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Whats the cut-off period for investments? I wont be in a position until the new year.
A % allocation of equity will be offered at a given valuation... when the equity
is fully sold, there will be no more.So it depends on the speed of the uptake.
I am happy to offer both investment and some devops love.
Do you know Puppet?
Puppet and Debian (Ubuntu server) is where we our throwing our weight initially.
Oh, and dev environments use vagrant.
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I have pledged as a patron (as mentioned above) but having read some of the excitement-making posts above would like to have the opportunity to invest.... will you be sending out a note/email to all the people who have pledged offering that.. presumably at the time you ask us to settle our pledges, right?
I will be doing that.
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Just spoke to Jon Bradford over at Seedcamp, and whilst he answers in his usual terse and "life's too short I've got places to meet and people to go" manner, his advice to me is to use the opportunity of interest to raise a figure I'd like rather than the figure I absolutely need to survive. His view: there are always surprises in execution, things always cost more and take longer.
In my main pitch deck the plan was always £30k (+ enough to cover processing fees and some overheads and advice) would get us through to just finishing the product in 1 year. Then we would seek a far more serious level of funding (fully funded [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_A_round"]Series A[/ame]) to raise enough to expand the team dramatically and start growing the features and number of sites we run.
Jon's view is that I should look to 18 months rather than 1 year as it takes a long time to get a Series A in place, and that I should pad just enough to get hold of expertise we lack during that time (i.e. to pay for legal advice and other skills we don't have inhouse).
I'm going to speak to Seedrs next to see how to structure this... want to grab legal advice tomorrow if possible as there's a risk that if I structure the equity badly it will affect future investment from a VC. I want to make sure I can give you guys something of very real value and potential, but without screwing the long-term viability by jeopardising future investment ability.
Very dull stuff for me to go stew on.
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once microcosm.app is up and running and you need another cash injection will you let the investors come on dragons den with you?
As a big crowd standing behind me?
Actually, we've applied to YCombinator, and I was thinking about hitting up the SF fixed gear lot and turning up to the interview in a pack of 100 riders to demonstrate that even the other side of the world the love and demand is there.
No idea what a bunch of Silicon Valley investors would make of bike polo manifesting itself on their beautifully tended green spaces.
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Haven't you already applied to YCombinator? Or is this a second application?
Last year, when the idea was too nascent and nebulous, a YCombinator alumni I know wanted to pair up and submit an application. This we did.
We did fine in the process, except the alumni who was helping open the door also inadvertently closed it. It turned out he still had his existing company and was still building his house (literally). And YC's view (as I understand it second-hand) seemed to be that there was no way we could focus on the new thing whilst the old things were still there. Go away and come back when you are focused and able to do this.
It was far too early, and since then I've quit work, realigned my life so that I can live within the monthly stipend, and evolved the idea into something I can communicate and implement.
Now we're in a better place, and so we've applied again. Refined idea, different team. I'm the only one that remains the same, and I've put down 6pt and the developer too. So we would be three... if we get onto YC.
The YC plan is in all likelihood not going to work. Only 3% get accepted, and last year over 4,600 companies applied for it. There is lots that counts against us: We're UK based, I'm over 30yrs old, they already own reddit and another forum might be conflict of interest. But then there's lots that count for us: We have an existing forum and community, we have domain experience, we have a team that balances the required skills.
So we'll see... we'll be told in 5 days whether we have an interview in San Francisco. And if we do, then we're in the 10% that get that far.
We wouldn't be going to YC for the money (it's less than we need to get through a bootstrapped year). Nor would we be going for the mentoring (even though we do need our skill gaps filled).
We'd be going to join other companies in an intense environment and to basically compete and focus. To work 18hr days, wake up and work again. To watch the other startups and see what works and what doesn't work. To feed off that energy.
We'd go for the exposure to that environment and the absolute focus it will deliver.
So if we get it... we hope to move faster than if we were here, and potentially meet investors who might fund the Series A.
But if we don't get it... well we're doing this anyway.
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Nice. Good luck to you with it - you can count on me to help raise the capital. If you've got any use for a middleweight front end dev then you could likely count me in there, too (my dev enviro is also vagrant, currently building a django project etc etc, have mobile platform experience, etc etc).
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I have little idea about what's going on but reading this thread is like watching a new american series about starting a company...
Except it's based in London, and the office space is an Art Studio in the sidings at Waterloo station and in the morning it smells of fox poo around here.
That is fox the animal, not Fox the user.
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yeah.
get b&d to fly over specially and he can charm debra meaden(sp?) into all of the money for 3% stake
I am a great negotiator.
I might get myself a perm and see if I can mimic his dulcet tones.
Beware of expensive imitations...
Thus leaving B&D for Hilary Devey?
shudders
That was the plan.
Oh lovely. Cheers.
reconsiders amount to "buying a beer"
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More dull SEIS advice: http://seedrs.com/seis and http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/seedeis/invest.htm
MrDrem
Vince
Soul
*Matt*
mr_tom
HatBeard
bothwell
6pt
saljam
Backstop
handtightenonly-
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Crowdfunding the creation of the next version of LFGSS
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