vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Seconding u/AgentScreech, I would suggest to do some serious research and putting together a business plan before engaging in a venture like this. A bowling alley is not exactly an agile business, there are plenty of fixed costs.    You have to know exactly why the place is closing, and figure out a way to reverse the situation.         In addition to leverage you local community, you can also try to diversify the business model. Find new streams of income from products/services, change the place to engage new potential clients, etc.
Well, besides focusing on digital marketing strategies, we bring creative, strategic and technical screen based solutions to life. Creating stunning websites, driving traffic to them and converting that traffic to sales through creative strategies is precisely what we do in a no-hassle, flat pricing model. Nowsoft is the only web agency SEO to give flat pricing for PPC, again based on the number of keywords. Get more information on our services: http://webagencyseo.jigsy.com/entries/general/web-agency-seo-with-a-flat-pricing-model
There is nothing fair / unfair in such deals. It is an art than a science.  what kind of things should be considered, to work out what would be a fair percentage stake A true fair value is; take the current valuation of the company [This can be difficult if it is small and does not maintain proper records]. Divide by number of shares, that is the value of share and you should 20K worth of such shares. But then there is risk premium. You are taking a risk that an small start-up may do exceedingly well ... or it may close off. This risk premium is what is negotiated. It depends on how desperate the owner of the small company is; who all are interested in this specific deal ... if you want 30% share; someone else is ready to offer 20K for 15% of share. Or there is no one willing to lend 20K as they don't believe it will make money ... and the owner is desperate, you may even get 50%.
You don't need a book, you need to dig into the business and understand what has changed. How long has there been a struggle to make ends meet? What seasonality exists for the business? Look at the period-over-period change for each product category as well as each line item expense, and find correlations that may exist. If it's possible, find similar insights about competition -- both brick-and-mortar as well as online.   It's important to analyze the results of the business to understand (1) the normal ebbs and flows of the jewelry store seasonality, and (2) any erosion of the business to online or brick-and-mortar competitors. The other important takeaway is that you have to identify any changes in the business' expenses. Are utilities suddenly taking up more of a share of the profits, or are the costs of raw materials on the rise?  Look at the cash flow to see where the money is going, or if there is a revenue problem. If business is down (and revenue as a result), you know where to start. Perhaps the answer is marketing or providing additional products or services that better match the needs of the clientele who are dropping off (i.e., online ordering and free shipping), or product pricing is elevated above the competition. On the other side, if expenses have gotten out of control, you know where to apply controls. Keep in mind that these are not mutually exclusive, and the business could have a revenue and an expense problem.  If you've studied economics, you have the skills to understand the numbers and drive out the answers, but this problem requires application and not philosophy, sociology, or economics. No single book can give you the step by step process. Every business is unique, and no one but your family can provide the insights necessary to analyze the results.   Best of luck! Reach out with any additional questions.
"I did sort of the same thing as you after a some time in consulting. The biggest annoyance for me was how poorly I thought the most basic, obvious bullshit through. Figure out how you'll bill for travel -- when do you fly vs. drive, what's your mileage rate, etc. Get your proposal template looking razor sharp, and have a standardized invoice ready (don't say ""net 30"" or 45 or whatever, some clients won't understand what you're talking about and there's no way to explain it without sounding like a douche). Be prepared to negotiate heavily at first. Until you start to get a steady client base, people are going to lowball you, perhaps rightfully so. Consider the consequences of establishing yourself at a low rate, or being considered unreasonable and inflexible.   Also, since you're working with a partner, figure out how you're going to register your business by considering your financial situations or, preferably, hiring an accountant. I also *strongly* recommend working with your partner and an attorney to draft an operating agreement. I've seen so many horror stories with people who either didn't have one, made their own shitty one, or otherwise got screwed on technicalities."
I don't know of any and it is unlikely that you will be able to find one.  Most credit card processors charge a flat fee plus percentage.  The flat fee is typically in the 35 cent range making the cost of doing business, in the manner you are suggesting, astronomical.   Also what you are suggesting is contrary to best practices as hosting services, and many other industries, offer deep discounts when making a single payment for an extended period of time. This is not very helpful, but I think it is unrealistic to find what you are suggesting.
I agree, I am a small business owner.  But my original point is that companies large and small got to pay low rates for almost a decade now.   And they profited from it.   economics tell you that it will swing back eventually.   Conceptually you may have to pay more, you may have to charge more, but your clients are probably making more.
1. Implement a 25% outbound IP royalty tax.  2. Put a 10% duty and health/safety inspection fee on all inbound food stuffs to be returned businesses HQed in the UK.  3. Charge a 0.25% tax premium per percentage point above Libor on intercompany loans.
&gt;keep the profit margin the most minimal as possible to gain customers over time That's not the right way to go. The running for the lowest price is endless and no one is going to win. What you have to do is establish your brand and charge a fair price for something that add value on people's life. If they think it's worth they will buy it. That's the best way to grow your ecommerce. Shopify + Dropshipping is the easiest way to go. First what you need to do is find what you want to sell. Then name your store and create a good logo for it. Remember, you need to focus on establish your brand. Going for the lowest price not going to take you anywhere. They will just buy from you because it's cheap and sometimes not even that. You are selling the service not only the product. You can't charge too much but charge the lowest price is not good either. 1- $300 I think it's too much. I would charge you half of that if you were my client. It's easy but time consuming to set up a Shopify store (depending on how many items you would be selling). You need to be aware to banners, logo and social media at very beginning too. So it's not only the store itself. 2- If you are going for Shopify you don't need servers, vps... The Shopify will be your hosting. What you need would be mostly pay designer (logo, banners), apps (Upsell, hurrify, shipping...), domain and maybe someone to write your product description. About how much would you get back it depends completely of what you are about to sell and how is the market for it. I work with digital marketing and wanted to test my entrepreneurship skills with e-commerce plus my marketing knowledge last week. Ended up making over $5,500 on the first 5 days selling in Brazil. Proof (http://imgur.com/a/zDmot) But if you don't have any knowledge about it don't expect too much at very beginning.
It may be tempting to be financially lenient with your customers as you start to build business relationships, but doing so may ultimately jeopardize your profitability. Establish clear payment terms on all invoices and documents, including a reasonable penalty (start with eight percent) over the invoice amount if the total is not paid within the standard payment terms.
In my mind these are quite different, though maybe there is some vague analogy in meta-space that is escaping me.  This isn't about manipulating scarcity or demand, it's about manipulating pricing. I guess the common thread is that it's about manipulating. :)  The motivation is to skirt the commercial code requirement that you can't charge people differentially by ability-to-pay by dividing the market into a high end and a low end, and giving the people who can't pay as much a less desirable product.  In this case, producing the high end product is easily possible to do for everyone, but if you put it at the high price, you'd get too few buyers and if you put it at the low price, you'd leave money on the table.  Similar schemes have been used in airlines to charge businesses more by assuming they have to plan things last-minute and making the high price be around changeability of tickets, and assuming vacations are planned longer out and are really being sold to a market of people with less money to spend.  By controlling the character of the sale in a situation where delivery of the product costs about the same, you maximize the revenue.  It used to be, though no longer is, that phone calls were done this way, too.  You got better pricing off-hours even though the phone lines were there 24/7 because it was assumed that the only people who must have phone calls, especially long distance, were businesses who could afford steeper prices.  By calling off-hours calling a different product, you could charge less for it and thus do the only thing you really wanted, which is to get maximal amounts of money out of business and non-business people based on their ability to pay, but by a dodge that caused the products to be differentiated, so that it couldn't be said you were charging based on ability to pay.
I suggest to start charging slightly more than needed to cover expenses. All you need is to show profit. It doesn't have to be significant - a couple of hundred of dollars of consistent yearly profit should suffice to show a profitable business. Then you can deduct on Schedule C all the related expenses. The caveat is that the profit (after the deduction of the expenses will be a bit smaller) will be subject to not only income tax but also the self-employment tax. But at least you'll pay tax on profit that is not entirely phantom. I remember suggesting you getting a professional consultation on this matter a while ago. You should really do that - talk to a EA/CPA licensed in your state, it may be well worth the $100-200 fee they'll charge for the consultation (if at all...).
Stuff like this is why we need to put legal measures in place to discourage businesses from getting overly large - like progressive corporate tax rates. Small business growing bigger leads to effienciencies of scale - but at some point the size starts leading massive inefficiencies like completely ignoring customer complaints.
Intellectually and logically, it shouldn't bother me for a second to charge something for a buck.  It's a losing proposition for the merchant, but their immediate business costs should be of little concern to me.  (They're making a choice to sell that item to me at that price and by accepting that means of payment, right?)  but the more I charge as opposed to paying cash, the more cash back I get. In my old-ish age, I've gotten a little softer and will pay cash more often for smaller amounts because I understand the business costs, but it's not a matter of caring what other people think. Accepting credit cards, or not, is a business decision.  It's usually a good one.  But with that decision come the rules, which up until about a year ago, meant that merchants couldn't set a minimum charge amount.  Now that's not the case; merchant account providers can no longer demand that their merchant clients accept all charges, though they are allowed to set a minimum amount that is no lower than $10.00. In the end, it's a matter of how much you're willing to pay in order to influence people's thinking of you, because the business/financial benefits of doing one or the other are pretty clear.
The way to do this is to make your best offer and let the seller and his/her agent do the negotiation between them. If you try to build in the discount in your offer, you will come across as cheap.
Recommend using quickbooks for account management. If you use the manufacturing and wholesale you can track POs from vendors, estimates, bill payment quotes and invoicing (there's an editor to customize your set up)Also, most accountants are very familiar with this platform so come tax time they'll be able to give you a hand no problem. For accepting payments I highly suggest asking for checks. If you do accept credit cards keep in mind most  payment processors charge a percent (1.5-3%) depending on transaction amounts and quantities of transactions. So you'll want to mark up your products by at least that amount.   Another area is sales tax. Since you are not the end user you should be able to avoid sales tax on the items you will be selling to customers. You then charge the customer this sales tax. Not sure about NJ but in Texas we are 8.25%. I then pay the state of Texas the taxes collected quarterly.   Edit: also make sure you have separate finances for the LLC. Separate checking, separate credit card, separate everything! If you end up using an account that is tied to you personally then you run into the risk of losing the protective nature of an LLC from a legal standpoint.   Edit2: by separate I mean using your IRS issued EIN number to open accounts with the LLC name. When you sign anything on behalf of the company make sure to add the name of the company next to it to show the company is making the signature not you. For instance   u/sexlessnights Company name, LLC
"Traditional insurance agent guy here.  There is no right answer in my opinion because your individual needs cannot be generalized.     There are a variety of factors that influence the price charged to you including but not limited to your past claims history, geographic location, credit profile, and the carrier's book of business itself.  This is just a small sampling, in reality their pricing calculations may be far more complicated.  The point is there is no one-size-fits all carrier.   My agency works with 15 different carriers.  Sometimes we can offer the best combination of coverage and cost to a prospective client that beats their existing coverage; other times we are nowhere close to being competitive.   The most important thing you can do is find a person/site/company you can trust and one that does not take advantage of you.  Insurance policies are complex and ""getting the best deal"" may oftentimes mean lessening coverage without realizing it.  So I would recommend using whatever service channel (online, phone, local agent) that's most convenient and consultative for you. And otherwise, shop around once every year or two to make sure you're still getting the most for your money."
Ah, but it might be the regulators responsibility. Predatory pricing can be a monopolistic tactic, meaning that large corporations that can afford to lose money on some projects may be wise to do so to keep their smaller competitors out of the industry, and then being the only one (or several) left, can make those losses back on jacked up prices since there is little/no competition in their market.  Bidding at a loss is often [illegal or regulated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Legal_aspects).
Cristina from Avangate :)   Well, most of your shoppers will not even know that you outsource online purchase activity to a payment provider, unless the solution you select, is not capable to integrate with the look and feel on your business.   If talking about Avangate, I can share some insights that our clients buyers usually appreciate: 1. Geographical Location - translated payment pages based on IP that present also the price in local currency and allow them to pay with a local payment method, if available (ex. Brazil - credit card with instalments - Portuguese); 2. Financial Support - specific area, called myAccount, where shoppers can track relevant info about how to renew/upgrade or get in contact with the merchant;  3. Taxes and VAT management - if you are targeting both B2C and B2B customers, the possibility of getting an invoice that can be presented for accounting/bookkeeping is very important.  Should you be interested in having a more detailed discussion, make sure to get in touch with me - I'll be happy to chat :)  cristina.rotari@avangate.com
Exit strategy is HUGE to a VC and they will want to make several multiples of their money back in a relatively short amount of time. Can you realistically support that for how much you are asking for? If not then going through an Angel group would be better. They have similar questions, but very different expectations. The main thing is that no one knows what your business is worth because it is 100% unproven after 2 years and is therefore a huge financial risk. If the money you are asking for is to complete product development then that risk factor just went up radically as you aren't even talking about sales. If the money is purely for the sales channel, then it's likely not enough. However if you know what it's going to take to get that first sale and have at least an educated idea on how much it's going to cost to repeat that then you should have an idea for how much money you want. From there you need to decide how much of the business it is worth to you to give up in order to get that money and, voila, you have a ""pre money valuation"". The real trick will be to convince the VC that you are right (which takes research and a rock solid presentation) and negotiating from there. No matter what offer a small percentage of the business for the money you want and realize you'll likely give up much more than that. A few things you should know: usually by year 3 it's apparent if a start-up is going to work out or not. You're in year 2 with no sales. That doesn't look good unless you are building a physical product, have a competent team with hard experience doing this, have patents (at least filed), a proven test product, and (hopefully) have a few pre-orders and just need cash to deliver. Although in that situation, I'd probably tell you to ask your friends and family before talking to a VC. Even kickstarter.com would be better. $200k just isn't a lot of money and should be very easy to raise from Friends or Angels. If you can't then that speaks volumes to an institutional VC.
"This isn't negotiations anymore. They are trying to change the deal after the fact. Stop negotiating and tell them they are bound to the agreement they signed. They are leaning on you because they know you are small and likely can't fight them. Document every conversation. Do not allow them to keep pushing after they've signed the agreement.  They accepted your bid (after giving your pricing to a competitor, which is shitty and should have been your first red flag). Then they started working on you. At that point your answer should have been ""we have a verbal agreement of x services for y price. A different scope of work is not scalable and would require a new quote.""  At this point you can either accept that they will continue to beat you up, or you can jam the contract down their throats until they agree or walk away.   I've been in a situation like this before. A major multinational asked for bid pricing that was agreed to be estimated only based on very loose requirements. Then they handed us a contract with that pricing included as ""not to exceed"".  We ended up walking away. It sounds like you may want to do the same if you can. Big companies often will have legal and payables departments that basically exist to fight any obligation to pay out money. In our case shortly after we ran into someone in our industry who'd worked with that company, and they said to assume that company would reject 30% of all invoices we sent. If nothing else, to delay payment just a bit longer so they could keep earning interest on the money.  Also, in the future I wouldn't turn away work until you are under a signed contract for a big project like this. You can't rely on such a contract to come through. If they drag feet and your schedule is full that's on them, or you bring in additional help or subcontract the work to deliver."
"Written with some mild snark , but no insult intended, because financial stuff can be ridiculously confusing... Looked at another way, you're basically asking if the Biblical ""Parable of the Talents"" can be implemented as a business model. You as the investor wish to be the ""master"", with the entity doing the investing playing the part of the ""servant"". Since the law prohibits actual servitude as described in scripture, the model must substitute a contractual profit- and loss-sharing scheme. OK, based on what you've proposed, and by way of example, let's say you invested a thousand dollars. You give the investment service your money. At the end of a year, they give you back - Your capital ($1000) - Plus 1/2 of any profits OR - Less 1/2 of any losses So let's say the worst happens and they lose ALL of it. According to your proposal, they have to cover 1/2 of the loss. You end up with $500...but they end up with LESS than nothing. They will be in a deficit situation because all the expense was theirs. They don't just fail to make a profit. They go in the hole. It doesn't matter what percentages you use. Regardless of how the loss is shared, you've only guaranteed YOU can't lose all your money. The company CAN. Given a large enough investment, or enough market fluctuation, a big shared loss could shut down a smaller firm. To summarize: - You want a service that charges you nothing - Does all the work of expertly managing and investing your capital - Takes on part of the risk you would normally bear - (on top of their usual risk and liability) - Agrees to do so solely for a percentage of any return (where higher returns will likely involve a higher degree of risk) - AND that guarantees, after just 1 year, you'll get X% of your capital back, no matter what. Win or lose. - Even if the market crashes and all your capital, and theirs, is wiped out Superbest, um, to be serious briefly: what you're proposing is, if nothing else, inherently unfair and inequitable.
Just the opposite, if you can, offer all prices! Make a premium product, and regular one, a lite version, and so on. Capture all price points.  The premium version's price gives you anchoring so your less expensive product will appear cheap even if it isn't.  This also gives users an upgrade path so the way to full price is baby steps.