What is the fair equity share to get upon joining an early stage startup?

It really depends on whether this is ultimately a top-down or bottom-up approach and to what extent the end-user experience is compelling enough to act as a forcing function to enterprise adoption. A bottom-up distributed mobile app must be both viral and incredible engaging. Without proof that you have that (or absent proof, strong conviction) most are better off attempting to sell top-down. Happy to talk this through in a call

I'm a positioning and messaging expert, working now and previously for several software companies in CMO type roles. Ideally you'll want to focus on your propositions to both sellers and buyers independently. You concept is dependant on providing the mechanism for bringing these markets together, so a failure on just one side means a failure for the system as a whole. Focus early on what works and what doesn't for each group, and what's broken in the relationship options they have today. Nail your positioning and messaging to each specific side of the relationship, then create test campaigns and landing pages for each. I wouldn't try wrap it up in one landing page just yet, make sure you understand what's working for both the buyers and the sellers independently first. Good luck, drop me a line if you'd like to speak further on it!

I would storngly suggest you to consider a 4th optinion which is much cheaper and with a higher chance of giving you return. I've personally used this strategy to start my consulting business from 0 to 12 clients in the first 3 months. Here's exactly what you can do. How You Can Generate 5 to 10 extra Trial Customers per week using Linkedin It is NOW the moment to leverage Linkedin’s full potential. In the future, this social network will start to get overcrowded (see Instagram and other ones that in the past were money-printers for the first ones who fully understood them.) How to leverage Linkedin to generate leads? 1- Use your personal account to post relevant content. Don’t put external links (if you really have to, write them in the first comment and tell people to look at it) as the post which includes them are penalized by the Linkedin algorithm that tends to make people remain in their platform. Use Quuu.co. if you want contents related to your niche posted every day on your account, but don’t expect an engagement from those. The best posts come from your stories, what you’d learned, and they give the hell out of value to your audience. 2- Select your target audience. Just hit the search button and look for the location, title/position, etc. where your leads are. 3- Optimize your profile. Treat it like a sales letter, but more related to your person. Firstly, write something eye-catching on your headline, for instance, “Contact me if you want to generate more leads for your B2B Business.” Then the first paragraph should be customer oriented (explaining the benefits of working with you/your company.) After you can tell more about yourself, and of your story if you’d like to. You can check my profile to have some inspiration. 4- Start with the automation. Download “Linkedhelper” (better) or “GPZWeb” (still good) to automate the following actions: - Profile Views. People will visit-back and see your “optimized profile” (see point 3.) And many times they’ll contact you. - Connect with 1,000 People, including a 1 line message (less-salesy messages get a higher-acceptance rate.) - Send a Direct message with an intro summary & calendly/ web/email link to everyone who accepts (better if you wait one day after they accepted your connection request.) ** MAJOR KEY ALERT** A high-quality copy of the message is KEY to succeeding. Try to stand out with humor or creative ways (thanks, Jon Buchan). I get five messages per day from people pitching me SEO services which go straight to the trash bin, while my messages, not to brag, get a very high response rate Reply to your messages, and watch the leads roll in! I repeat! Linkedin (and his automation) will soon get less effective as more and more people are starting to do it. So, do it now (the same applies to Facebook groups, see the third paragraph) and you’ll be ahead of 99,9%. Another thing, stick to the limits, check the Linkedhelper knowledge base for that. -- If you want support in implementing this strategy, just call me here on Clarity :-)

I'm glad you described your market a bit. I have not seen a retainer model work in this space, but that's not saying you can't succeed with it. YOU are the expert, so I would not leave it to clients to choose what they want. If you do, you'll get clients who say, "Yeah, I hired them to make me a page; it looked nice but didn't work"--and who is responsible for that? I have seen both arguments when it comes to the question of displaying pricing. I think you should show it. That's a qualifier for visitors, and you do not want to waste your time and energy on people who cannot afford your help. So my recommendation is to list your services with pricing, but make sure you have a lead capture system to pre-qualify. Then talk live to fully qualify and give your expert recommendations. I kind of like #4, but there is so little opportunity cost in you being able to offer all the other kinds of content...I would only take this approach if you are committed, really want to specialize, and get known for these kinds of pages.

So long as the suppliers are able to deliver a basic level of service that would create a positive experience for the purchaser, I'd say that it's reasonable to conduct the experiment. Marketplaces always face liquidity issues in the early days. Happy to talk to you in more detail in a call to better understand your current MVP and roll-out plans and provide some more specific advice to you.