Garry Tan

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• I have seen and loved a e-commerce logistic solution business in france and there are 2 option 1- cloning 2- being partner with them what do you suggest ?

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    I don’t know! What are you trying to do? If it’s not core to your business and can help you and them make money, then yes, partner with them. If it is core to your business, then you probably can’t partner — you’ll need to build it yourself.

• what do you think about these new amazon lockers attempt do you think it wil help amazon to beat wall mart ?

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    Here’s how I would evaluate something: Does it solve a real problem? Yes, in this case, it seems like it does. Lots of people don’t have a place where they can reliably sign for packages. This directly addresses that.

• Hi, Garry- our team just launched our beta version of a discovery based eComerce site: www.rypen.com. In your opinion what is the most important aspect we should be focusing on in regards to the first 3 months. Also, what do you specifically look for in companies like us when thinking about investing?

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    I can’t really tell what it is. Is it like Pinterest, or is it a retail site? You have basically 10 seconds flat to let people know what you are and how they should use you. Right now, it’s tough to understand why I’m on the site. That’s your first problem you should address asap.

• What is the right way to find a mentor/advisor? Is it just best to use someone in your network, or specifically look for someone and find a way to approach them?

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    Email them some questions, and go from there. Most people are happy to take a few minutes to answer some questions.

• My site has some good functionality, it has launched quickly but has some rough corners and in terms of design it is less gloss and more functional (think Twitter or Stack Overflow). Am I going to be at a distinct disadvantage without the gloss? Should I focus more on getting the functionality right or should I spend my time on fixing all the little bits and pieces of the design and visual aspect? Should I hold off marketing the site on 3rd party sites until it looks shiny?

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    Gloss is not super important initially. What’s more important is doing something novel and solving people’s problems. Gloss is like that last 10%. It might be make or break for certain classes of consumer apps or services, but for most, you’re better of making it work better.

• Hi Gerry. I've been working for a month on new SaaS tool. I intend to get private beta out at the end of the year. I was wondering if its good to start to talk to people already to raise expectations, make the product visible and perhaps catch first bunch of testers. Is that a good time to start now, am I already late or rather postpone for later?

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    End of the year is so far out. Maybe you’re trying to do too much? Better to have private users now than hypothetically more later. Always be shipping code. You are late. Do not postpone.

• Is there a tipping point for success measured in users for consumer products? 500,000, 1 million, etc.

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    I think the tipping point for consumer web products can actually be seen much earlier — daily/weekly retention rates of 20% or more. This is according to my friend Suhail Doshi of Mixpanel, who knows one hell of a lot about startup metrics.

• What is the best advice to market a website which depends on its userbase to function i.e. catch 22 situation?

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    The chicken-or-the-egg problem is common. The solution varies. Usually it involves doing something unscalable at first. For instance at Posterous, I followed the first 10,000 users and emailed them directly, welcoming them to the site and commenting on their content in a way that it was clear I wasn’t doing a form reply. It was real and personal. Reddit had to start their community by pretending to be real contributors, before it had any users.

• How do I determine pricing when licencing software?

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    Paul Graham says the best way to find optimal pricing is keep raising it until they wince but still pay.

• For a startup entrepreneur, is it important to be able to code. I'm teaching myself Java this year and also want to start a business technology management business this year as well.

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    Check out http://codecademy.com — I wouldn’t learn Java. I’d learn Ruby on Rails and Javascript and web development. That’s probably the best stack for beginners right now.