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moon demon
Sep 11, 2001

of the moon, of the dream
Is there a website/community that has a lot of discussion about startups and job opportunities and such?

I graduated college in 2012 and have been working as an accountant, but my heart has always been with startups and I want to get into the scene long-term. I dabbled with startups in college and worked with another goon to produce a website ( https://www.aptologist.com search for UCLA) that I think has potential, but its been neglected as of late due to real jobs (read: jobs with paychecks).

It was a great learning experience though and I want to pursue either founding or helping to run/grow a startup after working for a steady paycheck for a bit.

So, how do I go about pursuing that? I'll have my CPA license soon and I'm sure there are opportunities out there for someone with business/tax leanings, I just don't know where to start.

I'm in Los Angeles, if that makes a difference.

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DukAmok
Sep 21, 2006

Using drugs will kill. So be for real.

chupacabraTERROR posted:

Is there a website/community that has a lot of discussion about startups and job opportunities and such?

I graduated college in 2012 and have been working as an accountant, but my heart has always been with startups and I want to get into the scene long-term. I dabbled with startups in college and worked with another goon to produce a website ( https://www.aptologist.com search for UCLA) that I think has potential, but its been neglected as of late due to real jobs (read: jobs with paychecks).

It was a great learning experience though and I want to pursue either founding or helping to run/grow a startup after working for a steady paycheck for a bit.

So, how do I go about pursuing that? I'll have my CPA license soon and I'm sure there are opportunities out there for someone with business/tax leanings, I just don't know where to start.

I'm in Los Angeles, if that makes a difference.

Hacker News is a good resource to stay on top of the startup community, definitely more engineer/programmer focused though.

Cute n Popular
Oct 12, 2012
Hello folks, I'm doing a feasibility assignment for a hypothetical start-up. I was wondering if there's any available resources for tech-start up statistics? Things like an estimated bad-debt expense, industry break-even rates and growth rates in general?

Thanks.

moon demon
Sep 11, 2001

of the moon, of the dream

DukAmok posted:

Hacker News is a good resource to stay on top of the startup community, definitely more engineer/programmer focused though.

Hm, that's an interesting website. I'll bookmark it and try to follow it.

I think I may post itt about my website this weekend, maybe you guys will have some input on how to improve it. It's a solid beta but it needs some work.

moon demon
Sep 11, 2001

of the moon, of the dream
Finally found some time to make a post about my website, so here goes:

The website is called Aptologist. It's designed to help college students find apartments. Essentially, it's like a combination of yelp and Wikipedia for apartments.

We tried to streamline the listings so that it shows exactly what the students are looking for without being too cluttered. Every listing is editable, so in theory the info should be up to date as best as it can be. Users are encouraged to post reviews so that other students can be informed, positively or negatively, by other students. We found that most apartment websites are subsidized in some way by apartment managers, so almost no sites have actual unbiased reviews by renters.

Many college students are first-time renters, so were trying to make searching for apartments as easy as possible. We're also working on some how-to guides for first time renters.

Right now we have a beta site up that is fully functional with some bugs. We're trying to get more data/listings/reviews, but right now were facing a chicken-egg problem. The only way to get data is through users, but there's no users without the data. So we're playing around with some things that might help that, but since our focus is on quality over quantity, we can't just data mine other sites for listings.

Anyway, check out the site and give me some feedback. We need help finding bugs and usability issues! Search for UCLA for an example of what a school with listings will look like. And please post your apartment listings/reviews! Your school might have no listings yet, but you may help us find a bug in the process.

https://www.aptologist.com

:buddy:

swyys
Sep 20, 2012

chupacabra--

I am very impressed by your search autosuggest! Anyway, it's really cool to see more sites try to integrate domain specific semantic/OG-type search. I gave it a whirl and it's pretty intuitive-- the search facet confirmation after you enter is really neat as well. Now I want to do the same thing for my site :buddy:

I know you're just in beta and have limited listings, and are probably trying to conserve the cleanliness of the front page, but have you considered adding some listings and/or place/facet suggestions below the fold? I had some problems figuring out exactly how to search without receiving empty results.

moon demon
Sep 11, 2001

of the moon, of the dream

swyys posted:

I know you're just in beta and have limited listings, and are probably trying to conserve the cleanliness of the front page, but have you considered adding some listings and/or place/facet suggestions below the fold? I had some problems figuring out exactly how to search without receiving empty results.

We've thought about putting listings on the front page, and it's something we might look into in the future as a monetization thing.

Can you elaborate on the "problems figuring out how to search without receiving empty results?" If you are searching for a university that doesn't have any listings, then the page should tell you that it recognized the school but there aren't any listings and you should make one. Is that what you mean?

a cat
Aug 8, 2003

meow.
I'm tossing around the idea of trying to sell my small ecommerce site. $20k yearly revenue. Profitable, easy to run. One person of the two I asked so far expressed they might be interested in buying it. Obviously the next question is how much do I try to sell it for? I've heard 2-4x yearly revenue is typical, but to me (who has no experience selling this kind of thing), even two times yearly revenue seems like "too much", for considerably less one should definitely be able to very easily replicate my site. Flippa.com seems to have most sites "selling" for like 5x monthly revenue at best (though who knows if they are actually sold for that price.) On the other hand, my search engine rankings are pretty drat close to ideal, and there's no competition from any other website.

How do I get the most money possible without scaring potential buyers away? Obviously some negotiation will take place, I just really can't figure out where to start in the range of 10-80 grand.

I spoke briefly to a business broker... is it a good idea to get one? Can anyone recommend one? The one I talked to seemed to tend to only deal with businesses an order of magnitude larger than mine.

Konstantin
Jun 20, 2005
And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

chupacabraTERROR posted:

Many college students are first-time renters, so were trying to make searching for apartments as easy as possible. We're also working on some how-to guides for first time renters.

Right now we have a beta site up that is fully functional with some bugs. We're trying to get more data/listings/reviews, but right now were facing a chicken-egg problem. The only way to get data is through users, but there's no users without the data. So we're playing around with some things that might help that, but since our focus is on quality over quantity, we can't just data mine other sites for listings.

Anyway, check out the site and give me some feedback. We need help finding bugs and usability issues! Search for UCLA for an example of what a school with listings will look like. And please post your apartment listings/reviews! Your school might have no listings yet, but you may help us find a bug in the process.

One issue is that, in my experience, a lot of college towns have a seller's market when it comes to student housing. Landlords have no trouble finding J Random Student to fill their apartment. The issue is finding good tenants that pay rent on time and won't trash the apartment. If you will eventually charge landlords for this service in some way, they are your users, not the potential tenants. It seems that you know some landlords, so discuss the site with them and see what they want you to do. Once you have a solid profile of listings, the tenants will come, but to get that you need to be able to answer the question "How will posting on this site attract a better quality of tenant to my property than just posting on Craigslist?" Another thing I would consider doing is spending most of your energy on the Los Angeles market. You need to develop a good presence in one area, and it seems that you're familiar with LA. Once you get a solid group of dedicated users there and know what works you can expand, but attempting to attract landlords from all over the country in vastly different real estate markets seems like it would be very difficult.

Maluco Marinero
Jan 18, 2001

Damn that's a
fine elephant.
I posted about an application I'm working on a few weeks ago, anyway I was planning on running a crowdfunding campaign to make the launch possible, now it's live.

The app is called Elephant and it's a productivity application that makes your note taking much more powerful. Rather than having a different interface for notes, calendars, and tasks, you can manage the whole lot using plain text; meaning you can keep your hands on the keyboard and stay focused, getting it organized faster. Here's a demo video:

http://youtu.be/NLT0TlCm5SU

You can try the prototype at http://elephantneverforgets.com.au as well, it's an offline application so none of your data leaves your computer. I want to take what's in the prototype and build it up into a full service that covers desktop and mobile with sync and backup between the two. The crowdfunding campaign I'm running on Pozible will give me enough of a cash reserve to work on it full time to completion, as well as covering development costs, hosting and so forth. Also, it's a Fixed Funding campaign so no IndieGogo dodginess here.

Anyway, check out the campaign at http://pozible.com/elephantneverforgets, please pledge if you can, or share it around if you can't. Thanks heaps!

nebby
Dec 21, 2000
resident mog
Ok, first I want to say this is very cool, and you did a great job with the presentation. I realize none of this stuff is easy. But I wanted to throw out there a few thoughts. Giant disclaimer that I know very little about your motivations and goals with this project, so take all this with a giant grain of salt. But from my very naive perspective from the sounds of it you are focused on building and building and building without getting a lot of market validation first.

The syntax/wiki based approach to building out calendars and tasks is a very neat concept -- but there are a lot of reasons for me to be skeptical that it is enough of a step forward for people to want to leave their current calendaring/task management apps (and there are dozens if not hundreds of these things you'll be competing against.) How does a person learn the syntax? How do they remember it? What about a natural language approach that doesn't require remembering specific syntax (as seen in Google Calendar?)

As a programmer, and someone who uses vim and the keyboard extensively, I find the concepts in this product appealing. But, I'm not the target customer, because I manage my tasks using very low-level things like org mode and text files in my editor. So if I'm not the target customer, who is? The professional? The part-time worker? My mom? It's unclear. This is a tool designed for power users but I don't know that there is much of a market for power user task management tools.

For an amazing cautionary tale of the "lets re-invent scheduling/communication" problem check out this book:

http://www.dreamingincode.com/

Of course, if this is just something you are building for fun and just hope to get crowdfunding to crank it out without starving, that's another thing altogether. But this is the startup thread, so I have to assume you are doing this to turn it into a venture. I'd love to hear more about exactly what audience you are targeting and what your overall expectations are for this product, because it's kind of unclear at this point to me.

Maluco Marinero
Jan 18, 2001

Damn that's a
fine elephant.
Good questions, and no it's not immediately evident what my end goal or motivations are. First of all, I'd love to be able to build software and keep a roof over my head. Being able to do it on my own terms would me even better. If I became successful enough to require staff, I would turn the company into a worker owned, equal share equal vote company, because it's my firm belief that that's the direction the world should be working towards. Naive perhaps, but eh, I always stand up for my beliefs. As such, I'm not interested in building a mega growth business or anything, enough to turn over the bills sustainably is fine by me.

While it may seem like I'm building and building, I put together this prototype over the course of 4 months, part time only. I built with the express purpose of getting the project far enough along for me to test it on customers to hone in on a market and see how it is received. That's why it's freely available, and that's why I'm running this crowdfunding campaign. If it fails, then I'm going to have to move onto finding some stable work any how, but at least I gave it a shot.

As for the target market, there's a midzone between the low level power user like yourself, and people who are starting to organize their life.

The simple tools, which seem to be the main offering these days, are always prone to the same weakness, once you get serious about really recording everything you have on your plate the simple lists become more cumbersome than genuinely useful.

The complex tools, things like OmniFocus, MyLifeOrganized and so on are very selective on platforms, don't always have good reliable sync solutions, and still require a lot of configuration to get a good working system.

I believe there are enough people out there, especially in 'Getting Things Done' circles, who want a more powerful consolidated alternative without the mountain of configuration, an app that provides a solid sensible default for the user wanting more from their task system.

On top of that It'd aim to provide the best of both worlds when it comes to web apps. Genuine offline functionality from the ground up, with sync and backup when connected. Add to that an API and connection to services to make it easier to get on board, and also to pull inputs from email and other services, via ifttt.com or similar, and I think there's enough there to entice the middle ground.


Of course, I don't know this for sure, but with this campaign I'll be able to find out whether I'm seeing things right or not.

snagger
Aug 14, 2004
Has anyone tried putting videos behind a paywall for their site, perhaps even in a non-porn fashion?

I'm hosting classes on Udemy right now but might need to set up my own site if some institutional deals go through.

mcsuede
Dec 30, 2003

Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.
-Greta Garbo

Maluco Marinero posted:

The app is called Elephant and it's a productivity application that makes your note taking much more powerful

The idea your brand is trying to operate with (elephants have great memories) is pretty much on lockdown by Evernote, who obviously also dominate the space you're trying to operate in. Not directly, but close enough that I'd look for another identity idea.

Maluco Marinero
Jan 18, 2001

Damn that's a
fine elephant.

mcsuede posted:

The idea your brand is trying to operate with (elephants have great memories) is pretty much on lockdown by Evernote, who obviously also dominate the space you're trying to operate in. Not directly, but close enough that I'd look for another identity idea.

I hear you. Either way I've got to put this on the backburner anyway, the Pozible campaign didn't get any attention at all so I'm just gonna have to look for work for now. It's unfortunate but I've learned a ton in the development and communication side of things, and I know what I'm gonna move towards as a project during my spare time. I just need to make sure a roof is kept over my family's head first. :)

DreadCthulhu
Sep 17, 2008

What the fuck is up, Denny's?!
Any personal experience with closing down a startup after having run it full time for a year or longer? I'm curious if you had any words of wisdom.

snagger
Aug 14, 2004
Hey dudes, can I get one upvote here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5404889 That'll put me back in the 'Ask' heading and hopefully get some critiques coming in.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

snagger posted:

Hey dudes, can I get one upvote here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5404889 That'll put me back in the 'Ask' heading and hopefully get some critiques coming in.

They check referrers and voting up from a direct link. You gotta link the newest page and get people to find and upvote it from that for it to have a major effect.

snagger
Aug 14, 2004

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

They check referrers and voting up from a direct link. You gotta link the newest page and get people to find and upvote it from that for it to have a major effect.

Ah! Duly noted for, well, sometime in the distant future. Thanks!

the talent deficit
Dec 20, 2003

self-deprecation is a very british trait, and problems can arise when the british attempt to do so with a foreign culture





DreadCthulhu posted:

Any personal experience with closing down a startup after having run it full time for a year or longer? I'm curious if you had any words of wisdom.

What do assets/liabilities look like? Any investors?

DreadCthulhu
Sep 17, 2008

What the fuck is up, Denny's?!

the talent deficit posted:

What do assets/liabilities look like? Any investors?

Nope, no assets or liabilities or investors, just a bunch of broken dreams :) Guess easy "liquidation" is one of the upsides of bootstrapping.

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.
I just signed up for a Coursera class created by Stanford dudes, Startup Engineering. Looks pretty neat, it seems to be a copy of CS184 at Stanford. Starts in June, 10 weeks long, the technical side of (software) startups.

Graphics
Jun 9, 2003

Awesome thread idea! I rarely check this Business, Finance, and Careers but now I'm going to much more. I've been "doing startups" for about 6 years now (and some form of web design and development for about 10), have one startup I consider a true success under my belt, working on a new venture now (which I went through yCombinator with), and I'm at a point in my career where I'd like to start giving back and helping others (rather than succumbing to my bad habit of working on side projects, which are easily the biggest distraction you can have while building a company).

If anyone would like advice on whatever it is they are working on or suggestions for when applying to YC (or any incubator and pitching investors for that matter), by all means ask away. Also very interested in any goon meetups in San Francisco.

DreadCthulhu
Sep 17, 2008

What the fuck is up, Denny's?!

Cicero posted:

I just signed up for a Coursera class created by Stanford dudes, Startup Engineering. Looks pretty neat, it seems to be a copy of CS184 at Stanford. Starts in June, 10 weeks long, the technical side of (software) startups.

That's a really interesting one, thanks for reminding me of its existence! I already use most of the tools listed there, but there's nothing quite like double-checking that I'm not following some terrible practices or some of my tools are awfully out of date.

DreadCthulhu
Sep 17, 2008

What the fuck is up, Denny's?!

Overture posted:

Awesome thread idea! I rarely check this Business, Finance, and Careers but now I'm going to much more. I've been "doing startups" for about 6 years now (and some form of web design and development for about 10), have one startup I consider a true success under my belt, working on a new venture now (which I went through yCombinator with), and I'm at a point in my career where I'd like to start giving back and helping others (rather than succumbing to my bad habit of working on side projects, which are easily the biggest distraction you can have while building a company).

If anyone would like advice on whatever it is they are working on or suggestions for when applying to YC (or any incubator and pitching investors for that matter), by all means ask away. Also very interested in any goon meetups in San Francisco.

Hey fellow SF startup scene survivor! We need to talk! I'm in SF myself, full-timing startups for a year now, software industry for about 5. Would kill for advice from someone who's been through the gauntlet much longer than I have. We actually applied to YC a bunch of times and never heard back, so far at least. My co-founder interviewed with them 2-3 times, but never got accepted. Got a couple of friends who are ex-YCers, we might have a few acquaintances in common!

PM sounds good?

NZAmoeba
Feb 14, 2005

It turns out it's MAN!
Hair Elf

musclecoder posted:

So I abandoned previous startup attempt in favor of something people actually want. In addition to my day job I do custom applications for small businesses. One of them was to build a basic ecommerce app that integrates with QuickBooks. Well, QuickBooks is a giant pain in the rear end to integrate with. Figuring other developers had this same issue, I set up a small landing page describing my solution and got some coverage on Hacker News and Programmable Web.

My idea was to provide a very easy REST API on top of QuickBooks. A lot of people liked this idea, and signed up so we built it. It's called MajorApi and is officially launched.

If you're a QuickBooks developer, I'd love your feedback.

I was originally going to come into this thread to promote my employer Xero as an alternative to Quickbooks, as Xero was founded on the premise of "holy crap accounting software sucks, lets fix that". But seeing this post made me realise that a more productive avenue would be to promote our platform and our pretty awesome API.

Xero is an entirely online small business accounting platform, users love us because we've had designers working with us from day 1 to make sure the UI is intuitive and beautiful, and our API partners love it because it's free and pretty well made with complete documentation that's not full of filthy lies.

Xero started 6 years ago, and every year it's managed to double it's customer base to the point where we now have over 157,000 paying organisations worldwide, and it's only growing faster. We're a New Zealand company, but Australia is now our largest market, with USA and the UK starting to build steady momentum. We don't have many US Add-on partners, but we'd certainly like more, so this is where you guys come in.

So you can either try Xero for your business (there's a free trial), look into developing add-on software for us on our free API, or if you're looking for a salary, we're also hiring for devs in San Fran! (Also Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington). PM me if you apply for a job, as there's a pretty generous referral bonus for employees.

DreadCthulhu
Sep 17, 2008

What the fuck is up, Denny's?!
Cool, I was just now looking for accounting software for my startup, it's between Wave and Xero.

Excelsiortothemax
Sep 9, 2006
Hi all. I am a Canadian goon so some stuff will be different.

My friend really wants to start up his own metal working business. He has all the start up tools and supplies he needs, and even a few potential buyers. What he needs is a space. For that we would need a loan, which we can get from a bank or credit union. The only reason I am involved is that I have a head for numbers and paperwork, while he gets seriously frustrated by that stuff.

My question is, what should we bring to the interview for the loan?

I am thinking a catalogue of his work, a list of buyers, our business plan (rent out small base and sell to local vendors and do private commissions on a website until we generate enough capital to get a permanent place) a list of costs and how much we would need the loan for, and business cards and registration papers for our small business.

I think that is everything that we would need. It would show that really the only thing that we would need to get in business is the cash.

Any suggestions for a first time start up? Anything I could be missing?

If the loan does go through I do plan on writing up a contract stipulating how much I get paid for doing all the paperwork and banking and promoting. He might be my friend but I'm no-ones fool and know that friendships can be soured when it involves money.

DonnyJepp
Jul 4, 2004

Figured you all might like this: Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything

snagger
Aug 14, 2004
I'm trying to find something. Maybe an OSS person here would know.

For a new project I basically want to build a porn site without the porn - a set of videos (they're educational!) behind a subscription paywall.

I've looked around for out-of-the-box software to do this and the closest I've come is Mediacore - a system that functionally works but is ugly, not customizable, and may be prohibitively expensive (I don't even know - I have to talk to their sales peeps).

If there were an appropriate combination of open-source packages I'd consider building it myself.

Can anyone drop some science on me?

Toilet Tsunami
Jan 27, 2013

Don't forget to wipe...

Excelsiortothemax posted:

Hi all. I am a Canadian goon so some stuff will be different.

My friend really wants to start up his own metal working business. He has all the start up tools and supplies he needs, and even a few potential buyers. What he needs is a space. For that we would need a loan, which we can get from a bank or credit union. The only reason I am involved is that I have a head for numbers and paperwork, while he gets seriously frustrated by that stuff.

My question is, what should we bring to the interview for the loan?

I am thinking a catalogue of his work, a list of buyers, our business plan (rent out small base and sell to local vendors and do private commissions on a website until we generate enough capital to get a permanent place) a list of costs and how much we would need the loan for, and business cards and registration papers for our small business.

I think that is everything that we would need. It would show that really the only thing that we would need to get in business is the cash.

Any suggestions for a first time start up? Anything I could be missing?

If the loan does go through I do plan on writing up a contract stipulating how much I get paid for doing all the paperwork and banking and promoting. He might be my friend but I'm no-ones fool and know that friendships can be soured when it involves money.

I know this may be obvious... but within your business plan, make sure you've actually included the loan you're seeking and how/when you intend to pay it back. I've got a friend who is an institutional lender in Toronto and he once worked the retail side. He always said entrepreneurs would come in seeking cash but never articulate how or when they'd have it repaid. The verbiage at the interview will not make its way to the senior loan manager who will make the call on your case.

Cheers and good luck!

Seraphiel
Mar 29, 2012

Toilet Tsunami posted:

I know this may be obvious... but within your business plan, make sure you've actually included the loan you're seeking and how/when you intend to pay it back. I've got a friend who is an institutional lender in Toronto and he once worked the retail side. He always said entrepreneurs would come in seeking cash but never articulate how or when they'd have it repaid. The verbiage at the interview will not make its way to the senior loan manager who will make the call on your case.

Cheers and good luck!

Just thought I'd back this - I have to approve/reject investment proposals fairly often, although we prefer to offer encouragement and revision instead, but this is probably the biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs making.

Dr Jankenstein
Aug 6, 2009

Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.
Dumb question:

Where would I find what sort of building codes exist for property that is zoned X way so I know if its feasible to build Y on it?

A friend of mine has gotten it into her head that she *really* wants to open a strip club next to the new casino that opened (which, granted, isn't at all a dumb idea. Strip clubs and casinos go together really well) and she has an investor already lined up, and since I'm the one that's good at doing research and doesn't mind slogging through giant tomes of municipal law to see what we need to do to get her idea to come to fruition without breaking any silly municipal laws, and basically get all the background together for the business plan, since it's a win-win for me. Even if this fails miserably the only thing I've wasted is my time, and even then it's not really a waste since its knowledge that would be useful in the future.

However i've never had to research any of this sort of stuff, so I don't even know where to start. I'm trying very very hard to talk her into opening it slightly down the street on the SD side of the state line as the IA side...is a pain in the rear end to open a strip joint in since "strip clubs" are illegal but "performing arts centers" can feature as much nude dancing as they want. But there's a large parcel of land zoned commercial being sold by the square foot right there, I just need to know where to look to find out what's allowed to be built and what sort of permits we would need to pull (Her whole family are contractors/builders/involved in construction in some way, shape or form so we don't have to worry about that) I've tried looking this stuff up on the county website, the state website, the township website, the chamber of commerce...but can't find where the laws about "can i build a bar here? Ok, how about a performing arts center with a bar?" would be.

All y'all startup people that have dealt with this, point me in the right direction, please?

\/\/ Ah. I was hoping it would be easy enough to dig up online as the nearest town is on the other side of the county - a solid 45 minutes from me and I'm doing this purely as a favor and because I find all this dig up information poo poo fun. My thinking is if they start following through with this there's going to be a whole bunch of poo poo to try and stop it from going in since the casino's been open for over a year and no one else has put a strip club in yet. Probably because there's a bunch of injunctions/weird-rear end laws to make operating such an establishment impossible. And we're not building a house or nothing, just there is...nothing out there. It's a casino surrounded by farmland that was recently rezoned to commercial and industrial around the casino, but hasn't had anything built on it yet. So any establishment put into place needs to be built from the ground up.

Dr Jankenstein fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jun 9, 2013

snagger
Aug 14, 2004

AA is for Quitters posted:

A local/social startup disrupting basic human interactions

Prooooobably talk to a human in that bureaucracy of township/county/state/etc. Bureaucrats, in my experience, are pretty decent at pointing you to the appropriate other parts of their own bureaucracy.

edit: Wait, she has family in the construction business? Houses have to be zoned residential as well, amigo. Go ask them.

aslewofmice
Dec 22, 2003

AA is for Quitters posted:

Dumb question:

Where would I find what sort of building codes exist for property that is zoned X way so I know if its feasible to build Y on it?

A friend of mine has gotten it into her head that she *really* wants to open a strip club next to the new casino that opened (which, granted, isn't at all a dumb idea. Strip clubs and casinos go together really well) and she has an investor already lined up, and since I'm the one that's good at doing research and doesn't mind slogging through giant tomes of municipal law to see what we need to do to get her idea to come to fruition without breaking any silly municipal laws, and basically get all the background together for the business plan, since it's a win-win for me. Even if this fails miserably the only thing I've wasted is my time, and even then it's not really a waste since its knowledge that would be useful in the future.

However i've never had to research any of this sort of stuff, so I don't even know where to start. I'm trying very very hard to talk her into opening it slightly down the street on the SD side of the state line as the IA side...is a pain in the rear end to open a strip joint in since "strip clubs" are illegal but "performing arts centers" can feature as much nude dancing as they want. But there's a large parcel of land zoned commercial being sold by the square foot right there, I just need to know where to look to find out what's allowed to be built and what sort of permits we would need to pull (Her whole family are contractors/builders/involved in construction in some way, shape or form so we don't have to worry about that) I've tried looking this stuff up on the county website, the state website, the township website, the chamber of commerce...but can't find where the laws about "can i build a bar here? Ok, how about a performing arts center with a bar?" would be.

All y'all startup people that have dealt with this, point me in the right direction, please?

\/\/ Ah. I was hoping it would be easy enough to dig up online as the nearest town is on the other side of the county - a solid 45 minutes from me and I'm doing this purely as a favor and because I find all this dig up information poo poo fun. My thinking is if they start following through with this there's going to be a whole bunch of poo poo to try and stop it from going in since the casino's been open for over a year and no one else has put a strip club in yet. Probably because there's a bunch of injunctions/weird-rear end laws to make operating such an establishment impossible. And we're not building a house or nothing, just there is...nothing out there. It's a casino surrounded by farmland that was recently rezoned to commercial and industrial around the casino, but hasn't had anything built on it yet. So any establishment put into place needs to be built from the ground up.

You could talk to a broker at a Commercial Real Estate brokerage in your area: https://www.cbre.com https://www.marcusandmillichap.com are some of the bigger brokerage firms. If you already have a building that you're interested in, talk to someone on their Investment Sales team. If it's just land, talk to someone in their Land division. They may give you the hard sell on their services, but you should be able to get simple info like this from them pretty easily.

Baby Babbeh
Aug 2, 2005

It's hard to soar with the eagles when you work with Turkeys!!



You're going to need to talk to an actual person in the actual government about this. Probably multiple people, and also lawyer who deals in small business and property law in the area you're trying to set up. This isn't going to be anything as straightforward as going to the code enforcement website.

You're dealing in a vice business, and those always get political. Even if you're technically in the clear expect some county supe to lean heavily on the code enforcement department to make your life hell, because it buys them votes with right in an election cycle. The best thing you can hope is to be really well versed in the law and ready to roll with the punches when they start throwing up obstacles. Do you have any small business advocacy groups besides the chamber of commerce in your area? You should probably check with them as well.

Dr Jankenstein
Aug 6, 2009

Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.
Thanks for all the info!

The only thing with small business is everything around here is in Sioux Falls, and the land we're looking at is right across the border in Iowa, and Rock County Iowa doesn't have...much. There is the government economic development department, and I think I'll give them a call this week to see what we'd have to do.

And yeah, the vice business is the big problem here. If we were just going to open a bar, I think it'd be a lot more straightforward, but with a "performing arts center" (hah!) I know we're going to face a lot more barriers due to A) Being in the midwest and B) Strip clubs are like the epitome of NIMBY business.

But if this goes through, it's easy easy money provided all involved have some sort of head on their shoulders. And myself and the investor both know what we're doing when it comes to business. (Him more than me, but I know how to keep a budget with a business and am good at going through all the "what-ifs" involved to make sure we have all of our bases covered.) So long as we can get this up and running, getting people in there will not be a problem. It's just getting it open that is the problem.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Not about founding a startup, but rather working for one...what should I be looking for/at/negotiating when it comes to stock options? I've been offered 2k 'units' @ some fixed price, with 25% vesture after year 1 and a smaller chunk every quarter there after (full vest at 4 years). I take it's probably weird to request a change in that schedule?

shrughes
Oct 11, 2008

(call/cc call/cc)

movax posted:

Not about founding a startup, but rather working for one...what should I be looking for/at/negotiating when it comes to stock options? I've been offered 2k 'units' @ some fixed price, with 25% vesture after year 1 and a smaller chunk every quarter there after (full vest at 4 years). I take it's probably weird to request a change in that schedule?

That would be very weird. The 4 year vesting schedule is quite standard. What kind of change are you looking for?

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movax
Aug 30, 2008

shrughes posted:

That would be very weird. The 4 year vesting schedule is quite standard. What kind of change are you looking for?

Just thinking quicker would be nice (like 3 years instead) as my long term plans would be around that range, but that's all subject to change, I suppose!

Any comments / suggestions re: the number of units/stocks you're given?

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