I've been helping companies market to Spanish speakers for over 5 years. As with most questions that stretch across borders and cultures, the answer is, "it depends". Here are some of the factors at play: 1) US Hispanics are over 80% of Mexican descent, meaning that as a general practice, your marketing can be similar 2) But their situations are very different. In the US (according to census data), Hispanics trend lower income. But for products that have a US price point, you are going to have to appeal to wealthier Mexicans (for example). 3) Depending on your product/service, you may have to adapt pricing/messaging to fit cultural norms, or what people can afford. 4) Other issues: if you are a content company that sells advertising, you may want to EXCLUDE people from LATAM, as many advertisers are only trying to sell in the US. Obviously to give good advice I would need more context. Feel free to set up a call with me (I donate all proceeds to charity), and I'll be glad to talk through this with you.

Unless you need to be incorporated to complete trial sales, market fit testing...don't do it. Wait until you can afford the couple thousand dollars it will cost you and or until you get an investor if you will go for one. a C corporation is most likely your best bet. Fairly is all on perspective. The original ideator shouldn't leverage that fact to get more. Equity should be based on time involved, possibility of the individual leaving, value added in the long term picture... once you get employees how critical will this position be? how critical is that value now? Whatever way you split, leave about 10-30% open for future partners or investors or negotiations of any kind.

Best to talk with your Tax Preparer about this. I suggest H&R Block Executive Tax Services. They're highly competent. If you're a US Citizen you're taxed on 100% of your global income anyway. If you haven't been paying tax on 100% of your income, your best action is to immediately work with your Tax Preparer + file tax amendments for last three years, declaring your income + paying back taxes + penalties incurred. If more than three years apply, then ask your Tax Preparer how to handle this. Rule of thumb: Trying to evade taxes is a serious matter these days. If amounts are large enough, you can fall under RICO (money laundering laws). You don't want this. Start as a Sole Proprietorship + talk with your Tax Preparer about your specific situation to determine if another entity might be useful (Corporation). If you're making a truck load of cash, read up on Transfer Pricing + consider having your income for this enterprise flow into an IDC in a non-US jurisdiction.

Hi there, Your best bet would be to look for a pre-made source code and just edit out what you want to add in/remove. From my experience it is far easier doing this than paying a developer to make one from scratch -- if you're on a low budget. Also as far as I am concerned there is not a single CMS which has a native IOS app specifically for what you want to do, however I could be wrong. Check out markets such as Chupamobile and CodeCanyon and see if they offer anything that you are looking for. If you need any help regarding the business plan/monetization, let me know, I am here to help :). Kind regards, Giuliano

The core challenge with all marketplace businesses is that you must develop both sides of the market simultaneously. I've been through this with several of our own brands (Fundable, Clarity) - and while they presented additional unique challenges - the core is brining both the supply and demand side of the market to the table at the same time, with the appropriate ratios to create a thriving commerce environment. I'm happy to talk through our experiences, and those of countless clients who faced similar obstacles in starting their businesses. Kind regards, Ryan

Are you asking about the technical aspects that make this platform function? Or are you asking what successes users have experienced? I am not in a position to address the first one, I don't know the exact pieces that come together to provide the function of the platform (aside from a robust forum and a call scheduling element). I can speak the to success I have seen here. There are a number of experts who 1) recognize that there are users who need help, but may not be able to afford our rate, 2) understand that providing value here will result in an increase in their own business, 3) genuinely like helping others Those of us who have seen success identify with all three points. We want to help people, we understand not everyone can afford our regular consulting rate, and we know that the more we give here - the more likely we are to book business. Personally, Clarity has been one of the Top 3 leading revenue generators for my business in 2015. I am commited to adding more value and advice in 2016 -- for all three of the points I listed above. Truth be told, we are all experts. Some of us have embraced the title and put ourselves out there to further our impact. Anyone reading this has the ability to contribute and share insights that are unknown to others. Happy sharing, -Shaun

ughh this is a big hairy question for many businesses and from past experience consulting, it's going entirely succeed/fail based on your specific business & it's existing operational behavior / employees comfort level in adopting new tools. Integrating across existing software/tools is always the problem here, and is almost what kills every effort in improving one's business systems(sales/biz-dev optimization in your case); There's so many team/project management services online it'd be pointless to list without knowing more about your existing systems & business size/stage with employees. HOWEVER, to end on your point of 'value for the business' as opposed to the bias raw REVENUE creation being attributed to each employee: sounds like you want/need a simplified way of logging events in which are abstract in value but could at the end of say each week/month be reviewed/curated/compiled into understanding metrics/tags/categories for a manager/CEO to review within each department/employee/manager... quantification is what really hurts this as all businesses are complex in their own specific value offer/delivery, so all I can think of to end on is: let each level of management comment/tag/note their own interpretation of the 'quantified or tagged' value be it $10, 10k, or satisified customer, repeat buyer, new bizness market identified, marketing opportunity identified, social media result(hearts, likes, retweets, etc); Hope that helps

depends on the market, so it's IMPOSSIBLE to advise the correct approach/choice in this question. However, I'd lean towards a desktop/web app for anything that is trying to accomplish 'platform' level mechanics.... most noobs will use the term platform and app interchangeably but there is a huge difference: platforms are designed for OTHER COMPANIES/brands/power-users to BUILD FUNCTIONALITY on top of/extend the use for their specific purposes... TWITTER is a platform. "an app to buy/sell stuff in X new way or Y speciality or Z local/geographic market" is just an app that is trying to say it's cool by calling itself a platform because there's type major types of uses & 'transactions' involved.... a CHATROOM is an app... TWITTER is a platform. Hope that helps.

What you are looking for are SAM. Strategic Account Managers. These individuals are more flexible to conversations that Strategic Buyers or any other purchasing department. SAMs are reponsible for maintaining existing relationships with key vendors or buyers so that would be a good start for you. Same thing when you hire, I think you are looking for a SAM :) Merry Christmas

It sounds like you want all your "new customers" to register with their credit card info so that you can verify that it isn't someone just referring themselves via zombie email addresses. That makes sense, otherwise you'd be giving away a lot of rewards for fake referrals. When people send referrals to friends, they aren't doing it to make rent money, they're doing it for a reward that would be nice to have, but isn't essential, and isn't time critical. Because of this, I don't think that people who actually think your product is cool would hesitate from referring friends if they know the reward could take weeks to come. However, you _can_ get the best of both worlds, by also giving _another_type_of_reward_ immediately after each of their friends signs up. We'll call this other reward the "social reward". It would be an email you send saying, "One of your friends just signed up, thanks so much! We'll send you a reward once they start using our services!" That way the referrer would be getting an immediate reward once any friend signs up by A) seeing that they provided their friend with something useful, and B) knowing that their 'real reward' is imminent. Meanwhile, you would also be giving the referrer feedback about how many of their friends signed up. A) If very few of the referrer's friends sign up they can ask them why they didn't, or give reminders. So they'll be doing your work for you. B) Meanwhile, if many of the referrer's friends sign up, it would be a powerful implementation of a psychological concept called "social proof" , which essentially means that the more people like you do something, the more you do it too. So the more of the referrer's friends sign up, the more committed the referrer becomes to your product too. In summary: - Give the big reward after their friend(s) starts actually paying for your services (i.e. delay of possibly weeks). - Also give "social rewards" via email immediately after each of their friends signs up. By doing those two things you'll be getting the best of both worlds + a bunch of other cool side effects. If you want to discuss these, or other options further, feel free to send me a message, all the best, Lee

Thats a very good idea,i think you should talk with the people in charge.if you need any other relationship advice am here.

Camera should be of high contrast..... And lens should be conversing

Here are your options: You can only compete with them If you're able to either: A) Get a programmer: - Either raise necessary funds to hire one full time. See my answer on ("When is the right moment to approach investors?") - Use your own funds to hire a freelancer. See my answer on ("How do I get my game from Prototype to Demo?") - Or convince a developer to join you as a cofounder for equity. See my answers on that topic ("Where do I find a co-founder to join my team?" --And-- "How and or where do I find a stellar Partner/CEO") B) Learn how to program it yourself, and program it yourself - Either have enough time and motivation to learn programming fast enough (could be very difficult, depending on how far along you are, and what you're trying to program) - Or there are several methods you can potentially use (depending on the complexity of the app you need) to make an MVP without programming. For instance MIT App Inventor (http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/), or Marvel App (https://marvelapp.com/) Otherwise: A) Either see if you can join the competition. If you contact them and can convince them that you have something to contribute, they might let you join the team. See my answer on that topic ("How do I approach a business with an idea?") B) Or come up with another idea, and see if you can do steps A or B before someone else starts implementing the same idea Send me a message if you want to discuss any of these, or other options in more depth. In any case, I wish you the best of luck, Lee

I personally prefer the second two. That being said, given ghat 25% of your leads come through your website you may want to test each variation to make sure your users respond well to the new design. You should also check how much traffic you're receiving from search engines and prepare for a drop in traffic after launch. If January is a busy season for your business, it might not be the best time for a full redesign. Will these new designs be responsive? I would make sure your new site is mobile friendly.

Depending on how many simultaneous users you want the application to be able to serve at any given time (peak), and how much processing your application does when uploading and downloading files (as well as other typically used operations), your hosting specification requirements may vary. But, to offer some basic guidance, you could probably get started with about 3 Virtual Machines (2 for load balancing serving the web application itself, and one running the database). I'd get them with around 4GB ram and 2 CPU cores each. These run at around $40/month each on Digital Ocean. You could also use AWS, SoftLayer, Heroku, and others, each with their own pros and cons. For example, if you use AWS you could (depending on which database you're using) leverage RDS for your database which could simplify your scaling and operations. I'd suggest you store the uploaded files on S3, Object Storage, or similar service (as opposite to serving it from the file system which makes it harder to scale). Hope this helps as a quick guidance. As you can see there's lots of options and details to consider. If you'd like to setup a call, I can certainly help you dig deeper into the different options and which ones would work best for your specific needs.

I think you may be using the word "leadership" with a different meaning. You seem like a go-getter and a potential high performer (do more, do it very well, do things beyond what's expected of you), but these are different than a leader (inspire other people, set direction and governance) or a manager (optimize resources use, human or otherwise) A low-risk, good way to grow and stretch your talent, comfort zone and how people perceive you is to take on special projects. Ideally special projects that will lead to new products and new roles down the line, that way if you perform there is a natural transition towards the new role. The reality though is that a company of 25 employees and a culture such as the one you describe may simply not be one where growth opportunities abound.

Yes absolutely. Depending on the needs of your service and database traffic, some chains are better than others to use. Steemit.com is a good example of blockchain, curation, filtering by users, with a built-in economy.

Having a prototype is essential if you want investors to take you seriously. So good job on getting that. It would be very good if you can also get a designer to also make 1 or 2 sleek representations of your vision for what some key screens of the app could eventually look like. These screens are just to have in a deck, and maybe you could even add some superficial functionality by using something like Marvel (https://marvelapp.com/). Feel free to add buttons, options, etc. to the screens which you haven't implemented yet in your MVP. It's just to show your vision for the future. Then also have at least some data or insights to present from your preliminary user testing. Even info from just 5 user tests is better than nothing, but the more you have the better. You probably won't need anything more than 50 though (depending on what your app does), so you don't go crazy on that before talking to investors. Start by 'pitching' your app to just friends first, then to strangers (maybe your neighbor, 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 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. If you want to run your current prototype by me for suggestions, inquiries, etc. send me a message and we can set up a call, all the best, Lee

I have found CrossComm in Durham, NC to be among the best. Sean, their tech lead, really helped us at Reveal Mobile. They are reasonably priced with an impressive client roster (Duke, LG, T-Mobile, etc...). See http://www.crosscomm.net/ and just give them a call at 919-667-9432.

Easy: answer questions. I love to focus on questions within my defined area of expertise that don't have any answers already posted. I check this almost daily and jump in on questions I feel that I can add value to. You can also review other questions that have answers already, and offer your insights. Your message may be slightly different than other experts -- but there is beauty in that! Not every user will identify with every expert. Most of the consulting calls I have booked as a result of Clarity come from folks who read my answer to a question, not the original user who posted the question. To see success, you have to put yourself out there and commit to investing time to the community. All the best, -Shaun

Without having further details, I have always been a fan of bootstrapping- that is using your own funds and capital to start the business. If your objection to this may be that you don't have access to the kind of funding that is required through your personal savings but bootstrapping can be done through customer validation (pre-sales), business optimization (existing products) and personal capacity building (earn/save more). I hope this is helpful!

HI! Sounds like you have a lot of work ahead of you. I would say write it in the language you are most familiar with. If you feel comfortable in Java, then it's a great choice. NodeJS is also a very popular choice for API servers, and Python has two great, slim tools in Flask and Eve: http://flask.pocoo.org/ and http://python-eve.org/. Also, PHP 7 just came out and it's been thoroughly vetted; even if it's not battle-tested yet, it's way faster than previous versions and worth the investment if you are familiar with php. As for storage, it really depends on your data structure, but SQL fits most apps really well, and there is good support for it in cloud hosting. For hosting, I would look at AWS and Google. AWS offers more robust storage options with RDS and DynamoDB, but I bet Google is catching up fast. Both are very good options and offer great scalability, but are more complex to setup than a pair of VPSes. If you're in the market for a VPS, Linode has a managed Load Balancer service that's easy to setup and you can get a good HA setup for webservers with minimal effort. I guess the storage part depends very much on your data. Feel free to ring me up, I'd be happy to explore this further.

Some of those same influencers who turned you down might have written about your service if you hadn't offered to pay them. You should have instead sent them a bag of dicks. If they're a celebrity, you can get their agent's address from http://contactanycelebrity.com/ (it sounds fake, but it's actually totally legit, agents actually send them info). If they don't have an agent, try to look for a 'fan mail' address that they might have posted on a video or something. If you can't get any relevant address, then look up their friends on social media instead, and offer to pay them $xxx cash to send a back of dicks to their friend, and a cut of whatever orders end up being generated by that (if the influencer ends up writing about it). There are more techniques you can use to get influencers to post for free about it. Send me a message if you want to discuss it more, or just to say thanks if any of these ideas work (I'd actually like to know). all the best, Lee

There are an infinite number of ways to do this. Remember that you get paid for adding value to people's lives. Paid webinars, monthly newsletters, selling or reselling via ebay/etsy, ebooks (especially via Amazon/Kindle), digital products (check out Clickbank) as a creator or affiliate. Look for something you're interested in so that your interest won't wane. If you're only in it for the money, it won't last long and you won't have the drive to make it high quality. Check out Pat Flynn's site Smart Passive Income for ideas and resources. A key for any business is to leverage your time and create recurring revenue. Freelancing tends to be another job (dollars for hours). Creating something once that can be sold an infinite number of times (all digital products) is the key to growing your income. Developing a network of supportive people who can help you build your idea and can later help you promote your products/services is also critical. Don't think you can do it all yourself. Leverage (and support!) your connections. It usually takes time to develop the infrastructure and following/tribe/audience/customers. Don't give up too soon. Eighteen months is a good benchmark. After that, if you've put in the work, the business will start to take off. Don't expect "fast cash" before that though. Be willing to put in the hard work, delivering value all along the way (usually for little or no money in the beginning to develop a following who will buy from you later).