I'm not totally sure that you have to know the correct class in order to file a patent. I was under the assumption that it was the patent examiners job to ultimately determine this. With that said, I'm sure it's quite important to know what class you'll end up in and this should help you complete a patent search of other competitors in the same class. Also, if you have a budget for IP, a thorough patent search done by a reputable IP firm will bring back information on any potentially overlapping patents and you can check and see which class these patents are in and work backwards from there. Also, I'm pretty sure your product could belong to more than one class.

If you can win a customer on price, you can lose a customer on price. But its not price, that customers are sensitive to...its value. To answer your question, its important to be in a similar pricing range to your competition if you want to play the pricing game and commoditize your product. But I would argue that the reason you customers care so much about price is because you are not giving them anything else to care about. What do customers value most, communicate that to them, desensitise them to price and sensitise them to value. More than happy to discuss this with you further...Jon

In case Godaddy does not offer you a bigger data transfer plan, you can move to Heroku. They let you choose how much efficient you want to configure your server

From a usability perspective, having all your FAQs on a single page is the best way to go. Most visitors don't want to have to click back and forth between the main FAQ and each answer page. If you feel that each Q&A is deserving to be it's own landing page then I would suggest writing blog posts for each one.

1) 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. 2) There may be relevant Meetups in your area, go there and network with attendees (www.meetup.com). 3) 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). Send me a message if you want to discuss more options and how to access them, all the best, Lee

I'm concerned that I don't see a back end to your funnel here. Looks like you only have small, medium, and large of one service. Rather than concentrating on discounts and discounting methodology, why don't you look at Cost of Customer Acquisition? If you knew that number, you'd know what you have to make to break even. I also think you're hamstringing your lifetime customer value by limiting yourself to one service. There's nowhere 'up' for your customer to go. If you knew the CAC and LTV of your buyers, then you would know exactly what you had to charge. You'd understand even taking a loss on the front end because it lead to a big profit on the back end would be a possible strategy. But right now, you don't have a clear picture; that's why it's so hard to decide.

I used to design and manage complex business processes in the large BPO industry, I'm a fan of efficiency. After I left the industry I bought an offshore service based software development and digital marketing company that was probably pretty similar to yours. Fundamentally the best answer comes down to how you want to run your company, specifically what YOU want to spend your time doing. I'd recommend checking out Basecamp.com By the time I sold my company I was managing 3-4k hours of project work almost exclusively from BC with 20-25 hours of effort per week....it's pretty great. AUTOMATION, AUTOMATION, AUTOMATION, virtual assistants are great, but if you focus on eliminating their need you'll end up with better quality services at a lower cost. Good Luck

First of all, don't be afraid to share and exposing your business model. The Fear of stealing ideas is limiting you. I don't know your business model, your idea, your service or product, but no one of these will be the key of your success. The people, and how you talk to your market, will be. You don't sell product or service, you sell yourself (people) ... especially in the first time of your startup, when no one knows you. Every day someone builds a product or service that is a copy of another. The difference is the market and how he/she talks to the market. Back to your question. Hire one senior, skilled person, that after will be in charge of hiring other people is a right way. I didn't understand the reasons of why outsourcing wasn't the right way to follow. Costs? Was it a firm? Don't know. But... I can share a simple process that I follow every time in my business, even if I'm a developer and I could write all the code, I didn't write a line of code for software that serves my clients. You have to sketch your solution (application). Do it with tools or pen and paper (the right tool is better). I use keynote for mac or balsamiq is also a great tool. You have to have the entire application designed. Every page, every feature is running in the sketch. All the elements. It'll take a lot of hours or even days. Don't care about design and "looks good" now. Be fast. Don't care about "is it possible this?" question. Sketch it and write a note or doubts in a post-it. Now you don't have only a clear vision in you mind, you also have something that you can share with a developers. Developers are strage guys. They can build and make things from nothing but it's not easy when the product is placed only in a corner of your mind. "Rock Star" developers loves to work on UI (user interfaces). There is no-way to get off the road. And when they perfectly understand your application, they can give you advice, clear your doubts and build it faster. The key point here is to get the version 1.0 as fast as you can. Give it to your market and get feedback. To overcame the fear of stealing ideas, you could split your big application in a lot of smaller pieces. You should search and hire rock star freelances from website like upwork.com and give to a single professional only a small task. Then, hire a trusted person that put all together, like a puzzle. This works, I know a few friends that do this strategy. I can't tell you more than this, because a lot of decision depends of what are you trying to build, how much money you can invest and what are getting you stuck.

Buy targeted traffic. Describe the targeted traffic's problem in such detail that they instantly understand you know their market and their situation. Get the prospect to get on a strategy call with you. Sign them up for the coaching or service. That's it. Where's the problem? A lot of these "coaches" shouldn't be doing it. They have no experience and no ability. But they learned this system, and if they can talk confidently, they can get orders. All they needed to start was a pot of money. They paid another coach to learn the system (sometimes up to $50K+50% of their business, which would be fine for a legitimate, established operation but is highway robbery for newbies) and be given the marketing materials to attract prospects. Then they paid for the targeted advertising. What's funny is seeing their bitchy comments about prospects not showing for strategy calls, or them being so nervous they can't close. Further proof that they have zero business offering "coaching" in the first place. It is not rocket science, and it is the latest fad that will be dead in two years when the market is so oversaturated people will have to completely change their language, as they had to for SEO services, to get customers. I've been here doing real business consulting for a long time before it became trendy, and I'll be doing it long after these poseurs are gone.

What foods do you like ? What are the other restaurants in the area? What do they server ? What is your budget ? Is this an upscale neighbourhood ? What about franchising ? Do you have prior experience in the restaurant industry ? Did you work in a restaurant before ? I did multiple business analysis and financial analysis / plan modelling for restaurants before. You may reach me if you need more help.

Hi, this is a tough one! We work internationally and use https://transferwise.com to pay many of our providers. The exchange rates are the best on the market (that I have found!) although they obviously fluctuate. Hope this helps somewhat!

In short. As long as it has to be. What to put in it? In short, a step by step instructional on how you will expose your services to the consumer. A business plan and marketing plan are intended to be documents of reference during complex times. When you are losing your focus, gonig through self doubt - you go to these documents. Don't spend too much time on them though. If you have an online business focus on digital marketing steps, if not then make sure to cover the position you will take in the market such as price competitiveness, value proposition, write down examples of why customers might buy in general.

Etsy is a platform for selling craft items like what you're describing. But let's step back. You say you're bored with school. OK: we all were. The question is, how can you inject some excitement into your life so that school becomes interesting? Any business is a challenge. First you have to find out whether people actually want what you have to offer. If they don't, go pick something else. There's the example of a woman who so badly wanted a storefront bakery. But she just couldn't cover the costs of having a storefront. So she rented space at a commercial bakery and did her business that way instead--making the goods and delivering them to her customers but not having the expense of a storefront. Life often gives you what you want, but not necessarily in the exact form you demanded it in. So if your first idea doesn't work out, move on and pick another. That's the spirit of entrepreneurship. Now, as you're researching and putting into action your business ideas, do you think you could look at how what you're learning in school is relevant or could be useful to what you're doing? Sometimes, I know, it can be a stretch (it's 20 years later and I still have not used the 3 years of statistical analysis I learned in college...or the algebra I learned in high school.) Here's an article I wrote--it was a Clarity answer, originally--about what a young person can do with their life: http://www.salestactics.org/what-should-i-do-with-my-life/ It might help you. Running a business is not a cakewalk. It's hard work and requires persistence. Things don't turn out the way you want, and there are a lot of emotional grinding of gears. There are great highs and terrible lows. If you do well, some friends and family are going to resent it and talk behind your back...or in front of you about it. Be ready for all that, if this is the path you choose. No matter what business you're in, you need two things: Traffic and Conversion. Physical stores get traffic from walk-ins (that's why "location location location" is so important) and advertising. Then they convert by presentation, pricing, sales, and a number of other factors within their control. An online store gets traffic from paid advertising, social media clicks (look up "Red Dress Boutique" for a success in this area), and possibly hooking onto someone else's platform eg. Etsy, eBay, Amazon for their traffic & search engine power. Building your business on someone else's platform is ultimately a bad idea, because it can be taken away from you at any time and for no reason. So be wary. It's OK to start there, but as soon as you can, get buyers out of that platform and onto your own. The more you get into business, the more you'll find MATH is necessary. You need to understand your numbers. That's like a doctor checking your pulse and blood pressure. Is the patient doing well, dead, having a heart attack? It would be nice to know, wouldn't it. I was terrible at math in high school. In the course of a few months, when I was 19, I switched around and started becoming very good at math. 99% of it was my attitude. I had *believed* I was bad at math...and so I was. Until I ran into a teacher of a math course I absolutely had to do well in to get into the college I wanted to be in. He taught me that as long as I learned and practiced the method, I would do well. I would get the right answer every time. And I did! Then all through college, math was no big deal. In a business, you need to measure Cost of Customer Acquisition, Cost of Goods Sold, Gross Margin, Net Profit, and so on. These are the heart beat and blood pressure of the business. The alternative is you can not take it seriously, throw a few goods at the market and hope something happens. Who would you rather be? Start watching shows like Shark Tank and The Profit to get an idea of how serious entrepreneurs really work. From Shark Tank, you'll quickly see how important a distribution system is to a business. That's what the Sharks often bring: the ability connect someone's product to a big distribution network, so that many sales can be made. From The Profit, you'll learn how the numbers matter inside the business. Marcus gets in there and finds out the truth--and often, the owners are really flaky and have no idea what's truly going on. Numbers = control. Best of luck to you...and my best advice, which is that sticking with it, or persistence, is more important than any technical skill. You can learn the skill. But if you aren't around to learn it because you got distracted or gave up, well, then it doesn't have any value, does it.

Write a few white papers on topics that will be important to your clients to gain new subscribers and to nurture your vision for 2016. Write weekly blog posts and analyze your E-Mail outreach. Write a book about your consultancy's expertise. It's what we did with great success.

it sounds like you've already answered your own question – you needed a COO yesterday. I would disagree with your CMO that adding a COO is just adding "another layer". It is, in fact, what keeps the lights on. If your house isn't in order, everything else falls apart. With 26 employees, one of your biggest ongoing challenges will be your culture, and managing the morale, motivation, and performance of your people. Outside investors are interested in a number of things – not the least of which are your operating margins, who does what, and how efficiently the whole organizational structure is organized and communicates. One last thing: don't make the mistake of just hiring for skills or experiences. Fit is especially critical in a COO role. if you haven't done so already, define your culture, define your vision, define your values. Then work on developing a performance-oriented job description for the COO, then start your search. In that order. I'm happy to jump on a call to talk more, and help to strengthen the business case to your CXX colleagues if needed.

It's tough working with freelancers, but as you mentioned, it's sometimes necessary at early stages due to a lack of funds. You can either 1) Learn to code yourself 2) Find a software engineer co-founder 3) Learn a better system for working with freelancers So I'd recommend the 3rd option, and you can always work on the other two in parallel. There are certainly specialized techniques that will let you work more effectively with freelancers (either foreign or local). A good, concise summary of these techniques can be found in a free e-book by Amol Sarva (http://knote.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Ship-While-You-Sleep-Final.pdf). Skip to chapter 2 (page 18) if you want to jump into the meat of it. I co-founded two companies with Amol using the methods discussed there. If you have any further questions about anything you read there feel free to give me a call, all the best, Lee

There are a number of ways you could go with this: Cost+: Close to what you are suggesting: Calculate your hourly cost, add a profit. Then define your projects with your client, and estimate number of hours of work. That would be your price - like craftspeople do it. The pro for this approach is, that you let your own cost determine your price, which is very inside-out making it easier for you to justify your hourly pay. But the con is, that your customers will challenge your estimate, and you will spend a lot of time quantifying projects. But if you don't know yet how much time each project will take, this could be a way to start off. Benchmark against market price, though or find the price sensitivity of your customers. Create products: When you have more knowledge of clients needs and time used for development, you could package your development into products and charge for that. Small - Medium - Large with a development price for each. You could do it as a one-off, or you could integrate it with a maintenance model - see next. SaaS-model: You could integrate your site development with maintenance, provide SEO and similar service. That would make it very convenient for your customers, and create an ongoing cash flow for you as a subscription fee. Either as a fixed monthly fee or as part of the cash flow through the website, if you want to share risk and upside. But no matter what you do, make sure you know the delivery of your competitors. Where are you unique in your delivery? What do your competitors charge? Unless you deliver something truly unique, you have to be within the same price range. I hope some of this could work for you. If you want to discuss your pricing possibilities further, feel free to mail me or set up a call. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup

Managing the performance of any employee is difficult, but absolutely necessary. To do it successfully, you need to have a few fundamentals in place first: 1) A current and accurate performance-oriented job description that focuses on accountabilities. This establishes a baseline for expected performance. Without one, you'll be measuring in the dark, and may end up focusing on areas that aren't priorities, and don't drive results. 2) KPIs are always recommended. But whatever you put into place, remember that project management is expectation management, and thus not everything can be measured empirically, like budget deviation or milestones missed. It will be important to consider anecdotal or 'soft' metrics, and get team and client input on how well they communicate, motivate, handle conflict, deal with cross functional issues etc. 3) Measure fit. Too many companies fail in this regard. No matter how well the PM functionally performs as per their job description, it's equally important to measure how well they fit the company's culture, live your purpose and core values, and contribute to achieving the company's overall vision. If you have a capable PM, with strong self initiative, a weekly meeting should be the bare minimum. That said, a quick 5 minute huddle at the beginning of the day is recommended – especially for new hires still in the process of getting their feet wet – followed by another quick 5 minute huddle at the end of the day to recap progress, issues etc. You can loosen or tighten this up as needed, once they begin demonstrating the autonomy and smart decision-making you expect to see. I'm happy to jump on a call with you to talk more specifics, and lay out a plan you can follow.

Great approach! Many people don't realize that campaigns must be created and implemented well ahead of time. Growth hacking for example takes time and a lot of diligence, many think is a quick solve all approach to marketing but contrary to that! I would be willing to help you if you have any questions. I have done several growth campaigns with significant results, you didn't seem to post a question tho. :)

Have a look at Digital Globe's map API. We partnered with them recently and I learned about their mapping disaster recovery assistance in Nepal after the quake. I think the maps they offer will meet your needs: http://developer.digitalglobe.com/maps-api/

I am not sure if your courses are video-based, but I have had success with Udemy and Teachable. I teach WordPress and have 7 courses on Udemy right now. They pay instructors based on a percentage and also if the students are part of Udemy already or if you drive traffic to the course from your own internet marketing strategies. I help companies get their courses started on Udemy as well. Also, if you want to control the pricing structure a little more, check out Teachable. They are pretty good and as you requested, they take a small percentage. I hope this helps. Bruce

I've worked with a couple of CRMs; if you are looking for a custom-like solution, I'd recommend Podio. Salesforce has a lot of options, but tends to overwhelm folks who are not familiar with their tool. If I didn't go with Podio, I'd choose HubSpot because of the integration with their other sales and marketing services. I don't know any other details about your venture, so it is hard to offer a tool that will grow with you. I'm happy to discuss more and give you a more detailed answer. Just book a call and we can get rockin' -Shaun

Hello. My experience showed me that it is definitely not easy to get money from a bank especially in the early stages. It really depends on what type of business you are starting. Banks would usually look for risk management in the form of assets you own in case the business doesn't progress as planned. Unlike venture capitalists who are used to take a risk on startup investment, in the case of a bank it's very different and not trivial but I may not know all the schemes that banks offer in the US (is this where you are located?) I'd be happy to help you on your thinking process and cover the key points over a phone call. Hope this helps Yonatan

You already said it: "He isn't interested in salary as much as equity." If this developer is any bit worth his salt, he is worth the equity. A smaller piece of a bigger pie is far more valuable than a big piece of a small (or worthless) pie. Profit sharing is a red flag to me that just sounds "Cheap," unless you guys are making tons and tons of profit already. I don't know where you're based, but In Silicon Valley, a good developer can easily fetch $300-500k (base + bonus + yearly equity). UC Berkeley's average starting salary for NCGs majoring in EECS or Computer Science is $108k. Salary is something a good developer can easily get; why your startup (possibly unstable) rather than another more established company? If as the other person said, he walks and you're company is crippled, give him equity. Happy to chat more.

Good question. However, I think the better question should be; what system and thought process do I need to have for my Company Because. Marketing is just one small factor of your enterprise. Each and every single part of your business needs to be working on all cylinders. Below is a System we use to scale. I call it... 4 Heuristic Chain of Command" #1 High Level Thought Process The Dynamics Between The Founders Creating The Vision For The Company "Painted Picture" The Management and Creation of Your Dream Team (Do you have the right people?) #2 Strategy Creating Fundamental Blueprints For Success (USP, Brand Message, Attractive Character, Product Fit) Find And Establish Key Relationships And Networks (Who, What, Where and How?) Building a Backend sales system. (80/20 Rule of Business) 80% Profits in Backend: Increase Profits #3 Tactics Leverage technology to enable better buying for customers and faster selling (Online Marketing) Leverage Weekly KPI Performance Checks (What doesn't get measurend does not get improved) Leverage Top Platforms For Exponential Growth (Double Down) #4 Execution Day-to-Day optimization of Sales Channels (Paid Traffic, Content Marketing, PR, Direct Sales, Phone sales) Advanced analytics, social strategies and conversion optimization,for your business.(Dynamic, behavioral funnels) Analyse and research, measure metrics, perform technical audits and get competitive intelligence. (Email Marketing) I know this is probably not the answering you are looking for, but I hope you can keep an open mind Adios Ameer