paskster

Thanks. But we do not need to raise any money. As I said, we make single digit millions (in Euro) per year in profit.

Do you have any other ideas? Or did I misunderstood you?

It seems that folks at HN look down on so called "CRUD" apps. But the truth for most CRUD apps is, that a lot of thought went into building these apps and they have a lot of important parts, whose construction cannot easily be automized. Good examples are:

- Certain inputs might trigger other actions (integrity checks, sending an email, notifying another users, etc.)

- The UI / UX needs to be optimized for the specific Usecase of the app

- There are unlimited options for filtering or ordering items, and the choice of options depends on the specific Usecase

- A lot of apps need Cronjobs in the background to support certain workflows (notifying a user if a certain input has not been done in a certain time)

- There can be rather complex rules on who is allowed to create, update, delete or view certain items

- AB tests and Analytics need to be supported for a lot of Tasks / Views

- etc...

I cannot imagine a "CRUD" framework, that supports all of these issues. It would basically just be another programming language ;)

Interesting that the chatbots learned to show "fake" interest in an item, just to conceide it later in the negotiation process.

But I think what is missing, is the time component when negotiating with humans. A negotiation process is usually better for humans if the negotiation is quick and not dragging on too long.

And more importantly the chatbots never seemed to "walk away" from a deal. But in real life, you sometimes have to walk away to show the other party, that you are not a pushover. It would be interesting to enhance the model so that chatbots negotiate repeatedly with each other and "remember" how the other party behaves and how far you can push the other party to concede. Because some negotiations really are zero sum games.

I like this quote so much and I love that it stands out:

“You all can defeat Trump next time, but not if you keep mocking us, refusing to listen to us, and cutting us out. It’s Republicans, not Democrats, who will take Trump down.”

I believe we have a similar problem in Germany. Several political decisions where called "alternativlos" (having not alternative option) and everybody opposing them was basically labeled a racist or bad person. For example the bailout of greece or the opening of the borders for all syrian refugees.

I am not arguing for or against one side, but I do believe that there were not fair discussions about the pros and cons of these topics. And this is a big reason why the "alt-right" (or whatever) is on the rise in Europe as well.

So give people room to discuss all of these topics, hear their voices and truly try to understand why they have a different opinion. This way we won't have another Trump and we won't have far-right elections anymore.

It's funny, just two weeks ago we bought a simple mircrowave with just two knobs for our office:

https://www.amazon.de/Severin-MW-7874-Mikrowelle-kombinierba...

I explicitely chose that mircrowave because it only had two knobs and I just get confused with too many buttons. I always thought I am weired for not wanting all these special features.

I Like your idea a lot especially your last paragraph.

I don't think providing these information alone is a viable business model. But it could be used as a "lead generater" to support another business model. Basically it would be Content Marketing strategy.

I am looking for a "Daily Operations Management Software". Let me explain.

Problem I am facing:

We have a lot tasks that need to be done on a daily, biweekly, monthly or whatever Basis. For example: checking new profile images, curating user data, checking error messages, etc.

My current solution

I setup cronjobs manually that send reminder emails to certain employees in my company, that remind them to do this Task. I also have an Excel sheet with a list of all these tasks all. In an irregular basis I control if these tasks are done properly.

Proposed Software solution

I can create a task with a description and assign it to a user / email. I can also assign how often this task needs to be done and wich superviser should be informed, if the task got forgotten and how often the supervisor should control the results. The assigned user gets reminded about this task and has to check whether or not he completed it or whether something went wrong.

Yes! I think trying to make revenue as early as possible and making side gigs if necessary, is a valid way to bootstrap. But this is just my opinion and this topic should require its own thread, if you want to go into details.

Don't feel defeated. Embrace the fact that you can make it on your own ;)

It makes a lot of sense for people with Social Proof.

Then work on that.

I disagree. If you don't already have Social Proof, then it takes a big investment to try getting it. I believe for 99% of all startup teams, the time is better spent by working on your product or acquiring customers.

Networking is not working. I have seen so many startups in Berlin, who had a good shot of making it, but who wasted time in "fundraising" or "networking" and therefore killed their business.

Now obviously to each his own and for some it might work. But I believe only very few people on very few occasions get something out of networking.

EDIT: added a paragraph

see my reply here, I hope it answers your question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13634338

If you have Social Proof, you know you have it. If you are not sure, then you don't have it.

Social Proof could mean: - You are a Serial Entrepreneur - A famous Business Angel invested in your company - You graduated from a University with a great Alumni Network - etc.

Basically if a potential investor evaluates your Market, Traction or Business Model, then you already lost. If a potential investor invests, because he thinks other investors want to invest, then this is Social Proof.

For example you are talking one hour with a potential investor:

If you talk 90 % of the time about who else is investing and about how to structure the investment round, then you have Social Proof. If you instead talk 90 % of the time about how big the market is, what your revenue model will be any why your churn rate only decreased 2 % in the last month, then you don't have Social Proof.

Also if the potential investors talks about making the investment bigger to increase your run rate and increase your leverage for a Series B, you have Social Proof. If instead the potential investors is asking you if you can decrease your burn rate or recommends you to raise a smaller amount, then you don't have Social Proof.

EDIT: Added one paragraph

There are a lot of Investors in Berlin. But without Social Proof, it would probably be a waste of time trying to approach them.

If you make about 100k revenue (or if you have otherwise significant traction), you can not only approach investors in Berlin but also ouside, which kind of solves the "Social Proof" problem.

If you are barely selfsustaining, then please stay bootstrapped and grow your business. Otherwise the process of fundraising in Berlin will most likely kill your business.

EDIT: added one paragraph

Please don't waste your time pitching to investors in this position in Berlin. If you make X < 100.000 EUR monthly revenue, then any "investor" in Berlin will probably tell you:

"Very interesting. Let's keep in touch and come back when you make 5 * X EUR revenue."

And if make X >= 100.000 EUR revenue per month, then you most likely don't need 50-75K.

One thing in Berlin ist crucial: Social Proof. If you have it, you can raise 5 Mio EUR with basically zero traction and if you don't have it, it will be a long and timeconsuming process to raise any money at a fair valuation.

Are you willing to spend 6 - 9 months to raise 50 K and do you have significant monthly revenue? If so, your approach to meeting random investors should work. Otherwise you might want to apply for an accelerator in Berlin (for 25 K) or just focus in bootstrapping until you can approach international VCs outside Berlin.

EDIT: Spelling

We tried raising money for 5 months last year and we talked to partners from about 20 European VC, but we were not successful. We got no or low-balling offers at best. I guess we were missing what people call "social proof".

This was our pitch deck by the way (not meant for marketing but for context): http://www.instaff.jobs/download/InStaff_Pitch_Deck.pdf

We don't need money, because we have been cashflow positive and growing for a while. And since fundraising was hyper time consuming we will not get back to fundraising again.

But I don't want to "rage" against the VC scene here. To each his own and I wish everybody who raises money successfully to grow his business all the best.

Thanks ;)

We charge a markup (between 21 % to 43 %) on top of the employees wage.

Example: You book a promoter for 3 days. The promoters works 7 hours per day and earns 10 EUR per hour. Then his total gross wage is 210 EUR and our markup is 90,30 EUR (43 %) on top. So you as customer pay a total of 300,30 EUR to us.

We compete with traditional employment agencies who usually charge a markup of 50% to 200%.

There is a lot of content on the internet about proper call-to-action buttons (short: CTA). But I will try to give you my experience:

1.) The first CTA should be above-the-fold, visible to users right away without scrolling.

2.) If it is a longer page, the the page should contain multiple CTAs, so the user does not need to "scroll back" up.

3.) The CTAs should be visible and standing out from the rest of the content

The label of the CTA is very important. We use "Unverbindliche Buchungsanfrage" which can be roughly translated to "Non-binding booking request". We try to convey, that clicking on the button is risk-free and free-of-charge.

The first CTA on the page gets the most clicks, since a lot of customers do not scroll down.

We don't do cooperation with other companies, since we want to be focused 100 % on our business model. But I wish you all the best with your platform and I can recommend you to also create highly targeted landingpages. For example (just out of the blue) you could have a page on the url:

http://tryoldster.com/new-york/experienced-marketing-consult...

And on this landingpage you show some of our "oldsters" who are based in New Work and who have marketing experience. And in addition you show your platforms USP on this page and create Call-to-action button on how to get in contact with an "oldster". You obviously have to check yourself what kind of businesses are in your target group, what keywords they would search and what kind of landingpage could attract them.

edit: same content, but reworded my english

We are mainly targeting short term jobs for exhibition, events and promotion right now. 80 % of the time, customers book young females for these jobs. So your are right, that we show "young attractive women" on a lot of landing pages, but this is more a result of our business model. The comparison to GoDaddy is not fair, since it has no relation to their business model, that they show young females.

And we make sure that our jobbers not only upload high quality pictures but also write their personal experience in a targeted and concise format. For example we now started other verticals such as temporary chefs and on these pages you see mostly middle aged men with cooking experience:

https://www.instaff.jobs/koeche-mieten/frankfurt

edit: same content but better english

We are creating an online marketplace for short term work in Germany (https://www.instaff.jobs). Businesses can publish their jobs on our platform, jobbers apply with their profile and then these businesses can book the jobbers online. We take care of quality management and employment overhead (working contracting, payroll accounting, etc.).

We made close to 3 Mill. EUR revenue in 2016. We acquire 90 % of our customers via SEO and about 10 % via Google Adwords. We don't do any direct sales.

Our #1 growth strategy was creating well designed and highly targeted landingpages for all relevant keywords. For example if potential customers search for certain type of jobbers in certain German cities, these are some of our landingpages:

https://en.instaff.jobs/fair-hostesses-agency/frankfurt

https://en.instaff.jobs/fair-hostesses-agency/berlin

https://www.instaff.jobs/promotion-agentur/stuttgart

https://www.instaff.jobs/catering-personal-agentur/hamburg

Europe is not a single market at all. Simple thinks like making sure your invoice is paid from a customer who is based in another european country is practically impossible.

I know because I am the CEO of a staffing company in Germany: national as well as international businesses book exhibition staff and other temporary employees for events in Germany and Austria through our platform.

If one of our german customers does not pay, we can easily use the german legal system to ensure that we get our money. If we have to sue, our legal system makes sure that we are reimbursed if we win in court. But if for example an Italian business is using our service and they don't pay our invoice, we have no way to get our money. We technically could appeal to a court in Italy, get a lawyer in Italy, translate all documents to Italian and sue in Italy. But this would cost at least 20.000 EUR in total which are not reimbursed even if we win in court.

That is why businesses who are not based in Germany have to pay upfront. I cannot call the EU a single market, if my business has to treat a customer from EU the same like any other customer around the world.

So, maybe the UK will have some disadvantages if they are not part of the EU anymore. But they are not leaving a "single market" because the EU never was a single market. I guess they will be just fine without the EU.

1) If you expect a certain refund quota, lets say 20 % within 6 months, then you should already account for it: only account 80 % of the actual revenue and adjust this number after 6 months when you now the actual refund quota. This makes it more complicated but it would be the right thing to do and will help you get a somewhat decent financial plan.

2.) If your growth curve flattens out than this approach obviously does not really give you a good representation of how well you are currently doing.

1.) Refund: Yes, I would adjust the revenue in the month it was recognized.

2.) Monthly growth: It is actually really simple, you just caculate:

(16/1)to the power of (1/6) which equals: 1.58 This means the average growth rate was 58 %.

16/1 is the total growth rate for all 6 months. And to the power of (1/6) because it is calculated among 6 months

I really like the fact that this post first distinguishes "#1 Bookings vs. Revenue".

I hear it almost everyday among startups, where they talk about bookings, revenue and incoming payments interchangeably. And sometimes even in the same sentence such as "We made 100 k in the whole last year [meaning revenue], we currently make about 50 k per month [meaning bookings] and just last week we made another 30 k [meaning incoming payment]."

This makes it way to hard to properly communicate with founders. So great stuff this post.

I am very pro Euro. But I don't like the fact that a single country in Europe feels that 18 other countries have to pay their debt.

These bailouts in the past were signed from the greece government in the best interest of its people. A lot of people make it seem that we (non-greece european) somewhat forced theses agreements onto greece. In fact these bailouts where were unpopular in Germany, because it cost us a lot of our money, we could have spent on infrastructure, education, etc.

Therefore I would love Greece to give up the Euro currency and leave the European Union, so that these other 18 countries don't feel any obligation anymore to transfer more money to greece.

I believe that Europe will be stronger that way. Because a vision of a truly united European Union can only be reached if all countries play by the same rules and abide to their agreements.

I am astouned by all the comments, who say that "Greeks were getting a shitty deal" or that the bailout terms were somewhat "unfair".

Facts are: Greece had a spending deficit for several decades now. This spending deficit accumulated to such a big dept, that no investors were willing to lend greece any more money. 18 european countries transferred billions of euros in the last couple of years to greece, to help the country and the people. In return they had an agreement that greece would cut their spending. Greece never lived up to the agreements it made. In the last weeks 18 european countries offered greece another bailout, where greece would receive several bilions again. In return they asked greece to finally cut spendings.

Now greece voted against this bailout. There are a lot of people in europe (myself included, I am from Germany by the way) who are not willing to transfer further billions of euroes to greece, just so that a socialist party can fullfil its "promises" and increase their deficit.

I love the first reason "Because I can’t afford to allocate the time needed". Soooo true. You have really high upfront cost if you start fundraising and it might be that you end up with no real good offer at the end.

We already have a very solid business model, so licensing / royalties is not something we are looking for. And we would love to internationalize next year. There are a couple of competitors in this space in other countries, for example http://staff-finder.jobs/ and https://goworkabit.com/ If you like this business model, feel free to copy it ;) In what country are you based? I am more than glad to help you, except for giving you our code base of course.