Tony Conrad

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• If the total size of the niche community you are aiming to serve is no more than 1 million (for example), should you build your product to target them, or try to find "the bigger picture" and design the product for a superset of the community?

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    Start with one type of user and solve that one users problem incredibly well.

    They’ll be the best marketing channel for you and be your best product feedback overtime.

• We are having trouble getting people to try our app. Any suggestions?

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    Go to a place with lots of people (coffee shops, libraries, etc) and offer to buy them a coffee for 5 minutes of their time.

    More advice here: http://www.cindyalvarez.com/ but overall just physically go and find people to try it out

• With the rising smart phone adoption, it is vital to have a mobile application upon launch? And if not, how soon thereafter should one be released?

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    Depends on your product and how mobile fits into the product experience.

    If you have a mobile-first product, you should launch with a mobile app :) But its not necessarily a requirement for every business.

• I have a saas product, charging from $29-$299 / month. Should I stick to low-cost online channels in order to ensuring a sustainable customer acquisition cost or is it a good idea to accelerate early traction (and maybe beyond) with more proactive sales strategies: Conferences, phone sales, commission deals etc?

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    You should test all of your channels to figure out the most effective strategy for you long-term.

    Given that you’ll understand the average LTV for your customers – test other channels and validate against that metric to choose whats right for you

• What are some of the criteria for investment potential? Do you look only for web based "disruptives" or do you seek other businesses or new product ideas?

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    Passionate Founders with an unfair advantage in a market that they want to change.

    The Web has been a driving force in new businesses – but we invest into other verticals which have been changed by the Web as well

• Global vs. Local marketing for a Startup, when is good to launch a startup locally instead of globally?

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    Does your startup require a large density of people in a single physical location to be successful?

    If yes, launch locally – validate the business – then scale.

    If no, may not be global launch – but you’re not locked into focusing on local

• I run a UK software company that has many domain expertise from voice processing, telephony to realtime analytics and a non developer app builder. Over the years we have many products and frameworks. I'm struggling to best market these. Should I go for 1) a single suite approach already integrated for a vertical domain, 2) split into multiple products and target different markets with technical online education how best to leverage a product? 3) Create separate brand entities for each product?

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    First interview customers. Learn what they want, how they buy, etc

    Advice here: http://www.cindyalvarez.com/

    Then Test. Test. Test. and Validate your thesis from Step 1.

    Advice here: http://startup-marketing.com/

• Can 3 smart tech guys and one very smart female marketing student with a "great new fresh idea" start a website with basically NO budget ( lot of sweat equity) and expect to make it? Or do you need to have early investors and a bunch of money to have all aspects of your new site as close to perfect as possible before you go live?

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    Every business is different – most “startups” launched each year in the US won’t take outside equity capital (small businesses, lifestyle businesses, etc) – you have to figure out what you want to build and what your team wants to do and chose the appropriate path.

• Please define Soft Launch

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    Quietly opening the doors to a service (GA) but without publicly telling anyone that the service is live.

    Great examples are Pinterest.com and Snip.it – who are both live and with active users – but have not had a formal press launch.

• How would you evaluate a startup that has traction, is generating revenue and is looking for raising funds? Any recommended resources to read?

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    Start here:

    http://startuplawyer.com/i

    Then read here:

    http://www.askthevc.com/