implement advisory boards: If you do decide to set up an advisory board, here are my tips for how to do it the right way. 1. 2. 3. (10) Startup Advice and Strategy: Do members of an advisory board usually get paid. Web And Mobile Revenue Models (final) Contact the media with MediaGraph. Introduction to Growth Hacking for Startups. Pintrest, Facebook, Zynga, Dropbox, AirBnb… What do they all have in common?
They’ve all used growth hacking techniques to grow their user base from zero to millions (and sometimes hundreds of millions). Growth Hacking isn’t viral marketing (although viral marketing is part of it). Growth Hacking comes to solve a very common problem in consumer startups: getting to the first x thousand/million users quickly once the product has launched and the hype has passed. The term “Growth Hacking”, invented by Sean Ellis, and made popular by Andrew Chen, a Silicon valley marketer and entrepreneur, is a combination of two disciplines – marketing and coding: Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” In a recent post, TechCrunch defined the three characteristics of a Growth Hacker as follows: First Steps in Growth Hacking for Startups Growth Hacking Resources: Eze Vidra Latest posts by Eze Vidra (see all)
Keynotopia: User Interface Design Libraries for Keynote, PowerPoint and OpenOffice. Digital Products Retailer: Affiliate Program & Sell Online - ClickBank. How do you issue the right number of shares/options to an employee or an advisor? | the drawingboard [dot] me. HM Revenue & Customs at Mevagissey Harbour (Photo credit: Cross Duck) Most founders have desire to share their equity with people that helped them along the way, both as a thank you, but also as a motivation tool.
However, how to share is always a big question mark for every Founder. The two most frequently asked question is, “How much equity should I assign an advisor?” , which is shortly followed by “How do I know when to issue shares to new employees and how much do I give them?”. So, let’s take step back and look at why we are doing this in the first place.
Motivating employees and or advisors is a key part of having a productive workforce. Therefore, the word ‘fairness’ is what’s important here.. how do you define the fairness culture in your startup? Let’s start with advisors: Advisors need to commit some time to your company to ‘earn’ their equity. Then, define a time period for this relationship before you review it for extension. Pricing strike prices is a bit of a pain. Social Media Marketing: Separating Fact From Fiction : Business 2 Community Webcasts. (2 ratings)You must be logged in to rate this webcast. Overview Are you tired of hearing how social media is the best invention since sliced bread? Are you confused about what social media can actually deliver? Would you like to cut through the hype and get to the facts?
If you answered yes, this presentation is for you. Social media marketing professionals Natascha Thomson and Michael Procopio will present two real-world examples that show how social media can bring tangible results when used properly in marketing. They will also provide two real-world examples of social media marketing gone wrong, so you can avoid the pitfalls. Learnings Learn proven applications of social media in marketing that bring results.Hear cautionary tales that help you avoid social media pitfalls.You will have the opportunity to ask topic-related questions that are pertinent to your business situation. Speakers Michael Procopio is a Social Media Strategist who blogs at MProcopio.com. Already registered?
Business Blogging Introduction. 5 Startup PR Myths Debunked. There are many common myths surrounding the ideas of Public Relations and in our world – startup PR. The most common myth being that PR is only about media releases and nagging journalists – we recommend not nagging and taking a much more friendly approach. But there are several myths surrounding the idea of startup PR that are less talked about but more rampant - which is why we felt it was our responsibility to set things straight. Here are five startup PR myths we at Onboardly would like to put an end to: 1. You Have to Pay for Coverage Recently, a hot topic appeared on the headlines of TechCrunch when an American PR agency was caught charging clients a fee in exchange for coverage on TechCrunch. The moral of the story? 2. We’ve talked before about the importance of building a relationship with a writer before you ask them to cover your startup. While having a connection or an in at any media outlet is a bonus – it should never be taken for granted.
Guaranteed press coverage? 3. 4. 5. How to hire the right developer for your tech startup. I’m currently co-founding ContentForest – a content marketing platform – and we just crossed an exciting line: our private beta is only a few days away and I’m very happy with the way the product is shaping up. Getting to this state has been a process wherein we learned really valuable lessons. How to get the right development talent in place is one of these. Since this process was rather tricky for us, I want to share a step-by-step process you can follow to hire the right talent for your idea.
Step 0: Preparation, or what do I want? You’ve found a market opportunity, structured your thoughts into a concept, done your homework and the wireframes are in place – great! The very first step is to sort your thoughts. Do I really need a developer? If your are unsure or don’t have a technical background, get a technical advisor on board to discuss the details. Step 1: Sourcing, or where do I find one? You are now ready to spread the word. Freelancing websites. Job boards. Personal networking. A Full-Stack Web Team Will Provide Much-Needed Breadth And Depth To Your Startup.
Editor’s note: Phil Freo leads the engineering team at ElasticSales. Previously he was at Quizlet and Google. Follow him on Twitter. There is often confusion about the various roles of a web engineering team. I have had to explain, even to technical recruiters, the differences between these roles and that the lines that separate them are often fuzzy. In a startup, you can’t afford to have people who are only able to do one thing. The size of the company or startup will determine how many different hats each engineer must wear. In pretty much every case, when a startup grows, people will inevitably start specializing.
I’m a big fan of “full stack” people and think specializing too much, too early, is a bad sign for startups. Here’s an overview of the main functional areas on a full-stack web engineering team: Visual Designer Frontend Developer The basic frontend developer can create basic web pages with HTML + CSS + minimal JavaScript/jQuery. Backend Developer Sysadmin/DevOps. 6 free mobile device emulators for testing your site. The percentage of all web usage that comes from smartphones and other mobile devices is growing, and it won’t be long before mobile internet users overtake desktop and laptop users in terms of web traffic. So it’s a cardinal sin to ignore mobile users when you’re developing a website. One of the most important things you can do to make a website mobile-friendly is to test it on multiple smartphone and tablet platforms.
Luckily, mobile emulators make it easy to do this. A mobile phone emulator lets you check the responsiveness and functionality of the website across different mobile platforms, such as iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry, without actually having the devices in hand. Mobile emulators can help you pinpoint problems and issues with the website and allow you to take corrective measures to make the website visually appealing and functional on mobile devices. iPad Peek iPhone Tester As the name suggests, iPhone Tester is one of the most popular mobile emulators for iPhones.
M3 Programme | Make More Media. How to Get Startup Ideas. November 2012 The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they're something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing.
Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way. Problems Why is it so important to work on a problem you have? Among other things, it ensures the problem really exists. I made it myself. Why do so many founders build things no one wants? At YC we call these "made-up" or "sitcom" startup ideas. For example, a social network for pet owners. The danger of an idea like this is that when you run it by your friends with pets, they don't say "I would never use this.
" Well Imagine a graph whose x axis represents all the people who might want what you're making and whose y axis represents how much they want it. Self Noticing Give yourself some time. "Escape London" by @robfitz. How To Deal With Tech Media at Mike Butcher.