Crowdfunding the creation of the next version of LFGSS

:)

Since Thursday I have:

6) Got promises of introductions to Silicon Valley VC firms and VCs

i know a few people out that way... specifically, i know several people at the EFF should you ever need (i hope not!) and also a few people who did well in the dotcom boom (but i'm not going to name them here).

:)
Oh, one big important question to the people who missed out on the investment round; Do you want us to consider issuing more equity for 1 more opportunity to invest?

i think this is what was trying to be answered in mirius' post (or rather, requote of what you said previously). that was then explained better in the next post:

The context was that you had previously given a very strong statement (with defined reasons as to why) that you were restricting yourself to £50k and that stage two would be quite some time in the future, even though you knew it was very likely that you could raise considerably more in stage one. Now it seems that some people you know have whined a bit and you have thrown out that rationale for the investment structure?

i have to say, i agree: and i declare up front that i was one of the people who invested (i'm an anon ;-)

specifically, i think the bit you said originally about:

And the answer is due diligence and fair valuation. Just because there is demand to invest £75-100k it does not mean that it's true that the company has suddenly had an increase in value to £750k that would satisfy the due diligence of Seedrs and future investors.
still remains very true - what has changed since last week? to my eyes, nothing: you have the same users as last week (lfgss), the same code (more or less, you might have written a little more) and the same ideas. true, you have 50k committed funds from people whereas last week it was all just hot air - but we've all seen startups go bust or be superbly over-valued.

ahh, i see you just responded to this point. the key things you say this time are:

However, more than a trivial number of people have expressed the desire to invest and that they missed the chance, so I'm doing the reasonable thing of listening to this and trying to determine whether I want to deviate from my plan to allow them to.

If I deviated and made an extension to this angel round by opening a 2nd window on Seedrs, it would be to secure 6pt as a designer rather than rely on short windows of design resource on contract. As that is a poor way to build a well-made product.

my responses to this are that one, you've already learnt an important lesson that will stand you in good stead next time around: first of all, be fair to your (close) friends and family, not a bunch of random strangers on the internet. sure your dad may be a bit miffed, so remember to prioritise letting him have first dibs in the second round next year (or whenever) - and anyway, if you make that much money, surely you'd give some to your folks anyway?

secondly, re: design - well, we've all suffered lfgss.com in its various incarnations for the last 5+ years! i think at this stage it's rather the proof of concept than the absolute beauty that's going to get people to come knocking - after all, you've got a captive audience for when you switch this forum over to microcosm, i'm sure 15k people aren't just gonna turn around and scarper off to yahoo! groups or someother alternative overnight. and by that stage, you'll know for sure that you're onto a winner (eternal optimism!) and even more people will be queuing up to help you out with design etc.

i guess the thing that both of these points suggest you're learning here is time management and prioritisation; personally, i think you've done a great job so far and i'm sure you will only continue to get better. rock on!

oh yeah....

To answer your question about preferred features.

0) events

2) better pms. I want to be able to use my email client to send and receive pms, without me knowing an actual email address of the other party. Using microcosm as an intermediary.

Those are in priority order btw.

i was gonna chip in here as well - i'm currently writing this in a miniscule box in the centre of a 24 inch monitor, so it would be really awesome from my pov to sort out how to respond to posts better. i also agree with mashton that better pm system is a priority - the more i can do from my mobile or from my email the better. and, if you're doing calender stuff, i agree with other posters that .ics export / import functionality would be really useful.

and rock on mashton for recognising that counting begins with zero :)