Linux + MariaDB (Fast MySQL). Enterprise level throughput + scalability. Cost == $0. Well, cost included with whatever hosting you're using. I run a private hosting company. Some of my machines are running 250,000+ uniques/hour + have been for months. MariaDB can handle whatever load you throw at it... Well... so long as your coders know how to write high speed code. Most coders are clueless about this. Tip: Pay for expensive developers up front + you'll save huge amounts of money avoiding rewrites.

Likely you best rethink this. You've already used the work "employees", so you've already proved your workers aren't 1099 contractors. The rules a person must meet to be a 1099 contractor. 1) They have no supervision. 2) They have no set hours. For example, I have a 1099 contractor who runs one of my businesses. His direction is "get all the orders out as fast as you can." He has no set hours. He has no set workplace. Sometimes he works from his home, while he travels, sometimes in the business office. This is a true contractor. If you meet these criteria you're good. If not, you best search for what happened to Microsoft when they paid a bunch of employees on 1099 for years. When you read this suit, you'll be inspired to avoid their mistake.

You're going to want a comprehensive marketing strategy that determines where your likely customers spend their time online and you'll want to focus on one to two channels that you will work to their maximum benefit until you feel they are saturated. You probably also want to think about enabling technologies that will allow you to scale your inputs so you don't have to wear yourself out services clients while your business development suffers. There are a lot of "it depends" in your question. It's not enough to "find" if you don't have an engagement strategy of what you will do when you find them. I'd be happy to talk through this with you and point you in the right direction. All of my work is related to B2B sales of this nature.

At Gun.io we're about to replace our legacy home-grown system for these items with Hubspot. So far we are happy with it. It doesn't do _everything_ but it does enough and it's easy enough to use for non-technical staff. We got it up and running with about a month of dedicated work, mostly on developing the content.

Mistakes are good for those who learn from them but there is no logical explanation why you would choose to go through a long expensive and time consuming learning path filled with mistakes and 'lessons' when you can just learn as you go from an experienced individual who can help you reduce that path and minimize errors. When I was launching my first startup, I reached out to a few connections of mine, including Craig (from Craigslist) and Aaron (CEO of Jobing.com) - it was them two whom I worked with shortly and still failed that startup. It wasn't that the idea failed, but I learned so much on different perspectives that I completely abandoned what I had to refocus and launch a completely different business. Sold that business a few years later. When you reach to mentors however, it's important for you to consider their history, their connections, their level of involvement and the closeness to your own business model - have they launched something similar? do they own a business which you can partner with once you have built a relationship with this mentor and built a good product? Also, don't go with hard headed individuals who think they know best - no one knows best, what they are supposed to bring to the table is an experienced different perspective on the same situation you are going through now that they have gone through themselves - give you their perspective, introduce you to the right people, give advice and let you make your own decision with all things considered. I have a friend who launched a very innovative mobile app, I think it could be huge if well played, but due to them having influence from so many 'mentors' they screwed up their own growth and now the guys are doing 'marketing' to try to get revenue - not realizing that in it self is a business that distracts from the long term. My name is Humberto Valle, I'm the founder of Unthink, a digital marketing agency that is now globally known as the most helpful. If you would like to get in touch or need anything related to marketing please visit us at www.unthink.me.

Just do it. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Actual implementations are rare as Purple Lemmings. If you do something... anything... to move your startup to the first sale mark, you're well ahead of most. Only real consideration is massive action generates massive cash.

https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl is the tool I use for this. You can download a single video or an entire playlist. You can also use Firefox + http://www.downloadhelper.net extension. The Downloadhelper extension also allows scraping HTS streams, by playing them + recording the stream + dumping the stream into a file.

First define what you mean by boosting + your goal of boosting. For example, if you're running paid traffic to your agency home page, consider if this is useful (monetizes). Likely best to "boost" (I'm guessing you mean running traffic to) artist pages + then have artist pages point to a category (containing related artists) + have category pages reference your home page. Google the term siloing for more information about various silo strategies. Start with how you expect to monetize your efforts + design your site silo.

Hey there - I work with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley but mostly with what I call the Big Dreamers - people that would never be able to hold down a job, but can go out there and do something magical with their unusual talents. I am working on 2 books with different people, marketing their products with them and coaching Executives. Startups suck, man. Teams don't work, engineers don't stick around, you need connections for money and yes, it is risky. So what should you do? Three words: Online Home Business. Many examples exist of regular people - Dads, Moms, even teenagers - that started up a blog/website/social media/youtube channel with a passion of their own and posted fun, fresh, unique content regularly building an audience over time and making a tidy income - more than by driving for Uber or having a retail job. The best ones cross six figures and more with a little luck and good timing. I knew an example where this young man loved Disney and all things related - so he built a Disney fan website and got all this ad-click money plus affiliate marketing money and before he knew it he was on the news. So what's your burning interest? Let me help you figure it out and position yourself in a spot where you can actually still spend time with family and friends but live a comfortable lifestyle. I can help you understand your talents and how to relate them to the wide world out there! Call me and we can get started right away! Sincerely, Arjun Buxi

Hi, I've helped a lot of entrepreneurs with partner issues. The fact is that equity is divided in whatever way you negotiate. Rights such as first right of refusal are normally dealt with in the shareholder's agreement. Certain clauses or rights can certainly be unattractive to investors but these agreements can always be amended. Again, it's what you manage to negotiate for yourself. Arrange a call and I can help you with the specifics of your situation. You may find these two videos of mine informative: This one on partnership agreements https://youtu.be/WvLFlct227o and this one on share structures https://youtu.be/1EjKjSAd1F8 Cheers David Barnett

Happy New Year (2020) ! Do Feel (Perfectly) Free to Contact Me ; for a (Legally-Compliant) Digital Clinical Marketing Plan. Sincerely , Professor Obi

Rarely will you ever "live well" working a job. Trick to living well without a job is to treat your work like farming. With farming you prep your dirt, plant, tend, after sometimes a long while, your harvest is ready. How this translates generally, "provide massive value, in your niche, every day + eventually your harvest will be ready." Simple way to do this might relate to your writing. 1) Attend Meetup groups related to writing. 2) Speak to Meetup groups about writing. 3) Develop a course about how you monetize your writing. If you make $1000/month writing, develop a course about... "How to make $1000/month writing." People how make $0/month from writing, will be interested in your course.

This all makes sense. The only additional things you will want to consider, if you haven't already, are: - An SLA - to agree on the level of communication provided throughout the project to the customer This is because emails, calls, meeting can vary dramatically for each customer and/or project - Tool costs Factoring in the costs of any additional tools you might need for this project, in case you don't have them already - # of amends - I'm sure you get this already but just having something written upfront which factors in the cost based on X number of amends or iterations - Hosting costs - Security costs - Imagery and Iconography I see this missed from website build projects a lot. It can be a big cost and worth factoring in if it hasn't been done already - Integrations So not just the page functionality but also any backend integrations the customer requires. - Ongoing maintenance Just making sure you have something in place with the customer that gives them idea about future maintenance costs and what they should be expecting to pay out for In short, everything you've said looks along the right lines, but what I see missed most often are the above costs. This can impact your profitability on a project but also can be frustrating costs for the customer if they're not made aware of them early on. Good luck with the project!

All your questions predicate/depend on site's monetization strategy. For example, if current pages all have great SEO traction in SERPs than any site change best be well thought out + in general the HTML structure should... 1) Only fix any existing HTML errors, as reported by the W3C validator. Never. Ever. Introduce any new HTML errors or site's SEO can circle the drain. 2) Only lower page weight, so the ratio of cruft (non-content) to content, should reduce. So decreased cruft, which will increase content. For example, converting a well SEO'ed WordPress site to use a Genesis theme can potentially destroy all your site's SEO traction, because Genesis (at least last time I checked) can produce a site which is 98% cruft + 2% content, due to all the CSS classing + attributes + other non-content junk injected into pages. When I take on a project for one of my clients like this, first I require them to host with me... Because wrestling with broken hosting introduces so much noise into analysis, I just refuse to deal with slow + glitchy hosting anymore. Next I have my client walk through their entire money flow, end to end. After I understand site monetization strategy, then we work through small increments of change, constantly tracking when GoogleBot visits the site + how page indexing is effected in searches after a 48 hour period. If it's a hobby site, all this is overkill. If the site measures profits by the hour or minute, then any change can potentially zero out all income, so in this case best to proceed slowly, with great care.

I love this! Congratulations on a smart approach to launching a startup. I got a chance to talk to DHH - founder of Basecamp and hacker. (read about it here: http://blog.unthink.me/what-i-learned-in-1-hour-with-basecamps-founder-david-heinemeier-hansson) One of his biggest pet peeves is the idea spreading like wildfire that entrepreneurs need to jump head on an idea and let the wind take hold. What he suggest and what is greatly showcased by you here is to hold a job and take your startup as the side business until it can sustain itself off sales alone. Don't give equity left and right because if it does take off the last thing you want is to build something you don't own. If you have been acquiring customers for your product before it's built - that means that it should be relatively easy (compared to most) to get sales once you launch. You are already doing the bulk of what needs to happen which is marketing - simply boost your focus on getting referrals and case studies off the initial sales, ask clients about their core reason for handing you their money and drive that message/reason home on everything you from website to branded material to PR articles, etc. If you end up hiring a marketing agency to help with the next steps, look for the added value of programmers in staff so that they can coordinate what's needed once things are rolling. Essentially consider the fact that you need to start marketing it and positioning the product with the right prospect clients, get it launched onto product hunt (i could add it for you) because the truth is that you have 3 months to create a marketing system that is helping you sale. Don't be too afraid of jumping in full time if you can afford at least a few months solvency for yourself and if you are having sales.

You do not have to request permission to e-mail customers; however, you must provide them with an option to opt-out of receiving your electronic communications, in addition to the other requirements to remain in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act. Here's an excellent resource for your reference: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Get investors to be able to visualize as much as possible. Tell a story. Focus on the solution it provides. Make your story relatable if you can. If you can get their buy-in on all these things (the problem, solution, common ground, good delivery of the message, etc) the prototype becomes less important at this stage of the game and all of those other variables will overshadow the thing you don't yet have. In your story/explanation, provide as much visual detail as possible--while still keeping it simple. Remember your ABC's and 1-2-3's.

It is a very vague question..like "What clothing suits me ?" Well.. I can try to answer. Question - Why do you want to move to cloud. Have you already decided it is Azure (not the competitors like AWS or Google Cloud, which is totally OK. I am a Azure fan. Just wanted to know) Businesses (sometime business units / specifica application) moves completely/partially to cloud for 2 reasons - Convert capital expenditure to operation expenditure - Build solutions or part of solutions that are scalable, available and reliable without breaking the bank. How to Prep - Answer varies based on if you are a IT Boutique shop, Enterprise IT solution provider or a Non-IT business with IT teams. If you can be little more specific, may be we can chat and find a way through it...

I am just finishing my PhD and currently working on my dissertation. I have published two academic articles related to communication so I feel qualified to answer your question. When talking about academic writing resources, the question is a little vague. If you are looking for a platform on which to write academic papers, of course Microsoft Word works well and integrates bibliographies and sources depending upon the formatting. Word, of course, costs money but there is an open source word processor at Open Office (https://www.openoffice.org/) which is free. For keeping a basic bibliography, I would recommend bibme.org. This website allows you to easily enter citations and sources and copy them into your document. It also allows you to keep a running bibliography for different papers you may be working on and it saves them for you online (if you set up an account.) If you are wanting to go a little more in depth, I would highly recommend Zotero. It is a free product which allows you to store sources in multiple folders. Zotero has a Chrome extension which allows you to bring your sources in directly from web pages (even in Google Scholar) and the Word plugin allows you to put the citations right into your document. I use this all the time and it has saved me countless hours. (www.zotero.org) As for research, Google Scholar can provide you with the sources you need, however I recommend using your university's online library resources. Some university's subscribe to a lot of online journals and if yours does, then this is the best way to go and gives you more of the current research on your topic. Finally, one platform that I'm looking into that you may want to check out is Scrivener. It is a word processing program that allows you to really organize big projects by using digital cards to keep your outline solid and consistent. The program is great for getting your thoughts right and your argument organized and it has the ability to do sourcing but it doesn't work well with Zotero. You can get a 30 day free trial (www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php) and check it out to see if it will work for you. All the resources (with the exception of Word) are free. I hope this answers the question.

Don't do campaigns with mailing list which everyone is using. Rather create a new one based on your exact match. Trust me the result will be far better. With your list you can play around and get maximum result. I can be of help as I have the power of technology and research techniques. I can provide resources for business intelligence, data extraction and web scraping using digital strategy to reach a target specific to your business’ needs. What is your exact match? I can work around and share a sample data set. Interested ???

Same as any other entity (or person). Entity pays taxes in it's domicile jurisdiction. Best you talk with a tax preparer in your home country to ensure you have all the details. And... If you're a US citizen + your SAAS company is generating massive cash, likely best to organize your entity in a low tax jurisdiction, like Bermuda which is home to Google, Intel, Verizon, etc. And... best wait till Trump's new tax bill passes. If he has his way, corporate taxes may drop to a point low enough to keep your business in the US.

In a book, "Slicing Pie", Mike Moyers shows you different methods of securing talent prior to paying them a salary or securing investment capital. You can also use an ICO model similar to IPO except it is using a digital token to secure funding with a promise to buy back tokens. There are several models there. You can also try a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter or Gofundme. If you are truly passionate about it, find a way to make it happen and NEVER give up.

You can use a Factoring company (someone who purchases invoices). And likely they'll require some sort of seasoning of recurring payments before purchasing. You can go for Angel capitol + will have to give up a big chunk of income. If possible, write your own bridge loans by writing balance transfer checks on your credit cards. Usually this costs 1%-1.5% of check's value, so way cheaper than any other option + instant + you keep 100% ownership of your company.

Thank you for asking your question here on Clarity. The healthy discussion will also benefit many members of the community. The first company that I built and successfully sold, a BBS turned ISP (aka "Internet Service Provider", more here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/exitcoach), was indeed a "radical new approach". The internet back in the mid '90s was so "radical" that Elon Musk said this about it: "Back in '95 there weren't very many people on the internet, and certainly nobody was making any money at all. Most people thought the internet was going to be a fad." (video here: http://ElonMusk.fyi.to/YoungMillionaire). That company took me 7 years to build and sell, VERY painful first few years. No money for new tyres, then no money for petrol, eventually no money for public transportation. My second company, a free web hosting service, provided a radical new user experience. Rather than hosting your free web page on an "ugly" Geocities URL you could use an elegant www.yourname.hpg.com.br, among other clever enhancements. But at the core, hpG was no different than Geocities, Tripod or many of the other contenders. Apart from the enhanced user experience it was because we had a SOUND exit strategy from day 1 that we sold that company in 18 months and with a valuation 3X higher than my first company. BOTH with NO outside investors btw. Personally, I prefer the kind of "radical new approach" that enhances the user experience, zooming on an image by spreading 2 fingers over the screen (thank you Steve Jobs), than the radical kind of time/money that goes into the R&D required to create a palmtop, only for another clever entrepreneur to come along and leverage on your previous investment and reap the rewards thereof. Like what happened to Xerox, the inventor of the GUI, when Microsoft/Apple had a sneak peak at it. As far as investors go, it's a zoo out there. And "marrying" the wrong one can have grave consequences for the unexperienced entrepreneur. Most of the "big investors" are taking a portfolio approach (not that you cannot extract value from such a relationship) and many of the "smaller more manageable investors" bring little or no value other than financial capital. What you really want to find is intellectual capital, investors that have previously built and sold successful companies themselves before. The Marc Andreessen's of the world. Investor's that care much more about WHO you are, WHY you are pursuing entrepreneurial success, and that are asking themselves WHAT they can do to help you make your dreams come true. Investors that invest in true founders and not fundraisers. You may want to also look at this other related question here on Clarity: https://clarity.fm/questions/4857/what-is-the-ideal-time-to-reach-investors If there's anything I can do to help you build and sell a successful startup, feel free to engage me here on Clarity. Thank you!

Hello, you have a very interesting product in an interesting and growing industry. Anything with automated HR solutions is probably a good venture right now. There is a client of ours actually, www.BetaBulls.com who has specialized in automated Human Resources software (SaaS) as a CTO for other companies. I have learned a lot from working with them and based on that experience and the few startups I have launched myself including an online job posting platform and a game, I would say that generally speaking a good time to go for outside investment is when you have a validated concept, all legal documents in place and any type of demand from either partners or clients. Think of it as a business loan - you should only get one when you don't really need it, but for strategic leveraging is better to leverage borrowed money than your own. An investor should be the same, you get an investor if you need to buy yourself more time to improve on your technology or for market reach such as production or marketing. Not to prove the concept. It sounds like you are already there, so my recommendation would be to proceed with caution not giving any major control in any one area of your company or product.