What is the best suggested way forward with my tech startup?

My company does a lot of consulting with offshore firms who are looking for a way to generate new business, so I hear this question a lot. My first reaction is that you need to totally reverse your mindset when you talk about your own company. You mentioned that you have: a great software developers team, proven track record, passion, real value But, everyone says that. There a 10,000 companies that have those things, so a customer isn't going to notice it. You need to figure out what your company is best at (doesn't have to be technical) and present it as a solution to a specific problem that clients have. Maybe a speciality, or really good project management, really good communications, a special expertise or experience, a personality, experience with a certain type of client.. really anything.. But, there must be some thing that makes your company 'special' otherwise you will be lost in the mix. Don't worry about things like rates, or the fact that you have 'great' developers. Those are generic. Think about why a client would really choose you, and try to build on that! After you understand your company identity, it gets much easier to identify and engage marketing channels because you understand your target.

You won't find anyone worth adding to your team willing to work for equity only, no matter how compelling your product and business is. The realities of the talent market for mobile developers anywhere is such that a developer would be foolish to work only for equity unless they are a cofounder and have double digit equity. Happy to talk about hiring and alternatives to full-time hires.

Apple will allow a developer to register 100 UDID devices per 12 month cycle to test via TestFlight or HockeyApp. Having started with TestFlight, I would really encourage you NOT to use it, and go directly to HockeyApp. HockeyApp is a much better product. There is also enterprise distribution which allows you far more UDID's but whether you qualify for enterprise distribution is difficult to say. As part of your testing, I'd encourage to explicitly ask your testers to only register one device. One of the things we experienced was some testers registering 3 devices but only used one, essentially wasting those UDID's where we could have given to other testers. Who you invite to be a tester should be selective as well. I think you should have no more than 10 non-user users. These people should be people who have either built successful mobile apps or who are just such huge consumers of similar mobile apps to what you're building, that they can give you great product feedback even though they aren't your user. Specifically, they can help point out non obvious UI problems and better ways to implement particular features. The rest of your users should be highly qualified as actually wanting what you're building. If they can't articulate why they should be the first to use what you're building, they are likely the wrong tester. The more you can do to make them "beg" to be a tester, the higher the sign that the feedback you're getting from them can be considered "high-signal." In a limited beta test, you're really looking to understand the biggest UX pain-points. For example, are people not registering and providing you the additional permissions you are requiring? Are they not completing an action that could trigger virality? How far are they getting in their first user session? How much time are they spending per user session? Obviously, you'll be doing your fair share of bug squashing, but the core of it is around improving the core flows to minimize friction as much as possible. Lastly, keep in mind that even with highly motivated users, their attention spans and patience for early builds is limited, so make sure that each of your builds really make significant improvements. Happy to talk through any of this and more about mobile app testing.

You are right that the range is wide. You need to figure what are good values to have for your category. Also, you can focus on the trend (is your DAU/MAU increasing vs decreasing after you make changes) even if benchmarking is tough. Unless your app is adding a huge number of users every day (which can skew DAU/MAU), you can trust the ratio as a good indication of how engaged your users are. For games, DAU/MAU of ~20-30% is considered to be pretty good. For social apps, like a messenger app, a successful one would have a DAU/MAU closer to 50%. In general most apps struggle to get to DAU/MAU of 20% or more. Make sure you have the right definition of who is an active user for your app, and get a good sense of what % of users are actually using your app every day. Happy to discuss what is a good benchmark for your specific app depending on what it does.

To answer your questions: 1) Mobile companies at your stage usually raise angel funding at a valuation equivalent of $5,000,000 for US based companies and $4,000,000 to $4,500,000 for Canadian companies. 2) The valuation is a function of how much you raise against that valuation. For instance, selling $50,000 at $5,000,000 means you are selling debt that will convert into shares equal to roughly 1% of your company. 3) I would encourage you to check out my other answers that I've recently written that talk in detail about what to raise and when to raise. Given that you've now launched and your launch is "quiet", most seed investors are going to want to see substantial traction before investing. It's best for you to raise this money on a convertible note instead of actually selling equity, especially if you are intending on raising $50,000 - $100,000. Happy to schedule a call with you to provide more specifics and encourage you to read through the answers I've provided re fundraising advice to early-stage companies as well.