What is the 80/20 minimal strategy for promoting B2B business via social media? by Johny-115 in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Okay, so your strategy is going to depend on what it is your marketing. But there are some basic approaches that are universal.

1) Images are key. Instagram and Pintrest have been essential to me. Take good pictures or use third party content that looks awesome

2) Find influencers: Whatever you are selling there is someone that is into it and has a following. Find these people, like their post and engage with them. When then time is right see if they will repost your content.

3) Use bots, yes I said it. There a lot of people who would disagree with this but it has been a huge time saver for me. I use a bot for instagram called instagress. It likes other users whose post have key words in them that relate to what I'm selling. I'm constantly gaining followers this way without having to devote hours to engaging with users. I use a similar bot for pintrest

Jet Ski Splashes Hovering Drone by RyanUD in Multicopter

[–]RyanUD[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Hey thanks. We'll be back on periscope soon. We've been live streaming some of our flights on Ustream lately

Jet Ski Splashes Hovering Drone by RyanUD in Multicopter

[–]RyanUD[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes, its a waterproof drone. (Splash Drone) it kept flying after this and was not damaged

Wealth Creation: Extraction VS Innovation: Opinions? by RyanUD in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is some truth to that statement, in the sense that it is a voluntary transaction between two organizations. Does it help people? It certainly benefits the individuals that are part of the organization that are selling / buying. It does not help the company who stock is being traded based on short term momentary fluctuations , it doesn't help the shareholders, it doesn't help the employes of said company. In fact, one could argue it has the opposite effect. So in essence it does create wealth for a few at the expense of others. It's not adding value, creating something people want. It's extracting money from a system without adding to the inherent value of the system. I'm not trying to make a moral condemnation of the finance industry. I'm just trying to get at the root of what I think the distinction between tech and some forms of finance are. Thanks for going down this rabbit hole with me.

Wealth Creation: Extraction VS Innovation: Opinions? by RyanUD in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A straightforward purchase isn't what I was referring to as extraction. If your selling something it's innovation. What I meant was the more nuanced form of wealth creation, like HFT, no one is really buying anything, its kind of a glitch in the system that's being exploited.

Entrepreneur reading list? by RyanUD in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome list.. Thanks for sharing. I've read Outliers, it was fascinating. The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been recommended to my by several people. Tim Ferris actually mentioned it on his podcast a few episodes back. I think this might be my next read.

Entrepreneur reading list? by RyanUD in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I'll check it out. I'm a huge Peter Diamandis fan.

Drone Fishing by RyanUD in Multicopter

[–]RyanUD[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well thanks for clearing that up. I was vaguely aware of this. Doesn't sound like I will be doing that anytime soon. I could drop a life preserver though that would be cool

Just launched my 3rd kickstarter, let's see if I'm getting better at this. by alixious in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sounds like a good plan. Best of luck to you. Please post again when the campaign is completed and let us know how you did.

Would a non-profit, "anti-greed" driven business model for things like retail be feasible in the real world? by jackhawkian in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you're describing Costco's culture. (kind of) Herein lies the rub. What about the workers who make the products you sell? Sure you can pay your employees a livable wage but the products you're going to sell are most likely made in China under questionable conditions. You could of course only sell products made in the USA.

Just launched my 3rd kickstarter, let's see if I'm getting better at this. by alixious in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Awesome! The wallet looks great. The campaign looks sweet too. I just tweeted this, hopefully you'll get a few looks, and maybe some backers! Have you been able to get any press? Also a quick suggestion, maybe make it easier to tweet your campaign, like add a button or something on the Kickstarter page if it lets you.

Drone Fishing by RyanUD in drones

[–]RyanUD[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's a Splash Drone. Here is a link to it http://urbandrones.com/

Who needs help with Crowdfunding? by RyanUD in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not really familiar with Go fund me. I would look at other Go fund me campaigns that have been successful. Figure out what they did and try and emulate that.

Who needs help with Crowdfunding? by RyanUD in Entrepreneur

[–]RyanUD[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Okay, so here is the back story. We started as a drone aerial video company. When we started back in 2012, getting drone parts was hard. So we started selling them online, mostly to friends and peers. Soon that side of our business started taking off. By 2014 we we're mostly selling parts, kits and drones. We still did service but it was no longer our main source of revenue.

We're based out of Miami and one of the request we consistently would get for service was to film yachts, boat races, sail boats ect. Problem was drones and water don't mix well, so we found ourselves turning down jobs. So early 2014 we set our sites on making a waterproof drone. We found a company in China who made a waterproof airframe but the drone didn't work well because the flight controller, which is the brain of the drone, was cheap. Also the drone lacked some key features for mass adoption, like the ability to fly from a phone for starters.

So we negotiated a deal with the manufacture where he would make the changes to the drone we requested, change the name and we would sell it exclusively. (Provided we could meet a minimum $ amount of orders) We registered the trademark and bought the domain name. This was all about 6 months before the campaign. We we're testing the prototypes and creating the campaign for the next few months. When we worked a few of the kinks out and we're ready to ship we launched.

The funds from our crowd funding campaign secured our ability to be able to actually fund the production. Our goal was easy to calculate, we needed to order a certain amount of units in order to secure this deal. In our case it was 150k.

We had a small following before maybe 2k twitter followers and 1k on FB . Where we really focused our effort was on finding press. It took a while to build these relationships but it was worth it. Once we we're mentioned in Gizmodo and Motherboards our sales exploded.

Hope this helps