I could be wrong, but I read into this that you’re not 100% certain that there were 4 in the box.

If I was 100% certain, I’d tell the customer they need to re-count. If I wasn’t 100% certain I’d take it as a lesson well learned for the future and just refund and be done with it.

Jesus, what are you expecting? If I was the VC or other founders I’d look at this and quickly exit you out of the back door.

Website and hosting costs to start can be virtually zero, or start from £20 a year or something. So that has to be your priority.

Get SEO started ASAP, also free, email everybody you can, also free, phone people, also free. Cultivate a list of social media followers, also free.

You can tease a launch and build a brand months or even years before you make your first sale If necessary. Just start all the above and give it some welly.

In business, speed is everything. After 2 months you should have a company, a website, a bank account, and probably customers and products and a bank balance!

Ditch this lot and go alone. Or just forget the whole shebang. By the sound of it they won’t even notice for 6 months anyway.

Business isn’t a game.

It might stop someone being unconscious due to hypoglycemia.

Solving the problem of being in a coma is pretty useful.

We’ve all been there. It’s gutting beyond explain when you check a site/checkout and find it’s borked.

Loads of good advice here. Remember CUSTOMERS AND DEMAND DON’T JUST EVAPORATE INTO THIN AIR.

They’re still there. Go fetch.

I think this is one of those business ideas that’s fallen into the “ooh, we can do everything” elephant trap. What seems like a great opportunity is really too nebulous to pin down and market.

Your demand targets are spread thinly between people who don’t even know they have agoraphobia, and just don’t go out because they don’t like it, and others that are sufferers who completely do get it and might occasionally treat themselves to a delivery as a treat.

On the supply side, a home delivery service is equal whether the customer has agoraphobia, is too fat to fit through their front door, if they’re quadriplegic and wheelchair bound, or for people with no transport. So you’re going to struggle to market this to them.

An added problem is it’s not a condition anyone wants! An agoraphobe doesn’t want to be part of a group that makes it easier to be agoraphobic. They either need CBT or a home supermarket delivery. Both of which are solid existing competition.

It’s a bit like the business of selling alcohol to alcoholics, or gambling to gambling addicts. Businesss do it all day long, for a living, but not one distillery or bookmaker will ever list it in their mission statement.

I just love business and you need a sale. I’ll try again over the next few days.

It was credit/debit card rather than Paypal. I think the site message was “Payment gateway unavailable” or words to that effect.

Having learned the hard way I make sure we put a real live order ( you can void the payment afterwards ) on all our sites after every single code or site change. However trivial.

Always do a real order with a real card and not a sandbox test. There is nothing worse than getting to 4pm and realising you’ve not had a single order all day when there should have been a stack of packages to go by then. That hurts.

It can be the tiniest thing that puts people off.

I haven’t looked at the site ( yet) but when I click the link, will I know, inside 3 seconds:

Who you are What you sell And how you are going to make me happy?

We’ll see…

We could work remotely, but it’s not going to happen.

People and businesses work best together. We have fun, we bounce ideas around, we motivate each other.

We have a big building that is 30% office and 70% recreation, kitchen etc. We move desks close together and everything is open plan and noisy and brilliant.

We never have meetings, everyone knows everything and everyone knows who is doing what. We all see the whole business and understand it.

Yeh, we could work remotely.

But it’d be really shit and you’re going to have to kill me first.

We could work remotely, but it’s not going to happen.

People and businesses work best together. We have fun, we bounce ideas around, we motivate each other.

We have a big building that is 30% office and 70% recreation, kitchen etc. We move desks close together and everything is open plan and noisy and brilliant.

We never have meetings, everyone knows everything and everyone knows who is doing what. We all see the whole business and understand it.

Yeh, we could work remotely.

But it’d be really shit and you’re going to have to kill me first.

I can only suggest possibly saying what your products are, and where in the world they are.

Such things might possibly help. There’s products, and there’s products.

Aah, go for it. You’re not scared of the competition, you’re just scared of the leap.

Just know before you leap where you are positioning yourself. You’ll discover when you do that basic marketing job you have fewer competitors than you actually thought.

It could even be that your market gap has little competition at all.

Just know where you are going to fit and don’t go picking fights you ain’t going to win.

Good luck.

Launch it, do it. Do it. Do it. Do it!

All businesses need content… I think you can stab a pen in the yellow pages and it’ll land on a business that needs blog posts, creative content, marketing materials, Wikipedia pages, product and staff profiles etc.

If I was at a loose end thats what I’d do. Really easy to make a difference and quick to fire off with a bit of practice.

Passive income is for the old gits to keep some cash coming in while they vegitate.

At 25 you have strength, energy and stamina.

Now is the time to pull your socks up and graft.