jmaskell

You can easily lose money if you value the time spent writing the book and get paid nothing / less than you could have earned elsewhere for it.

There are quite a few large players in the market and many middle men between the producer and consumer. The secondary market is very inefficient - the default is to sell to a traditional merchant who will take 10-25% of the price. Auction houses take around 25% and prefer volume to single cases.

This gives us several angles to attack. Market size was a concern when talking to investors - and we took money from people who would be happy with that kind of scale.

Thanks for the comment - we have a full time designer on the team. Bootstrap is a great base and allows us to build quickly - but it still takes a lot of work to get the customisation right.

So I guess the main point of this article was to get some ideas down and provide a quick summary of things I've learnt in the past year. Getting feedback is helpful as it shows where I can drill down in to more detail in future posts.

For now quick responses to your points:

1. We spent a lot of time playing around with ideas, thinking big, making assumptions about what people wanted. We should have just built something small, quickly, put it out there and got feedback. Basically build a smaller MVP.

2. Knowing the basics is a good place to start - it at least makes it easier to hire the right people if you understand the role a bit.

3. Agree with your counter point. Specifically we spent a lot of time agonising over Rails or Django - when for our project there wouldn't have been much difference between the two - either would have been just as good. Getting the MVP built would have been a more constructive use of time.

Kind of agree with this - traditional VCs are only likely to be interested in the billion dollar/pound companies.

Many angels and small funds will be happy with £10m/year - it's just a case of picking the right type of investor for your company.

It's also worth using a credit card for the added protection and other benefits (see http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cards/credit-card-tips).

Just make sure you pay off the balance in full each month so you never get stung by interest.

Talk to your co-founder. It sounds like you're pretty sure that the problem can be resolved by taking a break. Try taking a week off. You're no good to your startup is you're burnt out and unable to work. Not taking a week off to rest now could cost you many weeks in the future.

If you take some time off to rest and you don't feel any better seek professional help. Mental health is just as important as physical health and isn't something that you should feel ashamed about.

There are two main advantages to buying an off the shelf company:

1. Having a company that appears to have been around for longer than it actually has (although it's pretty easy to find out it's history - e.g. when directors changed).

2. Getting the company name that you want. There are a number of people that form companies and register them as dormant just to squat on the name - just like people do with domain names.

Edit: forgot to add:

I'd recommend registering a fresh company. It's quick and easy. Buying a company, changing directors, making sure there's no awful legal history with it etc probably isn't worth the extra cost or effort. It's nice to have a clean slate to start with.

"As part of the company registration process, you might be tempted to come up with a lofty valuation for your shares. Don't. You'll only cause yourself hassle. Create 100 shares of £1 each and assign 1 share to each equal cofounder. You can change those numbers to reflect however you decided to set up the company. If you want to implement vesting, close this web page and get in touch with a solicitor."

This isn't the case if you register through Companies House - you have to allocate all share capital.

I found this out when using their online registration service recently - according to my accountant it's a change from the Companies Act 2006.

The Companies House registration service is definitely worth using - you'll probably get your company set up within an hour or two of filing the form. Unless you have a complicated shareholder agreement (in which case you really should get yourself a good lawyer if you don't already have one) the default Articles of Association will be fine for you.