jaspalsawhney

I also was helping someone do UX modeling. If anyone needs help - feel free to let me know.

[email protected]

Finishing My Experiments with Truth - Mahatma Gandhi

Another way to look the whole situation apart from bootstrapping gung-ho which I suggested earlier will be to ask yourself the following 1. Do you already have customers who have shown intent on using the product? - if Yes then it indicates that people are waiting for your product so there is a reason for you to release soon. If No then find these potential customers

2. If you already have a set of potential customers then reach out to them and validate whether they need all the features which you are planning to include in the first release? - If the features (the basic set) is less than what you had understood then you need to check how much money you need to get it out to the users. Again you are just validating your understanding and not asking the users for what features they'll want.

3. Do you have a kick ass team which anyone who you go for funding will ask you for? - This as mentioned above matters to anyone whose going to give you money

4. Is there competition to your product? If yes then how do you stand up against them?

Answers to these questions will indicate something and then on top of that you should add you gut feel whether you are comfortable or not with taking outside money.

Best of luck.

Bootstrap your way to stardom. Its not like you won't survive if you do not get funding.

1. Go to a bar and buy everyone a round of drink and another and another till either you or someone else collapse.

2. Give it to someone needy or Sponsor a kid

3. Find a startup/non profit which works in an area which resonates with his grandmom's interests and invest in them

There are in my opinion some benefits 1. There are a large number of people who are wanting to help you without anything in return - so for a startup where resources are already scarce its actually a good thing 2. Most of the "review my startup" posts come before the app/service has formally launched so it kind of works like a private launch for people 3. In the process of asking someone to review your startup. You'll get in touch with people who turn out be good sources for advice etc 4. Criticism is not in my opinion directed at someone's efforts but rather at the end product which is what the person posting asked for 5. Last thing - any marketing good or bad is better than no marketing

Well - I did conduct a survey already and the results showed an interest and strong viability for the offering. From that we took it to the level we have defined a basic feature set on how we see we can solve the problem but now as phamilton understood - I need a set of people 5-10 who can validate some of the assumptions which we have made.

Ofcourse I can prorate the assumptions from the survey itself and start to go ahead and develop the functionality but before I do that I see value in talking to people who I reckon might be the ones using the service end of the day.

You are right Karl but the shopping cart which you'll end up creating will be something which just serves the bare bone needs.

Some of the other features of a shopping cart

1. Integration with a checkout system (Single page Vs Multi Page) - this is itself a demon in itself.

2. Bells and Whistles on the cart itself like tax & shipping cost estimator

I guess when you say you can create a shopping cart in 15 mins you are not keeping in mind any checkout flow integration or estimators or much control with items in the cart e.g. changing sku options like color etc.

There are some open source systems like Magento which can be looked at too.

How about I help you with whatever needs to be done to sell? I'm a jack of all trades can understand design/coding/UX and also like the aspects of marketing.

contact me at [email protected]

One of my friends actually pronounces it as 'Hedge' Also her 'W' sounds like 'ood'

Well right now I'm trying to convince a set of people who feel that I'm not a network marketing person nor am I selling home cooked pickle.

Have used Visio, Powerpoint, Axure - prefer Visio however.

1. There's a very impressive video on how to teach kids to be entrepreneurs which covers the aspects of money management http://ca.ted.com/talks/cameron_herold_let_s_raise_kids_to_b...

2. Another article by Ken Rockwell which covers some important lessons http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-afford-anything.htm

Another way to look at it can to ask yourself the question

"What do you stand to loose?" - Worst case scenario you would have spend time on creating something which gets failed or they cut you off - In any situation you'll be learning invaluable lessons.

Of course if you end up taking up resources in form of people or material you can ask them to take the costs up for that. Try to position yourself a technical co founder on the team.

Thanks. Did he identify what he could have done differently so as to mitigate the risk?

Any thing is worth a shot in my opinion - its not like you have not tried any other options so I think that this is a great way to make yourself known. Best of luck.

The only way one can come to the conclusion to that question is either

1. You agree/disagree that they are different? - I think they are different because the whole concept behind demanding an artist to come and play in your town is no doubt very sticky. I speak out of experience because my wife for all her love for Yanni is getting to see him play live in Toronto next year using eventful.

2. The only thing which is left to find is how many 'demands' have been met this way? Maybe there are not many but I know that Eventful has one strong supporter in my wife and they'll have me too cheering for them if my fav singer comes to town.

Thanks. Will search.

Engage them in one of the following ways 1 a. Urge them to become citizen journalists sending you video's etc on stuff which they observe or come across. 1 b. Run a column showcasing some of the work done by such citizen journalists. e.g. NDTV (Indian channel) runs a similar thing.

2. Call for people interested in helping local community building.

3. Ask for feedback on what can be done to improve the paper. for e.g. if Toronto Star would ask me this I would urge them to slim their Saturday paper from 200 pages to 10 pages so that I do not feel bad about not being able to read it even when its free