Startup Business Thread

What a nice thread, user.

>Plant Nutrient business

>Been a horticulturist for years and I think I have some big ideas that aren't on the market yet

>Initial start up fee, probably need about five grand to do righteously. After to pay for each step of the startup is taking me time.

I work for a startup who has been building an app for the last 2 years. We don't have a single user and the founder is delusional about getting a sudden surge of users.

Worked in a successful tech startup for two years, first job, trying to gtfo now.

Remember:
>The best way to make money in a startup is to FOUND the startup
>Seconds best way to make money in a startup is to INVEST in it
>Third best way is to be BROUGHT IN at a high level from consulting/banking (i.e. before it's about to sell/raise/IPO)
>Fourth best is to be a Data Scientist or Backend Engineer

Literally any other role and you are on the receiving end of the dick rather than the giving end of the dick. You'll be a slave for someone else's dream, and worked into the ground for shit wages.

You'll have fun, and you'll learn about 100x more than most of your peers in normal grad jobs, but you will not make bank.

Moral of the story: get some experience then gtfo and do you own thing.

Also yes, Silicon Valley is painful to watch if you've worked in one of the memier startups, or been exposed to them. Thankfully, VC's are waking up that Uber For Cats isn't going to IPO, and have stopped investing in shitty, unworkable businesses, so they're dying off.

I just bought a house, so my credit's kinda shaky, but I'm hoping to leverage my soon-to-exist equity towards a business loan.

I'm Asian and there's a huge void in Asian-themed tea spots in my town, so I'll capitalize on that while offering device repair services.

Hoping to get ROI within 3 years and franchised within 7.

>>what industry are you in/getting into?

Bees - hives, honey, mead, and breeding pesticide-resistant queens for export.

>>what makes you want to pursue it?

I want to be my own boss and make a fucktonne (or at least enough to live off) of money while I'm at it. We're in NZ and it's the only place bees aren't in serious trouble - we're thinking before too long honey and queens will be really valuable exports, and I want to get into mead brewing because it's fun and I want a value-added and local sales instead of just exporting raw goods like a lot of the rest of the country. We've only just started planning though.

>>what are challenges you're facing currently?

Setting aside seed capital.

Open to comments/criticism/questions, and definitely advice.

I'm a completely new start up founder. I'm about to run an ICO soon (aka crowdfund) and I need to employ some people to host it.

What would I need in order to not get laughed at? Roadmap, Market Research, and White Paper are currently done. What else do I need?

It's possible to get a loan leveraged on your primary residence?

I've been brooding for a couple years now about starting a small cosmetics company with themed products. A while back I bought some raw materials and produced a nice batch of skin lotion.

Once I have a recipe down I will sell on Etsy and to friends to hopefully turn a little profit while developing new products. From there I'd move to make a website and sell there., maybe with some sort of loyalty perks to keep customers. Before that, it'd be important to have enough capital to afford large batches and solid QC testing so I don't infect anyone.

Margins on cosmetics are massive (most lotions are 70% water) so it's brutally competitive, but there's plenty of room for niche products. It's all about marketing.

That sounds like a great idea - the markup on cosmetics is insane, and the more you charge the more people want it.

>>what industry are you in/getting into?
Documentary filmmaking, possibly as part of a lifestyle brand
>>what makes you want to pursue it?
I'm really fucking good at making video and film, and aside from that I have no other monetizeable skills (there's no money in writing, and I don't have the equipment needed to be a recording engineer or music producer)
>>what are challenges you're facing currently?
No exposure or reputation.
No business model.
Still trying to decide what my "brand" should be, so I don't even know who my "customer" or "primary audience" is.

Capital and equipment are NOT a problem.

>Really fucking good at making film
>No exposure
Top kek

Philistine

>there's no money in writing
There's a lot of money in writing

Webdev here. How did you build a client base?

How do you seek out and make pitches to businesses?

I run an appliance repair company, did 2 million last year.

Elaborate please?
How does one get into writing with a fat salary, instead of slaving on Freelancer.com gigs for pennies a sentence?

Currently trying to start a buisness in either deep cleaning houses, or just cleaning windows. Trying to see which one is efficient and profitable.

I want to do those because they are the easiest to startup

I do film in Georgia.

Where you at?

Go window cleaning. Shit is dirt simple and very lucrative as well.

Also add gutter cleaning into your services.

Australia.

A lot of runaway productions in Georgia yeah? Because of the tax refunds or something?

No fucking way, what's your business model?

this made me lol. It's so accurate and depressing its not even funny. You've been in this too long my man

Revenue, not profit. I have 20 employees it's not really that incredible.

Melbs?

What do you shoot with?

I'd just like to interject for a moment.

What you’re referring to as a startup, is in fact, just a small business or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, a business. A small business is not an a startup by default.

A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.

That difference is why there's a distinct word, "startup," for companies designed to grow fast. If all companies were essentially similar, but some through luck or the efforts of their founders ended up growing very fast, we wouldn't need a separate word. We could just talk about super-successful companies and less successful ones. But in fact startups do have a different sort of DNA from other businesses. Google is not just a barbershop whose founders were unusually lucky and hard-working. Google was different from the beginning.

To grow rapidly, you need to make something you can sell to a big market. That's the difference between Google and a barbershop. A barbershop doesn't scale.

Pls gimme 50 cents to start my dick sucking business.

16VhPNvjEtxDwxaSE4NuKKJZRSrLW84Tx7

You write the book then kill yourself. That should cover publishing expenses.

Become a negative reviewer ranting about all these modern age cartoons, tv series and pitiful movies with piss-poor "Lost" writing. You can start with Prometheus 2. Then go with the dumb MLP movie Try to get credit from Doug Walker and James Rofle (tell Doug to keep the dumb asian chink and the token nigger in the backstage)

As for writing? Sci-fi and erotic. Be ready for 2020, this generation of faggots should end soon. You won't have to write about losers and faggots anymore.

Yeah it's 30% I think.

So if you film 100 million dollar movie here, I think our government subsidizes 30 million of it.

opening a weed dispensary.

dank cash yall

are you at least getting paid every month? i have read stories of app devs and web product devs who think they have a shit hot idea and don't not paying their staff because they have no cash flow, but still believe in the product after a few years

I have a small product business I want to build but I've got no capital to get it going.

Anybody have suggestions on getting a micro-loan?

Like $5k-$10k just so I can get everything up and running?

I don't really have much of a credit history to get a big loan with.

credit unions are the only ones that will even bother with loans that small.

or try online like lendingclub. honestly just get a c/c and run a balance. within a few months they'll give you a credit balance around that much. but personally i would never use a c/c for this kind of stuff.

Can't really go into the details but it's mostly replacing their secretaries and shit. Mostly working for medium sized companies.

Finding clients mostly by talking to companies using references from existing customers. My first few clients I found at a Fraternity convention.

What about the SBA?

Fuck man that sounds awesome. Even if it doesn't end up lucrative. I've help out with some friend's hives and have always wanted to get a bunch myself. My understanding is that the wax is much more valuable than the honey, though?

"startup" is just another buzz word, like an "app", that was invented in the tech/sv scene, simply because it sounded cool or hip. startup/business/venture they are all same.

Been thinking about making a video game, just can't figure out the monetization strategy.

SBA isn't a lender. what they basically do though their "loans" is guarantee your loan to a lender so they can give you money risk-free. You still have to go through all the credit checks, and qualifications.

post another invite, user. One that won't expire. It's rare that you see an actually motivated person with any skills at all on this board.

I started a drop shipping site here:

NaturalCoffeeTea.com

biggest challenge is im breaking even on ads and im getting discouraged and dont know what to do :(

Already have one.
>>what industry are you in/getting into?
Software development, mobile apps.
>>what makes you want to pursue it?
First because I want to be the boss. And also because it's about the only thing I know how to do and I'm confident about. I have lots of experience in everything IT.
>>what are challenges you're facing currently?
Marketing and properly advertising mobile apps to get new users and convert them to subscribers.

I'm starting an alternative lifestyle website (blog/magazine) for my local area (large city). was surprised to see there's currently nothing like it.

the point in starting it was to get access to particular people/gigs in order to improve my photography portfolio and then shop that around to editors of higher caliber publications. figured it might be easier to say i'm shooting for a publication that i can get looking legit than trying to persuade an already established publication to give me a shot. the more I've thought about it, the more i realise how monetizable it could potentially be. really looking forward to working on it.
>challenges
money. i'm a fucking bartender with no savings. photo/video gear is expensive, then there's hosting, google suite (which i already have for freelance photo stuff), marketing and general business software costs.

yes.

DSLR with a external HDD recorder. At the moment I shoot on 1970's manual focus photographic lens, because I like the uncoated look, and they're cheap.

Nice, now you see if I could get over there that's probably a good place to get gigs, even if it's as a runner, but preferably a Grip or a Camera Assist, or working under a Unit Production Manager doing paperwork

Although having said that, I'd rather focus getting my own stuff happening because as they say
>if you can't find work, make your own

It's a real good idea, looks like you better start saving.

Honestly I don't even know where to start. I want to start an offshore wind farm, in a rather profitable area that no one (I'm aware of) is even looking at or considering.

But how do you even get capital for this sort of thing? I'm an engineer with more than a decade of varied experience and the technical aspect of this sort of thing doesn't daunt me; but how do you start getting the funds? How do you establish the company for such a large concept? I'm baffled by that, and I'm worried I'm just going to day dream forever.

I'm looking to do a one-man interior painting... business. I'm looking to get paid for what little I know.
I have no clue how the hell I would advertise. Hell, I'd rather not advertise at all but people who need their walls painted probably already have someone in mind, or simply are going to have a very small chance of ever choosing me to be the one to do their work.

Shit. What do I do?
tl;dr how do I expand business to people who probably already have pre-existing business relationships and/or have millions of other static options to chose from?
For the people who actively put out ads seeking painters, how do I nab the job over other people who will also bid for the job?

Would love a new discord invite

You pitch.

Get your pitch deck together and target the right audience.

Trump says: know everything you can about what you're doing

Google how to pitch, how to present, how to draw concepts. Lead and Inspire a tribe of like minded people, and make the sea great again.

This probably means you are going to have to stop being a speg and learn public speaking

checked kek has spoken, the wax market will thrive

Advertise on facebook my man

You can target by location and I wouldn't be surprised if you could target by home ownership as well.

Try WeFunder.com

Pitch to whom? The local government? Banks? Energy companies? How do I insure that my work, concepts, etc. don't get stolen?

Im interested in starting some kind of local electronics business but how could I do that? I'm talking about like something you'd have to physically walk into and idk buy something or get a service. Problem is I don't really have an idea of what's in demand right now, nor do I have the funds to start a business as I'm 19 from a poor family. I realize my question is kind of like asking for a miracle, I'm just seeing if anyone has any ideas

If your idea for a business is so weak that it could be stolen from you by someone who has only watched your pitch you're not going to do well at all.

Yes, I'm getting paid. I already have a well-paid job so I would be crazy to give that up to work for a narcissist without a salary. As a developer, idea-people come to me all the time promising me a cut of their multi-billion dollar idea. They're so full of themselves that they require an NDA just before they tell you their idea.

These guys offered me an equity deal and I said no way. He was desperate to hire me for whatever reason so we structured my compensation as a salary + equity deal. The founder is one of those people who thinks their idea alone is the key part of success and he hired the cheapest code monkeys from India for $5 per hour and the whole thing is a piece of shit. If you ask him how he plans to monetize his free service, his response is "We'll sell user data for billions to the highest bidder" even though there's no analytics or any kind of useful information on our userbase. Everyday at the office he just keeps talking about how startup ABC was acquired by Google or Facebook for X billion dollars and laughs at how easy it is to succeed.

My role at the company is CTO but that's just a fancy title so it looks like they have it all figured out. When I tell him we need to hire a few serious software Engineers, they just decide to do what they want by hiring Pajeet. The developers don't even know how to use Git properly unless they have a Fischer-Price UI and we end up with a new branch each week because they don't know how to merge branches without fucking it up. The code has no unit tests, doesn't scale, and the whole thing is a complete mess. Even if they another private investor so they can pay salaries, they will just hire a few more Pajeets to put duct tape over all the problems.

Everything they do is just plain wrong. Our app on the Play Store and App Store has nothing but fake reviews. They're not even subtle about it. We waste our time on developing unnecessary restrictions so John Doe doesn't abuse our servers.

I have an app idea that I have mockups for and another website idea I haven't moved forward on. I dont want to be one of those obnoxious idea guys though.

I'm not even passionate about startups or entrepreneurship desu; I just want to escape wagecucking so I can pursue my real interests later on.

have you gauged their viability

One is one of those things that consumers don't realize that they would want. The other one is something that actually exists successfully; I would honestly be more or less emulating what is out there but combined with my own catchy name. Kind of like a Lyft-Uber kind of thing.

I want to start up a maid/cleaning service that focuses primarily on online booking. I live in a small rurual city in canada (under 100k people) and our current services are a fucking joke. It's all old-school shit where you have to call to make bookings. I want to put get a website up that handles bookings and contracting all in one.

But I'm broke as fuck and I work close to minimum wage right now even though I'm 28. I have no idea how to make a website beyond like a squarespace/wordpress type of site.

I think it would be a goldmine because it's a university town so I would clean up during the fall and spring semesters. I also am not sure how I would setup the "employees" though. To keep expenses down I would probably hire sub-contractors who would be paid based on # of cleanings but I don't know how to keep QC high enough because I wouldn't settle for a shitty cleaning job or having people steal from others.

IDK, it's probably just a pipe dream

Microsoft got BizSpark free for startups for 3 years if you apply. My startup uses it and its been a blessing. We literraly have everything microsoft-related for free (including enterprise Windows and everything we need) along with Cloud storage/apps that normally would cost around 150$/month.

> tfw idea man for app
> know the stigma behind "let idea man"
> believe in my idea, don't think it'll be a smashing success but I can expect modest returns
> only know how to do graphic design
> not fantastic but each rendition is significantly better than the last
> tfw since I can't code all I have been doing is drafting and working on a business plan

Should I apply for a loan or pitch to VC? I'm at a crossroads, Veeky Forums. My credit is average because I opened up new credit cards but before then it was great.

I've been wondering how profitable a dedicated study hall type business would make. Myself and tons of other students have trouble finding places to study, we go to coffee shops and libraries with kids and hobos in them. Our colleges have good spots with outlets and comfortable chairs, but even those get filled up during midterms and finals. Not everyone likes studying at home. I basically want to create a place students can go that guarantees they can get work done without having to deal with any bullshit. Preferably in a city that has a high concentration of commuter students.
I can't figure out the profitability of it, could I really get students to pay a subscription to this?

I want to start a hedge fund, where do I start, what do I need?

Not really the advice you're looking for, but you could attract clientele with offerings such as coffee and vending machines so they don't feel the need to get out as much and also have high end scanners, fast printers, and other business oriented machines. Maybe charge per use or have a subscription model for them?