There are so many possibilities that come to mind, without knowing a lot more about what has lead you to this point, it is hard to offer any actionable advice. The first place I would start investigating is the top of your sales funnel. Are you getting students? Are they just not converting? Are schools just not interested (I don't see this as a viable avenue, but it would be good to know). Are tutors signing up? Are they showing up? You explained a couple different pricing models, none of that matters if no one is coming to the party. I'd be happy to help investigate this and offer insights. If you'd like, schedule a call and we can get started. All the best, -Shaun

It's my opinion that establishing a clear personal brand position and strengthening it in the marketplace is an asset to your employer and yourself. As long as it's not distracting you from delivering on your KPIs, and creating greater positive awareness of your relationship to the business and it's products - you're aiding he business. Many companies can attribute the success of their traction, market positioning and inbound marketing due to the personal brand of its executives. As their brand develops, they can become a powerful beacon and voice for the company. It all comes down to execution, market perception, alignment and positioning.

Assuming, that you're able to effectively communicate to others why your project is a 'tremendous opportunity', then here are some options: - Look up local universities and email the chairperson of whichever programs relate to the type of cofounder you need (i.e. electrical engineering, marketing, etc.). You could even possibly go there in person and put up a sign on a bulletin board.  - There may be relevant Meetups in your area, go there and network with attendees (www.meetup.com).  - If you're specifically looking for engineers, look up local 'hacker' / maker spaces that may exist in your area (see here:https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces). Also do google searches for local hackathons. - Social Networks: ask your friends and ask them to ask their friends. - Outside your network: --- http://founderdating.com/ --- www.cofounderslab.com --- http://www.joinef.com/ (UK only) --- Linkedin --- https://angel.co/ (AngelList) --- Reddit ----- https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/ ----- https://www.reddit.com/r/startups ----- Or sub-redits specifically relevant to the skill you need

If you’re interested in buying an e-commerce business successfully you need a lawyer that is experienced in M&A both in the deal size and the e-commerce space. You should then look to follow some best practices from other successful deals. My advice first and foremost would be to identify lawyers with relevant experience. Firstly, find attorneys that operate in the same size range as the business in question (e.g. $1M-$5M). The market dynamics and associated legal norms are different at each size range, so its important to get one that is appropriate to the business you are buying or they will frustrate negotiations enormously. The second piece of this is to find one with relevant industry experience. A lot of online business transactions can get into trouble by offline lawyers failing to understand the asset class properly. Make sure your lawyer understands the fundamentals of online businesses and has successful transaction precedents in the space. 2 years of industry specific and 5 years of general transaction history is ideal. Once you have a lawyer you’re happy with, there a couple of practices to follow. Firstly, don’t look to reinvent the wheel. Do not have your lawyer draft legal documents from scratch (and be weary if they suggest this), templates that are customized to the deal terms are absolutely fine and standard. Secondly, you want to ensure your lawyer has a problem-solving mindset from the outset. Rigidity on all deal terms can create major issues towards the closing stages of a deal (legal is usually done after DD is signed off) and quite often deals are killed by lawyers that refuse to negotiate any terms. Its important you and your lawyer adopts a problem solving approach during this key stage of the deal. Happy to answer any other questions you might have in relation to his deal.

I had the same need 6 months ago. I tried 7 legal firms that called themselves "disruptive start-ups" but they could not provide a) timely services b) a modest amount of customer service c) a fixed price or d) any combination of a) b) or c). In the end I went with an established law firm that did provide a), b) and c) but it came at a cost. You get what you pay for.

A convertible note is a possible route. It would provide the owner with a discount to the price set at your next round of funding. For example, assume you give the note holder a 50% discount on your next round. Then your Seed Round sets the price at $10 per share/unit, the note owner would be able to convert their $50,000 for 10,000 shares ($5 per share). You'd have to negotiate more specifics such as interest payments, term length and any assets used as collateral in the event that you end up in bankruptcy. Feel free to reach out with any questions or to set a time to talk.

There is a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding content marketing and its need within a brand’s overall marketing strategy. Doing content marketing is much more than publishing on your blog occasionally and posting your thoughts on social media. “Do stuff and maybe it will work” is not a strategy, it is a gamble. A risky and expensive one, at that. Even so, many brands have yet to create an effective content marketing strategy. What does such a strategy look like? Where are the examples of brands doing it well? Here, I will show you examples of an effective content marketing strategy and offer ways for you to craft your own for your business. What is Content Marketing Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it. This generation of customers are taking drastic steps to avoid marketing messages. As consumers, we use DVRs to skip television ads, pay internet radio subscription fees to avoid commercials, mentally block out — or use plug-ins to avoid — internet click ads, and gloss over road-side billboards, rendering them useless and ineffective. So how are marketers supposed to combat this shift? Education. Consumers are still buying and making purchases, but the way they go about making a decision has changed. With all of the world’s information at their finger tips, savvy consumers are doing enormous amounts of learning and self-education before stepping into a showroom or talking to a salesperson. Knowing this is a huge opportunity for brands. If you know consumers are looking for information, be the source of that information. Not with sales-y content that puts your priorities before theirs, but information that the buyer really wants and needs. The Marketing and Sales Departments must align to create a buying path for this new era of consumers that provides authentic and transparent information about a product or service (the mission of Marketing) and closing the sale (the mission of Sales). Content marketing closes this gap by using brand-created educational content to satisfy the prospective buyer while helping the sales team convert anonymous visitors into buyers. Thought leaders and marketing experts from around the world, including the likes of Seth Godin and hundreds of the leading thinkers in marketing have concluded that content marketing isn’t just the future, it’s the present (see the video below on the history of content marketing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OHgMMpGLzk The key ingredient to using content to attract new customers is in the advanced planning. The strategy. What is a Content Marketing Strategy A content marketing strategy is a roadmap; a “User’s Guide” to how your brand will do the following: - Meet the customer at their specific point within their buying cycle - Align the customer’s needs with your knowledge and expertise - Use your brand’s assets to meet these objectives Business-to-Business marketers who have a documented content marketing strategy are 66% more likely to consider themselves effective compared to only 11% of those without a documented strategy. A content marketing plan helps you see the end-game before you have even started. Further, it gives a clear, articulable vision for your entire team and keeps you on track throughout the campaign. Just like New Years resolutions often fade into a foggy memory, our intentions are good – but we allow resolutions to fail. To be successful in any strategy, we need to be intentional. For proper sales and marketing alignment, and for the success of your bottom line, you must have a plan in place. How to Start Your Content Strategy The framework of a content marketing strategy is fairly straight forward: - Who are you targeting? What are their needs? - How are you going to reach them? (Attract new and nurture existing) - What content do you have now to get started? - What is your plan to develop and share more - How will you measure your efforts 1. Personas Take some time to consider who you are targeting. Are they male or female? Does it matter? Do they have a career? Children? Are they affluent? Coupon cutters? What are their goals? What happens if they do not reach them? Is their a monetary penalty for them? Will meeting this goal further their career? Will it make them happy? Clearly defining your targeted personas will save you a lot of time, energy, and money as you continue your business. With this person in mind, your content marketing strategy will begin to fall into place and you will feel that you are having a conversation with this “person”, rather than blindly throwing stuff out there. 2. Outreach Content marketing and social media are often used synonymously. This is a mistake. Content marketing is a broad method of marketing whereas social media is a tool that complements getting your content seen. Imagine your website as your online hub, where all of your brand-controlled content resides, your social media profiles are spokes that lead back to your home base. Social media has the power to reach incredible numbers of potential customers, influencers, existing customers, and even the opportunity to convert customers from competitors. Social media, in and of itself, is not content marketing. It is one of your outreach tools. 3. Available Content Next, take stock of materials you have on hand already. Many of us sit in offices filled with brochures, flyers, handouts, manuals, and documents loaded with helpful information, but we do little to extend that information to potential customers on the web. Make a list of the content available to you immediately and start identifying which persona is most aligned, where they are within their sales process, and what pain point they are currently facing. Getting started, you can use what you have on hand. But I recommend expecting this low-hanging fruit to run out. You should plan on developing your own, unique content. For a number of reasons, search engines reward fresh, unique content. Further, your prospective customers will be looking for information that is not available everywhere. Your unique perspective and “voice” (the tone in which you talk, the way you communicate, and what you share) may be the first experience a prospective customer has with you. This is the beginning of a long business relationship. 4. Schedule and Share Your Content After you have compiled your educational materials, grab a calendar. I recommend looking out 3-4 months to start. Mark holidays, special events, and milestones. Working backwards, prepare your marketing message for these campaigns. For example, one client of ours hosts 4-5 annual sales. They all surround major US holidays (New Years, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving/Black Friday). By knowing this, it is easy for us to prepare everything from banner ads, Pinterest images, blog posts, Facebook Status, videos, and even newspaper ads (don’t shoot the messenger). Once you have those events marked, consider a “theme” of the week for those 3-4 months. With that theme, and your personas in mind, write out the following for each week: - 2 Blog Posts - 8-10 Facebook updates - 20-30 Twitter updates - 4-5 product photos for Pinterest - 3-4 Instagram ideas - 1 Video By no means is this list all-inclusive. It is a starting point to get you thinking about how to plan content. To get a specific content marketing plan designed for your brand, I need to interview you and understand your goals, personas, and timeline. 5. Analytics Finally, how are you going to measure your work? Remember when we set up our goals earlier? Were you specific in identifying how many leads you want to generate? “Get more leads” is a horrible strategy, better is “Gain 50 new leads by September 1st” or “increase from 6% conversion rate to 12% conversion rate” These types of goals are easily measured and tracked. Do you have a mechanism in place to measure, monitor, and gauge your efforts? Further, do you have the right people on your team to help you know what is working and what is not? Can you explain why certain marketing dollars are generating a return on your investment while others fall flat? Final Thoughts Just like runners know the course of the race before they start, your brand should know the route you will take to your finish line. Having a strong content marketing strategy in place will ensure your team is setup for success. I'm happy to help and provide more specifics. All the best, -Shaun

Give Vimeo a try.

As the former owner of a web design shop, I can see the appeal of a program like this. The biggest reservation I think a shop owner will have is understanding how you will treat their clients, what expectations have been set, and how much damage control they will have to manage if something goes sideways. Your best bet will be to establish a relationship with these owners so they understand your customer service philosophies, approach, and communication style. I'm happy to help more, feel free to set a call here on Clarity and we can discuss how you might approach them to start this relationship. All the best, -Shaun

Millions of dollars flowing through your platform and you can't monetize it? You can't monetize the website, but you expect to be able to monetize on mobile? Those seem like major disconnects to me. Any investor you approach would think the same thing. Are you a marketplace like Etsy? If so, several smaller versions have already pivoted their businesses. You may be heading in the same direction. It sounds like an interesting problem. If you'd like to discuss in more detail, I'd be happy to look at the model and see if mobile makes sense. We can also talk about ways of getting a mobile platform created for less than building a native version from scratch.

You're doing it all wrong. Grow this baby and sell it for more. Hire yourself a strategist to work with you on this.

I have designed a few of these online marketplaces and I can tell you from experience that in this day and age, phone numbers are a deterrent on a signup form. I advise against it and agree more with the cons. However, that does not mean that you cannot get feedback from students. Form the past websites that I have built with student demographics, I have found that they like to interact with each other, so a better way to get feedback is to set up a forum in your online marketplace. Also, just adding a comment thread like blogs have is a very good way to get feedback, even more effective than phone numbers. Also, one reliable method that I found works is an incentive based feedback survey when students can earn pennies on the dollar to take surveys. If you go this route, you could offer 25 cents or $1 or even $5 to the first 20 or 100 students that fill out the survey answering all your questions that you would normally have asked over the phone. I hope my suggestions are helpful to you. I can always assist you in building your online marketplace. I have more suggestions for you as well. Bruce

Definitely DON'T go for funding at this stage. It would be just TOO COSTLY for you in terms of the stake you will have to give away for a limited amount. Most likely at this stage, you don't even have a clear picture if you really need the investment. Have you mobilized all the cash you can on your own? All I mean absolutely all. You don't want to ask for money when you are saving some bucks just in case your idea doesn't work. Have you raised some from FFF (Family, Friends and Fools)?. Again, don't go to angels until you have covered your very basics with those. All in all, most probably what is best for you is to grow this a bit more, get some proper biz metrics in place (churn, growth, revenue per user ...), experiment a bit with which marketing tools will work best for you and start a fire. When you have this fire started (i.e. you know, backed by data, what works and what doesn't), then YOU MAY buy some gasoline (i.e. ask for cash). Don't do it before. Always keep this in mind that I read in some book: "A FOOL AND HIS/HER EQUITY ARE SOON DEPARTED" Pere

It really all depends on the value of the website and your service that people are signing up for. The higher quality your service offering, the higher quality leads you need in my opinion. Also, most websites make members verify with a valid email address, so it is very common. I like the idea of lower signups, but higher quality. However, don't think of it as higher quality. Think of it as more highly qualified and targeted leads. Bottom line: I would go with less "higher quality" signups. Bruce

I think the best place to start is your startup's net worth which includes all assets, the salaries of your staff, and total sales. Say for instance, your business' net worth is $300,000. That's a good middle ground starting point, but your price to this other company can rise or drop from there. The next step would be to study your competitors and see if you can estimate their approximate net worth. If you can research about 3 to 5 companies in your competition and space, take the average, so the average could be $450,000 for instance. Next, have several meetings with this company and see how bad they really want you and how far they are willing to go to acquire you. When I say several meetings, you need to really see what they are willing to pay and compare it to your net worth and average net worth of your competitors. You may be able to go higher from there and let this company negotiate your price down. Be prepared to show them the average net worth of your competition and yours, but only show them the higher figure so they can negotiate your price down. Have an absolute lowest price that you are willing to go to sell. Good luck. Bruce

You seem to have a broad market focus. Narrow down your initial most suceptible group & early adopters. Once you have a target market, you can develop a series of objectives measures in days and social platforms for your 1 or 2 initial target markets. Once you have a series of objectives(goals) you can begin constructing a plan that helps you stay on track and even if you second guess it should serve as a reminder that there is a strategy in place and even if you pivot a bit all marketing efforts drive towards that next up objective. Once the steps are laid out, in laymen form such as pen and paper construct a series of possible content shares, imagery, captions, etc and develop a congruent messaging across all of your efforts. All leading towards 1 or 2 basic sign up forms or YouTube videos... Etc. always capturing email and name for access to continue to desired link or content pdf etc. don't be admiment about signing up for the $200, an email is an email so even if is an email given for access to information or future updates or tips you can still use that to nurture long term conversion. A consultant like myself can help you achieve this. Even if you get 10k sign ups averages state that you won't get more than 1k actual valuable users at best. There is a lot of work that needs to put into place, otherwise there wouldn't be questions like yours and consultants like me. But with a good strategy in place you do definitely increase your exposure and growth rate even if you don't reach your goals, because is about creating value no masses of uninterested leads.

This is a great question. I personally use Apple TV. And only use about 1:8 of their apps. I'm curious about your work. Please provide me with info ;)

I personally have had success with the Google Keyword Finder. This is part of the Google Adwords program for estimating keyword traffic and since Google has statistics on everyone's surfing and search habits, this is your best bet. My advice to you is that before you try estimating server traffic for your marketplace, select 5 to 10 short and long tail keywords that you want to target and then use Google's Keyword Finder to look at the search traffic. I hope this helps. Bruce

You're facing an uphill battle. Angels and Seed Funds see a new app every hour of the day. Same goes for incubators and accelerators. No one will invest cold because there is no way to protect it. There's nothing patentable. You'll have to show rapid user adoption. If you can hit 10-20k users within a few months after launch, you might have a chance. Even then, it will be tough because so many that have a quick adoption rate see their monthly user rate fall through the floor. You'll also need to live in a major hub - San Fran, Austin, NY or Boston. If you still want to pursue your idea, start small and test each feature before investing a significant amount of money. Research the Agile method of software development and follow it. If you want to talk, I'd be happy to talk you out of pursuing this idea. Ha. Just kidding - sorta.

First, congratulations on going the entrepreneurial route! You have a situation that is very common and one that can cause frustration so you're smart to identify it early. Branding, skills and experience are all external to you. They are the building blocks you use AFTER you've determined the type of business model that would work best for you personally. Here's are the first two steps in how to start: 1. Identify your values. (not strengths - that's external). Values are internal. They are the things that are most important to you. For many entrepreneurs, the values of Freedom, Accomplishment, Creativity, Recognition come to the top of the list. There are no right or wrong answers - only what is important to you. 2. Once you have your values identified, it's important to know your personal style - your way of being in the world. Are you introverted or extroverted? A mixture? (By reading your question I'd say both). Go toward pleasure? Away from pain? Want to help others? Consider these items above or get a personal style test and values test to know quicker. 3. Once you know who YOU are and what drives you, you must build a business model that can serve what you want to achieve in not just business but life. Do you want to be a solo person doing all the work? Run a large company? Somewhere in between? Online or offline or both? Then compare your intended business model to your values and style answers. Now when you ask the "Should I" questions you'll have a blueprint to help you make the right decisions every time. Hope that helps.

This is a prime example of why "stock template" operating agreements are not always the best. They don't always cover every situation and can sometimes lead to confusion. It is best to have specific language on the Operating Agreement that discusses exits, sales, and division of assets. With no other information to go on Scenario one is probably the way a business adviser would interpret the situation. The best action is to consult an contracts lawyer.

Hello, You may want to check out stockbrokers.com. They have enlisted Best International Stock Brokers 2016: http://www.stockbrokers.com/reviews/internationaltrading Hope this helps :) Regards Imran

Hello, This is a great question. Would your focus be for a specific country or region? I'm assuming this question is for online business only? Regards Imran

Hi, Apple cleary states the guidelines on what you can and what you can't sell on appStore from this guide: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StoreKitGuide/Chapters/Products.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008267-CH2-SW2 IAPP basically applies to content or services WITHIN your app, say you want to enable content, like on games, or what to enable services to access some data within your app. For the sample apps you gave, they dont need to have IAP within the app since they are offering a complete system which includes Admin and backend portal. The app is just a client that the system will use. You control transactions within the back end. Either you can bill customers based on trasactions made on the app, or based on subscriptions. In app purchase is good if you are developing iOS ONLY app, and dont want your users to log or use in any other systems, but if your developing a complete system where users will log on their admin account, see reports, pay bills, and most specially, if you want to own 100% (apple gets 30% for every earning you get on IAP) of your earning from your transaction, you can avoid using IAP. For your second question, the reason is that, this app is published using an Enterprise account. If you are a company, you can signup for an Enterprise account instead of the normal developer account. What differs from an enterprise account is that you dont need to published it on iTunes and hence does not follow the normal app review process from apple. That means, you can develop any features you want without violating any guidelines that apple have set in publishing your application. Enterprise account is suited for company and organizations who have their own set of policies. Donwloading an app from an enterprise account needs users to trust on the settings, thus downloading from an unknown source is risky. Hope the information above helps. If you have any more follow up quetions or any queries regarding your iOS app development, you can always book a call and I will attend to it dligently. Warmest Regards, Francisco

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