How to find Seed Investors?
Hi. I have an amazing vision of where the future of entertainment could go in the 21st century, and a fully fleshed out product that demonstrates the potential fully. It's an internet service that serves as an Etsy style platform for Role Playing Game World Builders and their Players. I sincerely believe this the inevitable direction that will bear tremendous fruit in the coming decades. While my service (a RPG World Building Web Application) is brilliant and fully functional, it is nevertheless still somewhat klunky. I need about $100,000 to have a true UX/UI reworking of the site, and I'm trying to figure out how I would connect with, and pitch to, Seed Investors for this purpose. I know they are out there... but how to connect to them? That is not so clear to me. Are there good resources to help me get a handle on what is required to be successful in this pursuit? Any thoughts and advice are greatly appreciated. Thank you!
If it is fully functional, get some paying customers.
Early adopters accept clunky, later users expect refined and simple.
Any investors will be heavily focused in traction to validate your idea.
With $1000 monthly revenue your fundraising options will be 1000x higher than with $0.
More importantly, the equity and control you give away will be far less with traction.
I have raised funds and bootstrapped before, each have their place. But first investment is a path you cannot reverse and will kill certain products that shouldn't have raised a certain round at a certain time & terms. Don't know your industry so can't comment on your idea specifically, just food for thought.
Thank you for your thoughts! Much appreciated. These are very good points. The thing is, a couple of others have the same idea I have, come later into the market that I did, but their slickness and marketing saavy are causing them to be successful in growing fan bases, whereas my implementation is not grabbing people at this point. It seems to me that this is a UI / UX problem. I'm a great backend programmer, but the Front End is nevertheless lacking in ways that I'm pretty sure are causing my potential customers to bounce off.
The UX / UI is good, but not Excellent. I think I'm not able to secure those early adopters because of it, though it could be other factors, such as the pricing model, or perhaps the underlying fact that mine only supports my own RPG Rules system (for very good reasons) whereas the others are supporting popular RPG Rules systems.
There are one or two companies with an idea just like mine who recently showed up in the market with slick implementations, and good marketing, who I'm pretty certain have substantial Capital behind them. I'm having a hard time figuring out how I can compete with them. Right now, to be honest, they're grabbing the market and I'm having a tough time getting people on board with mine.
My question might need to evolve, however, to something more like - How do I best go about getting Early Adopters for a project that I think has huge potential, but where I have only a small reach in Social Media, and very little capital to throw at it?
Investors invest in people, not ideas.
From my experience you will have an impossible time trying to raise funds without traction and with a critical gap in your team as you state yourself.
Simplest plan is find a partner with a belief in the product matching your own. Someone who has some marketing, sales & UX experience.
Go that way and you don't need $100k, but you do need to be generous with equity.
Then with traction and a rounded team you can later seek investment (if still needed).
This is an excellent suggestion. In truth, I have been hoping to find just such a person, and have been scouring high and low, but thus far have had no luck. While I do know people who share my vision, they do not have the requisite skills to fill that role (marketing, sales, and UX). I wonder, is there any sort of resource out there that you know that might help connect me with such. Thus far I've had no luck in finding it if there happens to be one. Thanks again!
Here, angel.co, founder2be.com are a few
Or just networking at either startup or RPG focused events.
Ok. Thank you! I very much appreciate your thoughts and advice!
Angel co?