Curious to see how many company founders in here have a system that collects data from every relevant software tool for their business and compiles it into an executive dashboard.

After working these past years with several angels and VCs, I am starting to see a stricter requirement for executives to track weekly growth and know their numbers COLD at any given day.

Upvote if you use an executive dashboard for your company and maybe share your experience?

As I tried Anything on My tool I changed the landing page Offering So many features in a cheap price but still, my tool is not working Now I am looking to run a cold email campaign For My Tool I am new at cold emails How can i run campaigns Will they benefit me https://localy.ai/

Hello everyone,

My new Christmas project is an MBTI-style personality test to assess your cat's personality (16cats.com).

I already launched a B2B business 2 years ago (a marketplace) but the acquisition was more local and focused on finding sellers (B2B). Here, it's more international and more immediate acquisition.

See these personality tests/quizzes that often emerge and literally go round the world? I'm thinking that there must be some best practices to kick-start the word-of-mouth machine. Any ideas?

So far, one person in France has shared the test on Twitter, which has caused a small spread on the network, and there have been 5000 tests in 2 days. Thats not bad but I'm looking for the right levers to reproduce this pattern on a daily basis. The idea is to monetize with advertising and a dedicated store, so if you have any ideas on this I'd love to hear from you too.
Thanks a lot!
Vincent

I wanted to share some thoughts on using SWOT analysis as a part of your strategic planning toolkit. This is such an undervalued process, tbh, especially now that we're nearing 2024. Time to get your strategies aligned, folks.

1. Understand what makes your business unique.
2. Don't shy away from acknowledging what needs improvement.
3. Stay alert and ready to embrace new possibilities.
4. Always keep an eye on the competition and be ready to face challenges.

SWOT has distinct advantages:

Big Picture: It helps you see your business from all angles, uncovering lesser-known areas of strength or issues needing attention.

Better Decisions: SWOT is a roadmap for decision-making, emphasizing where to invest effort and resources.

Teamwork: Going through a SWOT analysis as a team can foster collaboration and unite everyone in achieving a common goal.

Once done with the analysis, make sure to form strategies that build on strengths, address weaknesses, leverage opportunities, and minimize threats.

Remember: SWOT isn't a one-off process. As your business grows and changes, you'll need to reevaluate and adapt your plans accordingly.

Have you used SWOT in strategic planning? Would love to hear your experiences!

Hey people - I just finished raising a pre-seed round of just under £1m for my startup and it was hard as hell.

I got together with a couple friends who have raised before / are currently raising, along with some that worked in the Private Equity industry for a while to create a community centred around raising capital, giving pitch deck feedback and getting VC & angel investor contacts.

It's hosted in discord, totally free and super useful + we grew to over 300+ people quick haha

https://discord.com/invite/KgqazycHJW

I'm in search of a reliable partner in the UK who can receive parcels, handle fulfillment, and ensure proper packaging. The task also involves sending the parcel to our warehouse. If you or someone you know is experienced in this area, please get in touch. Looking forward to collaborating!

My first mobile app is live in three app stores and on the web. I have zero customers and ASO is not much of an option for me (due to the genre).
I intend to do a marketing campaign next year but was wondering, can anyone recommend companies that provide consultancy/assistance for achieving growth?

Hey group,
I launched my AI newsletter - "The AI Street Journal" about 10 months ago. I am still figuring things out in terms of formatting, tone, content ect.

My goal is to make it as valuable as possible for entrepreneurs, and small business owners who want to learn more about AI and how it can apply to their ideas and or businesses.

Here is the link - https://theaistreetjournal.beehiiv.com/

Thank you for your time

Launched a new online business for accessories? did not receive visitors yet ? any suggestions?

I'm now eager to scale up my sales. I'm on the lookout for a reliable partner who can collaborate with me. Thank you . (if someone here interested) we can schedule a video call to share my daily results

I want to use TikTok to grow my small business SignVibez but I don't want to make boring make this sign with me video. I would love to make cool engaging creative videos but man I am completely out of ideas.

My friend and I are working on a SaaS startup, and we've decided to build in public and share our progress. BUT, we'll do it anonymously, using pseudonyms.

There are three reasons for this approach:

• Both of us are employed, and our bosses aren't exactly excited about employees working on side projects - we'd rather not cause an unnecessary alarm
• We're inspired by others who are successfully doing this (like AJ from Carrd), and we're curious to see how challenging
• It sounds fun :)

We realize that being anonymous might make growing a startup tougher than revealing our identities.

Getting initial trust and traction will be more challenging, as we're just another anonymous duo on the internet. But we're excited to give it our best shot and see how things unfold.

Do you know of other founders or startups that are building anonymously? It's a common practice in the crypto and web3 but seems less common in the build-in-public community, from what I've observed.

I’d appreciate any advice or ideas about marketing and growing our SaaS as an anonymous team.

Hey everyone! As the title suggests, I'm looking for feedback what your thoughts are in which directions I should go in terms of GTM.

1) Quick introduction to the situation (probably necessary to know for feedback):

So after 16 years of freelancing and trying out what feels like every "productivity" tool on the planet I was so fed up with the actual-non-goddamn-productivity. Every basic task takes ages, all data is fragmented over 6 services and you just keep clicking save buttons into overlays into loading animations while you open up 6 old proposals while you forget your timer while you forget project 4 was over deadline while you forgot to invoice those 40 hours on project 2 and so on. If you want a truly custom invoice template with actually nice licensed fonts you're fucked anyway.

My stubborn ass felt like I can do better. Instead of shipping half-assed MVPs as everyone else does I spent 6000+ hours over 3 years 100% solo bootstrapping and building something polished that just makes me really feel productive, something I haven't felt in ages with freelance software.

I don't want to go overboard since that's probably not important for you, but in short: It's Time Tracking, Project Management, Task Management, Proposals, Invoices and Planning capabilities in a single polished desktop app with innovation in all of these domains to maximize efficiency as much as possible, so less time is spent with organisational/business freelance-tasks.

If it helps you to understand the product better, here's the link: https://fugoya.com (mods: feel free to remove the link, but I'm not posting it for promotion but rather context)

I ran a closed beta for 6 months to get early feedback and reached a point where the product has the maturity to launch, which happened this week.

2) Let me breakdown the situation a little further so you have a better understanding:

• I'm not an influencer of any sort and I don't own channels with a huge following, meaning my base reach is pretty low.
• The product is highly polished and feedback has been amazing, people are suprised of the high quality.
• Early adopters think the features it has are above competition, but in some cases they would love to see more (well, that's probably the case with anything really, but still. Top 3 are: Collaboration, Financials, Mobile App; all of which are on the Roadmap anyway, but not necessary to drag out launch further in my opinion)
• Important: The product is quite complex to get into (by nature of the field). It's not a spontaneous buy.
• Since it's for self-employed people it's a weird hybrid of: in theory it's B2B software, but since it's for solo-folks that often feel like consumers, often it feels very B2C-y
• You don't swap your invoicing system just for fun on a tuesday morning, it takes time and consideration. On the flipside this also means retention rate might be a lot lower due to the friction of changing systems if the new solution rocks
• Interestingly, people that don't want to buy it for themselves still speak highly of it and recommend it
• Lots of people that would benefit from it don't immediately understand the value. I've talked to a good chunk of designers that rather spend hours manually chucking out PDFs from Adobe InDesign than paying 20$/m (that's probably a communication task, still dropping it for context)
• In terms of target audience the obvious denominator is "freelancing", but I would narrow it slightly to "freelance professional" in the sense that people that have experience in freelancing know the pain points. If you juggle 5 projects at the same time you REALLY feel the value of Fugoya. What's a little bit tricky is that just "freelance" basically means any industry, although obviously for example agriculture doesn't really make sense, yet the creative industries are the perfect fit.

3) My thoughts towards general growth strategies:

• Sales-led: Since it's technically SaaS and B2B it's the first thing that comes to mind. Since it's targeted at single-users, the value per sale is fairly low, so my stomach tells me it's quite a waste of resources for my case. Sales imho work a lot better if you get 15 users in one sale. Is this true?
• Community-led: Since the quality is high and people that like it so far are super into it, this might be something long term. Unless a certain threshold of users are met I don't think it makes sense to invest too much resources I suppose?
• Product-led: I think for my scenario this seems spot-on. I understand the organic growth effects a constantly, highly iterated and loved product can have. Something I would do anyway as it's the only way I want to do it.

4) My assumptions:

A) I think it has the potential to develop organic growth once a certain threshold is reached. B) I think that all efforts should be spend to reach this threshold and once there, there needs to be a shift towards community building.

5) What are my options for this initial phase?

(here I'd really love to hear your feedback)

• Cold Emails: It's not sustainable, but I think a great fit for my kickstarting-issue. Definitely something I will do to get things rolling.
• Social Media Ads: Really torn on this one. On one hand also the downside of not-being-sustainable doesn't matter if all I need is the threshold, on the other hand as I'm not super experienced with ads I feel like it can burn money pretty quickly with unsatisfying results. What are your thoughts?
• Niche Sponsorships / niche direct ads: From what I know if the correct sources are found it's very on-target but in lots of cases quite costly. What's your experience?
• Content Marketing: I see the value, but since it's a long running thing and you reap the results far in the future it doesn't seem such a good fit, or am I wrong?
• Influencers: I don't think this works well with non-lifestyle-software, does it?

Sorry for the lengthy text, I just wanted to make sure there's enough context for educated feedback. Would appreciate any insights and most importantly where I'm wrong! 🙂

✌🏻

Welcome to r/GrowMyBusiness Monthly Growth Strategy & Advice. Use this thread to share strategies and advice with the community. These can include methods, tips, business strategy or general advice.

Comments must include written content with strategy or advice (not just a link), although you can include a signature. Posts without strategy or advice in the comment will be removed.

A startup had built this internal tool called Translate Channels that they used to communicate with their international team. When they ended up winding down their startup, I acquired it from them, rebuilt it from the ground up, and I've been running it the past few years.

I acquired the app for $8k when it was doing ~$250/month, and at the current monthly revenue ($919), it will do $9,480 in profit the next 12 months with little input from me. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to grow it, so I'm trying different things and seeing what works.

The app itself is super simple: just a Slack app that uses the Google Translate API to automatically translate messages based on the team's settings.

Anyone have experience growing a small SaaS product?

Hello fellow entrepreneurs and small business enthusiasts,

What do you think about implementing AI into various business models and relying more than 50% on it for the business to run? I did this once.

I own an eCommerce advertising agency. We take on various eComm businesses and help them get sales.

I tried using AI for my clients first, not myself. It was a risky thing to do, yes. But it paid off.

The Complexity and Potential of AI for Small Businesses

When I first heard about AI, it felt like a concept reserved for tech giants and blockbuster movies. However, the more I delved into it, the more I realized its immense potential for businesses of all sizes, especially small ones like mine. The ability of AI to analyze data, predict trends, and automate mundane tasks is a game-changer.

Common Misconceptions

Like many, I had my share of misconceptions. I thought AI was too expensive and complex for my small business. However, I learned that there are scalable and affordable AI solutions tailored for small businesses. The key is understanding what fits your business needs.

Practical Applications

For one client, I started small by implementing AI-driven analytics for customer behavior. This simple step allowed me to personalize marketing strategies and significantly improve customer engagement. I've seen similar success stories in other businesses, from AI-powered inventory management to chatbots enhancing customer service.

Getting Started with AI

The first step is often the hardest. For me, it was about identifying what I wanted to achieve with AI. Did I want to improve customer experience, streamline operations, or boost sales? Once I had a goal, researching and finding the right tools became much easier. There's a wealth of resources out there, and many AI tools come with user-friendly interfaces, making them accessible even for those not tech-savvy.

I am now thinking of using only AI to integrate into other businesses and help them grow. I've become quite skilled from this experience.

What do you think? And, what challenges can you predict based on what I've just shared?

Hi,

As a business owner, I'm sure you'd be receiving multiple cold DMs, cold emails, cold calls from freelancers and agencies looking to help you promote your business with online ads either on Google or Facebook or some other online channel.

Has it occurred to you that if these guys are pitching to help you with ads why aren't they running these ads for themselves and get clients?

Is this approach by them good to get clients or they should walk the talk?

Thanks!

As a small business owner myself I'm sure there are a few tasks out there that you dread doing each day. Am curious to know what they are. Please share!

I'm a UI/UX designer who has collaborated with startups, serial entrepreneurs, and scale-ups, recognizing the pivotal role design plays in achieving product success.

Here are four transformative design principles I've consistently found to work well when applied. They will guide you in creating an optimized user experience, leading to improved user retention and more paying customers:

1. Think Like a Mailman: Simplify navigation by prioritizing key functions and intuitively presenting additional features.
2. Styles Are Tools: Maintain consistency using a single typeface and a carefully chosen palette of two colors—1 primary and 1 accent color. Save creative designs for landing pages.
3. Literalism Before Icons: Opt for clarity with text-based actions instead of an overload of icons, ensuring better user comprehension.
4. Hierarchy Is Order: Prioritize user experience and functional structure over aesthetics. Focus on meeting user needs before considering appearance.

These principles may seem simple, but their efficiency should not be underestimated. I've encountered numerous products needing design fixes due to lacking these principles.

Remember, center your product around user needs rather than just aesthetics. This approach results in heightened user engagement and retention.

As a fellow entrepreneur, I currently offer unlimited UI/UX design through a subscription model. Creatively tackling new designs productively, these principles have become particularly important to me now.

I hope you find these design principles valuable when developing your own app or platform.

Hello everyone

I would very much appreciate your insight on this. I am on the crossroad right now. Is it better to be a VA Agency or an Small BPO agency?

And is anyone here who successfully established an agency? Can you please give me tips on how to register the business and what do US based company needs from us to provide when it comes to taxes and what do we need to provide to them.

Thank you so much.

The guide shows effective practice­s that truly make onboarding matter not only as the process of training and integrating new employees into your company but also as the initial impression your company create­s for new hires: Employee Onboarding - Best Practices

• Integrating your tools
• Investing in security measures
• Prioritizing interactive onboarding
• Building a feedback loop
• Promotion to continued learning

Hi there,

My cofounder and I are currently working on a platform that will allow users to invest in their favorite tech products. It is essentially a cross between a trading platform and product marketplace, because the tradable tokens are each tied to the underlying product, allowing any user to "claim" the physical product if they decide they want to. This is the real tangible value one would receive by investing in such an asset as opposed to some modern digital currencies.

Meanwhile, compared to other traditional asset classes we believe consumer tech is a much more approachable asset for beginners or simply those interested in tech. Our aim is provide in depth and never seen before product insights, price transparency, and even voting rights for owners of a certain amount of tokens- allowing you to have influence in the product's ongoing development. Similar to owning shares of a company, owning these "product tokens" not only provides insights and involvement in the products development but allows you to reap the monetary rewards of both its long term growth in value (due to substantial upgrades or new versions of the product) and even short term trading capabilities from timely price changes in the product (price is determined as a result of real time supply/demand dynamics similar to other investment products).

Let us know your thoughts on the potential of this new asset class; is it something you'd personally be interested in?

(you can find more info here www.theampla.com).

I'm Joshua, and I want to build a business creating vibrant Discord servers for businesses. To kickstart my venture, I'm offering to build custom servers for free. If you let me showcase it in my portfolio, it's all yours (This is so that my site will be more trustworthy and professional). Reach out via Reddit DM or drop me an email at ContacttJoshua@proton.me if you are interessed. So i guess what iam asking is: Will you help me build my portofolio? Thanks in advance🙏

Hey everyone! I built an AI tool called EnVsion (https://www.envsion.io/) that integrates with Zoom.

It can import your recordings from the Zoom Cloud, then automatically transcribe and summarise the calls so that you don't have to spend time taking notes during calls.

It's aimed at customer-facing professionals like Sales, Product Management, and UX Research professionals. I'd love to get some feedback on what I've built.

Thanks!

Hey guys,

I want to create a legal business for a blog that I'll start soon. I'm looking for countries that allow non-residents to start a business within their territory. The requirements are:

• 0 or low taxes
• Doesn't require having a visa, work visa, or visiting the country
• Has online platforms to manage the legal and administrative operations... Such as paying taxes, requesting e-documents...etc
• Not overpriced

Thanks a million times in advance 🙏

Dear ambitious entrepreneurs of r/growmybusiness,
I'm the founder of Ctiny and I'm excited to introduce you to Ctiny.io, a comprehensive link management powerhouse designed to supercharge your business strategy. 🚀

I understand there are number of link management tools in the market already. I don't want Ctiny to be one among it but to solve a unique pain point that the Digital marketers face.

At present, Ctiny provides a number of features,
Imagine having the ability to Re-target your audience, conduct A/B Testing for optimal performance, and precisely Geo Target your links. Ctiny.io empowers you with these capabilities and more.
With features like Link Expiration, Password Protection, and Custom Domains, Ctiny offers unparalleled control over your links. How can these features align with your business goals? What scenarios do you envision for link expiration and password protection in your marketing efforts?
Your Insights Matter:
As we strive for perfection, your feedback is invaluable. How can Ctiny better serve your business needs? Are there specific features or enhancements you'd love to see?
Explore Ctiny: https://ctiny.io
Your valuable inputs will shape the future of Ctiny.io, making it the ultimate link management tool for businesses like yours.

You have any feedback for this upcoming new-website-version? E.g. about the new title ("Create a ...") — the previous titles have made people confused. And other above-the-fold things? Here: https://tyws-maybe-www.netlify.app (temp address)

What would you say the website is about, in your own words? What don't you like?

(Maybe I shouldn't tell you here at Reddit what it is about — it's better if that's a secret, and you get to try to figure it out yourselves? So we'll notice if the website explains it well enough.)

And, any thoughts about the pricing? (Click "Pricing".) Is it too expensive or inexpensive, or just plain hard to understand?

(At the website, the topmost links, on the very 1st row, don't work.
Also cross posted to r/ Enterpreneur.)