I've been in a very similar situation as yourself. In our case the company split into two for better operational flow. I was the CEO of one company and was trying to figure out how to structure the other one. Unfortunately, the answer to many of your questions depends on further details. But I'll give some general feedback: 1. Depends on how much time you actual put into this new company. You sound like a CEO role but having a CEO that only spends 10hrs in the company a week would make the company look weak. You can start out as CEO and change roles later. 2. What's your exit strategy? If you plan on exiting soon, then you shouldn't; you'll make money when the company exits. But if it's more of a long-term play, then perhaps you should setup a dividend structure. I don't think it's good for company culture when someone takes a salary for not doing work. 3. Depends on growth but usually early founders become a board member. Depending on the company, they can meet as frequently as once a month, but typically a quarterly meeting is more likely. 4. This is a complex question which requires much more info. 5. This is tied in with #4.

I have worked on projects handling transfer of large image files across multiple vendors and being served on web for different targets (mobile, web etc.). I have also implemented cloud and DevOps solutions for high volume/scale of data and transactions. While I could tell you a list of technologies which can be used - the problem here is more of design and architecture. So I will start with that. Also a lot of decisions are based on more information and the use case - so I will need information on certain aspects of your application. 1) For searching an image users will enter search terms. You will have to associate the search terms/tags to actual images. While there are multiple ways to do this association - what is the link between a search term and image in your case. Do you have a separate database/service which will link given search terms to given set of images? 2) Since you are talking about handling millions of images - they will need to be partitioned logically or bucketized for optimum way to store and search. Is there a natural distribution? Do your users access all the images all over the world? 3) For any data storage related to images - we will need to go one detail further. While relational DB might serve a lot of needs, there might be use cases where considering other storages will be needed. Some questions which will lead to answers are - what kind of data per image will be stored? How frequently this data might change? How many new additions will happen on this archive? How fast would you want the updates to be visible to users/consumers? 4) What kind of traffic do you expect roughly? This will decide a lot design around auto scaling, load balancing and other aspects. 5) I am not a front end expert - but similar principles of scaling would apply to front end stack. Though I can not necessarily answer what technologies might fit your needs best.

I believe the only way to do that would be to get the download into Amazon for digital download. Otherwise, people have to email it to their kindle accounts.

Have great conversations with qualified prospects. That's the simple answer. Do this enough times and you WILL get a client. Now the hard part: How do you get great conversations with qualified prospects? 1. Find a group of people who have a serious problem *they acknowledge they have* (that's critical; it can't just be you alone saying they have it) that you can fix. 2. Get in front of them and explain their situation better than anyone else. Show them you understand where they're at. 3. Ask if they want the problem solved (this is also called "asking for the order," and it's something newbies are terrified to do.) 4. Solve the problem competently. 5. Get referrals. I have sales training programs and also coach executives on selling. If you'd like to find out more, please get in touch.

I love this question! Gets my creative mind flowing early morning. Here a few from top of my head: -Heart2Heart -Tete (tete a tete reflects a deep personal conversation between 2 people) -InterCo (for interaction & communcation) -InAccord (self explanatory) -tootalk -chatspot -lucidity (play on clarifty) Even if you don't like them, I kind of like some of these. Please feel free to google me, if you feel i can be of any help let me know. I'm one of Arizona's best commercial strategists.

Never. However look to enhance any customer reviews that embrace such differences. Revolve your campaign around 1 or 2 particular reviews or customer reflections. Read about blue ocean, ignore your competition (they will confuse you and kill your focus - do you think they are studying you? hell no!) Don't give them that validation. My name is Humberto Valle, an actual commercial strategist and consultant with clients and projects around the world. I am also one of Arizona's best marketing strategists. That's where I reside. Feel free to google me, if there is anything I can help you with let me know ;)

I've done this on a small scale for my product, but it worked nicely, and I learned some useful techniques. I'd be happy to talk with you about the process, and also answer any other startup questions you might have. Best of luck, Lee

When we did this for our own company we implemented in house, but we were at a high level of execution and resources (<100 employees). If you are small I'd recommend http://www.referralcandy.com/. It's a very simple system that you can implement and the payment tiers let you get it fairly "invisible" if you so desire.

Where? The world is a big place. Short answer, conferences are not that useful unless you are on a panel/speaking etc. Recommend you focus on building grass roots. Conferences can be a part of it, but how you do conferences matters, otherwise is an expensive use of cash.

What is the quality of that $140 per lead? Does that lead into a $1000 sale? We often think that a lead that costs $100+ or more is an expensive Cost per lead, but if it brings high quality leads that turns into a significant profit, I'll be happy to spend more $140 to get more of these types of leads. The next is to find optimize your working lead generation channel based on specific segments (is this segment get a better ROI).

The best way to build an MVP is to distill the solution to the smaller unit of value to deliver something to a customer. Start small, time box it and focus on solving the problem at it's core even if it's ghetto (I call the best MVP's ghetto but useful). Here's an image that represents my thinking on this https://twitter.com/danmartell/status/516316632126586883

No reason whatsoever. Sacrificing all of your time (consequently trading that in for your health) is a very dangerous and unsustainable approach. I've seen many entrepreneurs burn out quickly because of this. When I'm coaching other entrepreneurs, I always encourage putting yourself first (food, exercise, leisure) to be at your 110% for your startup and family.

The best way to get leads for a B2B solution is to do prospecting research online. What should you look for? Very depends on your type and stage of business. Assuming you are completely new here are some questions that would get you started: 1) What problem are the business you are looking for having or what goal do they have? 2) Do they have a burning need to solve it? 3) How does what you offer help them solve their problem or their goal? 4) What stage of business are they in? What industry? What size? And that is just for starters. Best approach for online research from there on out depends on your answers to the above. Once you have them, set up a call and I can help you further.

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There will be a lot of learning and adapting, but it should happen in a staged approach; much of it before actually 'launching'. Launching generally means exposing your full product/site/whatever to the entire general public. Before doing that you should do smaller scare, more targeted testing. Before launching, but after you have a prototype / MVP, you need to gather data on whether people want to pay for it. There are many ways to do this before a full launch. The methods vary depending on the type of product. Without further description of your product I can't help you further in terms of those methods. Send me a message if you'd like to discuss it further, best of luck, Lee

The previous answers given here are great, but I've copied a trick from legendary investor Monish Pabrai that I've used in previous startups that seems to work wonders -- especially if your company does direct B2B sales. Many Founders/ CEOs are hung up on having the Founder/ CEO/ President title. As others have mentioned, those titles have become somewhat devalued in today's world -- especially if you are in a sales meeting with a large organization. Many purchasing agents at large organizations are bombarded by Founders/ CEOs/ Presidents visiting them all day. This conveys the image that a) your company is relatively small (the CEO of GM never personally sells you a car) and b) you are probably the most knowledgeable person in the organization about your product, but once you land the account the client company will mostly be dealing with newly hired second level staff. Monish recommends that Founder/ CEOs hand out a business card that has the title "Head of Sales" or "VP of Sales". By working in the Head of Sales role, and by your ability to speak knowledgeably about the product, you will convey the message that a) every person in the organization is very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the product (even the sales guys) and b) you will personally be available to answer the client's questions over the long run. I've used this effectively many times myself.

Quite a broad question. Agencies and publicists that are experienced have learnt many things over the years, which will all play part of best practice. As a staring point, would suggest you think about the following: - Ensure your pitch is concise and to the point. Lead with what is most newsworthy to readers of the publication you are targeting - Be harsh. Consider if what you are sending them really news? - Rearsearch the journalist and tailor pitch to reference articles they have written or areas they have an interest in - Go to the right person. Don't sent an irrelevant story to the journalist. Make sure they actually write about what you are sending them - Be prepared. Have facts and information ready - Use the phone. Imagine how many emails they get each day! You're far better pitching on the phone, and talking over the news and then following up with tailored into based on their feedback If you get the approach wrong then your pitch is going to be sent to the junk folder and you simply won't get a reply or answer. Hope that's not too blunt! Hope it helps. Thanks.

Never launch before your value prop is clear. If your product is new and innovative you must pair it with affordability. If you have that even a buggy incomplete value prop will be preordered and otherwise welcomed. If your value prop is unclear you won't be able to efficiently edit and then re introduce much less price appropriately. Futuristic/new services often get priced out of the customers minds because it seems expensive or not really that useful. You avoid this by following my suggestion. #unthink

Really depends on the content and what you mean by content. You talking video, images, press releases? Need a bit more info to help with this one.

You really have to think about the objective. Why do you want to do it? Assume it is to drive traffic? Best way, is to focus on creating content that people want to read and share, then pushing out with paid support via social platforms, influencers and partners.

It depends on many factors. Are they willing to do it as a convertible note? If you're early stage the debt will be a burden if you don't have revenues in short order to repay it. 20% is extremely high and if you can't repay in revenues it could bankrupt you. Investors outside the U.S. Are not weird at all, in fact often very smart investors. But you have to get to know them first. In sum: how badly do you need the capital and do you think you can repay before it's due? If not you'll need to set repayment terms in case you don't hit your revenues. Just don't get stuck working to repay debt.

It sounds like you already have an MVP, awesome. Now you need some evidence that people want to pay for it. Make a landing page from your MVP which shows visitors its main exciting features. Have a link called 'Learn More', which leads to a form asking for user info (name, email, etc.). To make it even more attractive, you could tell them their first month's free, or 75% off when they 'sign up'. Data from this will give you a form of validation that will be useful for investors, it will give you a list of first clients, and it will give you some training in how to get the site into search results. Once you've got this, or some other form of evidence that it will work, start talking with investors. You should start by 'pitching' to just friends first. They don't have to be potential investors, it's just to get feedback. Then pitch it to strangers (maybe your neighbor, people from relevant Meetup groups, whatever), then to investors you're closest to (maybe you're connected to some on linkedin?), then to investors you don't know, etc. At each of these stages you'll be getting more and more confident about how to effectively promote your product, you'll be working out bugs, and you'll be perfecting your pitch to get the most interest. By doing it in steps you're not putting all your eggs in one basket, and you'll instead be increasing your chance of getting investment as your approach bigger and bigger investors. Some seed stage funds include First Round, Freestyle, Boldstart, Homebrew, etc. Send me a message for a more thorough list. To save time, find investors with portfolios that do not include any failed products similar to yours. Otherwise you'll be wasting time, and it's actually important to do all your fundraising in as short a time period as possible (it looks bad if it's drawn out too much). Also to save time, get in contact with the Partners at these funds. You can try going through companies that they've previously invested in. Best of luck, and let me know if you have any other questions, Lee

Hi, I've worked for years in business to business sales and consulting. You need to find out who works or makes decisions in a company in the area that your potential product could be useful, ie customer service. LinkedIn could be useful for this. Call them on the telephone. Don't e-mail. Open the conversation by asking for help, 'Hi, I'm wondering if you could help me find the person who would be responsible for customer service? I'm looking to get feedback on an innovative new idea I'm considering developing that may be useful to your company.' The most important thing you could ask them during the call is whether they've ever identified the problem that you're proposing to solve as an issue themselves. If they've never noticed, or don't care, then your new product will have a more challenging sales cycle since you'll have to do a lot of education. If they already know they have a problem, you'll need to act quickly because they may be already looking for a solution. Best of luck. David Barnett

Hi, I've spent years working in business to business sales and essentially, you're trying to sell these professionals on the idea of working with you. I also have a large referral network and I've systematized it such that its easy for me to manage rewards back to those who send me business. First off, what's in it for them? Are these professionals allowed to earn commissions or rewards from you in your location? Find out. If you can offer a referral fee to them for sending you business this can be nice. In my system I give people a choice of how they want to be thanked and its really appreciated. Secondly, is there any way their professional reputation could be damaged by sending people to you? Do you project the image and deliver the service that they believe complements their own? Thirdly, how easy are you to work with? Will referring a patient to you require them to pick up the phone? Send an e-mail or manage the contact in any way? The less work the better. In my system, referring professionals just fill in a simple web form and I then contact the client and take care of everything from there. I hope this helps. Arrange a call with me if you'd like to discuss specific details, I'd be happy to work with you to set up a system that works for you and is also easy to sell to the professionals you're trying to work with. Thanks David Barnett

Sometimes what happens, socially with older blogs is that they get picked up by a media writer, think Yahoo columns. They'll credit you and link back but won't even ask you. Maybe someone found it and posted on Reddit or tumblr. Because you have a picture of Gandhi and the title itself is kind of catchy, I wouldn't be surprised someone else shared it on Reddit or even tumblr where the reposts are SO easy, even if they don't get read people repost for someone else... If you have Googles Blogger you should be able to trace it down. Maybe conduct a G search based on date with that title... Unless you have analytics it would be hard to trace exactly. Maybe there is a software not even I am aware of. The question I would ask myself is instead is: Why did people share it. For that you don't have to trace so back. And the answers you get are way more valuable than you finding out who shared it first. #Unthink