Kuldip, Atit and others,
Thanks for your comments. I surely agree with your comments on the
management + money + technology factor.
But here's the scenario -
As for management, its a challenging situation since we do believe (as
does
every one else!) that our idea has the potential to gain critical mass
market, targeting a specific segment of the market and create brand
equity.
Now, the two of us do not have lots of top-notch experience under our
belt
or a track record if you will...but we see ourselves as being able to
think
out of the box and come up with innovative ideas. Based on the funding
and
the way our model evolves, we aim to bring on board senior industry
folks
for the necessary management experience.
As for money, we plan to quantify our market research and findings as
deeply
as possible in order to justify the investments that are required to
fund
the idea.
As for technology, our idea is more on the lines of an online service
rather
than a product. But we do aim to commodotize/customize a lot of the
specific
service offerings in order to serve individual needs of each
user/customer.
In order to create and manage our online service, we aim to use one of
the
leading pre-packaged solutions that are available at anywhere from
$100,000
to $500,000 depending on nature of service and scalability requirements.
The other issue we face in terms of creating a proof of concept is that,
even though its going to cost us a 'small', fortune we are not in a
position
to finance it ourselves. We ourselves would prefer to self-fund it,
since we
know we have to give up the largest chunk of equity at the lowest
valuation.
But one can't have everything.
Another important consideration is the management discipline and
industry
contacts an angel/zero stage VC brings to the table.
The third consideration being that once the concept is proven, it has to
be
scaled VERY rapidly in order to gain/sustain an advantage. This is
possible
only when the 'been there done that' type of people are involved - not
just
enterprising entrepreneurs.
So the question remains? how to get the angel/VC to bet on you with all
of
the above mentioned handicaps + the idea being an online service rather
than
a product.
I apologize for the long note..
Sincerely,
J. Shaw