I have been a problem drafting, project planning, pitch drafting machine over the last week (more actually). We have a big meeting planned for Tuesday in which I’m going to beg propose that a large software development company allows me to pay them about 5% of the total monthly bill and then they make the rest of the amount an account payable.
I have really enjoyed the business planning and pitch drafting process because the act of pulling together numbers, plans and trying to articulate the problem has helped me better understand the company. I might have to mail my MBA back if my school heard me say that we didn’t have a business plan, nor any of the research they suggested I do before investing time in building a product.
Nope.
What we had was a damn good idea and no direct or even close competitors in a market that’s in the billions. Sure, people are solving their problems today but idea is so much better … it’s the difference between a trusty horse and an AMG Mercedes.
So, we set about building the product with super low expenses other than my partner / CTOs time, which is valuable but I paid him in a sizable chunk of equity.
Now that our POC is basically done, the road to releasing to the market is pretty large for a weekend and summer warrior so we need to build out our dev team, but I’m not really interested in owing $240K for the work.
Thus, we need to fundraise. First, we’ll look to barter and then the friends and family round.
I’ve been working on the pitch for a number of hours per day and it’s nearly done. The neat thing is that it’s greatly improved over the week as bland problem statements have evolved into sharper ideas. I struggled with projections until finally I decided that didn’t care about those projections and decided to show the work plan, budget and approach for the next six to twelve months.
I like it. It’s authentic and solid. Is it good? I’ll tell you next Wednesday. 🙂