A small cash injection for a small startup can make a significant difference – I know this as I’ve been there. I’ve watched our company grow from having a turnover per year in 5 figures, to having the same level of turnover per week!
You can read more about the entire thing on their site, but basically the idea was that by “crowdsourcing” small sums of investment you could cut through redtape and give a startup a helping hand.
Since the sum overall is small – €5000 and the investment per head is only €50 the entire thing should be quite painless and fun to watch (you’d easily spend more on Lottery tickets or having a flutter on the Derby .. )
Over 60 submissions were received, but there could be only one – why does that conjure up images of Highlander?
It was decided that the voting would be done via Twitter, with each investor having 50 votes to distribute as they saw fit. I initially had issues with this public voting concept, as I was worried that my choices would be judged in the light of my day job. However I decided that if people can’t deal with me as an individual and “get over with it” then I’m probably better off not dealing with them at all.
The submissions are available as a spreadsheet here. Some of them are truly terrible. Terrible on more than one level. If you’re looking for €5000 from someone who does not have a vested interest in your success you need to do several things:
- capture their attention
- win them over
- show them that you will make good use of the investment
- show that you understand what the investment can’t do
Of course coherent English, with correct spelling, punctuation and grammar would be an absolute minimum. Unfortunately some of the submissions failed on all counts and were very hard to grasp.
Others seemed to think that playing buzzword bingo would win them money …
While others obviously either don’t need the money or simply think that the amount had an extra zero or two …
In the end I voted on three projects that I liked for a variety of reasons. Since 50 does not divide evenly by three I ended up distributing my votes as follows:
- 20 to KildareStreet. Why? It’s a very cool and useful service already, so it’s gone past being just some “crazy idea”. They also have a number of sane and reasonable ways of making money from it, so it’s not one of these “fluffy” idea with no actual business model to back it
- 15 to getdigs.ie – The idea appealed to me and I could see how it would be relatively easy to give them a push in the right direction.
- 15 to PhotoIreland – While this may not make any money directly it would indirectly as it would bring people into the country. Besides I like photos. They also had one of the best and clearest explanations of what they wanted to do and how they’d spend the money
If I’d had a few more points I’d have given one to the lot who said they’d get champagne with the money – I loved their quirky honesty!
Let’s see who wins!
UPDATE – forgot to link to the spreadsheet – sorry!
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I saw a tweet for this and thought I’d fill in the form. I probably devoted 5 minutes to what I would do with the money. I had no idea of the number of influential people who had donated. I also didn’t know it was going public until I received an email. When it was added to the spreadsheet and I could see the calibre of the other entries. When the voting started and it dawned on me who was reading my scrawls, I wanted to curl up and die.
I could moan about the google spreadsheet may not have helped my entry when it applied some ugly formatting and that all entries should have made the blog but the bottom line is there were more deserved entries, pitched in a more credible manner. Outvesting is brilliant. It was the first time I’ve done anything resembling a pitch. I’m still alive and I will learn from it – just as soon as I stop cringing.
Christ. Some spammers and scammers in that list. I’m not using Twitter so a pubic vote in it is a bit much to ask.
A small few good ideas in there but overall the future of Ireland is bleak if people genuinely think they have good business ideas via what they submitted.
WTF? What type of investment competition/whatever you want to call it doesn’t ask the question “What do you do?”. “How will you make money?” would be another good question. From the looks of it a lot of people just want a free €5k…
Call me negative, but I thought the idea of this was batty from the get-go. Helping someone worthy to buy plane tickets was one thing, but offering a charitable donation is just daft. If you cant raise 5k on your own then you shouldn’t be in business. If you have a good/worthy business proposition then getting €5k is trivial…
Sorry about the comments not appearing sooner – one or two of them were flagged as spam, so I had to retrieve them manually
@Michael – ok, but did you honestly think that you’d get the money for nothing?
@Damien – I mentioned that to them originally as well and they would accept the “votes” via email etc.,
@Richard “How will you make money?” – most of the web 2.0 / web 3.0 fanboys can’t answer that question 🙂
Michele
I am having problems coming to terms that no one will ever be anywhere near as excited about my business as me. Winning just €5,000 would have been like winning the lottery not because I couldn’t raise 5k on my own but there would be a degree of vindication attached. Anyone can win the lottery.
I could detail exactly my situation and my aspirations going forward but for the whole world to see? For me, not just yet but I am happy for those that have done well.
It’s easy to criticise Outvesting just like it’s easy to criticise many of the entries but credit to everyone (Outvesting, donators and participants) for at least stepping forward and trying to do something.