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I'm starting the process of single-founding a startup, so I'm interested too.
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Jun 9, 2012 11:49
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FSMC posted:Most if not all startup stuff seems to be based on "software/web" startups. Does anyone recommend any books or blogs that concentrate more on hardware startups. I wish, it's all pretty sparse. Still, the best advice I've picked up from books so far has been from Eric Ries and Steven Blank, their books are pretty much universal. Can you give a bit more detail on what you're working on, what stage you're in and where you're located?
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Jun 25, 2012 15:45
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FSMC posted:Electronic sports device. I've made a proof of concept, which works. I'm working on the prototype. I'm based in London... Hmm, I'm not sure I can give you any field-specific information then. Two things I've found really help is to a) Find mentors who have been through the grinder b) Look in-depth into startups that have built successful physical products. Other than that, I think you just have to find a process you trust and put your head down. Have you read The Startup Owner's Manual and the Lean Startup? Have you validated your problem hypothesis? Are you working solo? I think I'm a bit further ahead than you are in the process, if you want to chat about this poo poo pm or email/fbook me at zemvpferreira@gmail.com .
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Jun 26, 2012 10:45
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Malloreon posted:These days the path for consumer hardware begins and ends with kickstarter. That's patently untrue. Kickstarting might be all the rage right now but there's still plenty of available resources to take the more conventional approaches.
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Jul 2, 2012 21:04
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Gnack posted:Working on a fairly basic startup project myself, so I was pretty pleased to find this thread. Can you give us more detail on your project? I'm not the most experienced founder, but it seems to me like getting funded really depends on your local investment scene. Take the advice you read in Silicon Valley oriented books and articles very lightly, and look for someone local to you who's already done it before. If anything, really look into your hypothesis: do you actually need funding? read the books by 37signals and other bootstrappers, identify your MVP; build and release it as soon as possible and see what kind of traction you can get without spending money.
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Jul 9, 2012 13:39
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Space Crabs posted:Any advice on what to do when getting zero traction? I self funded but my app sits at <150 downloads 3 months later. A lot could be happening for you to get zero traction. Off the top of my head: -You're not exposing your product to anyone. -You're not exposing your product to the right people. -People are getting to your site/whatever but they can't see a proper path to action. -People think you look sketchy. -People can't see where your app's value is. -Your app sucks too much for any of the billion smartphone users to install. (this is probably not true) Give us more detail: what is it; how much money are you spending on publicizing, what kind of page views are you getting, how many clickthroughs...poo poo, give yourself some free advertising by pitching us, maybe you'll get to 151 downloads!
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Jul 12, 2012 03:05
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unixbeard posted:Getting Real from 37signals appears to be free now (or at least only costs an email address) http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ I haven't read it yet I've found it's very much worth the time for their contrarian viewpoints, if nothing else. Rework isn't free but get that too if you like Getting Real.
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Aug 3, 2012 12:42
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Seraphiel posted:I'm currently a manager at a UK-based angel investment network, so I generally see a lot of entrepreneurial proposals and whatnot, so I'd be glad to answer any questions if you guys have any? I'm founder/CEO of a seed-stage startup that's currently thinking about moving operations to the UK. Could I send you a slide deck and ask for your opinion on how well-suited we are to the investment environment there? If this is too much like work I'll totally understand if you decline.
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Jan 29, 2013 14:15
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:That's the common impression, yeah. To make that calculation you need to know the valuation of the company, fully diluted shares outstanding, and the number of shares you'd be getting. Alternatively, you can figure out the current valuation of the company from the assigned stock price and your percentage, and sanity-check it that way. And you still have to take into account any liquidation preferences that might exist or come to be imposed. Basically, it's hard to impossible to make any decent cash out of employee shares unless you're hired very early, or the company does a Facebook.
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Jun 17, 2013 16:52
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bee posted:
Caveat emptor: I'm an entrepreneur but I don't know anything about your space. I do physical products you put in boxes and ship to people. Reading your posts, I get the impression you're going though a period of heavy uncertainty: you don't have any data on what works, you don't have any data on what your clients want, hell you don't even know who your clients are; and so your opinion on what the business should be shifts a quickly as a fart disappears in the wind. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think you need to stop pivoting. Choose one direction that you think will be useful to mankind (or just design something you'd like for yourself), build a good-enough version of that (might be just a google docs spreadsheet and a landing page) and go sell the poo poo out of it. Once 1000 people have told you 'no', then consider pivoting. If 10 people say 'yes' before you hit 'no' 1000, focus on what worked for those 10 and keep on going.
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Aug 25, 2013 11:59
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Stop throwing that many hours at problems. 40-60/week is more than enough to get poo poo done, focus on being rested and at the top of your game, every single day. Also, if you have VC money and are that understaffed, how are you not aggressively expanding your team?
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Sep 16, 2013 10:15
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DreadCthulhu posted:I think I'm going to institute the Sundays to be off limit so I can cram in gym, groceries and the rest of the day with the SO and then hopefully have a energized 6 days afterwards. We'll see how that turns out. Why are you trying to work 80 hour weeks? Is the product of your work that well defined that you just need to build whatever it is you're building, to the exclusion of any sort of intellectual work? I have a small team with a very short runway and I'm trying to move everyone from the 60-hour panic weeks, to a 30-hour 4-day week, so everyone is better rested, at the top of their game, and making better decisions. You need to know right away if you're in a position where you need to be a grinder or a thinker, and adjust your hours accordingly: if thinker, work on having less work; if grinder, work on being able to do more.
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Sep 18, 2013 17:40
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DreadCthulhu posted:That's a good question. The product is somewhat defined, in fact we made a few institutional sales already, but we have no idea if this will scale. In fact right now it looks like it won't, too much hand holding to make a very measly sale. If we don't come up with a better monetization route (or a different engine of growth) we're done in half a year at best. We're continuously trying different experiments, and the thing we stress hardest is the speed of iteration of such experiments. The more we try, the better our chances of striking gold and not having to go back to real jobs in a few months. I'm sorry, but I can't agree with this. I don't care for Lean and think quality of iteration trumps speed of iteration. Experiments should be driven by hypothesis drastic enough to change your whole business, and that takes strong intuitions, time to think and a lot of industry-specific knowledge. No one strikes gold at random, you learn to dig in the right places. You are not a lottery ticket. If you don't know enough about your industry to make educated guesses about the future just shut the whole thing down right now. I wouldn't though, you're doing something right if you have sales. If something's connecting with people, you need to amplify the effect, broaden your reach and make sure it's scalable when it needs to scale. DreadCthulhu posted:Our runway is extremely short, around 6 months at the current rate, and we've just started paying ourselves "salaries" to survive (after 1.5 years of sucking it up). Our incubator's demo day is in 3 months, so we need to fake that perfect last minute hockey stick to make it to a reasonable seed round (our industry is pretty tough as far as vc goes, so every little bit counts). The better our traction at that point in time, the better the chances of missing the timing on that seed. 6 months is a shitload of time, are you kidding me? Also, no one half clever goes to or cares about demo days. Optimize for the long term, not for a stupid deadline. At the most you can use Demo Day as a PR tool if you have a shiny number or a new release. DreadCthulhu posted:At this point 80 hours is out of question, I don't even know how to do that. I agree that's kind of immature and an indication that you're not really doing work for at least 20 of those hours, but trying to live the "lifestyle". I'm a bit too old for the whole "don't shower for 3 days and sleep at work". Ideally we're aiming for 60h of well-rested work, which is pretty achievable with 6 day work weeks, but if you work intensely enough you could be done in 40. I think you need to get out of panic mode. What works for me is facing the cold, hard facts: -demo day is worthless and you shouldn't care about other people's arbitrary deadlines. -6 months of runway is plenty to get to ramen profitability or hockey-stick growth. -your product is either working or it isn't. You need to find out which and apply the appropriate fixes. Stop with the loving pivots. -If you fail your life is not over. What's the worst that can happen? If you're a decent developer I'll get you a job in a week. I don't have all the answers and I'm sure as poo poo not a success case yet, so what do I know. In any case, this job is tough and I've felt lost plenty of times before, so if you ever want to talk to someone who's taking the journey and vent, I'd love to have a chat over skype. If you're in SF I'm coming over in a week, let's have a beer.
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Sep 20, 2013 00:03
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You're in *that accelerator* with a startup *in that space*? I don't think you had disclosed that previously in this thread, sure you don't want to edit that out? I'm sorry, I might have misspoke about demo day. What I meant is that good investors get to know you in other situations, so you shouldn't pressure yourself with the thought that it's make or break. In my experience, a demo day feels much more like a celebration of what you've been through in the accelerator. Of course, if you're playing in that league you're 100% right in trying to get big numbers for demo day, but I still think it should pretty much be for PR only. I'll PM you when I get to SOMA, hanging out with someone other than my cofounder and our landlord sounds great 
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Sep 23, 2013 18:49
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toben posted:
Well, you actually have a great opportunity right there: If you're a tech guy working in a non-tech industry, you're in a privileged position to disrupt it. For instance, http://www.asseta.com is a YComb startup that was founded by guys sick of the way their industry operated, who decided to push it into the 21st century. Don't fall in love with mobile, either. It's a technology and it's probably an inescapable part of any solution you come up with, but unless you're already at the forefront of smartphone use that's not a great way to start a business. Instead, look at anachronism and friction points in your industry and work flow, and think what the shape of a ten times better solution would be.
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Mar 25, 2014 11:26
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Finding someone who'll be as committed as yourself to your idea and who'll make a good long-time partner is hard. Co-founder mechanics aren't easy, and I've seen a bad relationship take down many promising companies. Your problem's made harder by looking for someone who'll write most of the code for an idea they didn't come up with. Good engineers have plenty of ideas of their own to work on. If you're not fully committed to this yourself, the field narrows down even more. I don't want to be overly negative, but I think you need to take a stand on what you're doing: Either it's a side-project, in which case you should contract out /building a simple first version yourself, get a few customers, and reevaluate, or it's a startup, in which case you should spend every hour you're not at your job working on it, with the idea of leaving employment as soon as possible. Finding a good co-founder for (1) is impossible. For (2) it's hard but doable, and it'll have to come out of either your extended network or early customers/competition.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:51
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 21:57 |
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I run a physical product company (https://www.cookmellow.com) that was kind-of crowd funded to great success. Happy to help if I can, shoot me a pm if you think I'd be helpful.
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Sep 6, 2014 03:53
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