exline

The loan approach is not a bad one as you stated because it reduces your risk, which may be why they offered it to you. The figure you would like to get paid. The fact that you did the work at risk and have already taken risk, I would want ask for some above a hours * salary as the value of your contribution.

Do they know you are willing to use the hours you have already worked as an investment into the company? They may be thinking that you would not like this offer. Another spin is to do what they are offering, and determine the value each one brings to the table, but allow you the option to make an investment into the company using the loan you have already given the company.

I've had 2 experiences. The first was with an older entrepreneur who was also very technical. He handled most of the business work and his share of technical workload. He was open to letting me (and others) learn and take as much of the business work as we wanted to gain experience. I had known him for many years prior to doing this startup. Even though the startup eventually failed, it was a great experience.

Second one was with an with a entrepreneur who was technical enough to be dangerous. He had clear ideas on what our product could/should do but was completely hands off on how we implemented it. Again he was willing to let me into the business side if I choose to get involved in it. He had a much larger ownership percentage than I did, but he also brought about most of the business contacts and had a huge amount of domain knowledge (recognized expert in the field.) He also personally financed the company when there were cash flow issues. He had a personal line of credit to pay the bills that I did not have to worry about.

So in both my cases, there was a clear establishment of ownership and responsibilities. I think think the ownership and personal trust is the key. In both my cases I didn't have to worry about getting screwed over by either one. That is always a possibility, but it really pays to know who you are going into business with. The saying that it is like a marriage is very accurate. It is important to establish the value that each person brings to the table. At both startups, there was a large amount of work done 'at risk' that was converted into equity. I'd get that formula defined up front so that it is established. This helps ensure that your work has value in everyone eyes.

How much has he spent so far. On one hand it seems fairly small, which should not be an issue to repay. But I can see being a bit angry no matter the amount if he continue to do it after talking with him.

If he is not communicating, then perhaps put a hold on or cancel the company credit card he carries? I'd only do this if he is avoiding you while continuing to use the card for person expenses. What do your other founders think about this? Are they willing to cut him more slack than you? Are you over reacting? Hard to tell with out more details, but I would push to resolve the issue quickly.

Content seems good for first year students. I'd clean up the format of the presentation a bit. You were inconsistent with spacing between points in some cases. Lots of switching between back ground colors, images, no images, etc. It made it a bit harder to focus. I don't think you should have the period at the end of the titles, seems out of place.

Perhaps you handle it when you are speaking, but I'd put a bit more about pivoting. Or talking about MVP and iterating (pivoting) as required. Its really taking most of what you talk about and explain how it is not a linear process.

No. There are lots of startups with non technical founders who can bring in (or outsource) the technical development. There is a larger risk in the quality of the code when you do this. If there is no tech founder, then most of the time you will have a harder time judging the developers you will be using (hiring/outsourcing to.) It also means that you will have to pay for the development vs a co-founder putting in sweat equity to get the product done.

Based on your brief description, it sounds like there will not be a lot of heavy lifting to get the application up and running. From personal experience, getting the MVP version of the app done is really the easy part. It doesn't always feel like it, but in the overall picture it is easier to do development than it is to sell the app once finished. The sales/marketing after the fact is where the real work starts. Many hackers have trouble moving from development to marketing.

Working from home, waiting for breakfast to be made.

I should hire someone instead, but have not in the past. I grab a free template and modify it as best as I can. I have had a few users say they really like it, which always surprises me.

For the next venture I will be outsourcing the design to that it looks a lot better.

The API looks good to me. Nicely documented. Only found one thing that seems wrong.

You have: http://api.mixcloud.com/popular/ http://api.mixcloud.com/popular/hot/ http://api.mixcloud.com/new/

http://api.mixcloud.com/popular/hot/ seems like it should be http://api.mixcloud.com/hot/ to be consistent.

A large application trying to do many things at once. Has a very long sales cycle and is expensive. It requires sales and marketing effort teams to get sales. Support services offered because it is a pain to install and/or run.

The biggest issue is the ability to learn quickly. There is probably little or no work experience yet. I would not put much weight into school projects. I would look for any contributions to open source or private projects.

My recommendation would be to work on an open source project starting now. You will get to work on a better project (since you get to pick) and quite possibly learn more. You might find out that this turns out better than an internship in the long road.

I start with brain storming how it will be used. What are the use cases? This is easy if you are scratching your own itch. More difficult if you not.

Then pair down the ideas/use cases/requirments to what you need for an MVP.

Then I like to work on the data models and back end. But that is where my strengths are. If it is a complex problem, I like doing some design work to make sure a) its doable b) that I don't code myself into a corner.

That said, I'd like to all the above very quickly and get to the coding. I have found at times that I get stuck spinning my wheels. It helps to get input on any of the above from another person.

The first thing is to actually talk to your potential users. I don't think bloggers are going to be of much help in this phase. You are looking for feedback and want to talk with real users.

I would not spend time creating a screen cast yet. If you have a few screen shots or can just describe the product to them directly. Ideally you would want 10 passionate customers. If you only have 1 or 2, their feedback might drive you in the wrong direction.

As technical people, we would love to just email a few people or post a comment on a blog. But to get great users, you have to engage them. The best way is to go out and physically talk with them. Since your market is restaurant/cafe/bars, you can do it all locally which is great because you can read their body language, watch them use it, etc.

A few thoughts. First having to fill out the form to apply may be turning people off. Is part time meaning 2-3 days a week or is it 5 days a week only a few hours each day? The latter would not make the commute worth it.

The ad itself does not do a great job selling the position, but then again I'm not a .net developer. You might be setting your sights a little high for what you want. You may have better luck finding a college student, perhaps post it at your local university. My first software job was as part time developer, that I was recommended by one of my professors. Turned out he got a finder's fee for everyone that was hired.

I have not had great luck with job listings on Craigslist. A lot of people responding that don't appear to read what the position is.

I was part of a start up with 4 guys. 1 was my former boss, the 2 others were my equals. The original idea was the former boss's idea and he was paying for a lot of the overhead (hosting, hardware, beer, etc.) We all stated what our desired salaries were. His was above the 3 of us, and I was fine with that. He brought technical and business skills to the table and I was more than happy for him to have a larger salary. This was different than the stock allocation, which was based on hours worked (before we were funded)

So if you consider you and your co-founder equals, then equal pay makes sense regardless of the ownership. If you (or him) bring more to the table, then different pay rates is also fair, assuming you both see eye to eye on this.

I'm not sure at the PG quote. I do see the benefit of investing profits back into the company which will increase the value of the company and your ownership of it.

This seems to be a fairly popular application right now. I feel like there has been quite a few calendar/appointment apps recently. Lots of competition.

A few quick notes: 1) The team page is broken when you click on one of the images. 2) I have not watched the video yet, but I'd like to have screen shots and text descriptions of what the benefits of the app is. I can read faster then it would take me to watch the video. There is not enough details yet to make me want to watch the video. 3) I would call out that 'Appointment' where a user can actually use it (as a customer) and see what their customers would see. It is non obvious that you should click on it. 4) There is no email address on the contact page 5) The refer a business text is a long run on blob of text. It needs better formatting.

It seems like one way you are trying to stand out from the crowd is the CRM aspect but I don't see where you drill down on this.

Looking at the price, you might be under pricing your offering. Quickbooks goes from between $160 and $320 and intuit does force after a few years. I would add a third more expensive plan if I were you.

Also you should talk about benefits, not features. Technical people like features (we implemented them after all) but most users want to know about the benefits. It is easier to sell how the software will benefit them vs how cool a feature is has.

If CPC is working great and you are gaining paying customers, I'd keep doing more of that. As long as your customer acquisition cost is low, then keep pumping money into CPC for the time being.

You seem to have a lot of good content. I'm surprised that you are struggling with organic traffic. I just checked out the customer list you have, very impressive. It would appear that you are doing quite well. Perhaps you just need to add another plan and get more revenue per client?

I agree. I like having a technical lead dealing with all aspects technical and a manager dealing with paperwork, burn rates, BS customer issues, politics, etc. This frees up the technical lead to do the required technical work.

The larger the company the greater the need from what I have experienced. Technically its not required, but I'd rather not be dealing with those aspects. I forgot where I read it, but I've heard the manager role being described as a sh*t umbrella. Its there to keep everyone below him/her clean so they can focus on their work.

Could you report back how the cold calling works? I've been thinking of doing some of that but I have no idea what the ROI will be on it.

Thanks for details. I know about ending with .99 but had not heard of .79 but it falls under the same rules. Even though I know this, as a consumer I don't like it so I charge an even $25.

I think the difference between basecamp and your app is B2B vs B2C. I happily pay for things that help my business grow. I'm more hesitant to pay for things as a consumer. RIO is easer to justify to business. But that said, I think there is enough pain in the wedding planning processes that you can find the right price point.

Don't do it. Less than half is a more than a reduced salary. That's a major cut. After 3 months do you get any compensation for the first 3 months of reduced pay?

Even in tough economic times like now, I would not take the offer unless I had nothing else. Its hard enough to work at a startup without this added stress.

I believe that employees are absolutely critical to the success of a start up and I can't image that this start up is going to attract the best and brightest to work there with this attitude. I suspect that no matter how you perform, after 3 months, they will try to keep you salary low because they have already undervalued your contribution in the first 3 months.

What we do is to offer a short term contract during which we pay them normal contract rates, but we have the option of not hiring them at the end of the contract. No matter what they get paid for their work and if we like them, we bring them on at above industry average rates.

I also have not heard of 'footfalls'. Brick and mortal stores refer to door count.

Also there is a lack of details on your site. You do have the video, but there was not enough details on the site to want me to watch it. You didn't hook me into wanting to know more about the service.

Can you provide some of the reasoning that led you to the $12.79 amount. That is a rather odd amount, but it seems like you have a reason for it and I'm curious as to what it is.

I agree it sucks to get locked out when your trail runs out. I think your idea of locked down afterwards is a better idea.

Related to pricing, your pricing page has a 'Free' option, but you said you are not going the freemium route. I'm assuming that you have just not updated the page yet. In the comments you mentioned $12 a month. Seems strange to offer this as a monthly service. I'd rather just pay a single price as a user. What happens after the wedding? Do they have to cancel? Since there is a definitive end date to the usefulness of the app, I think you should at least the option of paying for a 12 month price up front. But $144 might be a bit high.

The site looks good to me. I don't think the "NotaryCRM will save your day (and your sanity)." stands out enough, especially since it is your tag line. There is not enough contrast.

I noticed you say it is a free service on the website. Do you intend to charge in the future? If so, you might say 'Free while in Beta' or something. Something to clue people in that there will be a cost at some point.

Overall great work in a short amount of time. Both the product and getting a large number of users quickly. Did you do anything else besides using Twitter to reach out to other notaries?

I was taken back a bit by the monthly fee. I was thinking it was a one time purchase kind of app. $29.95 a year is not to expensive but still it seems like a tough sell. Obviously you are not having an issue if you are having a 30% conversion rate.

What I was looking for and didn't see right away was how did it work. I think a diagram would be worth a 1000 words in this case. In order for this to work, your computer has to be on that is running the client software. How often is it checking in with the cloud server to know something is ready to print? It has to be alot in order to be able to 'print in 15 seconds' as you claim. I'd have an issue with that, but I'm protective over what is running on my machine.

ToDo lists. I find that when I get bogged down for any reason, if I create a todo list of items that have to get done I'm more likely to do the items on the list. I tend to pick up momentum as I cross items off the list. Make the list a manageable size, finish it off and create a new one.

For product related tasks, getting actual users and feedback from them is a huge motivator as well.

Every job I have gotten was through someone I knew. This goes all the way back to my very first job as bus boy. To me this greatly reduces the risk at working at a crappy place and helps smooth out the hiring process.

When I've been in the position to hire people, the first thing I do is ask the current employees to recommend one of their friends or former coworkers. If I like and respect the current employee, odds are the person they bring in will be of similar caliber.

Linked-in might be the closest fit to what you have described. Right now I'm guessing its mostly word of mouth. So there might be a market for it, but the trick is to get enough job postings.

I feel it is a bit of stretch to compare a product user to a blog reader. Having users who love your product will a) point out things that need fixing, b) give lots of great feedback. A product is something they have to use (you hope), its solving a problem. I don't feel that way about a blog.

I suppose a great reader will also provide feedback which is what you are asking about. Sorry no ideas here.

I have some users who love my software, but I rarely hear from them because the software just works. But then again my product is rather boring and not fun to talk about. I got my users by having software that solves their problem and I provide top notch customer support.

"The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki is a good read.

+1 to mixergy.com. There are a lot of very good interviews there.

I think it is a risk factor. I was almost not hired at a startup specifically because the owner was worried about the level of risk I was taking with wife/kids/house etc. That's a good boss to have, one looking out for me. Things turned out fine.

Personally, it does alter the level of risk I'm willing to take. Pre kids, I'd be willing to risk a lot more. Having kids makes me value my time which does force me to be focused. I'm willing to work long hours, but I split the time up. I work until 4-5 and spend time with the family. If there is work to be done, I'm back on after the kids are in bed. This could present a problem at some startups.