Let us start at the heart of all start up ideas, what is there a need for that is not currently being supplied or that has not been fully realized upon. When you find a niche that you can supply a demand for that no one else is supplying or that no one can supply in high demand you have found your money maker. A lot of people become successful with startups no one ever thought they would need in life. The hardest part about a startup is not the idea, the funding or finding the niche. The hardest part of a startup is getting the advertising out there and picking up interest. That's the difference between Nikola Tesla and Benjamin Franklin. Once you have found your niche bring it to the market in a revolutionary way that will catch investors eyes. Only then will you garner the respect of your peers.

Dear, As I working in production industry, technology development give me some indications that in new world of work we will faced with these following terms on the working places: 1 .The impact of technology on the old ageing workforce. Them should need to be flexible in learning and education on how to ensured that digital transformation delivers social and environmental benefits. 2.Digital skills training of workforce. Development of digital skills on the employee will help him to create many new opportunities for innovative products and services. 3. Using online data to tackle social issues. With new business models and practices are emerging that place fair handling of data and sharing of value arising from that data at the heart of their value proposition. 4. Increasing levels of transparency. Digital technology should to enable greater transparency across value chain, encouraging all players to adopt best practices. 5. Building trust with consumers and wider stakeholders. These complex relationships can make it difficult in bussiness, so responsible should use data innovatively to build trust by using it to tackle social and environmental issues along with their bottom line. If you have any doubts or unclear things, I will be on your disposal. Kind Regard, Haris

1. Start by focusing on the business problem, you want to solve, and how you want to implement the solution. 2. Don't be scared by the buzzwords (i.e. "If you don't use AI, you will be out of business in five years). Sometimes a standard report is fine. 3. Although you should start small by solving existing pains, be curious, and understand the potential for large scale solutions. Understand enough of the technology, that you understand the scale and type of problems that can be solved. But don't do this until you are done with 1. and 2. Good question and good luck with it! If you are interested in further dialogue, feel free to schedule a call. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup

One of the most innovative uses of AI that I've come across recently is using it to analyze sales calls. They're able to break down conversations into digestible/searchable topics. From here, they analyze what phrases and topics lead to/away from conversions.

Let's think about this for a moment, toaster ovens haven't been a common household appliance since the invention of the microwave. Although they are still found in the homes of the "I wanna be a gourmet chef at home" crowd which is a very lucrative niche'. Instead of limiting yourself to only toaster ovens, let's crack the door just a little wider to reviews of Gourmet Gizmos. You can bust wide open into a very small niche' of people looking to purchase high end quality kitchen appliances for crafting home cooked cuisine. This has 3 very distinct advantages for your success. 1.. This niche' of unique buyers have money they are willing to spend for quality products that are difficult to find elsewhere. 2. They make repeat purchases. Today they need a toaster oven and next week they want a cappucino machine. Since they have already bought from you once they know to where to come back for their next unique, hard to find item. 3. You have multiple items to sell without competing competition from Lowe's, Home Depot or Maytag. This advice is coming from a mom/marketer that knows her way around a kitchen. I'm happy to help you lay out strategies and devise a marketing plan for exposure and sells. Give me a call. Thanks, Delilah

Yup, check out mine. I get calls every month. Dave www.DavidCBarnett.com

Hi: Without knowing exactly what your product is, the quick answer is "it depends." Many regional and national retailers do allow for some portion of local discretion in their product mix, but they handle it in different ways. Some have local buyers, some have regional buyers and yes, some have you go through HQ-based buyers. If you're just starting down this path, work the stores in your surrounding area: * Walk the aisles to get a sense for whether they carry local items and how they display them * Talk to the store manager to discuss how such relationships work * If possible, talk to some consumers to gauge their interest in alternative products ("Excuse me, I notice you're buying X, do you try others?") If you already have some traction in local stores, have a fresh conversation with the buyer you've connected with to determine how they handle other markets or the region. If they know and like you and your product they may be willing to make introductions. If you wish to discuss, send me a PM through Clarity for 15 free minutes. Cheers, Kerby

Hi, my name is Kruno, I had several startups and several partners in them. First of all, you should know how much money founders invested in the startup, and then how much money you need to bring inside of the company and in which period. Second, if this idea is a long shot and "maybe" can be the new facebook or new google you can participate with your work to bring an evaluation of the startup on a higher level. Also, instead of money, you can offer your network of connections (to find investors, peach an idea etc...). Deffinetley check one of the online tools (e.g. http://foundrs.com/). And everything that you agree, put on the contract!!!! this is a must! Try to be very detail because if you don't put everything in the beginning, later you will have only problems with other founders. For more questions, you can ping me anytime. Have a nice day, Kruno

. . . Happy New Decade . . . Try searching for Sir Bob Geldof ; on the Internet. . . . ( Yes : The Former Boomtown Rat ! ) . . . Apparently : His Ethical Investment Vehicle is currently dishing out (Hundreds of) Millions of Dollars ; to Sustainable African Enterprises. Whatever the Case : Please Always Remember to (Regularly) Send Me My (Big Fat) Future Dividend Cheques ; most preferably via DHL ! Sincerely, Professor Obi

I have worked with a number of AI tools - both webbased and locally installed tools - and have a background in mathematics/statistics. So I am familiar with this space. My suggestion is first and foremost focus on the use case - forget that it is an AI tool. If your tool provides value, and solves problems for your customers, they will come no matter the underlying technology. When you say "web driven", I assume that this is some kind of subscription model, and you don't expect to sell anything face to face? Again, I would focus on use case (we solve problems), value creation (how much do we save or make?), ease of use (just upload this file and watch the magic happen), cloud installation (no need for own maintenance or local data scientists to maintain models). In the AI-space, your competitors are often internal employees - data scientists, statisticians, etc., and they are familiar with their own tools. So find out, who is your target segment in the businesses. Most likely a data scientist would tell you, that "I could build that myself". But what about following maintenance cost, depending on individuals, etc. So do you target to data scientists or business users? Often successful projects happen in collaboration; one can not live without the other. With regards to your focus on the US I am curious, why you focus there. Is that where you are located physically? Or there you see the most likely target customers? Since you are web driven SaaS, couldn't you go anywhere? I hope this helps. Feel free to schedule a call, if I can help you further with this. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup

Hi: Congrats on getting your service app to this point. Fundraising takes a lot of energy and time--more time than you think it will. Instead of embarking on that journey right now, consider channeling your time and energy into generating sales: Bootstrapping the promotions and marketing to start getting paying customers in the door. Not only will that generate the revenues that you'll ultimately be showing potential investors, but you will gain invaluable insights into your app--what works, what doesn't and what you need to tweak/modify to fulfill marketplace demand. If you wish to discuss, send me a PM through Clarity for 15 free minutes. Cheers, Kerby

I worked for a large outdoor product manufacturer that sold into stores such as Target, REI, Dick's Sporting Goods, Cabela's, etc. As you can imagine, if you are not one of their regular suppliers, getting even 5 minutes of the buyer's time will be no small feat. Depending on what market your product is in, I would work to identify who the correct buyer is at that company for your type of product and try to find out the best way to reach them; e-mail, phone, etc. Have your elevator pitch ready should you happen to get them on the phone and hit them with only the pertinent information about your company and the product. If you can identify any industry trade shows they may be attending and either set-up an appointment at the show or outside of it, this is a good way to get some face time. I have some other ideas that I'd be happy to discuss with you on a call if you'd like. Be persistent. Be polite. Don't get discouraged if they don't get back to you right away.

Hi, even if you hired a sales executive you would need to give them training on your product so they could effectively sell it. And even then the person would ideally need to know the best way to sell it, as not all sales executives are good at building the sales process itself. The idea thing for you to do in my mind, is sell that yourself, or hire a sales consultant to help you build the process. You will pay more in the short term for a cinsultant, but the sales should make that money back. Once you are accutley aware of how to best get leads and covert them, you can hire sales staff and have them refine it. By that point you should have some income to be able to pay them Base+. It is likely you could get commission only sales folks, but in order to do that they need certainty that you at a minimum know how to sell your own product and they can spend the time working for you and making enough money doing so.

Hi: Good job tackling this important exercise. There are many entrepreneurs who shy away from it. That said, if you're in the US, check out SCORE (https://www.score.org/). The organization has chapters around the country or you can connect virtually. This is the perfect type of project for their counselors. If you wish to discuss, send me a PM through Clarity for 15 free minutes. Cheers, Kerby

Hi. There are several proven approaches you can test to see what is more effective to your specific public. I can elaborate them better after getting some further details about your marketing strategy. ------------------------------------------- 1. Turn subscribers into affiliates ------------------------------------------- Just offer a discount or any other benefit which your subscribers would appreciate. Such tracking is easy to do with affiliate ready-made tools. This strategy is very powerful. A good example is the Dropbox case: they grew 3900% in 15 months mainly by giving extra free space to their affiliates and referred users. ------------------------------------------- 2. Are you using lead magnets? ------------------------------------------- Whichever is the medium you are reaching your potential subscribers, make sure to tease them properly, by giving a freebie (PDF, webinar or whatever) in exchange to their precious emails. ----------------------------------------------- 3. How exactly is your free content? ----------------------------------------------- Either it is a lead magnet, blog article, video, each piece of free content you provide has 3 purposes: 1) To provide value to the prospect. 2) To establish your authority. 3) To drive prospects towards action. Just think about the biggest immediate problem your ideal prospects might have, mapping out ONE thing they must do to solve it. Remember to put your focus solely on that one thing, being as specific as possible. In the end, promote your paid subscription. Then make several freebies like this covering different topics. ------------------------- 4. Paid advertising ------------------------- I would recommend you to run ads targeting prospects with specific job titles and/or from specific industries etc, on LinkedIn and Facebook. Yes, I said Facebook. I know top millionaire professionals reaching 7-figure serious clients with Facebook Ads with great success (best example I know: Frank Kern). You can run lead-generation ads, using lead magnets as I've described above. --------------------------------- 5. What about YouTube? --------------------------------- Besides the high search volume within YouTube, their hosted videos have a high relevance on Google searches (especially because they are own by Google). The main difference in the YouTube strategy is that your prospect will start the interaction seeing your content rather than first giving their email to then see the content. A workaround is to talk about the subject mentioning they can download a PDF with the framework to solve the problem. So when they click on the link in your video description you're gonna collect their emails. -------------------------------------------------- 6. How is your marketing automation? -------------------------------------------------- The vast majority of people who receive our marketing messages say no. That's just the human nature, no matter how skilled we are. That's why we have to track non-converted prospects and bring them back with a smart approach. Nowadays we have several ways of tracking prospects behaviour in order to divert them to specific funnels according to their interactions, such as: who opened or not the email, watched the webinar, watched only X% of it, downloaded or not a PDF etc. -------------------------------- 7. Get a qualified coach -------------------------------- Just give me a call and I can coach you on any of above proven strategies, so that we can draw a marketing plan tailored to your own goals and niche. Best regards, Carlos.

"Is content marketing the right direction for our ecommerce business?" Yes. It takes a lot time and work, but it can be worth every minute. It's a method of utilizing SEO: letting Google drive searchers to your website when they search for phrases related to your business. Movoto wrote a great piece that explains the thinking behind using Content Marketing, and how they took their blog from 2,000 views per month to over 18,000,000 in 2 years. Here’s the home run that exemplifies the thinking behind content as a marketing initiatve: >Our first thought isn’t, “Oh, this will be cool” or “This would fit perfectly on The Atlantic” or “This will soooo go viral.” No, our first thought is, “Is there an audience out there that will link back to us?”< Audience first. Whatever content you publish has to reach and resonate with the right audience. ————— "What's is the best way for your suggestion to move forward into content marketing?" Figure out who you want to reach and what they care about. Then create videos, graphics, and written text (blog posts or educational resources) that appeal to those users. Then you have to promote it. "Publish and pray" doesn't work. Andy Crestodina at Orbit Media famously said "It’s not the best content, but the best PROMOTED content that wins." But that's a separate question altogether. Hope that helps! Please reach out to me here on Clarity if I can provide any more answers for you. Good luck!

Crowdfunding for startups is a difficult task if there isn't a tangible product at hand currently. If he kept the funding on a personal level and only involved family and friends, then it could work, but that opens pandora's box of "borrowing" money from people you have a non-business connection to.

Hi , I think I can help you in Metatrader , If I have more Info about requirements for your strategy , From your question if I understand right you based on some entry signal you want to build multiple entry positions with different lots size till exposition of a trend and gradually close (exit) the position and also your entry must have different lot size based on signal strength (MA(50,100,200) or/and MACD) or something else

Hi: Sounds promising. Something to remember, however, is that a VC who invests in a series B round has different objectives than an angel investor, a seed investor and perhaps even in investor in a series A round. If one of the B round investors in that other company has been with that company through all of those stages, they may be a candidate for you to approach, but if they're only in at the B level, you may not interest them at this time. That said, it may not hurt to chat with a B round investor to get on their radar. They may even point you to an earlier stage investor colleague. That should be part of the prioritization exercise you take with your potential investor pool. Before you approach any investor, however, get your story straight around differentiation and your company's unique approach to solving a marketplace problem. If you wish to discuss, send me a PM through Clarity for 15 free minutes. Cheers, Kerby

From an identity and branding standpoint, it sounds like your operations in the two states provide the same product or service to the same target demographic. Thus, they should stay as a unified brand as far as your look and feel, including logo, website, business cards, and social media. It's not unusual for companies to co-locate. This is partially a legal question, so be sure to contact your accountant and lawyer about the matter. However, it would be helpful to learn more about what your startup does in order to best solve your dilemma, including how location-dependent the service is. Would you like to set up a call so that we can dive into the issue further?

I have lived and worked both in Dubai and Bahrain and done business and help set up branches all across the GCC - also known as the Arabian Gulf. Firstly, let me commend you on having boots on the ground in trying to sell your product in this part of the world. Its really tough to sell a software product from afar unless you are so unique that customers are going to be forced to listen. I assume you have competitors. Dubai is usually where most multi national companies set up their regional head quarters and there are very good reasons for that. Namely easy set up, great infrastructure and desirable living conditions for your personnel. However its not inexpensive to both set up as well as operate in. Bahrain is a less expensive place to operate with good infrastructure, hungry job seekers and easy access by road to the Saudi market. If you have researched which country may be your primary target market - its usually one of the two - UAE or Saudi, then take your pick: Bahrain or UAE. Oman is also not too difficult to set up a branch but without significant investment, setting up in the other Gulf countries is more challenging. Travel connections are easy except for the recent rift with Qatar. Feel free to set up a call with me to get more detailed answers to any questions you may have.

You can base your business in mostly referrals, however, if you want to grow substantially, you should use some paid advertising to boost your revenue. It all really depends on how much you want to grow and how fast. If you are alone as an architect without staff, then referrals are a good place to begin since you can only take on so many projects at any given time. -Richard

Looks like you have already defined your ideal customer; Next You need to find out where the potential students spend their time - Online & Physically - and meet them there. I'll start with the option, which I think has the most potential: and the answer is NOT online - do not underestimate the value of networking; going to meetup's - interest clubs - sticking adverts on buildings, bus stops etc. with little rip-off pieces. Online: - do they spend time on facebook? probably the most undervalued forms of marketing - quora - you can do a very narrow targeting through Google Ads, but you did mention a very low budget. Hope this helps Sylvia

Hi, I was once in such an environment. The company had an interesting way of dealing with the slowdown... they sold vacation time. Here's how it worked (and it may only help you in 2019) If you know you don't need a full complement of staff in the last weeks of the year, offer your employees the chance to take an extra week of vacation in that time which will be unpaid. However, if they do want a paycheck, they can 'buy a week of vacation' by deducting 1/51st of a week's pay from each week's pay over the course of the year. So a person who earns $1000/wk would have $19.61 taken off each week's pay in order to get a paycheck on the week which is essentially an unpaid absence. The money just goes back and forth. The effect though is that your labor cost is cut in the slow period of the year. People get excited about their extra vacation week. Happiness and fun fill the air in the lead-up to 'vacation time.' Hope that helps. dave www.DavidCBarnett.com

I've watched different companies struggle with customer acquisition, and I myself struggled with it. I doesn't matter if its a physical product, a service or an app. Attention costs a lot of money, usually more than we can afford. Paid acquisition should never be your main driver of new users, it will almost never pay for itself on its own. The only way to create a sustainable business is to have enough organic growth. I would suggest using your marketing budget not on generating direct sales but rather on cultivating channels that can grow organically. There are many ways you can achieve this. Some tactics that are commonly used: Offer free products in exchange for "honest" reviews (https://www.amazon.com/gp/vine/help). Find influencers (read people that are active on social media) that might have interest in your product, in your case - outdoor people - hikers, travelers, etc. Send them free samples, ask them to recommend it to their users if they like the product. Another avenue I would suggest exploring is going to B2B or B2B2C. Camps & resorts for example would be places that probably have interest in product. Reach out to them, send them free samples. Offer them to purchase it, or to sell it in their gift stores. I would be happy to discuss this further, answer questions and offer more advice. Good luck, Ron