Can Non-US resident apply for a Social Security Number?

Better than a cover letter is to actually proactively DO something to help them. It'll show them not only that you've researched them, but you're passionate about the startup and worth bringing on. A man got a job at Square early on for just making them a marketing video on his own (back before they had one). Since you're a web designer, design a stellar 1-pager that's targeting their message to a particular niche. Something they could use on social media or something. If they're like most startups, they're not interested in reading cover letters. They're interested in passionate individuals who can add value to the organization.

Hi This is a very broad question on: 'what makes someone a successful entrepreneur?' and 'how to raise seed funding?' Entire books have been written on how this is done, so any attempt to give you a professional answer in just a few lines would be unprofessional. Nevertheless, I will say that there are numerous factors that affect an entrepreneurs ability to raise early stage funding, among them are (in order of importance): 1. The team (how long they've been together, their skills, their past experience, their passion)/ 2. existing customers / practical market research: how many existing users/clients are there. If your product/service doesn't exist yet, then how many people showed that they would buy the product/pay for the service (you can check this without actually having the product/service). this information is very important to investors (just throwing out potential numbers doesn't cut it). 3. The idea - yes, the idea only comes 3rd, as in most cases you will pivot (change the idea) at least once or twice before reaching the final version of the product/service. 4. Your connections / the amount of investors you approach. 5. Timing / luck. If you give me more specific information (such as the type of product/service, the market, the team etc..basically your 'deck'), I will be happy to try advise you on the best way to raise money. For example, for a product, you should try avoid crowdfunding platforms unless you already have the entire manufacturing process and selling/shipping process ready. If not, you will be seeing 'fake'/copied versions of your product even before you hit the market. Good luck

If you're a service business and haven't been able to make profit, then I highly doubt investors are going to get involved. The beauty of selling your time is you can get people to buy right away, and if they pay anything above $25/hour - then you should make profit assuming you can live off of $50K/year salary. All that being said, here's what I did when I almost went bankrupt building my company Spheric Technologies (at the time I had 3 employees). 1) I got on the phone and started calling old friends loosely tied to the industry and asked for advice. Doing so introduced me to new opportunities, ideas and connections. I spend every night - after working 8 hours with a client - emailing and calling 15+ people. Some I knew, some I didn't, many I hadn't talked to in years. 2) Focused on sales & getting paid faster. Many times - especially a service based business - will die due to cashflow issues... they can't afford to pay their employees bi-weekly, and wait on the sidelines while their customers pay them net 30, 45 or worse 60+. So I hustled to get my existing customers to pay me Net 0, and going forward, got a deposit (20% up front) and kept the invoice every 2 weeks, Net 0, paid via wire transfer or credit card. 3) Refined the business to focus only on 1 customer type that was profitable. In the early days you take on anything that will "make you money" but you quickly learn that not every customer is the same. If you know this, stop working with customers where you can't make 30% net profits off a project, and use that as your filter for new opportunities. Also, raise your prices if you aren't making profit. Someone in your industry is... so can you. Unfortunately, there's no short cut or silver bullet - but the pattern to follow is listed above. I eventually grew that business to 30 employees in 4 years (bootstrapped 100%) and was acquire in May 2008 before the crash. It was the easily the most intense time of my life, but I learned A LOT of lessons that I continue to use today. Call if I can help, but assuming I maybe priced outside of your range ... that being said, there's thousands of other folks who can help for as little as $30, so get on a call today.

In my experience, every step you take to complicate your company's structure and ownership rights reduces the likelihood of investors providing your venture with seed funding. To attract seed funding, investors expect a single-minded laser focus on the entrepreneurs' assessment of his or her best path to validating their business and growing it into a very large business as quickly as possible. So the very idea that you are reliant or considering taking multiple paths to success is likely to act as a red flag for most experienced early-stage tech investors. Also, until there is significant traction achieved, an investor is expecting to own everything generated by the business. There are rare occasions where a particular asset, brand, domain or other component of the business can be spun-out (usually in the case where it's a distraction from the core business but there's inbound demand from a buyer), but when I say rare, I mean this happens so infrequently that it's not anything that should be reasonably expected in the course of planning. Speaking candidly, this entire strategy creates a perception (accurate or unfair) that you are undecided on a number of the key questions you need to be sure of before you have a good chance of raising seed funding. I'd be happy to talk to you about what you're doing and help provide some clarity based on what I hear. I encourage you to review my references as I have been helpful to many other Clarity members on these types of issues.

The ideal way would be to hire the engineer while the project is still under development. You and the engineer should follow up with the outsourced partner in the process. This will give hold to the engineer and later more staff can be trained in upgrading or follow on versions of the product/service.