Tough to answer in full without knowing what your service is, but there are plenty of ways to get in front of college students. A few ideas: - Build a blog with useful/interesting content, share on social, build an audience - Incentivize current users to invite their friends through a referral program or a campus rep program - Find sites where college kids spend a lot of time (think: Reddit), or posts relevant to your service and get involved in the conversation - Are there on-campus clubs or groups that would find your service particularly useful? Try reaching out to see if they'd be willing to give it a try Let me know if you want to hop on a call & discuss more ideas.

Just do it! No, seriously, I'd not recommend to talk to someone, because it basically is more a thing of getting to know the interface and the quirks of doing x and y. I'd neither advise someone to start using a 3rd party if you do have someone who can invest a bit time to learn the platform. However, if serious scaling is a close requirement, then you're forced to either get an in-house team or outsource it. I usually reach <.5$ CPA and I also usually have best experiences with testing myriad of AD sets. Keep in your mind, always testing: copy: tone, audience keywords, actionable keywords etc. image: emotional triggers, quality, visual objects etc. target audience: try to refine your scope to your buying persona, not your marketing persona Here are some resources to begin with and set you up on a good track. This is comprehensive enough to introduce you to most mechanics: https://adespresso.com/academy/guides/facebook-ads-optimization/ This is a short list of what to optimize for beginners: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/optimize-your-facebook-ads/ If you do not yet know what you want to achieve with the ADs (brand-awareness, retargeting, CTR, other actions or conversion types), this post is listing most types and its use: http://www.jonloomer.com/2015/05/05/facebook-ads-bidding/

Congratulations - you're in a very enviable position compared to many startups - you already have an audience. I would recommend that you open a dialog with your readers - it doesn't have to be obvious (it can be), but you should include them in the decision, and find out what they want. You could take a direct approach and poll them. That might seem a bit uncomfortable, but if you believe in the value of what you'll offer them - and give them a say in that offering, it shouldn't. You could also take an "offers" approach - where you test a few limited quantity, limited time offers (via email, banner, inline, etc) - this allows you to test the waters with multiple products before committing to a consistent offering. You can test products (physical, digital), services, affiliate offerings, and the list goes on. What to offer is a hard question to answer without more details - but suffice it to say you should look at what has performed historically among the ads on your site - as that will give you insight on what has captured their interest in the past. Something very important to remember - you've built this based on the value you add via the blog - don't stop doing that. I've seen more than one blog make a commercial attempt - and in doing so stop or greatly reduce their content after getting excited about initial conversions. Once they'd hit their entire initial population of users with product marketing, things slowed down, and then they had to play catchup on the content front to regain traffic.

I'd venture that if you have to ask such a generic question about how to start a startup, you're probably not well equipped to do so. My suggestions are as follows: 1. do 3-6 months interning with a small very early stage startup 2. find someone else to execute your idea whilst retaining a % equity 3. look to find co-founders who can execute the idea, stay involved but focus on your skill set (if it's relevant)

Hi there, Congratulations on your scholarship! I am both a startup adviser and college professor. My advice is based on my experience in the US, so please bear that in mind. Typically a personal statement is a combination of resume, aspirations and suitability. In that the school wishes to see your achievements, life experiences, goals, abilities and how all those make you a great candidate for their school. Most schools like to see your connectedness to their history and culture, and want to be satisfied that you will both gain from their learning and add to the institution. I am happy to get on a call with you to discuss how your startup experience and mindset can be leveraged for this as well as learn more about why you want a law degree in the first place. Look toward to speaking with you! Best, Arjun

Try linkedin.

Being both a Consultant to Startups and an Educator to young people like yourself, I commend you first on getting international experiences of any kind. And it's great you have a good business idea! Here's the beauty of applying to those companies - you can always say no or not pursue the job. And if you're not hired, that's the end of that anyway! Better to have an offer first before you think of this as a 'choice'. As for someone working on your idea - odds are someone already is even if not publicly known. Let's go with that assumption. Remember that being first to market isn't important anymore (remember Ask Jeeves? Google it.) Short answer: apply for the job(s) and simultaneously try to put a team and execution plan. See which opportunity takes root. Talk with me more, as I love working with students and young grads! Best of luck, Arjun

Working in consulting I can certainly see your dilemma. We have often thought about billing like that, but ehrn we have compared our fee to the size of the clients business, the clients do not receive it very well. (Close to "Mind your own business!" to put it mildly). By billing by the hour you stay on your own side of the fence and can motivate your costs, but you do not get a part of the value you create. I have seen it presented by one consultant, and he ties his fee to the performance of the business (increase in revenue, bottom line) after he has been involved. But he is a big shot strategic consultant working strictly with coaching top management directly. On that level it could make sense, as your impact can be more directly measured. I would consider one of the following options: - If your impact can be very directly measured - f.ex. If you are involved in the launch of a new product, business area or similar - it could make sense for both you and the client as you can measure f.ex. revenue generated - Try to package your deliveries into products or components, as they are more scalable and easier to charge by user, revenue or cash flow through your delivery. It can be hard in a lot of traditional consulting deliverables, but try to be creative about it. Software licenses have been priced like that for years. That way you do not have to justify the time you spend, so it is easier to charge the margin you are looking for. - If you have no doubt about your value creation, go all in! No cure, no pay - if the value is not created, you do not get any money. Significant downside, but also upside. Again, you need to be able to measure your success correctly. The good thing is, that you can experiment with this approach without harming your other business, as I assume you work with your clients individually. Good luck!

Regardless of your launch date - keep calm. Having a competitor or twenty is all but a certainty in our new business environment. It has never been easier to discover a problem, validate a solution, build a product and reach customers. But that goes for everyone. I'd urge you to consider a few questions: 1. Competitive Intelligence: If this competitor's offering is very similar to yours - what can you take away from a year (nearly) of their operations? Can you use this intel to modify your own product or approach? What have they learned in a year that you can use as a shortcut? Have they shown success in a particular vertical? If so, can you also focus there? This isn't an exhaustive list of questions on this topic - just pointing out that there is likely a silver lining to this cloud of competition. 2. Product The question of "is this ready to release?" "should I do it now, or later", "if later, how much later, when is the right time to launch" is one I field more than once a week. My opinion always skews to the "as close to now as practical." Watching founders struggle over knowing exactly when to launch as if it's a ribbon cutting ceremony for a bridge is painful for me. There is always a minimum level of development, engineering or design required to get your product into the market - but it is usually well below the perceptions of the founder. Take a minute to step back and ask yourself what will happen between now and whatever arbitrary time period you've determined is "ready". What features will you be adding? Do they matter to your users? If you said yes, how do you know - did you ask users? A lot of them? If not - you may be adding bloat before you even launch, or worse, doing what I call "building a better Yeti trap". Make sure your efforts are driven by the actual, and not perceived, assumed, or gut intuitions about what they need. Conclusion A competitive entrant is always a bit unnerving - but remember that being first to market isn't the race you need to win - that's just the start. Turn this into an advantage by drafting off their momentum. Chances are, your product is ready for some level of use right now, and that users will derive some benefit from it, and that you'll learn a lot from their usage. So, for my 2 cents, I'll borrow from my stiff upper lipped ancestors from across the pond - and suggest that you "Keep Calm, AND Launch Now" Cheers, Ryan Rutan

I have had a lot of experience of being mentored and mentoring. I think you should separate the search for a mentor from the search for an investor. A mentor should be a disinterested guide to life and business. An investor is going to look at you and your business as a way of buying a retirement condo! They want different things. A mentor wants to feel valued, to feel that they are helping to build something of value, to feel appreciated. You find such a person by looking for people whose expertise you think is useful (in Meetups, or conferences, or via LinkedIn) and politely approaching them to ask their advice. You will need to talk to a lot of people this way. Once you find someone with whom you "click" then you can see if the relationship develops from there. Investors are a whole different ball game. They want to see evidence of competence, capital, talent, cashflow forecasts. They don't want to hear that you are struggling, that you have dilemmas, that you need advice. Don't mix the two! Feel free to ask me more :-)

Do those prospects come from an opt-in process? Are they aware that your brand obtained their data? If not, than you are cold-calling them and no matter who it is, we humans do not like to receive cold-calls, right. Though, you are in a premium market, thus you are in the market to put in a lot of effort to warm them up or to get in front of your leads. In your case, you already have their names and mail addresses. I'd get those mail addresses into gmail and use discoverly to receive their social media accounts. Discoverly is a chrome plugin that will automatically retrieve the mail addresses linked social media accounts, if there are some. http://discover.ly/ Armed with those you can do further research and look if they have shared interest or even know eachother with followerwonk.com or buzzsumo.com. You can use this data to prioritize your list as you already have a positive WOM signal if they know each other and only one becomes your customer. I'd advise to create a spreadsheet to keep track of your research. I'd consider to think about an outreach method with your facebook channel as your prospects can immediately associate your account with your business giving you higher trust-value than a faceless cold-call and especially if they can see your work without any friction and low mental effort - just a click away. You may even gain insights to their actual consumption patterns, e.g. you might see someone publishing an event that is related to your business and they are going to - thus you could approach them on spot. You could also gain additional insights about lead quality with realizing at what stage of their "marriage preparation" they are. With this you can at least weed out the non-qualified leads, those that are just "interested" but far from making an elaborate purchasing decision. There is so much you could do with that data,but even if all of these seem out of your willingness,take this advice cold-mailing > cold-calls. Hope that helped a bit ;) -Andi

Hard to say with no information, but... I would always suggest starting with the community your customers belong to. 1. Try and get relevant music blogs writing about your app. 2. Look for tweeters who are big influencers of your potential customers and see if you can get them interested in tweeting 3. Try creating some incentive for people to share the app with their friends / peers 4. Write your own content for your website or a blog, good quality content is what google looks for these days 5. Decide based on your markets demographics what other networks are good to establish a following on and create useful content there, e.g. instagram

Make sure you are offering a product others want to purchase at a competitive price. You can do your own research regarding competitive pricing or use software that assist with the detail research. Your question does not note what types of product you are selling; however, most product sells are seasonal and that may be causing the dip you are experiencing. Compare the results to the same week last year and the year before and review trends. I work with clients that sell products on line - feel free to set up a call if I can assist further.

I used to sell event sponsorships via phone, so I think you can sell everything if you want, but you need to make pre-sale emails, find great contacts e t. c. Try to sell expensive tickets on business events, for example. The % you can get from organisers also depends on your negotiation skills, because they can offer a good deal for you.

What are the company's policies regarding the frequency and timing of employee reviews? Start by checking your employee handbook and make sure you completely understand the policies. You then have a decision to make: you can approach your boss to discuss the matter and try to work it out, you can talk to your HR professionals to ask them to address it on your behalf, or you can wait and ask if any adjustment to your compensation can be made retroactively, in light of the delay. Each strategy carries risks. The first two risk impacting your long term relationship with your boss. The last strategy is a financial risk but preserves the relationship. You have to ultimately decide what's most important to you, and what consequences you're willing to live with. Happy to talk with you directly if I can be of more help.

If you go to to https://clarity.fm/yourusername/widget and replace 'yourusername' with your actual user name, you should see an Embed code link to add a widget that includes your profile/per minute rate/Request a call Button. Feel free to give me a call if you'd like help implementing this into your site.

They may have patents on certain algorithms they use to sort / present jobs to people, but it's unlikely that anyone has a patent on the general idea of a career portal. If you'd like advice on how to do an effective patent search, or how to affordably file your own patents in the US I'm happy to help. all the best, Lee

Like most things in web development there are 100 ways to slice that pie - so this answer is by no means all encompassing of all ways to do so. Depending on what your objectives are I would recommend one of two ways: 1. Use the built in WP gallery feature tied to the WP core. No extra code and thus you couldnt get any lighter than that. It already resizes the images to different sizes. To access simply goto "insert media" and look in the upper left hand sidebar for the gallery option, select your images, determine size, press insert. If you want to customize the wp core gallery functionality to show attributions or something similar a good wp coder could knock it out in 30 min or less. 2. If you want a lot of features and customizations an display and interaction I would recommend just getting Revolution Slider. It has more features than you could ever need and it can pull images into galleries OR it can pull posts in from WP and use the featured image, title, and any other custom field you have into the slider. There is a lot more that could be said but that is a quick - to the point - response. Cheers!

This would really depend on your goal of the lead channel. If you want to deal with warm leads give http://inspirebeats.com a try. InspireBeats will help you find and build a list of targeted leads, do research on them, and warm them up for you through a personalized outreach. That way you have an additional channel of leads flowing in for your sales reps.

According to Clarity's documentation, no. The client suggests times and there is some expected back and forth before a mutually agreeable time is agreed upon. Details here: https://clarity.fm/help/articles/2/how-does-clarity-work

I'm currently advising a client right on exactly that kind of customer service integration. Look into Live Ninja (https://liveninja.com/). It brings together the best of both worlds from web and a call center. Voice + Video + Instant connect without any special software, or a phone. You can have either one way, or two way video, and text chat too. Obviously, get nice uniforms for your call center guys if you haven't already.

Print advertising is expensive and phonebook usage has certainly declined. The marketplace can also be pretty fragmented with so many different publications. It would depend upon your market such as if you have a lot of retirees/seniors in your area that may still utilize a book? And have you previously found good results with phone book ads? If you feel like phone book ads give a good ROI, I would put an emphasis on having solid assets in place to support it such as high quality photography, good online reviews, and modern, mobile friendly website. I hope this helps. We are Google AdWords certified if you'd like to put more of an emphasis on online ads. Feel free to set up a call with me if you'd like to discuss.

I'd run a lead ad targeted towards people with similar job titles or at competing companies. Include relevant job information (title, salary range, etc), then promote the ad as "easy application" and require full name, email and phone. Once they apply, send an email requesting their resume or get them on the phone. I work for a digital ad agency (AdvertiseMint) that specializes in Facebook and Instagram ads, we could help you set these up if needed. - Brian

If you can skip investors and run with your customers money - do this until you're ready for big round. What is good traction...? It depends on how you sell it to investors, how you pitch them, actually. It's not about real traction on this stage in 99% of the cases. But... if you really want to understand what the best traction is, I think it's all about retention and customer happiness. If you have very less amount of money, or companies can't leave without your software and are going to use it daily, switch from other e t. c., so this is the best traction measurements. You can grow money and # of customers, but if they really use your product and like it - the best traction you can have. If you want understand your best traction before the launch, so initiate pre-orders with great discount. How much traction you have is not so important as how fast and how good it is.

As a rule of thumb it's better for you to continue investing yourself as far as you can. The reasons are: 1. The later you raise money, the more your business should be worth 2. You are able to retain more control of the business 3. Fundraising is very time consuming and will divert your attention from making your business work Having said that, if you're getting to the point where you can't continue to move the business forward (or at a good pace) without money then it's worth looking to fundraise. Dan