The idea is great !! Its not new though..
Check out http://www.pounce.mobi/ ( it was earlier called BuyCode).

Some positive points
1) Just because it is there, it does not mean you can build it.
2) A business which got acquired and vc backed is a good sign that your idea is already market validated.
3) Because it is validated, you already know what is the market segment you need to target or you can pivot from the known reference point now.. cool ..isn't...

How can you do it ?
1) Ideas are dime a dozen and worth a shit. Don't feel bad. Build an MVP.
2) With the image recognition already democratized using dozens of cloud service providers, you should be able to build something quick with low TCO (total cost of ownership).
3) Identify your business model. You want to copy BuyCode or do something different ?
4) Try selling it - (rubber meets the road). You will feel the heat and smell the burns :-)

Need help ? talk to me.

Hello Hustler..

There are 2 kind of problems that people solve. Aspirin or Vitamin. The product road-map (from an engineering point of view) depends on this.

If you building something that is so unique and solving a crazy problem (E.g app that tell's what is your girlfriend thinking now capturing her brain waves from distance !!) you don't need to concentrate on the UX. UX is expensive and in some cases very important. In this case, the feature (MVP or minimim markatable product) is the key.

If you are building another burger joint or calorie tracking app or ride share, the UX is a big make/break factor .

Best is to hire someone who has more programming (engineering) experience and have enough understanding of the design aspects.

For your design needs, get it freelanced (cheaper)

Validate your MVP and and if there is $$$ coming, put it on improving the quality and experience which includes
- better UX
- scalable backends etc...

Call me if you need any help.

It is a very vague question..like "What clothing suits me ?"
Well.. I can try to answer.

Question - Why do you want to move to cloud. Have you already decided it is Azure (not the competitors like AWS or Google Cloud, which is totally OK. I am a Azure fan. Just wanted to know)

Businesses (sometime business units / specifica application) moves completely/partially to cloud for 2 reasons
- Convert capital expenditure to operation expenditure
- Build solutions or part of solutions that are scalable, available and reliable without breaking the bank.

How to Prep
- Answer varies based on if you are a IT Boutique shop, Enterprise IT solution provider or a Non-IT business with IT teams.

If you can be little more specific, may be we can chat and find a way through it...

Great, I recently worked with a non profit who sells Pashmina shawls from kashmir on ebay and also to European suppliers (wholesale). Luckily they were using magento kind of platform that offers multiple customer account types (for wholesalers and retailers).

This is an integration question. How do you integrate your ebay selling event to your inventory (inhouse / cloud) systems.

Option 1 - Hire a freelance and build a hook using EBAY api - http://developer.ebay.com/devzone/guides/ebayfeatures/Notifications/Notif-ItemSold.html
OR 'Out of stock API
http://developer.ebay.com/devzone/guides/ebayfeatures/Development/Listings-UseOutOfStock.html

Option 2 - Wait for Zapier web hooks. It is in their wish list.
Option 3 - Some scraping hacks :-) Not the best way but definitely a TACTICAL way to see if th product is in stock on not...

Option 1 is the neatest one and scalable.
Are you using a online/saas product for your wholesale business.. Just curious ...

If you need any help in implementations/online-presence strategies..let me know. Happy to speak !!

Balance score cards are a good way to create goals for the organizations and translate in into tangible ASKs .

If the purpose is to increase the bottom lines by 5% , you can break it down to
- Customer success Team - increase retention by 7%
- Technology team - reduce operation cost bt 10%

The percentage can be broken down into specific measurable tasks and be passed on the manager to reportee to the last man on the line.

Meritocracy should then be based on target % completion

If your product or service considers technology as a competitive advantage compared to other marketplaces , yes it is better to have a CTO who can leverage technology to build capabilities. E.g if you are buyer-seller matching is based on machine learning backed algorithms, you need to retain the tech guy. Does not mean he/she has to be a CTO. You could use equity power too.

If you business is just another market place and the your execution power is the differentiation, then you could live with a agency/freelance company

Advertising "www.buyessays.us" ?
Please use google for "What is ..." kind of question.

Marketplace are the most difficult model to build. It is like building 2 businesses. One that is a service provider and the other that is a demand generator.

Essentially you are selling two products to two distinct sets of consumers and being the market maker. Make your Business stories that their needs.

People who provide solution in clarity don't do it for $. No on does 9-5 clarity calls for living (unlike Uber). When an expert has this feeling to share his knowledge to a needy person, clarity provides a way to do it.... So you need to identity where the appetite lies and how to sell it..

Even if you have lot of leads at both sides, it needs a lot of try and error to reach the right equation where to have an optimal supply-demand ratio.

Feel free to talk.
If you don't have the seed users/consumers for both sides, you have start building it and gradually in a controlled manner start introducing them to both sides of the business until you perfect the right mix..

like Flour and Water - when it comes to bread making... :-)
Happy to read if you want to share what your business is about. May be we can do a 3 mins brainstorm after that..

My strengths are
- How can you use technology to measure the KPI
- Design systems and processes in place to achieve this goal.

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” --― George Orwell

But is it true ?

Are all great tech taken ? There are plenty people who are above average in everything. You don't need the best programmer in the world to be a CTO / Architect.

1) In the lack of capital, the only thing you got is your DREAM. Sell the dream and only hire someone who believes in the product/idea. Ask him what his opinion about the product is and how it can be made better.

2) His(or her) and your wavelength should match - If you are the CEO guy, he should be able read you and you should speak a common language or have a similar thought process. CEO owns the product and CTO delivers it.

What skills should you be looking for
1) Technical - If you need CTO/Architect , don't look for a programmer. A word-press or a .net programmer can be your co-founder but he need to have that big picture vision of product. Architects have a high view of product architecture and the 360 Deg view solution delivery. Need not be an expert in everything but should be able to get things done my other developers. ARCHITECT/CTO IS A MINDSET. You need to find people with that mindset.

How to find people with CTO Mindset
1) Ask them about how to build something like facebook. Check if they talk about Performance, scalability, caching,availability etc..
2) Ask how to do it lean (cheap) - They should be able to give you a ROADMAP (that is the skill you are looking for).
3) Are they aware of what is happening in the industry. Ask them what they read and listen to. Your OUTPUT is a SUBSET of you INPUT

Hope that helped. Let me know if you need any friendly help. I am at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nefinjohn

Nefin

Couple things.before we get into details.
1) I am not sure what you meant by A.I and G.A
2) The retention issue with your friend's company is not a TinyPulse issue. The questionnaire and derived KPI were not designed or derived .

I must put my Business Intelligence and Data Integration hat on !!

HR, Marketing and Sales - We are discussing the analytics for 3 distinct coporate function here using TinyPulse , G.A for marketing and HotJar.

It makes sense that the CEO (or CXO) should have a single view dashboard

For integration , all we need to access to data. HOTJAR Roadmap (http://docs.hotjar.com/v1.0/page/roadmap) show that they will have API access in future phases.

TinyPulse do not have API access but if there is a way to get the data (as export) this could work,

HOW TO INTEGRATE
----------------------------------
Use a cloud based Microsoft Power BI or Qlik (Cheap or almost free) and you can build pretty powerful online dasboards joining different data sources.

The 3 sources that you have mentions - Marketing (website UX and usage), HR and Sales are so independent to each other that I do not see any possibilities to mix and match data for information discovery. But yes, you can get a single view .

Just a tip - Next time when you choose a platform or product for your company, see how mature their API and integration is .

"SaaS without API endpoints is Car without a dashboard "
Feel free to call me if you need help building something. I believe you already have an awesome team.. Kudos !!!

Thanks
Nefin