Daniel Burka

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• Effective web design and social marketing is now more important than ever to business, yet it is quickly becoming a commodity. After 17 years as a web designer, I'm to the point that web design is a dying business model. We are in the "do it yourself" age. Many small business owners would rather take a stab at online marketing than pay a professional to design an online strategy. How can I leverage my 17 years of experience in design and marketing into a workable business model?

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    It’s really hard to give advice without knowing you better. But, my two-cents advice would be to move up in the market if you can. There’s a ton of squabbling over just a little bit of money near the bottom end of the market. In the higher priced end of the market (in my experience) people are looking for problem-solving and are happy to pay to see their problems taken care of. Especially in design and marketing.

• What is the best way to test usability of my mobile app before launching it?

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    Get it in front of a bunch of people and watch them use it. You don’t need a fancy usability lab. You’ll learn a ton by handing a phone to someone and (with as little guidance from you as possible… really try to keep your mouth shut) watch them try to interact with your app. I bet you’ll learn a ton with even 5-6 people.

• #informalquestion How do you deal with start-up competition jumping on your own innovating ideas? How do you use it to grow stronger from it?

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    I can’t say it any better than this classic 37signals post: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Have_an_Enemy.php

• What is Milk? See a couple founders on Twitter, but don't know what it is.

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    Milk is a small team (seven of us) who are building several of our own startup ideas. Our first project is Oink (oink.com) and we’ll be iterating on that and building other startup projects.

• I have a social network project for music and radio aimed at helping musicians to make their work a success in a market of 100 million daily users. I want to see how I can help you start. I have a team interested in the project. but I need an angel.

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    I can’t tell what your question is here? It’s all a statement.

• Hi Daniel, they say every successful app/site is built on failures. In your history as an entrepreneur how many of your websites/apps that you launched (with the idea of being monetize) didn't work out?...A simple % will do... I would like to compare against myself and hopefully find some correlations for motivational purposes ;) thanks

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    It’s hard to give a percentage and there’s failure and there’s failure. Is that sufficiently Clintonian for you? :)

    Inside an individual project there are things that worked, things that were great successes, and things that could only be described as failures. If you look at something like Pownce – a startup that Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, and I started – it was a real mixed bag. We developed a pretty great community, had hundred of thousands of users, and managed to have a satisfactory exit after some struggles (suffice to say, it was complicated). We achieved some great things, it wasn’t an abject failure, but it wasn’t a rocket success story either.

    Sorry I can’t give you a more succinct/helpful answer.

• I am self-learning web design yet to polish up on my skill set and I have started to receive referrals for jobs. I have not yet done a full blown project on my own. What is the best way to approach this?

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    I’d encourage you to keep practicing your craft, with or without paid work. Try doing something like a 37better project as a way to hone your skills: http://37signals.com/better

• I am a product designer and am considering to offer my design services for free product development in exchange for royalties. I am looking for feedback to this approach; pitfalls, hurdles, contractual obstacles, etc.

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    This is obviously a risky venture with plenty of potential pitfalls. But, you seem to understand them. Hire a lawyer to work with you on contracts, since they’re extremely important in this type of work.

    Silverorange (a web agency I work with in Canada) does some work like this with e-commerce companies, where they take a percentage of online sales. They’ve worked out a contract for this type of thing that’s worked so far. Just don’t skimp. The weird thing with this kind of work is that it’s often more likely to be contested when the project is more successful! When people realize the size of a check they need to write sometimes they get squeamish (and litigious).

    Also, silverorange does considerable research into a company before getting involved. Obviously, that mitigates some of the risk. But, that can be a lot harder for a newer company (many of the businesses they work with are 40+ years old).

    Good luck with it. And make sure you can still pay the rent.

• Do you have any tips on how to raise your profile as a designer in the startup world?

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    Do lots of great work. And, I mean lots. I was designing for 7 years before coming to SF and then did a lot of work here on Digg and Pownce before I started getting opportunities to speak at conferences etc.

• Is it unreasonable to find a back end developer that can also do front-end design?

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    It’s not impossible, surely, but it’s an unusual combination of skills. You’re more likely to find a combination front-end dev who can design (and even these are gems that should be cherished).