. . .
Okay, just for fun (and in the remotest of possibilities that you will recognize and use this strategy):
Let's pretend someone came to me and pitched a venture like this. You for example. Well, founding and launching companies is my profession, so I might be able to save you a few hours (or decades) of wasted time and dead ends, lol
Let's further pretend that you tell me you need to raise "X" dollars and asked for my professional advice.
Let's assume for this hypothetical, that I was willing to give a month of my time to develop a plan that MIGHT increase your odds of getting the dough and business model you are dreaming of. Let's say, I will waive the $100K fee for the month and do it pro-bono.
Well, I already know what I would advise you, so now you have saved $100K, lol:
If I were in your position, with your resources (or lack thereof) and knowledge of business (or lack thereof), this is what i would do:
1) Recognize that I don't have a fucking clue how to raise money.
2) Recognize that I don't have any realistic idea of how to run and manage a company, especially one with investors' capital on the line.
3) Realize that my lack of a home/office or any business track record and all of the transiency of my existence would make it nearly IMPOSSIBLE to raise capital and run a business---without some other help/resources.
4) I'd then try to figure out a CREATIVE way to bring in some resources and this would be my first avenue to try....
- Try to find someone who knows how to do CROWDFUNDING and appeal to them to do it pro bono.
- Try to find someone who has a home or an office who is willing to lend a hand with banking, an address to deliver to, ship from, a phone, computer, etc.
- Give it your best shot to find both of the above.
- But, since the above is not very likely to happen (since it will require someone to spend time/money to help you) start working on "Plan B" right away at the same time
PLAN B: Find a documentary filmmaker or a wannabe documentary filmmaker or a student filmmaker and pitch them the idea of doing a documentary called "CINDERELLA STORY". They will follow several dreamy eyed idealists, would be entrepreneurs and future Facebook founders in their quest to make a billion dollars (or whatever their dream is). You, sir Clay Pigeon, would be in that documentary right now, they would begin videoing you and/or giving you video cam (or good Mobile device) to track your exploits. You would represent the spectrum of the entrepreneurial scale that is starry-eyed utopian-belief. Not a bad thing, just not a very practical thing for making money, right?
They (the student documentary producers) would front you some dough and "sponsor" you and your project. They could easily set up your CROWDFUNDING account and handle the particulars of it for u (e.g. get someone in business classes to do your business plan, get someone studying marketing to give you kill-ass cool marketing materials, logos, powerpoint, et al)
Then you would have backing by an industrious GROUP of enthusiastic people who have a motivation OTHER THAN betting that you will make a lot of money.
They would do it as brilliant and compelling "content" for their documentary project.
And it would be incredibly colorful material for them, whether you succeeded at astral levels or crashed and burned from unrealistic ideas. See what I mean?
Perhaps then you could do what you are trying to do and get the "backing" (not just a few guys handing you a hundred bucks each, which will surely make you fail due to undercapitalization). Get it?
Okay, that'll be $100,000. Oops, forgot, it's pro bono.
But that advice is worth a lot more than $100K if your commercial venture succeeds even at the most modest of levels.
This is entrepreneurial ju-jitsu, dude. You use your weaknesses and leverage them into strengths. It's judo where you use the foes power and size against him. You have every conceivable weakness for a new venture, so don't fight it. Make it work FOR you.
I would say that there is a 99.999999999% chance that you will NOT follow this advice.
And even if you do, there's a 98% chance that your business will fail unless the team behind you fills in all the missing reality and functions that you will never bring to the venture.
This is how reality works.
If you find some really talented folks to throw down with you, maybe your idea goes viral and its a sensation.
You are in a labyrinth right now. You think you need a hundred bucks here and there to move to the next segment of the labryrinth, towards the "exit". But there is no exit in the labyrinth you are in. Viewed from above, it's just a closed trap that gives you the sensation that you can navigate it by yourself. You can't.
You need a plan that takes you OUT OF that labyrinth and OUT OF that paradigm and OUT OF that mythological view of how business works. You need a super creative idea to bring about an alchemical event.
That's what i would do if i were you. Find sponsors who want to make a documentary. Even if that doesn't work, you will then be hooked into the same network that can get you up and running with a crowdfunding site and partner(s).
Many would-be entrepreneurs have asked my advice "how to succeed". I always tell them one thing. I'll give you free advice but only if you follow it. Otherwise, I won't.
99.99 % of the time they don't follow it very early on and I stop helping them quite soon, even during the first conversation, lol.
But they later will tell people "the market is bad right now" or some other absurdity to explain why their brilliant idea failed.
I can tell stories all day long about this, but hey, "free service free fall!" LOL LOL
I will help someone who really deserves help.
I hope Clay Pigeon goes viral. That'd be sooooo cool.
I did my part. Not a $100 check---a $100,000 plan.
The consulting was free, keep it so. LOL
ps: Just in case by some intergalactic miracle you try to follow the advice, DO NOT ASK OR EXPECT anything from any documentary filmmakers. You are content. You are not the film's producer or a partner. Give it all away because that is the only slightest hope you have to attract people to your koolaid. (i.e. don't go all "Hollywood" and think you are making a movie, you ain't. Consider yourself blessed and lucky beyond imagination if someone actually "bites" and catches fire on doing an extended documentary like this.
