Being a reseller, service provider, or industry professional what information do you believe you lack? My company builds virtual conferences for the industry and I'm looking to pull some feedback on what topics are most important to you? Are you interested in learning about sales & marketing? Grow Management? Funding? Accounting? Legal issues?

What are the items that affect your business? How are they affected and what information do you think would assist your business?

Our opinion is that everyone benefits from a more educated industry.

Probably the two that would perk anyones interest is how to get more time out of a day, and the funding aspect.

Venture capital can be hard to come by, especially in the hosting world as it's a non tangible product. Everyone knows they need it, and there's some deep pockets out there that will invest, but I think if there was something that allowed a smaller fish to gather funds from smaller investors it would be a better situation.

So if you needed $100k, instead of getting one or two investors, getting 4 or 5 at 20k each. It means smaller investment on their part, and that eventually means smaller payout on YOUR part (the company) as it's not as big of a risk.

Conor:

If I remember right your registered for the event. You should definitely check out A.C. Ross presentation on funding.

I do appreciate your feedback and you are not the only ones having issues with those two areas of the industry. Currently, we are in talks on bringing an additional partner on for additional funding. There is another concept that we will be introducing later this year when everything lines up that will deal with private investment and the hosting industry.

Yep, I'm registered I'll put that event on a sticky note! We're always fielding low ball investment offers, but the return rates (or control they way) are too high especially when we don't *NEED* the investment. Now had someone come along 8 years ago, I'd be all over it

I think those starting out and needing that extra capital to turn the part time business into a full time business - they'd benefit a lot from a guide like that. The local SBA's can only do so much, and often they seem to like to do as little as possible!

I find the issue is not how sound the business is; however, no one outside of the industry understands the industry. Last year we went to the bank for a loan in the $20k range to expand our once local design business and could not get financed with my co-signature and a near perfect credit score.

Web Design & Web Hosting are on a high risk sheet at the bank. Most investors and VC's don't understand it or your not big enough for them. Let's not even get me started on the SBA and local business orgs.

How to start from scratch with near no money might bring along more interest.