I vehemently disagree. I would recommend not following-up with any angel investor who asks you for a business plan. You yourself should be able to credibly articulate how you envision the next 12 months unfolding and especially how you intend on spending the money you raise, but that's about it...
Google could be a good place to start searching for the information (s). Just be careful about the authenticity of the data that pick for your business plan. One way to ensure authenticity is to pick data published by established brands. However, given my experience working with plethora startu...
There are a lot of ways..LinkedIn can help greatly and even for that matter freelance sites like Elance, Guru, etc if you are tight on budget. Specialist outsourcing company can be of great help but finding them can become tricky at times. I happen to use TechCusp.com for my company and although ...
You might be somewhat in trouble. You'll want to consult a lawyer, not to be adversarial, but rather to ensure you do things that are legal and are best from a tax-consequence perspective. You can't back-date option grants or stock grants, for example. There are recent scandals reinforcing tha...
Have a product that users / customer are using and continue to use. The goal is to derisk the opportunity for investors and the biggest risk is that you'll build something that nobody wants. Once you have that, then try and find a big enough market and opportunity that justifies a venture inves...
It's very important. (first, read this article by Josh Breinlinger - http://acrowdedspace.com/post/47647912203/a-critical-but-ignored-metric-for-marketplaces) The way you achieve success in a marketplace is by driving liquidity for both your supply & demand. Demand-side Liquidity = When users ...
After shepherding 300 equity crowdfunding raises through our platform I'd say all of them have a higher valuation. Reason is it is the entrepreneur that is calling the shots. It is the entrepreneurs offer on their terms on an equity crowdfunding platform. Once you get outside investors involved...
Engagement matters most. Engagement is actually a function of great product and great distribution. Engagement is thought-of mostly as a product issue but in many cases, it also expresses itself as a distribution problem particularly where there is no possibility for a "single player" experien...
I'm not a .COM purist. In fact I own quite a few .ME domains and have sold half a dozen of them or so. However, building a business or brand on a non-.COM extension like .ME requires some additional analysis. It's impossible to advise you on which name / domain to choose in the absence of the ...
Startup recruiting is really a full-contact sport that must be played to win by the Founder(s) of the Company. If you want to hire the best possible talent, you must be as focused on this task as you are a fundraising round (in other words, completely focused on it until it's DONE). Great techn...