Strip everything back to the most basic way you could ever offer your thing/service at all. I wouldn’t even worry about the specifics of a concierge MVP or how to move to WoOz until you have a customer.

Start with a landing/sell page and, as long as you know you could supply what you’re offering wait and see what happens. If you’re swamped and unable to keep supplying all your customers… GREAT!

Offer them both as separate products/solutions.

Cross sell the other one/integrations as enhancements.

Focus on one or the other for short/medium term development.

No legal expertise but you need a lawyer to represent YOUR best interests, not those of the company.

Look at complete sales for similar size/revenue tech businesses.

Don’t forget to factor in your time spent building the business and what it would take for you to do so again.

LAWYER UP.

Get a second valuation from alternatives. Or come up with a way to generate a valuation using as many assumptions as you need to; ultimately that’s all your potential buyer has done.

Agree with others. Clearly you need to take ownership of the code and find a way to make that work.

Other agencies could take it on but there will be a big overhead/starting cost and they may feel they need to rewrite significant parts so don’t underestimate this. Many won’t take on code from others. It’s significantly more effort that you might imagine.

In my opinion:

1. Most important thing is to get a full, granular copy of all your (customers, usage, funnels etc) data. That’s the core of your business even if you had to rebuild.

2. Take the code but get a specialist & lawyer to help with the terms and details.

3. Brainstorm all the things you could need to ensure in the and agreement. Eg: you need a period of time where the outgoing supplier helps get things up and running; provides documentation & handovers; is sufficiently deleting any data/bespoke knowledge you’ve put in; etc.

4. Don’t accept your Option 2 as a blanket dissolving of obligations from Option 1/the original contracts etc. Speak to a lawyer with tech knowledge. Consider no-compete clauses, warranty periods etc.

I think there’s some nuance in there.

If it’s well targetted and can help solve a problem the recipient genuinely has (and has capability to use - ie budget and/or authority) then it’s not necessarily spam.

If I need something that does X and I get a cold outreach from something that does X then I’ll at least read it and probably click on a link.

No problem. And genuinely happy to help further if you need it.

I believe it should be abstracted but they must hold some form of a common ID (email etc) in order to facilitate the “enrichment”. Maybe it’s done in a public key/private key way. I don’t actually know.

In terms of getting access I think you’d need to become a partner/customer of something like Acxiom.

If you just want your personal data then you can get it (certainly in Europe or for companies based there) by doing a “subject access request” but I think you might have to originate those with organisation you’ve shared data with.

For the UK (and Europe?) look into “Data Controller” vs “Data Processor”. Third parties running services tend to be “processors” who have responsibilities, but it’s the data controller (normally the first party thing you’ve used directly and given your data to directly) who are ultimately responsible for ensuring it’s handled compliantly and getting you access. Eg: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/controllers-and-processors/controllers-and-processors/what-are-controllers-and-processors/

There are several big agencies that combine data for various purposes (generally advertising-related). It’s often called "data enrichment"https://www.acxiom.co.uk/customer-data/enrichment-data/

If you use the same email address to register with two companies that both share some data with the central agency then both learn a bit more about you. But that it pretty much always (in theory) abstracted data points based on the granular data each individual company keeps to themselves.

Most personal data tends to be 1st party data that you provide directly to a company voluntarily (eg if you have insurance then you give them your date of birth, weight, address, etc) and it’s tied to your account that you’ve chosen to set up with them. They will have a unique id for you in their database.

Most first party data points don’t leave the organisation you gave them to (google knows where you’ve been if you check in at a location in google maps (or allow it to track personal granular location automatically) and what YouTube videos you’ve watched. But they’re not selling that information.

What organisations tend to do is aggregate it and assign you to a number of groups. Country, age-band, education level, interests. Now, as we mostly know, those can get pretty damn specific, especially when combined, eg: people who live in zipcode A, have a college degree, have a driving license but not a passport, shop at B, order food from McDonalds, are vegetarian, own a dog, have a child under 1, and use websites C, D & E.

It might even get down to: this user graduated in 2002 from X, is vegetarian but gets Uber Eats from McDonalds store Y and has never ordered a non-beef product in the past 10 months. But it’s not going to include your individual order history.

THIS! Need more information about the number or records (eg rows) and data points (columns) and which you want to use and how. Is it ordering, filtering, searching, etc.

I’m a digital product manager and have worked with lots of non-technical TV people on games/apps/websites. I totally get where you’re coming from. Having an idea and what you want it to do is one thing; knowing what to ask for and all the “extra” bits that you wouldn’t ever think of is a completely different thing.

All the below may sound scary. You have to do it on your own - you can work with the developers/agency (if they’re good) to specify it together. But that may well not be possible if you’ve hired a developer to just implement what you ask for.

Really good developers and many agencies can help with this stuff but far too many don’t. They do exactly what you’ve asked for, not much else, and make a lot of assumptions. That’s not a criticism of them - that’s also often not their skillset, in the same way thinking about server or build processes isn’t yours!

So, I’d suggest you think of your app as 2 linked apps, or two parts of the same software:
- one is what users see and use, the user-interface “front-end”
- the other is “back office” admin tool whoever is running the app (you)
- and completely separate to that is the tools, software and various admin things that developers use to turn code into an actual website or mobile app (including the back office bit) that people can see.

1. Have you asked for an admin app? If devs are just mentioning “admin panel” it that could mean anything from the iTunes/Google app submission site, to a database admin tool or a code-processing tool that turns the code they write into the actual app file. You don’t want to get into the second two of those if you’re not experienced.

2. If you have asked for an admin app what have you asked for? You need to be specific about how easy you want it to be, how you access it etc. In theory a admin app could be a text file that you edit and the software sucks that in and changes accordingly. This could well work as a cheap “hack” for a logo change for example.

3. What have you asked for the admin app to do? You (or somebody) needs to be really specific.

Example - the developers may assume the logo is never going to change so they may “hard code” the logo in. This means only a developer can update it and it may need a whole new release of the app. But if you specify that you need to be able to swap the logo yourself via a non-technical back-end option then they can build that in. The same with text. If you give developers some copy that goes in the app they could just paste that text into the code. Or they could make the app look that text up from a content management system meaning you can update it.

Another example - if you want to be able to log in and send push notifications that you type in, you need to (a) specify that the app can send push notifications, (b) specify that you want to be able to type them in manually, or maybe you want to manage it from a 3rd party CRM system etc). If you haven’t specified it you won’t get what you want (if you get it at all).

All these extra things take additional development and testing so cost more so it’s important to think about which ones you really need to be easily updated yourself vs getting a developer in to do.

I realise that was a lot and you may not understand it all. Happy to answer more questions and clarify etc.

Start simple. If you’re co-located, literally post-its on a wall. You can do it digitally in Miro.

If you want something structured (probably worth it) I’d start with Trello for task tracking and visibility - use a really simple board set-up (Kanban or similar). And google docs/drive for documenting. Until you’ve started doing it you won’t know which bits of tools and processes are useful for you.

Things like Jira/Notion/Monday/Airtable etc are all great but can take a while to set up and get working.

Quick question - as a tech founder have you worked in agile dev teams? Or are you new to it all?

AB test it but I’d suggest that there should be a “Book a demo” CTA waaaaayyy higher up. If not in the nav.

Hey Suraj,

Congratulations on your first 5!

Given that you have over 1k free users there’s obviously an appeal to what you’re offering and the website. So I’d keep doing what you’re doing there (though I have some suggestions - see below).

It’s normally way easier to up-selling to, or retaining, existing users than acquiring completely new ones so I’d definitely focus on up-selling the paid service to existing users. I’d look at AB testing the CTAs and conversion points in your funnel; and in your emails.

Having just tried it out, one thing I’d say you’re definitely missing is that you see to let people use the free service without supplying any email etc. I’d look at adding in a step after the processing that requires an email address before they can access the result. That way you have a definite way to follow up and upsell.

In terms of some immediate, specific, thoughts browsing your website (in no particular order):

1. I’m rather surprised there’s not an example video on your homepage. Makes me wonder why. it would be especially great to see a couple of real users’ videos.

2. My first question was to wonder about the privacy, security and copyright on the uploaded and generated content. This doesn’t seem to be addressed in the privacy policy. I’d want some pretty convincing stuff about uploads not being kept, how long they’re held for, who can access them, etc. And clarification that you take no ownership of the resulting outputs. Or what credit you expect. And I’d summarise a bit of that in the FAQs as well as the proper details in the legal bits.

3. I’d get a copywriter to review all your copy and help write variants for AB testing. Much of it is great but there are bits that don’t read quite right and I don’t think you can have that given that your product is built on understanding language. Example: the “Contact Us” text in the footer: “We will revert you back within 24 hours” isn’t correct English. (FYI - I’m no copywriter but change it to “We will get back to you back within 24 hours.”). There are also errors in the Terms page which would make me worry.

4. Again, given the focus of your product I think you need to ensure every single bit of text on your site is entirely optimised for easy reading. A few bits are not (eg the text that summarises SubtitleO on the left in the footer).

5. It’s definitely worth thinking about adding a $5 or a pay-per-use tier to see if that makes any difference.

Lots of opinions, which I know you did ask for! But here’s my objective, fact-based take given what you’ve written:

1. You’re not talking about “starting”; it already exists and has a good number of users. That’s more than most start-ups.

2. Given it already exists and has users, how much time and effort would it take to keep it running or expand. Is that something that you can outsource or find a partner to focus on it?

3. You have a head start on learning with something that already exists and has users. That will (in the short term) outstrip starting something new in months time.

4. What’s the worst that can happen? If you come up with a better idea or something bigger at college then switch. See if anyone wants to take on what you’ve built or just let it die.

5. Don’t forget to have fun at college. It’s not all about Zuck-ing your entire future.

Good to ask the question but, as others have said:

1. You can do both, they serve different user states

2. You’ve got some customers who didn’t use what you had before but did sign up in the end - ASK THEM! Give them a discounted month or whatever for participating in a user journey mapping session with what you had and what you might try as an alternative.

3. Definitely A/B test or, if you have both versions, track conversion and follow up to get qual data on the WHY.

4. While I’m speculating, the causes of giving up may well be the following rather than to do with the copy/button/option: needing more info (ie the demo) or the user not being authorised to make that spending decision.

I agree with some of what u/AnonJian said - as soon as you put it out there somebody could copy it (unless it’s something so specific that you start a patent process which is slow and expensive). You need what you’re working on to be able to stand against competitors and being the first isn’t normally enough medium/long term.
BUT - What I’d say is that you can maybe research the problem your idea solves. Unless there’s a real world problem that enough people have and are willing to pay you enough to cover your costs then it’s irrelevant how good or unique an idea it is.
So: focus in on the problem you think you’re solving. If it’s a real problem that many people have there will be places those people are talking about it or sharing existing ways of working around the problem. That could be conferences, online forums, youtube videos, newspaper articles, Q&As etc. If people really want the problem solved better and are really likely to pay for that solution then they’ll probably be happy to explain the details of their version/experience of it and why it’s an issue.