You might be somewhat in trouble. You'll want to consult a lawyer, not to be adversarial, but rather to ensure you do things that are legal and are best from a tax-consequence perspective. You can't back-date option grants or stock grants, for example. There are recent scandals reinforcing tha...
Ask your current clients what they value the most in their relationship with you; use their answers to describe what you provide to others (note that it may be a "feeling" or "outcome" rather than a "service"!). Also, give your consulting process a unique name to differentiate how you do what you...
Yes, that's extremely common and expected. Generally you charge 3x the rate you pay.
Hard to determine best, but how about: * YCombinator - Pebble, Upverter, BufferBox * Bolt http://bolt.io/ * Highway1 http://highway1.io/ * Lemnos Labs http://lemnoslabs.com/ There are probably others.
It really depends on what you're looking to offer, but generally you should allow people to try before they buy, encourage and help them while they try it out and then ask for the business.
Microsoft Azure. For startups they give you a ton of stuff for free, and if you talk to someone there you can probably get even more. And when you're eventually ready to pay, you can just continue with them. Google's cloud offering is also free or cheap, but it's unclear what the future of tha...
If you charge a subscription then I wound't have ads - it breaks the social norm for paid memberships. If it's freemium, then add ads to the free accounts.
Read Tribal Leadership, a great book on culture and Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, a great book on implementing change when it's difficult.
Type of shares are generally split into two: common/ordinary (depending on the jurisdiction) and preferred. The former are granted to founders and employees (most commonly as options with a right to purchase common/ordinary shares). The latter are generally issued to investors and include special...
To answer this question, I would need to know a lot more (how many other founders, employees, background of the CTO, etc.). A great resource for thinking through founder equity is this post by Joel Spolsky. http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a-new-software-startup-how-do-i-a...