Can someone help us asses our product, datacusp.com?

Wow, lots of questions here. Let me try to hit them in order: "Should I get a job or find investors?" IF you have access to enough investor capital (not debt and not your savings) and you can get to MVP and still maintain ownership of a sizable majority of the business then do it. IF that means debt financing then only use the debt lines the cost of which can be carried by returns generated by the use of funds. I would prefer to offer a convertible note to prospective investors that can be easily extended throughout both friends and family and seed rounds (up to $2M to $3M) to get to proof in the market. If you can get to revenue and earnings fast enough then you can avoid equity dilution all together. IF you cannot secure that find of funding AND you cannot produce enough revenue from your business to deliver sufficient earnings for you to live on, then by all means, you should find a way to make the money you need and not burn all your savings or mortgage your home If that means short term contract work that's great. Particularly if you can find log term work that is relevant to the business you're building. If that means taking a job then do that. IF you do that, then yes, be transparent with your employer and let them know you're working on your own business also. Hope this helps....

A prototype will not get you an investor, to be honest. This is just a fallacy. If you can fund the prototype, launch it in the market, get some traction from users. See if your mobile app resonates with your users. You need to track whether your app is able to retain those users so that they keep coming back to it. If you have a good amount of retention with the first few set of users (100 or 1,000), that's a good pitch to take to an investor. Investors are not looking at ideas, they're looking at businesses that can get, retain and engage a customer.

From my experience I would not advise you to go with Venture Capital when you're a start-up as in the end they will most likely end up screwing you. A much better source for funding would be angel investors or friends/family. The question of how much equity should I give away differs for every start-up. I remember with my first company I gave away 30% because I wanted to get it off the ground. This was the best decision I ever made. Don't over valuate your company as having 70% of something is big is a whole lot better than having 100% of something small. You have to decide your companies value based on Assets/I.P(Intellectual Property)/Projections. I assume you have some follow up questions and I would love to help you so if you need any help feel free to call me. Kind Regards, Giuliano

Keep in mind that investors invest for returns. Telling a prospective investor that you want his or her money to grow your business but don't plan on ever generating a liquidation event that pays him or her a dividend is not likely going to work; angel or not. You may be better served with debt financing where returns are generated in the form of interest payments not equity value growth. BUT, if equity financing is the plan, you're going to want to develop a strategic exit plan right from the start. That means identifying prospective buyers, strategic channels etc and characterizing the value drivers for each right up front. You'll find prospective buyers come in a number of forms; competitors, bigger versions of you, strategic partners, private equity, etc. Each will value your business in different amounts for for different reasons. Understanding this is vitally important for you to navigate to securing the right money, from the right sources, with the most favorable terms. Once you've qualified and quantified each of them, then determine what (specifically) you're going to need to do to align your business with those prospective buyers generating the highest returns. This will drive your business model and go to market strategy and define your 'use of funds' decisions. This in turn result in a better, more valuable business whether you exit or not. Do it this way and you'll have no trouble raising money from multiple sources. You can learn more about the advantage of starting with a Strategic Exit plan here: http://www.zerolimitsventures.com/cadredc Good luck. Steve

You can only solve a big problem that changes the world if you solve a problem that is deeply personal to you. Two great examples and why they worked: Roy Raymond was a sad pervert. He'd buy bras and panties at the department store and all the clerks thought their thoughts about him. Roy felt embarrassed. He wasn't really a pervert. He just wanted to buy lingerie for his girlfriend. So he solved this major problem he was having. He created a space where men could feel comfortable coming in and buying sexy lingerie for their partners. He called it Victoria's Secret. But Roy, by solving this important personal issue for himself, apparently solved the same issue for many other men. First year sales were over $500,000 and he quickly opened up three more stores. In 1982 he sold Victoria's Secret for one million dollars before trying multiple other businesses that ended up failing. One MILLION Dollars. A decade later Victoria's Secret was worth over a billion dollars but Roy Raymund was nearly bankrupt and had missed the huge run-up in it's value. -- Picture New York City in the late 1800s on a rainy day. It was disgusting beyond belief. 150,000 horses transported people up and down the busy streets. Each of those horses, according to Super Freakonomics, dropped down about 15-30 pounds of manure. That's up to 4.5 million pounds of manure A DAY on the streets of NYC. And now imagine it raining. Would you cross the street? How long could this last? How long would the city survive without being infested with crap and all the diseases brought with it. What would happen as population of both men and horses increased? Was someone working on inventing a gigantic manure scooper? How would this problem get solved? It never got solved. Instead, Henry Ford invented the assembly line to mass produce cars. Every horse lost their job. People began to drive cars. Manure problem solved. -- In both cases there is a common theme. Someone outside the industry solved a problem that was personal to them that then changed an industry forever. Roy Raymund wasn't a fashion designer or a retailer. He worked in the marketing department of Vicks, which makes over the counter medications. Henry Ford, I don't think, ever worked in the manure industry. Instead, each person focused on a problem that was important to them. A problem that excited them at that moment in time. Raymund wanted to avoid being embarrassed in the future. Ford wanted an efficient way to make cars. The ONLY way to change the world is to solve a problem that is important to YOU. They had to choose themselves for success before they could save the world. Raymund had to convince himself that he didn't belong in the marketing department of a division of Procter & Gamble. He borrowed $80,000 and took the big risk of starting a business. Ford had to survive numerous failures and bankruptcies in order to find a cheap way to make cars. He would abandon investors, people who supported him, and even companies named after him, in his quest to solve his problem in his own way. Nobody gave them permission. And neither of them set out to change the world. They only wanted to solve a problem that was personally important to them. It's unfortunate that often we forget that choosing ourselves is not something that happens once. It has to happen every single day. Else we lose track of that core inside of us that solves problems and is able to share them in a way that makes the world a better place. Ford forgot this and became obsessed with Jews. Ford is the only American that Hitler mentions in Mein Kampf: "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence...[from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." And what happened to our embarrassed marketing manager that has ignited the passions of men and women for the past 30 years? Roy Raymund saw the value of Victoria's Secret jump from the one million he sold it for in 1982 to over a billion dollars a decade later. He failed in business after business. He got divorced. Then at the age of 46, my age, he drove to Golden Gate Bridge, jumped off it and killed himself. Before you can save the world you have to save yourself. But you have to relentlessly do it every day. Sometimes the train wakes me up at night and I feel scared. What will the world be like for my children? I won't always be able to help them. I don't even know if I do enough to help them now. And then I remember. I'm alive for another day.