balajiviswanath

Interesting concept. Where did you source the data from? Are they from public records or Wikipedia?

Very cool design and concept. I loved how you used Bootstrap for this.

Bait and switch model is a pretty old concept (promo offers, free trials, etc in consumer goods).

I'm an active Quora user and I feel irritated by the whole flood of reviews that is polluting my feed. There is also a huge internal rage against the feature. It is like turning university classrooms into a bar.

That's a good feedback, rmason. It is a niche model that could be added to the article.

If you are a solo entrepreneur who is running a website part-time and furthering your personal brand, then advertising is not a bad idea. However, it is different if you are working full-time along with a team and building something bigger.

Thanks chewxy. The only issue is that advertising is getting increasingly sophisticated and contextual. The big boys (Facebook and Google) have way too much data and crowd out the smaller startups. So, startups should start thinking beyond advertising as a main source of revenue.

As the 4 columns show, productivity & hours worked go diametrically opposite (negatively correlated). All the countries in the most working list are also in the least productive list. So, it still doesn't change the German assertion that Greeks are not doing enough.

Second, the article itself accepts - " because the two labour markets are structured differently, it is actually hard to compare like with like."

That means the headline is pointless as it is contradicted by the sentence above.

Thanks Alpha. That is great info. However, I tried all these tools and none of them are quite good. Blackboard has very few startups (most in their list are publicly traded cos) LinkSV is very hard to navigate. Also, these companies are focused on SV startups alone. I wish they had more data of non-US startups too.

Out of curiosity, what do those 3 founders really do? If they don't develop products or sell the products or get the funding they have no business to be sitting as founders. Many non-technical founders have the weird notion that ideas matter a lot. However, unless you develop & sell them - the ideas are worth zero. So, their contribution is effectively 0.

If you get a competitive pay, try to hang on more and see if you can turn around the company. Tell the founders about your concerns and see if they will let you get added as a co-founder (so that you benefit when the company finally turns around).

However, if you get a lot lower pay than what you get in a bigco, you need to talk frank with your founders. More than the revenue and lack of funding, it is the Zero active users that concerns me. Momentum is the key in a startup and you guys seem to have lost it. When you are in a hole, stop digging.

There are three essential things that are important in running a startup: Focus, Focus and Focus. ;-)

At a startup, the entrepreneurs could do build a million different things and I found it sometimes hard to curtail both my ideas and those of the other founders. For instance, in one of the months we toyed with 20 different technologies as each day some developer would come and say "why not we use platform Y & API from X to do Z?" then everybody would just start chasing all the APIs and build a simple prototype (that will get forgotten after the next day's idea). That is an extreme case, but you get the point.

Once you have focus and determination, the rest usually falls into place.

At this stage of your career, you should think more about the experience added by the job than at the numerical salary number. If you work with the right people with right ideas, that $30K (minus taxes) can be compensated in no time.

As another Microsoftie who quit Redmond for startup world at the same stage, I would advice you to consider the following:

1. Is the work they do at the startup quite exciting and promising?

2. Are the founders great people to work with?

3. Do the founders and the investors have a lot of connections?

4. Is there some press coverage around the startup?

5. Do love working at a startup? Do you plan to start one in the future?

6. What is the scope for learning at the startup vs. learning at MSFT?

I found that after a couple of years, there were less things to learn at MSFT and was entering a plateau. In the long run the marginal money matters less than an opportunity to showcase your full potentials and get the right contacts. YMMV.

There are freelance product managers (check out oDesk and Elance), but it will take a lot of effort in getting the quality guy as there is a low signal-to-noise ration. Also, it must be understood that product managers need to be a core part of the team and freelancer might not fit into that.

If the skills demanded are fairly common (Wordpress development or basic level php knowledge) then it is not hard to get quality guys at low prices. I have myself done a few product management tasks in these sites for about $25-30/hr - mostly running marketing campaigns, taking care of product launches and building websites.

In summary, I would say you can get a decent product manager freelancer for $30-40/hr if you are not building a complex product and not require a lot of learning curve to understand the product.

As a programmer, I love the fact that the demand is outpacing supply. But, I also have this weird feeling that we are back in 1999. Back then, even crappy programmers commanded 6 figure salaries. Hopefully, I'm wrong.

If an ordinary Joe had tried to open your unlocked mailbox to read the mails he would be arrested. But if a $150b corporation does this, it would be wrapped in wrist. Only Google can get away so easily from this. Imagine if Microsoft had done this.

I typically use PHP and many of my sites are built on Wordpress. I have previously done Web programming before realizing that it can get pretty expensive in terms of maintenance. With quality, premium plugins and themes, you can get a quality site out in about 6 hours and charge $300. I tweak the CSS and PHP of the existing themes to get close to the customer needs and have built a KB and a process internally to reduce the full site development 6 hours what it used to take 25 hours or more.

That is working good so far. It is also easy to maintain, I have WP_MU setup and can update a large number of sites in parallel.

Not necessarily. I had a few bad experiences with vWorker, freelancer and other market places. oDesk is slightly better than the lot. In oDesk the initial 30 days was working on low priced contracts and couple of times with clients who didn't pay. It was a little painful learning.

But, then I got a little better at identifying the right set of clients and now the I set rate at $33/hr and most of it in hourly contracts that are guaranteed payment. I also take fixed price contracts from clients with whom I have existing relationship. Many guys I know are charging $60/hr and having a good practice.

The thing in the initial phase you come across a lot of noise and as you find out the 1-2 good clients from the 10 shabby ones, you get repeat business from them.

The difference between freelance marketplaces and direct sales is that in the former the clients have a real need, while in the latter the we have to convince the potential leads of the need to have a good website with proper attention to typography, speed and ux.

To prove their valuation and get a stronger hander at the negotiation table. Many companies raise money not for capital investments, but for:

a) create news and get free PR (press loves such eye-popping numbers)

b) get higher valuation numbers that will motivate the employees more (they have the stock options after all)

c) get more powerful/influential shareholders who will help clear the hurdles in the company's way

This is not exactly how capitalism is supposed to work - capital has to be used judiciously to build future growth.

I run a small web development business to help fund my startup goals. One tip is to try to tapping the freelancing marketplaces such as oDesk. I have started on oDesk about 2 months ago and now I'm getting enough work to even turn a few potential clients away.

Service business can be grueling and your projects can quickly turn into nightmares if not planned well. The small businesses who want the websites from us can be very vague in what they want, and might not appreciate some of the great stuff that we do (like getting the Pagespeed score above 90) while appreciating lame stuff like those landing page flash intros.

In the initial phase (first 3 months) take more well defined tasks that can have less margins, but can help you appreciate the hardships in the business. As you mature, you can take up more complex projects that can give pretty fat margins.

We are given 2 ears and 2 eyes to read and listen, but given only one mouth to express ourselves. So, nature herself optimized us for consumption ;-). Also, when we use the term reading it is usually meant for longer content. But, most of what people do with smartphones could at best be called juggling or glancing.

We don't stop creating because we are consuming more. It is other way round. We are consuming more because we are afraid of creating.

My definition: A startup is a 1-5 year old company that has a potential to grow up its enterprise value by 50X within the next 5 years and has a business that can scale up quite easily.

This would filter out all the usual suspects Facebook, Twitter, 37 signals, while keeping Path, Instagram and all the YC funded companies. It would also cut out the new neighborhood bookstore, most service businesses and that sweet home business. Also it would cut out companies that have already reached $1-2bn in valuation (as they cannot realistically grow to become $100bn companies in 5 years).

1. Use launchrock to create a splash page with info of what your product does and a signup form. 2. Create your blog and write about your product & field. Follow SEO best practices and put a sign up link in your blog. 3. Run a Google adwords campaign with a small budget. 4. Go to startup events and network with people who might be interested and point them to your launch page.

That's an interesting tip. Will update the post.

Trademarks are the way to protect your brand name. Here is the link to get you started in the US - http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp

Are there other tips in launch marketing that could be added?

Thanks for your feedback. We are launching our complete website soon and it will have detailed info of who we are and what we offer.

Our offering applies for both Saas and non-Saas startups.

For SaaS startups our offerings like creating an effective landing page that is connected to mailchip for double opt-in, managing inhouse development with project management, keeping track of marketing & sales with CRM tools will be useful.

And then once the product is done launching the startup with affordable PR tools, improving their site's search rankings, tracking with right analytics tools can also be done.

Sorry for the delayed response.

Outsourcing is not an all or nothing deal. The startup could outsource server setup to us, do their product and as they get time slowly take charge.

A lot of startups have very limited time to get their idea executed and make it a real success. One of the founders might quit, the team might run out of funding or a big competitor might make your product offering unnecessary. This makes the first few months really critical.

Setting up your server with the right web server, installing wordpress & configuring other tools, keeping the packages updated take a lot of time and those few extra weeks can be the difference. What we do is help the startup get going and your team could take control of the stuff over the course of time as you get comfortable with the components.

For SaaS startups our offerings like creating an effective landing page that is connected to mailchip for double opt-in, managing inhouse development with project management, keeping track of marketing & sales with CRM tools will be useful.

And then once the product is done launching the startup with affordable PR tools, improving their site's search rankings, tracking with right analytics tools can also be done.

clickable: http://www.eeegl.com