Based on Radio and TV ads in the US, anything about flipping houses, weight loss, making money the easy way. Watch late night TV where you are and see what is selling on Infomercials, trust me if they are selling it as an infomercial, there is probably profit in what they are trying to sell.

SaaS is the way everyone seems to be going these days, as it is a huge revenue producer for software vendors. Why make $50 once when you can instead milk someone for $10/month for life? As a holder of multiple desktop licenses for products like Quickbooks, Photoshop, etc I can say that I HATE when I am forced to go to a subscription-based model unless it comes with some very good perks. Quickbooks is using pretty brutal tactics to get everyone to switch, including disabling real-time sync with bank accounts, etc. For this reason I will probably switch to a different software vendor in the very near future. If you do decide to go to an SaaS model, make sure that you give the users a very good reason to switch and ideally give them a choice, don't force it on them. Free upgrades are petty much a given, or else what are they paying for?

Hi I have worked on executive compensation in multiple companies and I am presenting information based on my recent work in this area. COO salaries in the US will range from USD 105K to USD 268K depending upon experience, location & skills being hired. This will include base pay + 401(k) benefits + Performance incentive/bonus. If you are offering equity then thats an excellent negotiation tool. You would have to first decide what compensation positioning you want to take or have already taken wrt your existing talent at developer level. This can determine a pay range - then look at your budget & discuss with your recruitment partner if you can identify talent at that cost. Keep a range say from 75% to 90% of the compensation ratio as your target cost for a role like COO. Take a look at tools like Robert Half - rht.com. I am happy to help you with the details in case you want to do a more detailed analysis/study.

Strikingly.com is pretty good. Wix is also good. Squarespace also good.

Definitely a C-Corp in Delaware. You can use the SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity). That's a better version of the convertible note, made by Paul Graham from Y Combinator. You can find it on his personal website. You should buy the best seller book THE ART OF STARTUP FUNDRAISING by Alejandro Cremades. You can find it on Amazon.

You are going to need to find a Shopify developer to build this functionality for you, as something like that is definitely not built-in or available as an app. https://www.shopify.com/developers https://experts.shopify.com/developers

I would run a test with Search Ads in Google Adwords, Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads to see which one perform the best. That would be my short term! Then, Content Marketing (Blog), Social Media, Email Marketing and some Display Advertizing. I've worked with 2 companies like yours and these channels worked for them! I usually work on a weekly meeting (1 hour) basis and it usually takes between 2 and 3 months to have an integrated digital strategy up and running!

I would rather work 80 hours per week on a project I was passionate about than 40 hours a week on a project I didn't care about. You're right, there is no "right answer". You have to know what will get you out of bed each morning and excited to tackle new problems and challenges.

If you have international customers who speak other languages, response is lower when you speak to them in English. Solutions like Trustpilot handle that. Have implemented them plus some other methods for international customers in various countries, would be good to know a bit more about your specific requirements and share some tips on a phone call.

Depending on the advertising platform and your budget, you can run multiple highly targeted campaigns at the same time. The more targeted your campaigns the more profitable they will be. For example, Campaign A can target only those in US, while Campaign B, can targeted only those in Australia. Each campaign has its own messaging, landing pages and specific ad copy to that region. Campaign A and B can both run at the same time as long as you have the advertising budget to so, if you do not then I recommend choosing your most profitable country first.

First things first. I must appreciate that the website has good content. You should ask yourself the purpose of creating this website. Information is now available all over the place. Right from individual portals to the Feedly, Mashable, Newsify and Pockets of the world. How do you want to differentiate yourself? What do you think is your strength? What has worked for you or your company in the last 3 quarters? Many answers lies in the purpose of the company, which only you can answer. Do you know who the target segment is? If your TG is young startups, offer them content that addresses their initial / teething problems. If your TG is startups in Growth phase, help them with content on building operational efficiencies, right hiring, employee retention, customer delight, building organisation culture, how to get the next funding, etc. The world is moving from Content to Context. We are worried with Information Overload. So, help them to find relevant content at ease. Any amount of information is of no use if they don't relate to it. It becomes another news paper, which is anyways a crowded market. My intent is not to give you a solution, because the right answer lies within you. My idea is to help bring that out for you. Hope this will be of some help to you. Regards, Shiv.

In my opinion your cannot make something "go viral" organically. It is something that happens naturally and with a great marketing campaign. There are more than 1.5 million apps on iTunes and the chances of your getting found are minimal. You need to create a marketing campaign that uses paid traffic from Facebook to spread brand awareness and increase app downloads. I would like to ask how your Facebook page has 24,000 likes, but your app only has 300 downloads? If did not pay for this "likes" then there is a way where you can turn those fans into app downloads.

This is a little hard to answer because it is so vague. It depends on the area, the market and the strength of innovation. I know that The App Guy has a terrific podcast at http://www.theappguy.co/ and is also trying to organize a community for App developers to sell their ideas. Let me know if I can be of further assistance to discuss patentability in terms of its value to getting a sale or license. What ever you do, don't spend money filing a full patent, just a provisional. Good luck.

If you have a marketing budget (even $5/day will elicit much more response than you'd expect), there's tremendous untapped opportunity for your niche. Based on the description in your question, I think Facebook advertising would be smart, targeted and provide the best ROI. Why? 1. It's simply the most cost-effective way to engage an audience in a specific niche like you're targeting. 2. It works great for B2C and B2B. 3. Unlike Google AdWords and other PPC options out there, Facebook makes it much easier for entrepreneurs and business owners to get started and manage campaigns. 4. Facebook is growing exponentially in terms of user engagement and activity on the platform. Your target customers are likely on Facebook and it's going to get more expensive to reach them as demand increases. I'd recommend going to https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/ to get the basic knowledge you need to test a campaign. There are literally hundreds of other resources online that go into more detail on creating your business page, choosing audience and objectives, ad layout and other useful tips. Hope this helps provide some direction :)

Regardless of your industry or product, we all want to increase the amount of traffic to our website. Right? After all, more visitors usually means more sales. The easiest way to increase website visitors is to pay-to-play. You can buy ads on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter to send more targeted traffic. You can also pay Google to appear in the search results more often. Here are some ways to increase the number of visitors to your website which don’t require a huge budget. 1. Business Listings Sites like Foursquare, Google, Yelp, and Yellow Pages are great for driving more people to your website. Several years ago, HubSpot published a list of 50 local business directories to submit your business listing to. Check it out. These links will not help you for SEO purposes, since many of the actual hyperlinks are ‘no-follow’, but they still generate a great amount of human traffic (let’s not forget, humans click on links, too) 2. Create a Slideshare Slideshare, a service now owned by LinkedIn, is a like a traffic firehose. The service allows you to upload presentations (think about that PowerPoint presentation that you made last quarter for the talk you gave at the local Chamber). Visual marketing and corporate storytelling are huge this year (and will be for the next several years), having engaging slide decks on SlideShare will drive your targeted audience back to your website and increase your reach. If you need some inspiration, here are some examples of great PowerPoint or Slideshare designs. 3. Video There is a huge demand for video content right now. In fact, video posts generally out-perform text and image-based updates on Facebook. Moreover, most modern smartphones are packing a high-quality video camera anyway. Use your smartphone to record a series of videos answering common questions your customers have. Upload to your blog, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, SnapChat and Facebook (side note: upload the video directly to Facebook, it will get more reach than simply sharing a link to the video from another service). 4. Guest Blogging Guest blogging is writing content for another website in your industry. Just like you and your website, other brands are struggling to generate relevant content. Contact the owners of a complementary website and offer to write a high-quality blog post for them. Don’t be overly promotional (respect their audience and their platform). Again, you won’t get a ton of SEO benefit, but you will get exposure to their readers and benefit from that cross-promotion. 5. Interview Other Experts Chances are, you know other folks in your industry with an expertise or specialty. Interview them and post the transcript on your website. 6. Blog On Your Own Site Blogging — that is, regularly publishing high-quality content — on your own website is absolutely, without-reservation the best way to attract visitors to your website. Blogging works because search engines are always looking for the best possible content for their customers — the searchers. Search engines love fresh content that is relevant to a specific topic. By publishing this on your site, you are signaling to the search engines that you are an authority on that particular topic. 7. Evaluate Your Message Visitors are always asking WIIFM: “What’s In It For Me?” If you have some traffic coming to your website, but are not converting them into known leads (growing your email list, for example), then it is likely that you are not “speaking their language” and providing a clear unique proposition for them. Be very intentional about your language — and use words, terms, and phrases that your ideal audience will connect with. 8. Experiment with Pay-Per-Click Facebook and Google offer incredible pay-per-click programs. You can set a either a daily budget or a campaign budget and your ads will be shown to your selected audience. For as little as $5 per day, you can see how your message resonates with your intended audience and adjust accordingly. I usually see website traffic increase almost instantly when running pay-per-click ads. 9. Social Media Social media is a great “outpost” for your brand. It should be used for listening to the needs and frustrations of your ideal customers — not for self-promotion (there is a place for that, but that is in another article). Focus first on developing a relationship with your followers, ask questions, answer their questions, be helpful, and always be looking for ways to make their lives easier. 10. Website Analytics Install a free analytics tool like Google Analytics to start tracking where your existing visitors are coming from, what content is most popular, and how visitors are interacting with your site. This will give you key insights on what your audience is craving — publish more of that. Bonus: Make Several Pieces of Content from One Idea Don’t fall into the trap of using your content only once! Members of your audience consume content in different ways, from video to podcasts and infographics to text, be creative by re-purposing your content. For example: If you interview a partner within your industry, host the interview on Skype or Google Hangouts and record the video and audio. Pull out key quotes from the interview and schedule them as Tweets with a link back to the edited transcript on your blog. Hire a graphic designer to apply those quotes to an non-stock photo and share on Instagram or Facebook. You can also use a service like Canva. Next, save just the audio of the interview and make it available for offline listening. If the interview is especially long, break it into multiple parts and publish them over time. Assuming you publish 1-2 blog posts per week, this will give you content for your blog for 2 weeks. Recap: As you can see, it is entirely possible to generate 10-20 pieces of content from just one interview: 6-10 Tweets of quotes from the interview 6-10 images with text to publish on Instagram or Facebook 1-2 part video segments 1-2 blog posts with a text version of the interview 1 downloadable audio file for offline listening 1 Slideshare presentation recapping the interview Conclusion While the technical aspects of search engine optimization have changed over the years, the principles have not. If you continually optimize for your human visitors and establish yourself as a knowledgable authority in your field, you will see an increase in website traffic. Remember, Rome was not built in a day. Neither will your online empire; but with any combination of these tips, you will attract more traffic to your website.

You should have a proof metric - market traction, market proof, proof that they are not wasting their time on your site with half-baked ideas. You should also have some way to show that there has investigation and transparency into the crowdfunders. Try a group with vetting services like http://clearbusinessdirectory.com/vetting-services/ Lastly, you should have clear focused categories that are not overrun with misfits. Investors may want to focus only on a particular area of interest. Make that clear.

First off, always good to see more and more tech companies in Europe. Berlin is producing a lot of great startups. Your geo-location isn't nearly as relevant as: - Your stage (Seed round) - Age (1 year?) - Pre-revenue or post (post) - Business model (B2B SaaS) - Vertical (Hardware) While plenty of VC firms will deal specifically within their own or select territories, it's more common that they have focused on the stage of the company or the business model. You'll need an effective deck and an outreach plan. Assuming that's in place, VCs are easy to find and at minimum a junior will be happy to receive your slide deck. Use Angel, Pitchbook, Crunchbase, DealStream and similar to sort based on the criteria mentioned here. Find multiple contacts at those firms via LI if needed. You can use platforms like Crunchbase to better identify which VCs are investing for your target investment level, or in your industry and use that as a filter to short-list. SaaS is, of course hot. More so B2C but certainly B2B has very strong interest and high activity levels. It won't take much effort to find yourself in "interesting" dialogue. More important than who to contact and gaining their interest though, is ensuring you walk away with a good deal. You're not dealing with amateurs. And their proposed term sheets won't be generous in your favor to say the least. Get yourself an accountant with M&A experience or a third-party VC on retainer for the advisory.

I think it would be vital to the company's survival that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. If there's grey area, I've found that work tends to gravitate toward the more motivated party, and the social/power structure gets weird. I started a company with four founders, and we didn't define roles. What ended up happening is one person didn't do anything that wasn't interesting to them, one person would start a bunch of tasks and leave them half-finished for someone else to handle, and one person was only capable of handling process-based work, which left the fourth person (me) to handle everything else (and write the processes). It bred resentment and made it very difficult to adjust roles going forward, because it had been established that I could do everything and therefore I became the final point of responsibility, even if we'd defined new roles later. Our only way out was to sell the company. In later companies, I laid out responsibilities clearly and made sure each founder had ultimate responsibility and autonomy around their tasks. This has worked out FAR better in every case. I've built a framework that I use for defining and divvying up tasks, and it's made a huge difference. I've had my coaching clients use it as well to similar results. If you need a fresh set of eyes on it, or if you'd like to bounce ideas, I'd be happy to talk. Drop me a request and we'll talk. Good luck!

If you're talking in terms of service-based work (freelancing, consulting, etc.), then ALL of sales should be based around the value you're creating for the client. If I build a new marketing funnel for a client and they see an extra 100 leads per month — assuming their standard conversion rate for new leads of 5% and an average lifetime value of $6,000 per new customer — I've just created a pipeline that will feed this company $30,000/month of new revenue in perpetuity. Even if that work seems easy for me, I need to be charging on the value I create. I've coached many freelancers who struggle with the idea of charging for their work, and it's always because they're framing it on hours or difficulty rather than value. But if you sell on created value, your fees are essentially an afterthought: the client knows what they stand to gain, and paying you 20% of their first few months' revenue is a steal in their minds. If you'd like to talk specific strategies for sales, I'm happy to share what's worked for me. Drop me a line. Good luck!

Yes. They should be responsibile for identifying opportunities to expand the company's products or services as well as being responsible for identifying any risks to current products or services and identifying ways to capitalise on the things that already are making the company money. They should work closely with the company's product director, financial director and marketing directors. In addition to working with the directors of these departments, they should essentially be an ear to the ground across all departments, identifying trends from internal feedback and observations.

One idea that's worked well for my clients has been to create a Skunk Works, which is effectively an autonomous, outside-the-bureaucracy, kinda-sorta-secret R&D team. I've been on these teams before, and if they're truly left alone with a pile of ideas and resources, they can accomplish incredible things. (This is how Lockheed Martin developed some of its most incredible tech, and how Google takes its "moon shots".) But it will be a challenge to management, because they'll have to stay out of it after the initial specs are delivered. If you can get buy-in, though, you'll bring back startup-level development speeds to your organization. I'd be happy to discuss some of the processes I've followed and the structure of the teams I've been part of — just drop me a line. Good luck!

The route I'd take is to start researching conferences that you'd like to speak at. Find out where and when they occur. Look for a "call for proposals" — lots of conferences ask speakers to submit talk ideas. Find out who runs them. See if you have any mutual friends. If not, see if you can find a way to be helpful to them (without asking for anything in return). Building good will has paid me back many, MANY times over as a speaker. Look for local meetups. Maybe organize your own. Start to get experience as a speaker and build a reputation. It starts slow, but things ramp up quickly once momentum picks up. I used this approach to build my own speaking career. I'd be happy to share my strategy and story with you if you're interested. Good luck!

If it is really only two way country transfer (or one receiving country and several country stacks sending money there) it would be best to build your own custom solution. Basically a simple SW to allow for receive electronic transfer money in some region (one for EU, one for US, one for Australia for example) together with API linked bank accounts and one payout in target country. Of course you might have to do some KYC/AML/PEP checks but there are API avaliable services to do that for you. Depending on how you want to build it, it should not cost you more then 75k USD total. Ask around for good SW houses in your area or call me and I can help you put it up together.

Most people are lazy. They won't do anything other than daydream about becoming your competition. Next point: if the barrier to entry to your marketplace is low, then it's all about selling. Rather than focusing on features or what you do ("We make websites"; who cares?), start talking about serious problems your solution fixes for your customers. Things like: > reduced waste/rework > minimized project times > lowered interpersonal struggles > shrunk sales cycle > sped-up time to profitability on new products. When you concentrate on these ideas, you differentiate yourself and move out of being a commodity provider.

First off, you have to find out who would be willing to pay for this. All the information you describe here is already out there online, if you have the knowledge and the time to research it. In my view, your segments should be found with people, who are too busy to build a schedule themselves, or don't know where to go and need inspiration on that. But is there a business case in building an audience, that would pay for that service? Traditionally travel agents get commissions from airlines and hotels, that they book with - would private customers be willing to pay for you? "Off-line-travel-agents" already exist. I could see a business case for an "online-travel-agent", if you would make the bookings also. But that comes with a different responsibility as you would be closer to working as an actual tour operator, and handle when hotels have overbookes, flights cancelled, etc. What you could consider doing could be building your own niche - trips to Spain, Greece, California, Northern Thailand, South Africa, whereever - and you become THE expert on that area. You would know everything - all sites, attractive accomodation, flights, means of transport, dangers and annoyances - and you build an online universe around that, but also do the bookings. Then you would get commissions from the different operators you would work with and be the source of knowledge about that. Good luck with your business idea! If you would like to discuss this further, let's set up a call. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup