The one and only thing you should do to validate your idea is... Pre-sell the solution. TAKE MONEY. Real actual money. The only way to tell if something is viable is to take money from people who will buy it. Don't be fooled by people who say you can't do this. Apple does this all the time. T...
Typical pre-seed (100-500k) is 5-15% Seed (500k-2M) is up to 25% And over depends. The "potential of the next FB...." is just that, a potential. Don't fight over equity early but make sure you never give up more than 15%, don't offer board seats too early and no "right of first refusal" or "ri...
I have to say that from the hundreds of startups I have work with in one or other way, I have never seen someone "hire" a lead generation solution. Most of the work on the early days is done "manually" or "by hand" and the grow is all worth to mouth (or some inventive growth hacking technique wi...
As a startup freak myself, I am always looking for new ways to make the company better and communications between the teams easier. I like Slack as a communications tool as well as Asana. HipChat is pretty slick for instant messaging and integration with inbound customer service live chatting for...
I think it would be vital to the company's survival that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. If there's grey area, I've found that work tends to gravitate toward the more motivated party, and the social/power structure gets weird. I started a company with four founders, and we didn'...
The disadvantage(s) are: These answers address the question assuming the large corporation is the largest shareholder in the investment round or at least 40% of the investment offering. Public perception: You raised the issue in your question. How many of your potential customers would percei...
Angel List (www.angel.co) is a good resource - people and entities are gauged on their 'signal' rating so you can see who's most active, and that's a pretty good hint as to who is most likely to have leadership/influence in a particular area. You can search by one/many of filters such as Market, ...
It really depends on what you're building here. If you can do any part of your product manually, I would suggest doing that in the first version. The absolute fastest way is to hire a contractor to get it done, but that can be expensive. If your first prototype can't be built with a prototyping...
First, congratulations on your recent funding/recruitment successes! This is an excellent question, and a transaction I have been directly or indirectly involved with numerous times before. Each circumstance can be unique, the two most important considerations to look at as a starting point wou...
This is a complicated question that likely requires legal advice particular to the startup. However, compensating employees at a seed stage typically takes the form of stock options or restricted stock units (RSU)s. Stock options essentially give you the right to buy shares at a certain price (“...