JonathanWCurd

The b2b product has a more defined route to revenue / profit but its market is capped. I wouldn't complain about >$1 million in profit but my personal goal is to make a bigger impact (doesn't have to be now, but if I wait will I squander my chance).

We have done past work for some of the players in the industry so we have good connections / a solid network within the industry so I have no doubt we can get the product in the door. The questions is are we limiting ourselves by pursuing a product that has only a small market instead of aiming higher / bigger.

Once we have an MVP and can show traction, would we be able to find investors so that we can grow rapidly and capitalize or is this market to small.

If they did, that would be due diligence on their part and expected. Best of luck to you either way.

No for me.

If they started charging I think it wouldn't be too long before another free service came in and started to eat their lunch (read freeloaders would defect). Of course even if they lost hundreds of millions of users to some competitor they would still be a viable business. Look at yahoo.

Pick smaller more approachable projects / problems and you can.

I usually go into things having thought them through and after doing research so I am usually pretty confident that I am right.

That being said, I am always open to other ideas and listening. If I am proven wrong I am more than willing to accept that.

Keep us updated. No doubt there are people here who can help spread the word.

Not saying its the route I would take but you could share your story and the site name here and at other social sites like digg, reddit, etc and internet vigilantes might just do their thing to drive them away.

I have seen it happen before with design / logo theft etc.

Do you hav any kind of legal registrations, trademark, business filings. If so send the cease and desist but also send a copy to their domain registrar maybe they will shut down the site.

Good point. I was being very narrow sighted on that.

The only finished projects in my opinion are failed projects.

Successful projects are never finished. You need to keep working with them and making them better to improve your offering so that you can retain your users and keep your competitive edge.

launch.is just follow the blogs about each presenter or click to see the demo pit companies.

Yes to CVv.

Only use AVS if your shipping.

Authorize only for 1.00 to verify card for subscription billing or authorize the card for full amount if you are batch end of day processing. The authorization holds the money for a period so you can capture it and if you never do it releases it back. It only affects a cards available credit and does not affect you or the consumer unless you capture it.

Great points. I appreciate your thoughts.

Should we accept users first come first serve or filter them based on a simple survey and who we think would provide the best use cases.

I would say it really depends on the deal size. You want to reward them for their efforts but not overly reward them.

Also if these parties are that interested and your product is that good or has that much potential they will find about you quickly with or without the introduction / broker.

For my current project I have spoken with at least 50 people. based on the recorded feedback I have. I would estimate about half the people I talk to have something to say either positive, negative, or both. But we haven't done anything in depth or official for this consumer product.

For the B2B project I would estimate between 10-15 clients before we committed ourselves, and once we had that info we surveyed about 25 potential customers (10-15 of which were in the first casual group).

Focus on the good. Focus on what went well. Focus on what got done. Right before you end add a quick whats left and follow with a game plan to get it done.

On the flip side I do know that I currently use the pre-release version of our product and it has solved the problem we were aiming to solve for myself and our other team members. Hopefully this is an indication we are on the right track (fingers crossed).

I think it really depends on what you are planning to build.

For my last project (B2B) I spoke with lots of potential customers on a casual basis. Once we determined there was indeed market interest, we did more in depth surveying and evaluations to determine the most important features and what pain points the customers really were looking to solve.

For my current project which is consumer focused, I have had lots of casual conversations and I record the input from them into a quick document I use to track, suggestions, concerns, and both positive and negative feedback. The hard part is that without a live product (we are in development) talking about things like: Would you pay for this? If so how much?, Do you think this would help you?, are just hypothetical and we find it hard to really judge by answers if the idea is truly validated. Hopefully when we rollout the private beta of our MVP we can do more in depth usage analysis and collect more accurate feedback.

We usually name our stuff with the following very boring format:

[Server Role]-[#][d/t/p]

On the plus side its easy to maintain, easy to remember, and easy to explain to new hires.

I am going to try this out. Looks easy and just what I need to store my favorites.

I love cooking. I find it relaxing. It also has the added benefit of eating healthier.

Who makes the drive? Many of the manufacturers have diagnostic programs you can run to test if its motherboard or read head issues.

If its not making funny sounds (read head / platter damage) you may be able to swap the drive chip guts with another similar drive and get the data back yourself without sending it in. If its under warranty you can get a replacement from the manufacturer if not eBay might have one or some of the other asset recovery chop shops you can find parts for computers servers etc.

2-5 k is normal if the drive is so far gone they need to take it apart to get to the data.

CBL Data worked for me in the past but That was a few years ago. They will evaluate your drive for free and tell you what they can get off data wise and the cost. If you want to proceed they then do the work if not they send you drive back. They were suggested to me by a seagate support person at the time.

Have you tried to pull the data off with a recovery software using the drive as a slave.

Are you on OSX, windows, or Linux?

In that case, maybe try one of the online startup docs repositories. Maybe you can find something in one them that would work.

Since I do not know your skill level, location, and other variables its hard to say exactly. Thats why I suggested comparing to what you could earn if you were to take a full-time job in your area, at your experience level.

Also you said you have worked on fixed price projects before. If you know the scope of the work, and you can estimate what it will take you to get it done, you could charge 1.5x what you think it would take for you to do it fixed price then brake that down into an hourly rate. The extra .5 for changes, and miscalculations on both yours and clients side.

Hire a lawyer. If the dollar value is that good that it makes you want to do it right. Then its probably worth the cost to do it right and get good advice.

Pull the trigger. Use the money to build a development team that you trust. And trust them with building your first version (MVP). Iterate from there.