San Francisco

LiquidPlanner has recently gotten great traction within my company (well...my 9 to 5 which is a 150+ person eCommerce organization). We used Jira for years--still do for some things, mainly issue tracking--and I don't think it has too many fans. I've used Basecamp for personal projects and it works well. 

I agree with the points on streamlining signup and accelerating the user's path to value. Also, consider holding off monetizing your site. As there is a network effect here and you're in the early stages, focus on growing the community first and then pulling revenue levers. 

For rapid prototyping, Ive had great success outsourcing to a small firm in Jordan. Very affordable, high velocity.

It's perfectly reasonable to be wary going offshore. Would only suggest doing it if a # of controls are in place. I'm currently working with developers in Jordan who are a fraction of the cost of stateside work. Though there's no absolute certainty they will deliver what is expected, the following puts me at ease:<div> </div><div><ul><li>The company is owned/run by a former Accenture engineer who came as a trusted reference from a co-worker (the co-worker has visibility into the project and frequently checks-in on status). Though the work is mostly done offshore, he is headquartered in Texas.</li><li>There is a stateside project manager who handles most of the interactions with the off-shore engineers, however, we have bi-weekly touch bases through Skype</li><li>Payment is remitted only a monthly basis--but only after agreed upon work as been demo'd and delivered. Also, the Software Agreement contract uses Taxes as the governing law; Texas tends to be very consumer-friendly</li><li>I'm very hands-on and provided fairly polished designs and direction at the start of the engagement. At Day 1, we knew exactly what we were doing. </li><li>The firm has an incentive to go a bang-up job as they want to use my project in their portfolio and secure referrals</li></ul><div>The above made it an easier decision for me. I guess it also depends on your objectives with the product. For me, I merely want an MVP that I can use for Beta purposes. If successful, I'd commit a sizable investment to building out a mature, scalage version. </div></div>

I'm a firm believer that for anything consumer-facing, visual appearance and user experience are extremely important. Unfortunately, consumers aren't always able to see the vision/spirit of what you're developing--and a bad design could derail, disrupt, or disinterest the shopper. I've done a lot of A/B testing against significant traffic on major retail sites, and you would surprised what impact seemingly trivial UI/UX changes can have on behavior, conversion, revenue, etc.

I've started using Asana and like it. Also using LiquidPlanner and Trello. Not a fan of LP, but Trello is effective.

I spent some time with California Academy of Arts Industrial Design students this weekend, and I would suggest reaching out to them for affordable prototyping. They have CAD expertise, access to 3D printing and are eager to build their portfolios. Example: http://fxvdesign.prosite.com/. If you want an intro, let me know.

Try http://capellasolutions.com/. Affordable, effective.

Interesting idea but not a viable business--well, at least not one worthy of the kind of investment they received especially with Whisper also in the anonymous confessions marketplace. Frankly, I'd rather have proactive shutdowns than continued bubble inflation and another burst heard/felt around the world.

What does the service do? I've named a few companies and could send you some ideas.

I've sold SaaS licenses to universities before and in my experience, they're not too agile. Sales cycles can be long, they're slow to adopt and are often budget-constrained. To start, I would recommend targeting several universities that fit the customer profile for the product/service you're offering--schools/universities that have real pain. Understand their budgets and buy schedules (i.e. when decisions are made and who makes those decisions), and engage them early. Perhaps start with a cluster in the same region to make things easier.
 
 Since you're overseas, I would strongly recommend pulling in a sales partner on US soil--someone with a track record of closing deals in the academic community. Frankly. "sales" might be a misnomer because at this stage, you'll need to mitigate risk for these often risk averse institutions by offering free trials or POCs. Get 1 or 2 success stories and use those orgs for product feedback and to act as references. Academia is a close-knit community; word-of-mouth is powerful.

<ul><li>Establish / incentivize a group of "Mavens" (highly active early adopters) to seed the network with content</li><li>Build features into the product that support virality</li><li>Engage relevant sites in blogosphere</li></ul>

A few things that helped me out... <ul><li>Use services such as Clerky for business entity formation and some
 post-incorporation activities. While doing so, always interrogate the 
services these sites are trying to sell you. In many cases (such as 
Foreign Entity Qualification) it's cheaper filing directly with the 
state or federal organization.</li><li>Depends on your situation, but consider forming not as a corporation as that may have pass-through tax advantages. Again, depends on your situation. </li><li>Establish clear objectives for the first version of your product and build towards that. Otherwise, you'll waste money on superfluous development. </li><li>Outsource development overseas, ideally with a peer-recommended firm</li><li>Provide
 clear and complete guidance to engineers with every request to minimize
 cycles. Further, know how you want your product to look and 
function--the user flow, the precise interactions, the design, even the 
typography. I saved lots of cash by delivering detailed product designs/mockups, such that it just became a matter of implementation</li><li>Use Squarespace to build your .com. They have all the trendy templates...easily customizable.</li></ul>

I usually ask myself is there's a material likelihood that not making the change will be a blocker to reaching my specific launch objectives.

Wholeheartedly agree with Jacob. Also, work in short execution/validation cycles. That is, don't spend a whole bunch of time and resources building something out in a silo. Instead, to the extent that you can, execute your idea in small, manageable chunks and seek validation from potential customers at each point along the way. It's not uncommon for ideas to change/mature once feedback loops are implemented.

Use the service WayUp (http://www.wayup.com). Also, make sure you comply
with labor laws in your state particularly if this is an unpaid internship.
In the state of CA, not doing so can land you in trouble.



For informal external meetings, I generally don't expect a structured agenda--just a mutual awareness of the purpose. If formal, yes, an agenda is needed. Internally...only if it's a non-standup (more than 15 minutes), consists of more than 2 individuals, or involves cross-departmental teams.

Looking for document which outlines T&amp;Cs between a company and software developer--and that transfers all rights to the company. I see some online for purchase; wondering if anyone has any solid templates handy that they could share.

Does anyone have a solid Software Development Agreement template to share? 

I'm compensating a contractor with a small amount of equity (less than 
3k shares) and was curious what people's thoughts are regarding granting
 restricted stock vs stock options. Note that the current value of the shares is negligible (fractions of a cent)
as we're a brand new company. 
 
 Any salient advantages to either for a 
company at this stage?

Early stage company issuing equity to a contractor: Restricted Stock or Stock Options?

For me: The Viral Startup (Andrew Chen) Growth Engines (Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown) Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers (Gabriel Weinberg &amp; Justin Mares)

What books are you currently reading? 

Over the past 6 years, my career has been in the predictive analytics / personalization spaces--and is now focused on helping omni-channel retailers do business smarter by leveraging their massive data sets. I've put my stamp on many IR100 retailers, having defined personalization roadmaps and deployed custom solutions that account for over $1 billion in annual revenue.

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