Do you run lean analytics on your business? Any great experience or trouble to share? If not yet, why?

Please realize that my suggestion would be slightly different if I knew which two countries. However, without knowing that here's what I'd suggestion: 1. Since you're just getting started figure out which country provides the best legal benefits for starting a company. This should include tax benefits, legal protection, and ease when it comes to filing paperwork (incorporating, managing payroll, taxes, etc.). This will undoubtedly save you time and money moving forward, and staying lean. 2. Once you've established your home base country, you'll still need to hire people in the other country as you scale. You may want to think about using a service like oDesk or Elance, not necessarily to recruit people but to manage ALL the paperwork associated with hiring international people. They will of course be given contract status. If you are going to be providing employees equity then I'd suggest consulting a lawyer for how people in the non-home base country will be treated. 3. Reporting revenue. You need to be very careful about whether you are providing goods and services. If it's goods keep in mind that you might be subject to tariffs. If you're providing services then I think you might be in the clear, but please double check. Finally, some countries might have an issue with where the revenue was actually made i.e. are you sitting in your office in your home based country while servicing clients in the non-home base country, or are you actually in the non-home base country. 4. No matter what you'll need to setup a remote working environment for yourself. Invest in the best technology you can, and find clients who are willing to utilize your services on a remote basis. Here are a few additional posts on running a remote team that I've written: http://femgineer.com/2013/09/running-remote-and-making-progress/ http://femgineer.com/2013/03/how-to-transition-to-a-remote-team/

Your support software should cater to your needs, depending on how your business operates. Fiver uses Vanilla forum and Zendesk. Thumbtack uses Zendesk. Not sure about AirBNB, their help center seems to be custom. Depending on how well funded your are, I would recommend starting with a free plan with one of the help desk SaaS products, or even using open source ticketing platform. Then, as your needs grow and you need integration with your marketplace, there's no reason you can't scale and migrate.

It's not unusual at all. If you do outsource, try and make sure you have a project lead that you can trust. Once revenues get up to a certain point they might want to see the project through and come on board full time OR they will have enough pride in their work to make sure a proper transition takes place. As far as security, make sure you have an airtight non-disclosure/non-compete agreement with a penalty clause that includes financial remuneration.

If you haven't fully tested your app with the 100 individual accounts Apple allows you to test via TestFlight or Hockey, then I'd suggest you should test thoroughly with your email list before launching to the app store. Things to look for at this early-stage: Activation and Breakage Points: From app download to user onboarding, where are people getting lost? Your goal is not only to have them download the app, but complete whatever steps for them to become your user. Optimizing the flow to ensure maximum conversion is a key first step. Engagement: How often are they completing the tasks you deem most important based on your business model? How can you increase this number? User Understanding: How clear is the app's UI and messaging? Where are they getting lost? Virality: While true virality is hard to measure at this stage (given the constraints of pre-launch testing), you can evaluate the potential effectiveness of any distribution tactics you might employ (contacts, OAuth's etc) in terms of user opt-in and conversion issues. Real analytical data is easier to interpret than user interviews but there is a such a treasure trove of good customer development intel from customer interviews. Those first 100 people who download the app should be personally interviewed about their experience, what they like, how much it solves their problem, how much of a problem that is for them in the first place and so on. Before you go live in the app store, I highly recommend you max out your installs in a private testing environment. I'm happy to talk this through with you in more detail in a call.

It's really ill-advised to solicit your vision from anyone. In my 20 years of building, investing and supporting tech companies, I don't know of a single success story that has it's origins in someone with your approach. Running a tech startup is incredibly hard. It demands sacrifices few are truly able to make and come with it tremendous risks that most people are unwilling to take. It sounds to me as if you want the startup life because you have an impression of what it's about but haven't yet experienced it first-hand. I'd encourage you to first join an early-stage startup. Developers are incredibly in-demand. Find an entrepreneur who has some experience, funding and a compelling vision that you believe in and get to know what the journey is really like.