I'll be holding #office-hours via a Zoom call on Thursday at 1:30pm PST.

Happy to cover this during OH. Cofounder relationships are definitely hard! Lots of nuance, and each case is different. The most important thing is effective and very frequent communication. Start over communicating, and then finding right balance.

Do you have a URL?

Hi Tela, URL?

Hi David, I've seen your MVP and heard your pitch yesterday. Please look into Drift and Intercom, which call themselves as conversational marketing. However, we are using Drift successfully at our BearTax for interacting with customers and solving their issues.

It's a small code snippet you include in your code. Gives a chat box and a dashboard to respond to users. You get their email, which page they ping from and also allows you to write automated responses for certain questions. Allows you to create knowledgebase and it can respond automatically depending on the page the customer is.

Have a look at their website, articles and podcasts by Intercom - that could help you.

Hey Conner, good stuff to cover in OH! Depends on where you are starting from for MVP. Always best to start with the problem you are solving, coming up with the simplest version of a solution to that problem. What is the minimum amount of product you need to build to know if your solution is right? How will you know if your solution is right? answer these questions and build backwards. Shipping also depends but I generally think you should ship it as soon as you can learn something from it being in users hands (and it's at least kinda useful). Applying to YC is a great idea for all founders, I think. They accept companies at all stages and backgrounds -- there is no single correct time to apply. A great time to apply is when you have a core team of cofounders (at least) and conviction around the problem you want to solve, greatly helps if you have progress against solving the problem for customers.

Hey Yusuf, great topic for OH. I think it really depends on the startup. Ultimately, the best source of funding is revenue. I think the best time to do crowdfunding is when you can kill two birds with one stone - funding for your company + customers (pre-sales), or + users (supporters of project), or + there's a potential opportunity to create some great buzz around your launch marketing (viral video or something). Crowdfunding is a skill alone and building a company + getting good at crowdfunding is hard and not worth it unless you can kill two birds with one stone IMO. If you mean equity crowdfunding, i don't know enough to give an opinion sorry.

completely depends on your idea and capabilities. PM as I can suggest on that front on how to get started with lean setup and build your product.