One of our founders is going on sabbatical and his 25% equity share is now up for grabs. How should the rest of us co-founders deal with this?

10% of the total monthly sales churning on an absolute basis is near fatal. That means that within 5 months, you have 50% absolute churn per year, which reveals fundamental flaws with the service itself. Anything above small single digit churn is telling you and your team that customers are not seeing enough value in your product. I'd start by doing as many exit interviews as you can with those that have churned out, including, offers to reengage at a lower price-point while you fix the issues that matter to them. Happy to talk through this in more detail in a call.

Convertible notes are by no means "earned." They are often easier to raise for early-stage companies who don't want to or can't raise an equity round. Equity rounds almost always require a simultaneous close of either the whole round or a defined "first close" representing a significant share of the raised amount. Where there are many participants in the round comprised mostly of small seed funds and/or angel investors, shepherding everyone to a closing date can be very difficult. If a company raises money on a note and the company fails, the investors are creditors, getting money back prior to any shareholder and any creditor that doesn't have security or statutory preference. In almost every case, convertible note holders in these situations would be lucky to get pennies back on the dollar. It would be highly unusual of / unheard of for a convertible note to come with personal guarantees. Happy to talk to you about the particulars of your situation and explain more to you based on what you're wanting to know.

Generally bootstrapped startups should avoid salespeople, for a few reasons: a. they typically can't afford the base and overall comp required to attract sales people who can actually sell / or afford to support them with marketing, management, etc b. it will be very difficult to find the rare person with the right mix of sales and startup DNA along with the critical domain knowledge, consequently the startup is likely to settle c. the founders need to be very involved in the selling and customers will demand it That said, if the plan is still to hire a salesperson, find someone who has demonstrated sales success in startups and is excited by the early stage in company building. Create a comp plan heavily leveraged on sales results (unless you are in an industry where 100% commission is a common practice, would recommend against $0 base as this creates the false impression that your hire isn't passing time with one company while looking for another job with a richer comp plan - you want your rep focussed). Sell the vision and opportunity to be part of a growth story. I have written a several blog posts on hiring sales people into start-ups. You might find these useful: http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/ceo-question-should-i-learn-to-sell-or-hire-a-sales-person/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/start-up-sales-and-hiring-advice-dont-stop-selling-once-you-hire-your-first-sales-rep/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/hiring-start-up-sales-reps/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/startups-and-salespeople/ Good luck!

With all respect to Dan, I'm not seeing anything like that. You said "pre-revenue." If it's pre-revenue and enterprise, you don't have anything proven yet. You would have to have an insanely interesting story with a group of founders and execs on board with ridiculous competitive advantage built in. I have seen a few of those companies. It's more like $3m-$5m pre. Now, post-revenue is different. I've seen enterprise plays with $500k-$1m revenue/yr, still very early (because in the enterprise space that's not a lot of customers yet), getting $8m-$15m post in an A-round. I do agree there's no "average." Finally, you will hit the Series A Crunch issue, which is that for every company like yours with "cutting edge tech" as-yet-unproven, there's 10 which also have cutting edge tech except they have customers, revenue, etc.. So in this case, it's not a matter of valuation, but a matter of getting funded at all!

Most of the earnings come from the people you are in contact with. The platform is not that big at the moment but it can be earned. My recommendation is to create content on your private page web, facebook, instagram ... and leave a clarity link through your work. If you need extra help call me for 15 minutes.