

Problems faced by web entrepreneurs? - jayliew

Folks, like many of you, I &#60;3 YC and tech startups. I know most of you are working on software, in particular web startups, so I've got a question for you all.<p>Like you all, I too have the YC dream and would love to do my own startup (&#38; looking for co-founder also!). I've decided after much thought that I must be passionate and care about the target market, and the target market I've decided to tackle problems for is: entrepreneurs, specifically, web entrepreneurs.<p>For those of you who are running a web startup .. what are some problems that you wish someone solved for you? Obviously some problems you can't "outsource", but there's gotta be some problems that is shared by all of you that someone else can tackle.<p>For starters, the one thing I've thought about is UI/UX testing. Most web startups may or may not realize its value, may or may not know how to do it, .. perhaps an opportunity?<p>I would sincerely appreciate any feedback ..
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mahmud
Relationship brokerage and "finding who in that organization I need to cold
call".

I spend about 3 hours a day chasing up someone in a massive hierarchy and when
I find them, it's usually the wrong person and I need to backtrack and restart
the search from another point up the department tree.

I would pay $100 for every successful match, and up to 5% of the project fees
if and when I get a contract based on this lead. We need people outside of the
startup scene, people in _boring_ industries who know other people.

I have become an alcoholic taking people out for drinks every night just to
find out they don't exactly know who I thought they did know. Launch a startup
that allows company employees to snitch on their bosses and sell future
project plans, acquisitions and RFPs for $$$. If I can get a 48 hour head
start and discover the plans before anyone, I will make it up to you BIG TIME,
secretly and privately.

It's about time social networking got a little shady ;-)

~~~
jayliew
Hmm .. so this is a sales / lead generation problem right?

* Just to look at today's solutions - have you tried digging LinkedIn real hard to find the person with the right title? Knowing the exact title or "path" on LinkedIn would quickly tell you if someone really knows person X or not?

* There's a few pure lead generation companies out there, have you tried those? (Just to understand what's not working with how people do things today)

