Does anyone know how a service like Xero or similar services work, any terms/ legislations around accessing users bank balances or account history?

SOM refers to the portion of the market that your business COULD actually capture, as you stated: "[the] % [you] can realistically achieve from the SAM." Let's use an analogy to break this down - and pretend you are talking about fishing instead of project management software. TAM refers to all the fish (that manage projects) in the sea. SAM are all the fish (that manage projects) within casting range of the dock you fish from (ie your solution is viable for them). SOM are the number of fish (that manage projects) you can reasonably catch within the amounts of time, energy, and bait you can allocate to fishing. The question within a question you ask about guidelines on believability is a great one. And, while I don't have a guideline or benchmark to share, I can confirm your instinct; ensuring that your projected SOM is reasonable is absolutely critical. The best way to project this is by having at least some of the equation variables grounded in reality - ie, actually catching some fish. If you can show how much it costs to acquire a customer, how much it costs to service that customer, and how much you'll make from that customer over a lifetime, you've got some great empirical evidence to show how you'll achieve growth within your SOM. I don't think of SOM as a target - it is rather the theoretical maximum number of customers or revenue I can achieve within the (sub)universe where my product or service adds value. In the end - the number is important - but not as important as how you present it, and how you'll approach it with your product. As an investor, you want to see more than just the answer - you want the thought process behind the answer. Was the founder thoughtful in their approach, did they look beyond the obvious while remaining pragmatic? Do they understand clearly why the SAM (macro-environment) and SOM (micro-environment) break out of the TAM in the proportions they've listed? More than happy to dive deeper on this.

I'm not sure if this is how you imagine this world to work, but at least according to the order you wrote it "raising funds" was first. In reality it should actually be one of your final steps of the stage you are at right now. It may even come after a year or two! So you have this great app idea, and you're looking for a place to start... Don't! Don't start yet before you decide whether you have what it takes to get into a roller coaster that can ruin your life and make you miserable! Not trying to scare you but I think most people only hear about these great success stories. They have this dream of maybe, possibly, becoming the next big thing... Because they have the best idea for an app... You don't hear about the failures so often. And even if you do, you don't hear about what the founders of these failing startups had to go through. Truth is you are most likely gonna fail. And I'm saying that without even knowing what your idea is. There are so many barriers on your way that even a great product with a great team is likely to fail. Some people would say "I'm not afraid of failing", "It's good to fail cause you learn", "Failing will make me stronger for the next startup". That's somewhat true but it doesn't mean that failing is easy. As oppose to what people sometimes say - you do not want to fail! It's very painful!!! You have to understand what failing in a startup means. You can work your a$s for 2-3 years, have little to no salary, waste other people's money (most likely your friends and family first), lose friends, fight with your partners, your family, your spouse, devote 20 hours a day for your startup all this time, forget about the little and big things you used to enjoy in life, and only then, after debating 100 times whether you should quit or not, you finally decide that it's not gonna work and you've failed. Disappointing your family, your investors, yourself. Trust me it is painful. Are you sure you wanna do this to yourself? If yes, give me a call. I have the experience you need! From idea stage, to proof of concept, to running beta tests, getting millions of millions of users in ways you can't even imagine, creating features and experience that will make these millions of users completely addicted and viral, raise money in a smart way, hire the right people, find a great co-founder, succeed, fail, be persistent, and enjoy the ride! Good luck, Roy

It depends a lot of in the skill sets and experience of both people but in most cases the ux designer should be controlling the developer pretty heavily in order to make sure his ideas come through properly. The UX designer may just need to work on his approach so people don't feel bossed around and more like they are working together. In an ideal world, there would be a project manager who makes sure everything is communicated well and keeps the dynamic feeling great.

Here is a link to a basic model - http://monetizepros.com/tools/template-library/subscription-revenue-model-spreadsheet/ Depending on the purpose of the model you could get much much more elaborate or simpler. This base model will help you to understand size of the prize. But if you want to develop an end to end profitability model (Revenue, Gross Margin, Selling & General Administrative Costs, Taxes) I would suggest working with financial analyst. You biggest drivers (inputs) on a SaaS model will be CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost, Average Selling Price / Monthly Plan Cost, Customer Churn(How many people cancel their plans month to month), & Cost to serve If you can nail down them with solid backup data on your assumption that will make thing a lot simpler. Let me know if you need any help. I spent 7 years at a Fortune 100 company as a Sr. Financial Analyst.

You should try to engage people using social networks, it is easier to spread than email. The conversion rate on emails are low but is still a valid tool for that. Send and email with a simple and objective message that will make people want to try. The best way to have feedback from users is to watch them use the app. You should put them on the hands of everybody that you can and without any instrucions and just watch, don´t even say that the app is yours. Try to do it a lot. If you want feedback from others, you can include the feedback form inside the app and suggest users to answer occasionally. I would also strongly recommend to use a tool as Flurry Analytics. Is the best way to get data from how is the use of the application. Pay attention to those data and be open to change your app a lot, you may need more features or cut some off to make it easier to use. If you need more help please contact me.