What free B2B applications should I offer?

There are a lot of places where you can try to get validation for your idea. But before you start going to look for these places, get your Buyer Personas (the representation of your ideal customers) in order. If you know who your ideal customers are, then the next step (of finding where they hang out) is easy. You can easily start tapping into your (existing) social network, for example to try to find people to have a conversation with and try to find out if they're really having the problem you're solving. Another place is local meetups, check out sites like meetup.com and see if they're meetup's in your area around the problem you're trying to solve. Go there and start talking to people! Online, online there's million of possibilities to try to find your ideal customers and trying to get a conversation with them, use Twitter search, certain Facebook groups around your demographic, newsletters, things like Quora etc. to find people hanging around and trying to get solutions to the problem you want to fix. (there's a ton of online locations in this SlideShare deck if you need more inspiration: http://www.slideshare.net/jcvangent/doing-customer-development-and-stop-wasting-your-time-startupbus-edition) Don't feel limited by the amount of budget you have, for having conversations with people you don't need a budget, you just need to know where to look to find the correct people to talk to. I recently wrote a blogpost around the subject as well, to give you some tips on how to reach the right people and what to ask them if you want to dig a bit further in the subject: http://inboundrocket.co/blog/stop-wasting-time-how-to-prove-youre-building-the-right-product/. Best of luck!

Simple: The right investor is someone who wants to invest on standard terms at a good valuation relative to your current stage. Extra bonus points for someone who has relevant industry connections that could accelerate your business and is willing - at the right time - to make introductions for you. But you should have really quite low expectations of most angel investors. Certainly they should have NO operational control of the business. Although I want to be as helpful as possible to companies I invest in, it's entirely for the entrepreneur to drive me, not the other way around. There are very few exceptions to this rule, for example when angels who actually do have very recent and relevant experience want to back someone who is inexperienced and need oversight in order to feel comfortable investing early. But this is a real rarity. Finally, to answer your question about what entrepreneurs do when they receive funding, they should spend it in the best possible way to accelerate the success of the business. I'd be happy to talk to you in a call to provide more clarity on the matter and also discuss when is the right time to accept investment. If you have people willing to back you, that's great. You want to make sure you have a clear plan and set expectations accordingly.

I wrote an answer to a similar question today which you can find here: https://clarity.fm/a/2877 The one flaw to your current process is this premise: "Whereas, if I focused on a good idea the whole process of driving success would be easier." This - from my experience - is simply not the case. I'm working on what I believe to be the best idea I've ever had and it has been absolutely the most challenging time I've ever had in a career full of product challenges. So a "good idea" does not make the process any easier. As I privately advised the person who asked the other similar question: I'd encourage you to define all your own pain points in your life and filter by most pain and also least addressed by existing solutions. Building what you know and what you're excited about building is the best that any of us can hope for. There's no path to greatness that isn't full of challenges ahead. Happy to do a call to discuss further.

If I was going to start over, with a blank slate I would do several things differently. 1. I would hire an accountant and bookkeeper on day one. I know that on the surface it's easy to look at the cost of an accountant and justify spending those resources in other areas, however I have seen this play out horribly for a number of businesses (ours included.) An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. 2. I would make a list of all of my start up items, edit it and then edit it again. Start as lean as you can. We started our t-shirt company with basic equipment in my mom's attic and slowly moved into proper production space as we needed to, however we made the mistake of buying too much equipment early on because we thought we needed it. Get by with the bare minimum for as long as you can, get traction, customers and cash flow and then expand cautiously. 3. Don't listen to salespeople! Talk to friends, other businesses and look on the web for answers to common questions. Salespeople are great when you know what you need to buy, however often times you are going to end up wasting money that would be better spent in other places, like on your accountant. 4. Don't take on bad customers just to make a buck. If you are interested in knowing our 10 tell tale signs of bad customers, schedule a call with me and I'll run down the list. It will save you hours and it only takes a few minutes. 5. Find a team of advisors and listen to them. I wish I would have listened to advice that people were giving me for free when we first got started. There's an old saying, "if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in trouble." Find good council and listen. Hope that's helpful, I've been a freelancer and small business owner for almost twenty years and enjoy coaching startups and entrepreneurs in getting their ventures off the ground. Feel free to schedule a call and I can help get you started.

I'd suggest that there is no "should". The beauty of being an entrepreneur is that YOU get to decide what success is. In fact - In the system I use with entrepreneurs you learn to define "success" for yourself and build it into the requirements of your business model.