Bidniz stuff
A couple of people have volunteered to provide further seed investment. When the first one offered some weeks ago I said we didn't want any, since we were just starting up our big funding round. But by the time the second person offered, only last week, it became clear that we have between 100 and 200 unclaimed units, leftovers from January investors who hadn't actually sent us any money. (Units are shares, except we're an LLC and not a corporation, so we call them units instead. Shrug.) It would actually be to our benefit to sell them to interested parties, even at January prices, before moving into our next round. So, I'll wheel and deal and things will work out OK.
The variable comes from the fact that one investor has explicitly backed out while the other continues to make "I'm still interested" noises. But it's been five months now, so I have the distasteful task of calling this person I don't know very well at work and asking point-blank if they're in or out. I'd rather do this over email, but this person has demonstrated that they're not interested in communicating that way, despite the fact that the one time I called them before they asked that I keep my follow-ups to email. (No, it's nobody you know.)
I dislike telephone conversations specifically because they are so intrusive, but there are times when this aspect makes them handy. If still quite dislikable.
Attended an MIT startup clinic last night, my first in several months. It was good time, and I always enjoy meeting other entrepreneurs in every field and trading stories and cards (even though I am always full of nervousness and dread right up until I walk through the doors).
This one had a lot of people who weren't sure what they wanted to do, or whose startups were in very early stages. As always people love to hear about Volity Games, whether or not they know anything about games, but this time I got a lot of impressed looks when people learned that we actually have a working public beta. I'll have to remember to open with this fact in future elevator pitches. I'll also have to look into the possibility of giving a presentation myself at a future clinic.
And in case you thought I was kidding about the competition for funding being all cancer cures: one of the two presentations last night was a brand new startup pitching a service for early oral cancer detection, which they hope to sell to dentists and oral surgeons. There's a lot of money to extract from the field of dread diseases, my friends.
My networking experiences over the last couple of weeks has made it clear to me that, contrary to what I expected a year ago, there is very little game industry representation within capital-land. This presents a complication for us, because investors typically keep their investments within fields they know about, and few know anything about games.
It seems to be true the other way around, too: The one angel whose attention we caught last week is himself from the games industry, and told us how refreshing it was to see a funding application from a startup whose plan and product he could actually grok. So there aren't many entrepreneurs in games, either!
This seems rather counterintuitive, given the famously tremendous size and growth of the games market. The key, I suppose, is that it's not an invention- or innovation-driven market... it's mostly a lot of people grinding out new content through existing tools. So a startup that has truly invented something new, like us, is an anomaly.
The variable comes from the fact that one investor has explicitly backed out while the other continues to make "I'm still interested" noises. But it's been five months now, so I have the distasteful task of calling this person I don't know very well at work and asking point-blank if they're in or out. I'd rather do this over email, but this person has demonstrated that they're not interested in communicating that way, despite the fact that the one time I called them before they asked that I keep my follow-ups to email. (No, it's nobody you know.)
I dislike telephone conversations specifically because they are so intrusive, but there are times when this aspect makes them handy. If still quite dislikable.
Attended an MIT startup clinic last night, my first in several months. It was good time, and I always enjoy meeting other entrepreneurs in every field and trading stories and cards (even though I am always full of nervousness and dread right up until I walk through the doors).
This one had a lot of people who weren't sure what they wanted to do, or whose startups were in very early stages. As always people love to hear about Volity Games, whether or not they know anything about games, but this time I got a lot of impressed looks when people learned that we actually have a working public beta. I'll have to remember to open with this fact in future elevator pitches. I'll also have to look into the possibility of giving a presentation myself at a future clinic.
And in case you thought I was kidding about the competition for funding being all cancer cures: one of the two presentations last night was a brand new startup pitching a service for early oral cancer detection, which they hope to sell to dentists and oral surgeons. There's a lot of money to extract from the field of dread diseases, my friends.
My networking experiences over the last couple of weeks has made it clear to me that, contrary to what I expected a year ago, there is very little game industry representation within capital-land. This presents a complication for us, because investors typically keep their investments within fields they know about, and few know anything about games.
It seems to be true the other way around, too: The one angel whose attention we caught last week is himself from the games industry, and told us how refreshing it was to see a funding application from a startup whose plan and product he could actually grok. So there aren't many entrepreneurs in games, either!
This seems rather counterintuitive, given the famously tremendous size and growth of the games market. The key, I suppose, is that it's not an invention- or innovation-driven market... it's mostly a lot of people grinding out new content through existing tools. So a startup that has truly invented something new, like us, is an anomaly.