Looking for investors or feedback on my startup

You actually want to be a serious company and not a hobby?

You need to fire everyone involved with the video and marketing, hire a CTO who can build you an app and a web platform on equity, get a biz dev guy with experience in manufacturing and scaling a company, and for gods sakes try and find someone who has actually built a successful business in the past.

And for those reasons, I'm out.

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This is is a great thread thank you all. Can you tell me what you liked about my presentation?

Has any viewed our product comparison? Our product is 10 to 30 faster than our main competing product.

>Jow Forums - Business & Finance
shill a coin or gtfo

You will need $60k to catch up to me and years.

I haven't thought about that yet, I'm scrambling to just get it finished.

vimeo.com/275280875

I used EmazingLights before and I'm quite happy with their products. Most people I know just stick to EmazingLights even though there are tons of other competitors (LEDGloves for example). Never tried their Spectra, but doesn't it also have the ability to change color from the mobile app? Why is your product faster in that sense?

Our product puts the others in the stone age if current glovers see it they will want to upgrade. I'm also targeting the online forum.

I have set no money aside yet because I will seek more funding when we have more to show after this round. I understand this needs to be thought of though in advance and mentioned.

Nick our hardware dev has vast experience in manufacturing. His personal project has almost a million in inventory being built up.

I can find an e-com guru.

I will add our roles, thank you.

His product is absolute shit compared to mine. You have to go through 18 menus everytime you want to edit and view the pattern. On ours you can do everything on the same page and it sends directly to your gloves, his sends to a LED hub that you then transfer to the finger lights.

Couldn't say it better myself. None of you have the background or credentials to be in business. Just because you can shoot some shitty product vidoes for Instagram doesn't mean you can be successful with hardcore digital marketing or understanding the intricate workings of E-commerce. I can hire bumfuck college kids to film videos for me and manage social media. You're business is worth $50k? Are you dense? You don't have a working product. No sales. No e-commerce experience. No digital marketing platform experience. And I'm supposed to trust that you'll give me a return on $5k? I'd rather source this project out to China with the $5k alone than ever give you and your team a dime.

And for those reasons, I'm out.

t. E-commerce and digital data marketing expert who makes more than you ever will.

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You're pitching that you're going to make your investors rich and hit a potential $7M valuation and your go to market literally consists of facebook ads and a single forum.

Quick math:

I invest $5K and get 10% of the company. Next round you raise lets say $200K (because manufacturing is expensive) and I get diluted to 5%.

You then take that $200K and put $100K into manufacturing, $25K into development, and that leaves you with $75K.

You then spend the remaining money on advertising. If you're lucky you get a 0.05% conversion rate on your advertising. So that means for every 200 dollars you spend, you get one customer.

After manufacturing and advertising costs lets say you get $100 in profit per pair of gloves. That means with your entire $200K investment you are only going to make $37,500 in gross.

But you've got 5 team members, they need salaries. At $4K a person per month, an entire $200K investment would get you at most like 5 months of burn before you need to raise again.

So now I own 5% of a company that is constantly hemorrhaging cash.

We have a fully functioning prototype. Our product is also far superior to anything to anything on the market. We simply lack e-com.

Also I will make more than you.

My product is far better, that counts for a lot.

Did you even read everything?..

Lol no. Our profit margins are 75%. Your money is also re paid right away. You will make about $10k if we raise $200k.

You literally don't know that. You have no advertising plan so you don't know how much it's going to cost to acquire a customer.

You're not doing at scale manufacturing and shipping, so you don't know what those costs will be.

You don't have an e-commerce platform, so you don't know how much that will cost.

You have literally no idea what your profit margin is going to be and pretending otherwise is ridiculous.

Let's try it this way: What do you sell your gloves for and how much do they cost to manufacture today?

For the love of Christ don't tell me you've burned through $60k on this 'idea'. I can source out a better product to my team and have a working prototype in a month with a lot less than $60k. I could blow you out of the water if I saw any profitability in this project. And someone, somewhere will.
He doesn't understand how business math works clearly from his answer:

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Sorry, forgot to account for advertising. Look all I know is there some guy making tens of millions of dollars releasing shit products. Why can't that be me if my products are way better?

It was other investors money.

Holy goddamn shit that question alone is the single most concerning thing I've ever heard an entrepreneur say.

Answer the question because I'm about to drop some knowledge on your ass that is going to save you from wasting a lot more money. What do you sell your gloves for, and what does it cost you to manufacture them today?

We sell for $150 and it costs $35 to make them.

>sorry I forgot to account for advertising and operating expenses
This is why you'll never be successful or see any money from me.

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You shouldn't be looking for investors on Jow Forums because it's highly unlikely you'd find them. Maybe if you added a crypto component.

Do you have an email?

Am I doing anything right? Doesn't my product being much better count for anything?

Yes, I have an email. Did you want to contact me?

Everyone is working for free. Big deal I made on mistake a message board. I'm not thinking about marketing I need to get my product finished first to have more to show for the final round of investment for advertising.

Okay great.

Baseline you make $115 in gross.

Let's say you get double my original conversion rate on your advertising, 1%. That means you're spending $100 to get that customer to buy your product.

$15 in gross. On $75K you will sell 7,500 units at the 1% conversion rate.

That year, you will make $112,500 in profit, sounds great right?

But you have 5 team members who need salary. At $48K a year per head that goes to $4K a month. (4,000 * 12) * 5 = $240,000.

So in your first year you will lose $87,500 assuming that you raise another $200K and your advertising conversion rate is double what is expected.

Yeah

That's not going to continue forever. And you need a team to run a business. If you can't make the numbers work it won't matter how good your product is because you will take a loss every time you sell a unit and you'll take even more loss if you don't sell units.

BTW your gross profit based on pretty sensible numbers is -$11.67.

Shit net profit srry

Heh, I've been thinking of hand controllers myself, though my ideas aren't similar to yours at all.

Also the market is still small imo.
How many people have VR and also would want to buy extra controllers for it?

Whoops my bad.
Thought this was for VR

It's only some edm rave lights.

Are you insane it won't cost that much get customers.. A full team? For what? The products built. Also anyone we do need is working for equity.

[email protected]

It's a large niche market, we can get to 50% profit on each unit easy.

How do you know it won't cost that much to get customers? Have you done any advertising yourself and proven there's a better rate you can hit?

And a full team because you're going to need someone to handle the money, someone to deal with the site when it's fucking up, someone to deal with customer complaints and support requests, someone to build new advertising materials, someone to talk to investors, someone to make sure orders are being shipped properly, someone to regularly inspect your manufacturer so you know there's no quality fade, and much much more.

You have literally 0 idea what you're doing, which means you're in exactly the right place to find someone who will give you money.

I'm going to be nice to you for a brief moment so you'll understand me.

Having a superior product doesn't mean you'll win.

You need to have a firm grasp on every estimated cost associated with everything. Otherwise, you'll end up burning out very fast and potentially losing lots of money. If you claim to have a marketing team, then you should be able to tell me a detailed roadmap for how you intend to drive traffic to your platform to get sales with an estimated monthly budget.

Guys with expensive cameras don't count as a marketing team. You'll need someone who specializes in backend marketing, facebook marketing, instagram marketing, google adwords, SEO, and the actual budget to get sales. Every single one of those platforms is vastly different.

Next, you'll need someone who know everything about ecommerce. These guys don't work for cheap or for equity. They are consultants who will get you results and optimize the sales funnel on your website to get you actual sales.

Your audience for this market isn't very big to begin with and only a select % of your market will be able to afford it.

You have no idea what you're doing and when you can't go into the black, it means the grim reaper is near.

The top guy is making like $40 million, he was also ranked in the top 100 fastest growing business in the US many times, it's booming.

You literally didn't answer the question.

How do you know you can acquire customers for less than that cost?

He had the experience and knowledge to scale the business to that number. You do not. Retards think they can fly. Doesn't mean they'll survive the landing from a 10 story building.

If you can't answer the questions, you shouldn't be seeking money.

There's no way to know my cost to sell unless I actually start selling.

I will hire the best of the best in these areas then. Problem solved.

To be fair OP has more research than half the crypto ICO's people shill here that have raised millions.

>You have no advertising plan so you don't know how much it's going to cost to acquire a customer.

This is almost impossible to predict. It's a reason why legitimately having a "run at cost until we figure it out" approach is acceptable in a pre-series B type startup. Companies that have launched dozens of products that are worth billions of dollars cannot predict the cost per customer acquisition until there is a few years of traction. If this was predictable life would be a lot easier overall and everyone would have boat loads of money.

(I have an MBA and work for a fortune 500 marketing company).

You literally said "are you crazy there's no way it will cost that much to acquire a customer".

Now it turns out what you meant was, "actually I have no idea how much it will cost to acquire a customer".

And now you're going to hire the best? Okay well that $240K per year in salary just got raised to about $500K per year.

No, he's actually a stealing idiot in my opinion. I know him personally. He learned on the fly to get where is. He has come a long way and so can I.

That's not even a little true. Anyone can run a PPC & SEO analysis on their competitors for like $500 bucks.

And this guy's not even saying, "I'm going to A/B test these various strategies." he came in with two strategies and has yet to suggest a single other method of marketing. I work at an accelerator and I see seed stage start ups every day that are way more fleshed out than this.

Take a look at this.
>Just landed from our production meeting things are looking great!!
Wonderful thing to know where you've been spending investor money. Imagine, just for a moment, if you'd spent this money on something business related.

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Thank you. Exactly. There is just no way to know until we start selling. All I know is the light show companies have massive warehouses, they must be making money.

I have gotten people to invest this much.

What do I need to add? Please tell me?.

I used to work at an airport it was free.

You know what dude, I blew like $30K on my first stupid start up when I was an idiot, but at least when I got advice I fucking took it.

Everything that you need to figure out is in this thread. Instead of trying to tell people who clearly know more about building a business than you do that they're wrong, just take the feedback and stop being such an idiot.

And for god sakes do not ever say anything like

> why is my product being better not enough to make money?

> LOL it's not going to cost that much to acquire a customer! Okay well admittedly I don't actaully know that but...

> my competitors have warehouses, therefore my business will make money

> I have a top 100 forbes businessman on my team, but I need to ask the internet for $5k and part of that will go to buying plane tickets for my team

How can I flesh this out more?

>That's not even a little true. Anyone can run a PPC & SEO analysis on their competitors for like $500 bucks.

Yes, this research is done on a huge scale. I've seen it done in the 100's of thousands just to see if a TV Show idea is viable (because filming the first episode would be in the millions). A/Z tests so to speak with the best results and experts in the industry guaranteeing a grand slam and it ends up tanking. If you could go to market with guaranteed success then there wouldn't be a need for entrepreneurs or startups. There is no real way to predict costs on customer acquisition unless you have a few years of traction. There is a reason why more serious investors don't want to come on until later rounds...

Alright, I'll listen. Keep the advice coming. Your telling me if I do all this stuff I can get the $5k?

Video of prototype: youtu.be/c4TTBuQ2uFA

Bullshit, I literally had a guy for my start up put together a 50 city PPC estimate on sweat equity just this week.

And even if OP came in with a limited search at least then, AT LEAST, he could say "we have done some research and that indicates bla bla bla" but instead it's "give me $5K so I can go tape a video and we're going to use facebook ads but lol the conversion rate you estimate is ridiculous even though I actually have no clue".

No. Even if you took all my advice and I gave you money I can tell from the way you handle harsh criticism that your company is going to fail no matter what. You need to have the truth beaten into you by reality first.

I'm done giving you free advice. My guess is you can't afford me for the hour. Nor do I want to work for equity. Good luck. You'll need it.

That's a crock of shit. You may have an MBA, but you're still a massive idiot. I was able to get an estimate for my customer acquisition costs in less than a month. Sure, you won't know LTV until after some time, but getting cheap KPIs for products is easy.

Sixty thousand dollars.

PPC estimate? How is this done?

Okay look I was a little defensive but I believe if I work hard enough in a few years we can be making a few million dollars profit each year.

Give the money and you can beat the truth in to me all you want and I will listen. I'll figure this out. I have gotten this much money I can get more.

How To Start A Start Up

dwindly.io/nKOx6d

How much do you charge per hour?

Jesus christ.

"I believe" reality doesn't care.

"give me the money then tell me what to do" what the fuck?

Listen idiot, you need to figure out what to do, go do it on a small scale to prove it works, then ask for money.

Why the fuck do you need to raise $5K? Why don't you just get that top 100 forbes business guy, that multimillionaire, to give it to you?

How many of these things do you expect to sell?
I dont know too much about this EDM or go to festivals but if I went to a festival I wouldnt want to get "gloved".

> why is my product being better not enough to make money?

> LOL it's not going to cost that much to acquire a customer! Okay well admittedly I don't actaully know that but...

> my competitors have warehouses, therefore my business will make money

> I have a top 100 forbes businessman on my team, but I need to ask the internet for $5k and part of that will go to buying plane tickets for my team

>"I believe"

>"give me $5k then tell me what to do"

>asking for money on Jow Forums

>no projected operating costs, including advertising

>spending investor funds on private plane charters

>We have a working prototype

I can order all those parts on amazon and duplicate your shit in less than a day. Then have a pajeet or ruskie make me an app with a better interface. Then outsource production to the Chinese.

For you, I'd charge $60k/hr. At least the money would go toward something productive.

I can only prove it works by releasing on Kickstarter. I should have started on a smaller scale.

That guy is our competitor, why would he give me money?

Then why don't you save up money and fund it yourself?

After all you're making $115 profit per unit right now right?

What is it you do again?

It will take me 10 months to save that from my extra income. We aren't selling units yet.

Oh okay so the numbers you quoted me earlier are total bullshit as well then. Guess we can add that to the list of stuff you don't know.

And why, exactly, should someone give you money instead of letting you save up for a few months to prove it yourself?

Look, I was a little defensive. I apologize. I wish you make all the money in the world this year.

I do everything you can't do. And make 7 figures doing it. I also answer questions when asking for criticism instead of being a little pussy.

I'm done here. The answers are in the thread. Get back to work.

Thanks user.

>hey noob, i'm a hotshot businessman here's how you do business
>lol nice try noob, i'm the real hotshot businessman posting on Jow Forums and you're advice is literally moronic
>you fucking noob i'm a a hotshot and here is my private plane i bank 7 figures i bet you're living with mom, btw i'm posting on Jow Forums
>no you're a noob i have an mba and am a hotshot businessman who bangs supermodels right before posting on Jow Forums

I think everyone need to lay of OP he came here for constructive criticism and all he’s getting is shit. I really have no clue how to help you OP because I have no business experience but I’ll just say that I think you should keep at it if this is something you really care about. Don’t listen to a bunch of crypto chasers on a afghani paper machet website. You do you, just keep working hard and you’ll make it.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=KxGRhd_iWuE

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Alright op ill throw in my 2 cents (figuratively, u aint getting cash from me)

1. Figure out how much itll cost to make a bare minimum functional product

2. Compare to how much you think youd buy it for. Imo, make them disposable and for 5usd per pop, people would def buy over lightsticks at clubs/events. Max id pay for a pair would be 25usd but best thing obviously is prototype and test in a regional location.

3. Make a prototype asap, find what ull need, make it urself or hire someone to do it, forget about outsourcinf production just yet.