Make sure you check your local fire code requirements before getting your heart set on specific decorative items.  There are usually limits to the amount of combustible stuff you can have in a area which is open to the public.  Also check your local EPA and OHS requirements.  Laser light shows need to be set up in a specific way to minimise the chance of vision damage to the audience and the performers.  Your insurance will not cover you if you fail to apply accepted safety standards.

I've started a "start up costs" spreadsheet dank.  You need to research some costs and fill in the numbers.  Many of the line items will need to be expanded.  For instance, you'll need to create a new line item for each individual thing which fits under "internal construction", "fittings", "office equipment", "crockery", "appliances", etc.

In many cases, you'll need to make decisions and do some research before you can fill in the line items. For instance, if you're going to aim at the Middle Eastern market you'll need to decide how many different coffee blends you're going to offer and cost those (as well as cost crockery specific to serving that style of coffee).

Pricing internal constructions and fittings will take a considerable amount of research and you'll need accurate plans to do it properly as well as plans for how how you want it fitted out.  Things such as where the plumbing is located will affect your design options.

http://www.2shared.com/file/-C10RZA6/dank.html

His design work is actually pretty good for a specific market.  Unfortunately, he doesn't seem interested in taking on large design projects which would bring in significant money.  Not sure whether his skills are good enough to segue into environmental and interior design or whether graphic design is his niche.

Real world loan contracts deal with this all the time.  You denominate the contract in terms of the most stable currency even if the funds are loaned and the repayments made in another.  dank's proposed venture is not a "Bitcoin business" in any meaningful sense of the word.  The vast majority of his business will be conducted with USD and that's also the currency in which his accounting records will be maintained.  It's a pretty trivial matter to denominate the loan contract in USD and repay the lender in Bitcoins.

At fair market price or at the diluted price they're trying to force Matthew to accept?  It's sure as hell not in the interests of anyone planning to sue Matthew that he accepts a token payment for his stake in BitTalk Media Ltd.

The lesson he'll get in Free Market is someone else leasing the building because he doesn't have the funds or anything else organised which would allow him to acquire it.  He'll probably abandon the project if he can't get that particular building and blame "lack of capital" or "no-one giving him a chance" for the project stalling.

You mean you don't think that securing a lease on commercial premises and doing everything else necessary to actually launch the business when the mood takes him is a viable business plan?

dank, your spreadsheet doesn't show any repayments to your lenders as an expense.  This is definitely something people are going to want to see in your financial forecasts.  It also doesn't include any money being put towards your future ventures.  My understanding is that you're looking at funding future ventures from the profits of this one, so it's important that you regard setting aside money for that as an expense.

I can help you set up a more detailed spreadsheet if you like, but you'll need to find out some hard numbers on stuff.

No one is suggesting that it couldn't do well but the majority of service-based businesses fail.  How many "nice" restaurants, bars and cafes have you seen go out of business in your town/city?  Anything new gets a certain amount of attention when it first opens, but keeping people coming back week in week out is a hell of a lot harder than it looks even if you're the only game in town because people are fickle and they get bored after a while.

You spent pages and pages arguing with Rarity about shit which was utterly irrelevant to your business proposals, and he sure as hell wasn't trying to help you in any way.  It might be worth listening to what people with actual business experience have to say and if you choose to reject it at least understand why you're rejecting it.  

Never reject sound advice out of "ego".  You're not "different", "special", or "magical".  Your business proposal is not "unique".  If your venture is even moderately successful then you'll attract competition and that competition will likely be better resourced and better funded than you are.  You need to plan how you're going to create a "moat" before you even launch this venture.

dank, it's not "hate".  It takes a hell of a lot of good planning and hard work to make any business succeed and most of what creates that success is invisible.  dank glass wasn't a bad idea, but it hadn't been refined.  Turning this proposal into reality is going to be way more expensive and complex than dank glass would ever have been and people are trying to get you to consider the obstacles you'll face so that you can plan for them before you spend a cent of your own or lenders' money.

I did some quick research and there are basically two hookah lounge/bar models which are profitable.  There's the one aimed at college aged people which serves alcohol, has live entertainment, etc and there's the coffee house/restaurant model aimed primarily at a Middle Eastern clientele.  In both cases, there's a revenue stream apart from the hookahs themselves - alcohol and entertainment cover charges in the case of the first and food and beverages in the case of the second.

I know that you're reluctant to disclose your location in even general terms, but it's going to have a massive impact on your costings.  If you're located somewhere where a business which allows indoor smoking is required to have an independent air-conditioning you're either going to have to pay for the installation of that system or rent premises which are already compliant with that requirement.  Food and beverage service also comes with location dependent requirements and commercial kitchens are extremely expensive to install, so you may need to look for premises which has existing commercial food preparation facilities and an independent air-conditioning system.

You will need to allocate space for cleaning and disinfecting the hookahs themselves to whatever standard is required by health regulations in your area.  You need to factor in how long each hookah will be out of commission for cleaning before it can be re-used on a busy night.

A successful business can fail.  You can be popular as hell and bringing in money hand over fist but if you've miscalculated your expenses or don't have the reserves to cover expansion, your business will fail.  You will need to cover increasing expenses before you have the additional profit (not revenue) to meet them.  You need to know things like how many paid hookah sessions it takes to cover the cost of one employee, bearing in mind that you can only count the profit from those sessions when determining whether or not you can afford an additional cost (whether it's an employee, advertising, amenities, etc).  

You need to know which nights aren't worth opening because your chosen demographic typically doesn't go out or doesn't have money on those nights.

The point which Ant is trying to make is that you need to research all of these things long before you even start asking for investors.  You can't just make it up as you go along and hope for the best or you will come undone on other people's money and you've already seen how ugly this community gets when the ventures for which they lend money fail.

I know that all of this preparation work is not as exciting as planning your decor or thinking about which bands you'd like to engage (one reason I get paid good money for project management is because ideas people typically hate doing - or even thinking about - all the mundane but necessary work which precedes the launch of a successful business), but it's necessary if you want to succeed beyond the first few weeks or months of opening your business.

Like Ant, I'm going to give you some advice for which I'd normally charge people.  Set up a Gantt chart (I do mine in Excel) or some other kind of project management chart now and list every single step you need to take between now and opening your venture.  Allocate deadlines for each task.  Look for any conflicts in the timeline, so that you're not going to have multiple tasks demanding many hours scheduled at once and other periods where you have nothing needing your attention.  You should always be working on something.  As a reference point, it typically takes me up to 20 hours to put together a Gantt chart for a small project.

Once you have your Gantt chart, you should create workflow charts.  Some tasks are going to be dependent on other tasks being completed first.  If it's going to take at least two weeks to get a particular permit, then you need to make sure that you've gotten hold of the applications, and submitted them with payment long before you come to a step which requires you to produce that permit.  

If you need any interior fitting out done of your business premises, you want plenty of time to obtain quotes from different providers and to have the work completed and inspected and you may need to work around things like noise ordinances.  You also want to minimise the period for which you're paying rent on the premises but not open for business, so this can be a tricky balancing act.  Don't assume that tradesmen will be available when it suits you - commercial work is often booked a long time in advance.

Track every cent which you spend on your project, and every minute which you spend on it.  Neither your financial estimates nor the amount of time you've allowed for stuff will be accurate.  This is normal, but if you don't track everything and make adjustments in your forecasts there's a very real risk you'll end up seriously over budget and behind schedule.

Above all, don't get distracted by the "sexy" part of this venture.  This is a business, not a hobby, and you need to remember that at all times.

One already exists.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108770.0

+1

dank, if you're going to let every thread get derailed by Rarity you're going to have a hard time getting investors for any of your projects.  If you can't stay focused in a thread about something which is of considerable importance to you, no-one's going to trust you to stay focused for the 60 hours+, week in/week out commitment which actually opening and operating your proposed venture will demand.

And you didn't think it was important to notify your lenders when that changed?

I'd strongly advise filing complaints with whatever information you already have and adding any extra information you have as it comes in.  The longer it takes before those who can access all sorts of information about Trendon Shavers which this community cannot start investigating, the more opportunity he has to muddy the trail.

I also believe that it if it was legitimate to ask Bitcoin Magazine to distance itself from Matthew, it is equally legitimate to ask the other members of GPUMax to distance themselves from Trendon and to make a public statement regarding his current role in relation to that entity and whether or not GPUMax itself had any exposure to BS&T (we know that they shared a wallet, but we have no idea to what extent the businesses may have crossed over in other ways).

I doubt very much that no-one closely associated with Trendon knew what he was doing.  It's likely some were complicit in his fraud.

What do you mean by "finding pirate".  His real life identity was known long before he defaulted as were the identities of some of his real life business associates and his family.  We even know when he's next due in court in relation to other matters.

What is needed now is for people who've lost funds to actually go ahead and file complaints with the various agencies responsible for investigating investment fraud, cyber-crime, etc.  The more people who do that, the better.  As such frauds go, this is not a big one, so a large volume of formal complaints is highly desirable.

Government investigators of fraud, scams and other financial crimes are far better resourced to find out exactly what pirate was doing than anyone this community could employ.  You already have enough to report him to those authorities and for them to begin trying to trace the funds (you have no access to the other side of these transactions - the USD trail - while those investigators do).

There is nothing to stop you from collecting information with regard to taking civil action against pirate (and it's even known that he is due to appear in court in relation to other matters in November so he could be served there), but you don't need a lawyer in order to get the US Attorney's Office (they appear to be who normally investigates ponzis) moving.  There seem to be multiple bodies to whom suspected ponzis can be reported and there's no harm in reporting this to all of them.  It's their job to investigate whether pirate's scheme was a ponzi or some other kind of investment fraud - you don't need to present them with a complete case file in order to make a report.

Y'all might want to read this.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66802.msg1180141#msg1180141

For the win.

LOLgasm.