Micah Baldwin

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• Hi Micah, I'm demoing a working prototype to a potential client next week. Naturally, I'm interested in feedback regarding the features, the value proposition and how do I make them an early adopter. Can you please suggest some questions that I can ask the potential client. Thank you !

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    make all the questions negative. “If you were using this product and it went away, how disappointed would you be?” What are the three features you couldnt live without?“ Stuff like that.

    Good luck!!

• what would be an effective way to bring in clients for a personal training business?

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    no idea. find your market, build a strong message and then broadcast that message to your market.

• As a start-up in the very beginning stages, is it better to look for an investment or a loan. Also, is it better to ask for too much or too little?

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    loans are often better depending on the terms (convertible notes for example).

    Ask for enough. Its all about momentum. Get people to feel that they will miss out if they dont invest in your project.

• Thank you so much for your generosity. I'd like to ask something. Being a comic-book lover and a entrepreneur, what similarities do you see between creating a good title and a successful business? And why we do not see much successful long-run web and digital-only comics?

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    creating any good title always starts with the core of a great story. Businesses are no different.

    People get bored and life gets in the way, hence very full long-run digital comics. If they got paid well, it would be a different story…

• How do I get international VCs interested in a project in Nigeria?

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    I have no idea. I assume the same way you get any investor interested in a project. Make the project amazing and successful.

• How did you get the attention you got by launching Graphic.ly? Is launching a 'beta-invite-landing-page' enough to get things going, probably not... right?

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    We tried to “burst on the scene” with a mix of invite only, loud chest beating, and working our network of friends and contacts. Mostly, we tried very hard to work with a small group of dedicated users and get them to help build us to a big group.

• Hi Micah, 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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    95% :)

    I believe strongly that all successes are built on the back of failures. Those failures arent always gigantic. But, building and testing and failing and iterating, s the best way to get to success. (I think in terms of big failures, I have had 2.5 out of 7)

• Did you have a Co-Founder? if not what it difficult for you to start by yourself?

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    yes for one company, no for another. You want to have someone that you can talk to during the good and bad times. I think that so many people see the solo-entrepreneur as sexy, but forget that a startup is friggin hard, and that you need to have someone you can talk to and share the burden.

• I'd like to learn more about starting an e-commerce site. Where do you suggest I take a look?

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    do you have a product you want to sell, or just make an ecommerce store? There are tons of software out there to make it easy – Storify for example, some plugins to wordpress. Then study SEO/SEM/SMM, and Amazon, etc.

    Etsy does a great job too of letting you set up a store and play around with ecom.

• I'm a non-technical founder in need of a technical co-founder. How can I convince one of my developers to become a co-founder?

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    find out if they are interested first. Second, see if they love the idea/future. Third, a shit ton of equity.