As I sit here in the SoHo House in lower Manhattan, I cant help but express some frustration in taking Bitcoin and its economy more mainstream. A prospective investor just left, and I'm finishing up a seed round of funding. Although I've done this before with my other companies, the ratio of prospective investors to actual investors is much higher here than in any other industry, which means I have to meet more investors than I would for another type of business. Previously, If I had met 10 investors, at least 2-3 would invest, but with Bitcoin that number is much higher.

I've come to a realization that I'm not just pitching my company, but rather pitching the whole industry of Bitcoin. Not only that, but most time spent on meetings IS explaining, pitching, and trying to have them understand why Bitcoin will become (investing with me, of course) a multi billion dollar industry.

My initial obstacles was explaining how this would grow, how can we use Bitcoin in the mainstream world? Obviously as a merchant solution the answer is simple and Bitcoin is very appealing to adult entertainment sites, gambling and eventually larger retailers.

Right, Growth. Thats the key word.

So I prepare documents and business models and explain how much Bitcoin will make, how much it has made and its mistakes and how the community has fixed them. I have to explain the MtGox hack, the mybitcoin disappearance and the legal battles we all face.

There are 'riskier' investors, and I've already secured and signed with them, but why does that have to be? Is it because Bitcoin is so new that alot of my question remain unanswered?

The point of this post is yes to voice my frustrations, but at the same time I consider this community to be shareholders in my company because your thoughts, ideas, and voices are what make up Bitcoin. You guys have been here since the beginning and no what will, and what will not work.

With that said, I was hoping to get the following out of this post:
1. Some feedback of my thoughts.
2. Advice/Tips for my next investor meeting.
3. Overall ideas of HOW you guys see Bitcoin breaking into the mainstream market.

Thanks for reading 

-Charlie

Please help me test out the new Bitcoin Sentiment Indicator:

Financial Risk Analytics  

Up and running !

Only complaint is that when in the Options (on Windows 7x64), when checking "Start Bitcoin on windows system startup" and then hitting Apply. There's a slight locking up of the program, then the box becomes unchecked.  I'm not sure it's actually doing anything.  Hitting Ok instead of Apply, yields the same results, except the Options dialog disappears and the checkbox is still checked.  When you re-open Options, the checkbox isn't checked anymore.

Might be something to look into

In fact, I would almost boldly propose that the term "block chain" be renamed to "public ledger".  This would be a jargon change to use a term familiar to anyone with anything to do with banking and accounting, rather than a term that only has meaning to computer scientists.  It would encourage non-engineers to make many more useful assumptions, such as the fact that entries are only added to the end of it, and that it's available to everybody.