Re:Ask HN: About to launch a web app, am I missing anything?
by lifeisstillgood on Monday September 09, 2013 @09:09PM
(#6357377)
1. Yes form a limited liability company (I think a C-corp in Delaware. You should probably pay no more than 150-250 bucks but never done this outside UK)
2. Be tax efficient / aware. In the UK certainly you are best off drawing the majority of income as dividend. Of salary. If you have a wife strongly consider having her own half the business and draw salary too - this however more applicable of you are a contractor
3. Sensibly estimate a portion of your revenue as chafgebacks and related support costs - start at 10% and work down as you get enough real customers.
4. If this is B2C ask is it a good idea? It's a tough market
5. If it is B2B I strongly suggest not doing a free plan - in fact start at something like 49.99/ mth and discount at rly and yearly. Basically you want people who have both money a d are serious enough that they will not email you to fix things the very second they cannot get it working
6. A stripe self publish book has just come out - may be worth while
7. Build a mailing list. Do this by creating a landing page that just has your main selling point on it and a "sign up for a Pre launch discount code". Mail these people something interesting you have written each week / fortnight that's related to you.
Publicise this - HN, Reddit, forums related to your product. Just get google used to you as eay as possible
If you really cannot stop yourself from giving free access try giving away a private beta access. This is easier to shutdown and lets you test the waters as it were. Use landing page for that.
2. Be tax efficient / aware. In the UK certainly you are best off drawing the majority of income as dividend. Of salary. If you have a wife strongly consider having her own half the business and draw salary too - this however more applicable of you are a contractor
3. Sensibly estimate a portion of your revenue as chafgebacks and related support costs - start at 10% and work down as you get enough real customers.
4. If this is B2C ask is it a good idea? It's a tough market
5. If it is B2B I strongly suggest not doing a free plan - in fact start at something like 49.99/ mth and discount at rly and yearly. Basically you want people who have both money a d are serious enough that they will not email you to fix things the very second they cannot get it working
6. A stripe self publish book has just come out - may be worth while
7. Build a mailing list. Do this by creating a landing page that just has your main selling point on it and a "sign up for a Pre launch discount code". Mail these people something interesting you have written each week / fortnight that's related to you.
Publicise this - HN, Reddit, forums related to your product. Just get google used to you as eay as possible
If you really cannot stop yourself from giving free access try giving away a private beta access. This is easier to shutdown and lets you test the waters as it were. Use landing page for that.
A lot of this is stashed in different parts of HN
http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/08/24/the-ultimate-cheat-sheet-...