paskster's comments

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