autheticity

The best resource on equity: https://www.holloway.com/g/equity-compensation

Earlier version on GitHub: https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation

Also look at the Index Ventures link and calculator: - https://www.indexventures.com/rewardingtalent/calculating-in... - https://www.indexventures.com/optionplan

From your question and knowing nothing else, I assumed it was probably low - but it depended primarily on salary and total compensation (is it market rate for your friend? How far off?).

From other answers (the company's fair market value is $30- $70 million vs $0 or unknown, the salary is slightly under market rate), it depends on the difference between your friend's total compensation here and other offers (or realistic other offers they theoretically could get).

I'd ask for more than the difference between this start up's total comp and other offers. Why? Expected value and risk. Get a reasonable risk adjusted amount given liquidity and likelihood it will ultimately be worth $0, $1,000, or even $10,000 (good chance it's in the 90-98% range, and if the company wasn't already worth something it'd be closer to 99%).

It's probably in the ballpark of fair, but not quite there for your friend.

It's not clear if the biggest problem you have is 1. potential users / customers not understanding what problem you solve, 2. that the problem isn't one of their big problems, 3. that your user onboarding needs to be improved, or 4. that their current solutions are satisfactory or 5 something else. Identify it, focus on it, try things related to it.

You are likely a member of your target market - how and why would you talk to a random person or company about some problem or product?

Customer feedback is a combination of analytics, conversation, and observation. You are already getting some!

Talk with users, potential users, and people that leave and find out why. However your users want to be talked to (consider in person, conferences, video chat, differently worded or timed email, chat in the website, surveys, possibly but probably not the phone given the audience). Turn the random text based messages into bigger conversations.

Observe people using your website, signing up to use your product, using your product. What works great? What can be improved?

For getting customer feedback, look into user research and user interviews. This might involve giving people incentives e.g. gift cards to participate.

Read The Mom Test. Short summary here: https://www.slideshare.net/xamde/summary-of-the-mom-test

Other resources:

- https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-research-cheat-sheet/

- https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/

- How to do a user research interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq3OiHQ-HCU

Relatedly, for users falling off, look into "user onboarding"

Here's a useful resource on marketing, messaging, and communication: https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/intro No need to reinvent the wheel - follow the tried and true paths.

There's a San Francisco based developer marketing agency / co-op / investor agency. I can't recall the name. They have had some prominent developer focused companies over the past decade. They have good resources, including videos on YouTube.

Can you succinctly communicate how you solve some annoying problem people have even if it's small? Of course it's technical, and developers are averse to a lot of marketing, so imitate successful similar companies / products e.g. Twilio, Netlify, GitLab, etc., or whoever has marketing you like. Think about what they look like, what they say, when they send you emails, the entire experience of using the product. Your UX won't be as big and polished - you're trying to build it up and improve it. But small things can add up.

Generally useful resources:

- Short branding exercise: https://library.gv.com/the-three-hour-brand-sprint-3ccabf4b7...

- Working backwords (do the first part of this): https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2006/11/working_backwar... explained here https://www.quora.com/What-is-Amazons-approach-to-product-de...

- Kevin Hale video on building products users love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12D8zEdOPYo

- Lean Startup (if you haven't read it already, if you have read or skim it again)

- Lean Product Playbook - super practical

- Four Steps to Epiphany: https://web.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/up...

Email in profile if you want more guidance / advice.

What do your users say and do?

Do you know about user interviews and user research? Here's a great short intro: https://www.slideshare.net/xamde/summary-of-the-mom-test

I strongly recommend learning about product management and user research. Read The Mom Test and The Lean Product Playbook and do what's relevant. Start there!

Happy to discuss more and share more resources that could help. Email in profile.