There are many startups in this area - Including the one that I am working on :)
I would love to understand your particular use case, but we have typically seen that users do not want to pay to record, transcribe and generate summarized notes for internal meetings.
The government has become pretty smart - their standard rates have increased quite a bit (since they lose tax revenue)
Secondly, I don't think people are going to touch the old notes - just too much risk involved.
Infact, I would speculate that since a lot of black money is now worthless, we might see rates go down, especially for new constructions
Summary:
- New startup entity (< 3 years old)
- Atleast 10% stake
- No more than 3 applications per startup
- Atleast $345,000(VC,Angel,Incubator) or $100,000(govt grants) or show public benefit if less funding available
- Initial stay for 2 years
- Employment authorization only from startup
- Minimum salary at 400% poverty level
- Spouse gets EAD, but minor children do not.
After 2 years, 3 years extension
- Atleast 10% ownership and active role in startup
- Atleast $500K additional funding OR $500K revenue with 20% growth OR 10 Full time Jobs
You can find a good analysis of this problem from a Game Theory perspective by listening to Professor C. Christine Fair. She has written a couple of books, and you can find her talks on Youtube.
Depends upon the university, if it is publicly funded or not. Tuition for private universities ranges from $1000-$10000 per year. Public universities - Less than $1000 per year, in many cases no tuition.
Mindmaps, with notes. Allows you to organize the information in a visual hierarchy, so that you can quickly refer back to the notes. I use Freemind[1], an open source tool.
If the idea is a B2C kind of business - Run a facebook ad campaign with the target audience. You can direct them to a landing page and collect email addresses/ other details.
Facebook pretty much has a global reach, so you should get some validation points.
For more of B2B ideas - You are better off talking to people directly. Mine you network. Look for conferences, meetups, tradeshows where you might find your audience
For Live chat, there are a couple of options like LiveHelperChat/Livezilla. In the end, I ended up using Olark, since I didn't want to maintain one more service.
For support - It really depends upon your use case and volume. One non-open source alternative is Google Groups - You can configure a Google Group as a Collaborative inbox
Here are my thoughts on this - After emacs and shell, I typically spend time using the browser. I am thinking of trying out Conkeror[1] to minimize my use of the mouse.
Master emacs & shell. You can achieve a high level of productivity if you can get into the flow. Of course, this requires more training and you will be slow initially, but over time, it helps.