I have compiled a list of 60+ most asked questions on Quora and Reddit and written my action oriented answers.
Here are 20 questions.
Q1: How Reddit And Quora Got Past The Chicken And Egg Problem Of Having No Content/Users?
Topic – Scaling
Quora and Reddit solved the “empty site = no users/no users = empty site” problem in similar ways.
The founders of both services spent the first months filling them with content themselves. On Quora, the founders simply answered and asked lots of questions under their own profiles. But the reddit approach was a bit more interesting. Instead of just using their own accounts, the founders would create fake users to make it look like there were multiple people submitting links.
Their ‘submit link’ form featured a third slot: “Username”. According to Steve Huffman, reddit co-founder, it took several months until they didn’t have to submit content themselves to fill up the front page. They also focused on keeping everybody in the same place in the beginning. reddit had no subreddits, and Quora was mostly focused on technology. Instead of having users spread out, everyone was in the same place, making the community feel bigger than it was.
Q2: How Do I Research My Competitors?
Topic – marketing
A quick Google search will show your so many things. But, the only bulletproof way to research your competitor is to ask their customers. Talk to their customer that how is your competitor serving them. After talking to multiple customers, you’ll get all the insights of your competitors.
Q3: How Do I Build An Audience On Social Media?
Topic – marketing
If you don’t have money to buy ads, there are only two ways that can significantly gain you followers. These are following other accounts and shoutout for shoutout.
Start following people who might be interested in your product. In return, many of them will follow back. To follow those relevant people, open your competitors’ accounts and start following them. Once you have around 500 followers, start doing shoutout for shoutout. This means that you ask your followers to follow someone else’s account and in return, that account will also share a related post to their followers.
Q4: How Do I Evaluate Social Media Marketing?
Topic – marketing
There are two methods. One is ongoing analytics, and another is Campaign analytics.
Ongoing analytics are necessary for keeping up with the overall pulse of general conversation about your brand and company. Once your brand tracking is set up, you can just let it run and check in regularly to see how everything is going.
Campaign-focused metrics, on the other hand, help you understand the impact of targeted marketing initiatives and will vary from campaign to campaign, depending on your goals for each. An effective social media measurement program will likely include both ongoing and campaign-specific measurement.
Q5: How Does A New Business Get Its First Client?
Topic – marketing
Most people say that you need to build a website, set up a store, buy a hotline number before starting a business. The exact opposite is what you should do. You first need to get a client and then spend time on these activities. You can get your first client by asking your friends and family. Your very customers will be your friends, friends of friends, local neighbors, or even your family
Q6: How Do I Find Investors For My Startup?
Topic – funding
One of the deciding points for an investor to fund a startup is to see the x-factor. It should be positive and high.
u(T) = u(0)e(xT)
u(t) = user at time T=T
u(0) = user at time T=0
x = x factor
If you have an idea only, then it’s unlikely that you’ll get any funding. You need to start getting customers to get funding, and customers will only come when you have a working product or prototype.
Q7: Why Do Venture Capitalist Say No And How Do I Make Them Say Yes
Topic – funding
There are two ways to measure a startup traction.
One is increasing in revenue over a period of a week. If a startup is offering its services for free then the measure would be the increase in active users. If you see that the rate of growth is just 1% over a week which means that startup would grow only 1.7x over a year. If the rate of growth is 5% per week then startup would grow around 8x in a year. Venture capitalists pay a lot of attention over this growth. If the growth per week is 1-2% they say No because they can invest money in some other startup where they can get a better return on their investment. To make them say Yes, increase the growth to at least 5% per week.
Q8: How To Know If Your Startup Idea Already Exists?
Topic – Getting a startup idea
If your idea consists of having something over a website, you can use Google hacks to search if your idea already exists or not. Make a list of 2-3 phrases that perfectly describe your product. Enclose those keywords within the quotation mark and search on Google. Google will show only those results where it finds the exact phrase. For ex, if your idea is having an online store for a pen with light, just google “pen with light”, “light pen”, “luminescence pen”. Don’t forget to use quotation mark.
Q9: What Should I Do If I Have An Idea For A Startup, But I Have No Money Or Resources Whatsoever?
Topic – Getting a startup idea
First, you need to use the money in your bank account. The next point of contact would be family and friends. Make sure that you give a share of your company to them so that they’ll be more interested. The third point of contact is the bank. Take a loan that is enough to build and validate a prototype. Once you’ve built the prototype, show it to your potential customers and note down their feedback. Get customers rapidly. Then show the feedback to investors and you’ll have the funding.
Q10: I Have An Invention Idea. What Do I Do To Check That Someone Hasn’t Already Invented This Idea?
Topic – Getting a startup idea
Do a quick google search and check if it’s already taken or not. Go to the US Patents and Trademark site (http://www.uspto.gov/) and then search.
Q11: What Are The First 5 Hires Should I Make?
Topic – Hiring
In a startup, it’s not like that cofounders don’t work on bottom rated tasks like replying to someone’s comment on Instagram. Cofounders do the same things that employees do. There’s no hierarchy present.
Hiring depends on the skills of co-founders. In I Innovate, we have three co-founders. One is good at marketing, one is good at sales, and one is good at finance. So, the spots left are product development, designers, editors, and engineers. So, we’ll be hiring based on these skills.
Q12: How Big Should A Stock Option Pool For Employees Be?
Topic – Hiring
15-20%. Standard vesting for options is 4 years, with a one-year “cliff vesting” and monthly vesting after that. “Cliff vesting” in this context means the employee must be employed by the company for a minimum of one year before the employee earns any of the options.
Q13: Should I Form My Company As C Corporation, An S Corporation, An LLC, A Partnership Or A Sole Proprietorship?
Topic – Legal
Start it as an S corporation. If you have to issue both common stock and preferred stock then start it as a C corporation. An S corporation can easily be converted later into a C corporation. LLCs are popular but are equally complicated. Partnerships and sole proprietorships are to be avoided because of the potential personal liability to the owners of the business.
Q14: How Should Equity Be Divided Among Co-Founders Of A Start-Up?
Topic – Legal
The most common method is based on the money each co-founder is putting in a month over the next 12 months. For example, if one co-founder is putting $400 per month and another is putting $600 per month then the first cofounder gets 40% and another gets 60%.
Q15: My Clients Pay My Invoices After Months. What Should I Do?
Topic – Payment
Get paid upfront. If you think that having a contract will solve the problem, it won’t. Problem is, contract just means that you can try to go through court to get the court to order them to pay you. Even if you win in court it does not mean you’ll be able to collect. Have some samples/portfolio, show them that as proof of your ability to do the work, then get the money and only after that make them their stuff.
Q16: I Want To Quit My Job And Open A Startup. Is This A Good Idea?
Topic – Miscellaneous
Quitting a job to start a company is always a good idea. However, before taking this risk, I recommend you to keep everything ready like a business plan, model, idea validation, etc. It’s better to figure out that something is wrong in your idea when you have a job than when you don’t.
Q17: Do I Need A Business Plan To Be A Successful Entrepreneur?
Topic – Miscellaneous
No, it’s not mandatory. But having it gives you so much deeper knowledge of the business. I remember that I also refused to create a business plan for the first 4 months. I thought that I knew almost everything about my business but I was not completely correct. When I created a 12-page business plan, I realized that I learned so many things about I Innovate magazine that I didn’t know earlier.
Q18: What Is The Proper Definition Of A Startup?
Topic – Miscellaneous
A startup is a temporary organization used to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. “Temporary” is emphasized because a startup’s goal is to cease being a startup, to graduate up to be a large business or to fail and move on to another opportunity. An early-stage venture that isn’t capable of this type of rapid scale-up is a small business, not a startup.
Q19: Which Is More Important – Idea Or Execution?
Topic – Miscellaneous
An idea is just a multiplier but the execution is what matters. A good idea means a high multiplier. So, If execution is good then having a great idea means it’ll be multiplied by a high number and will result in more revenue.
Q20: What Should Be A Startup’s Top Priority In Its Early Age?
Topic – Miscellaneous
There are only two priorities for a startup in its early age. One is customer acquisition and another is product development.
You can find rest of the questions here - https://iinnovatemag.com/blog/techniques/67-most-asked-questions-by-entrepreneurs/
Ask my anything that you want to know.
[link] [comments]
from Entrepreneur https://ift.tt/2PkfJMO
Business News Live devoted itself to sharing articles about Business, Entrepreneurs and Business Matters. It is fond of sharing knowledge and experience on the blog, our main goal is to deliver interesting articles that is worth a reader's time.