Many of us aren't in the US. Those that are in the US are seeking ways of compliance with the SEC laws.

I wrote a blog post on this to answer your question.

*shrugs*

Whilst the onus is on TagPesa to convince us that we should throw money at them, the onus is also on YOU to create confidence that you aren't just going to be an incubator black hole that fails to return the money invested in you. Failing to perceive something as simple as a looming trademark dispute is intensely concerning. That is something that should be discussed at the outset long before a due diligence has taken place.

As an idea, why don't you have startups pitch their ideas to #bitcoin-assets on Freenode? There are a lot of savvy investors there; the founder's (or founders') ability to successfully defend their position when quizzed on specifics will not only cause them to sharpen their pitch and model, but will also raise interest in that startup among investors who are already deeply entwined in the Bitcoin securities/assets space and have significantly large amounts to invest. It may be a bit of a baptism by fire, but they will come out better understanding their business, and you will have piqued the interest of real investors.

A lot of them have been profitable in fiat terms...which means investors would have been better off holding their Bitcoin than investing in a "company".

Fine, here you go:

1) What would a "fair" valuation of a company that is pulling in $1m/mo. One of the problems I have with finding value is the volatility of the coin prices. Our mining will be strictly alt-coin, which is considerably more unstable than bitcoin.

If that company were already pulling in $1m/month in net profit (not EBIT or EBITDA, and I assume you're not retarded and quoting a gross revenue figure for valuation) would be in the same region as companies such as a mid-sized bank. Given proper information and long-term confidence I would value the company using a discounted cash-flow analysis. Given the information scarcity in this post, it's probably just easier to find a profitable, publicly listed company and use them for a thumb suck. By my calculations a company showing long-term growth and that is that profitable would be worth around $115 million. Given the short-term profitability normally associated within mining, however, you probably won't feasibly be able to price the company beyond $20 million.

If you don't currently net $1m/month in profit then you can ignore the entire paragraph above. Ideas are worthless, execution is everything.

2) What is a fair ROI for investors?

Because most of the companies seeking funding here are startups, investors would be looking for rapid profitability and ~40% or greater annualised ROI.

3) Considering the lack of trust in the securities exchanges, would a direct-share offering deter investors from buying shares?

Yes, it would very much deter them. Many investors go short on obvious scams investment opportunities that involve mining because of the very great difficulty involved in running it profitably. By hampering their ability to trade their stock you're just making it an unattractive investment.

You have not replied to my wall of text analysis or the question I raised. You aren't really setting yourself up for success with an attitude like that.

But How Can They Communicate Properly Unless Every Word Is Capitalised?

OP - mining operations are notoriously lossy (or outright scams). You're fighting a near-losing battle.

1. Proof of operational ability. Historical data based on actual mining performance. Demonstrable relationships with equipment suppliers so that you can ensure you get equipment fast enough to be profitable. Being in the #bitcoin-otc Web of Trust on Freenode.

2. For mining investments the biggest factor is operator trust. To invest in a mining operation you generally want someone who has been in this space for at least a couple of years. You can tell a lot by their technical knowledge of the mining space. Nearly everything else is secondary to identifying and trusting someone who is reliable and an expert.

3. If you are known and trustworthy? Monthly, or even quarterly. If you are unknown? Daily, chum.

4. There is literally not a single serious investor here that needs a "website" where they can watch their "credits". That stuff is so easily faked so as to make it inconsequential. Regular reports and dividend/profit payouts are all you need, throw the website out.

A few things that occurred to me:

1. alot isn't a word

2. Is there an actual proposal somewhere we can view, or are we expected to take everything at face value? I've looked at your pitch deck, the comments below apply to it as well.

3. You need to give us a great deal more detail about how you will be complying with Australian regulations (I assume this is where the legally registered company is), as well as South Sudanese regulations (among other countries you're planning on entering into). Being part of "Seedfunder II - The Money Returns" doesn't imply any due diligence has been done on behalf of the investment community, you need to flesh that out in your proposal.

4. I am an African that currently lives in Africa, and I am surprised at the lack of clarity about how you will get agents on board. Having been up-close-and-personal with Vodacom's failed attempt at bringing M-Pesa to South Africa I can tell you that bringing agents on-board isn't hard or complicated if you know what leverage to use, but if you're going to operate from outside of the country it will be downright impossible. You haven't elaborated on whether or not Anyang Majok will be based in Australia or not. There needs to be plenty of detail about how you're going build that agent network.

5. You need to elaborate on how you're going to provide support for that agent network. Who will be Anyang's support, if anyone? The same goes for Uganda and Kenya.

6. I've conducted incredibly large amounts of business in Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania. Often times, especially with foreign companies, regulatory hurdles are...created to make sure everyone is cut in to the foreign money. You have not elaborated on how you will deal with this, nor have you detailed who your agents are in South Sudan and what groundwork they have made in ensuring compliance.

7. Safaricom is going to come after you for the TagPesa name, I guarantee it. The name is too similar to M-Pesa and can easily cause brand dilution or brand confusion for them. You have not mentioned this at all (maybe some sort of SWOT analysis is a start).

8. iOS and Android apps? Really?? Nobody needs them. Your target demographic, both the users and the agents, need USSD access more than anything. This requires significant infrastructure in tooling up and/or partnering with WASPs in South Sudan and in Australia (or whatever the equivalent of a WASP is in those countries).

9. I understand that, as a startup hiding behind an "incubator", you don't have to produce any financial data whatsoever. But it would be to your credit if you had some predictions and some financial data to-date.

10. Besides some low-res screenshots of an Android app and of the website there is no indication as to where you are in the process. Are those just mock-ups and this is just an idea? Or have you started development?

11. You have not created any confidence in your ability to secure funds. Cryptocurrency holding services get hacked on the regular, and require an incredible amount of detailed forethought, planning, and skill to secure. You haven't mentioned - at all - how you plan on securing your user's money whilst you hold it.

12. You have not detailed how you will move fiat around. If your target is cross-border transactions, you will need to have a large fiat float in the receiving country (or countries) that is regularly topped up by wire transfer or whatever. Moving large sums of cash into the country is rife with regulatory and tax concerns, all of which remain unaddressed by you.

13. Your market may be bottoming out before it has begun: http://www.iol.co.za/business/companies/vodafone-joins-moneygram-to-spread-m-pesa-1.1646234 - you need to address how you will compete with that (going back to the SWOT analysis suggestion).

14. There seems to be some confusion around this "exchange" thing. Are you planning on operating a cryptocurrency<->fiat exchange that anyone can trade on? Why bother? Who will use the exchange? How will you secure it? How will you scale it up?

I think that's all I can think of offhand. As it stands, Seedcoin inspires no confidence in institutional investors or even casual observers. If you want money through their fund-raising efforts YOU are going to have to do the hard work of proving that this is a viable venture.

Ouch.

Trade executed with NoodleDoodle @ 0.6 BTC for 2500 MNR

10/10 great answers. OP, this guy speaks truth, read what he says and follow his recommendation.

Hopefully they can afford proper hosting instead of HostGator's failing junk when they actually have something to tell us.

He's talking about altcoins, so I'm guessing GPU mining. The rest of your points stand 100%, no WoT profile and by my calculations he's looking for $7.7 million - $14.3 million.

Just to clarify - do you mean you're in the final stages of getting the farm running, or in the final stages of preparing a 25 page PDF?

The reason I ask is that I have a fairly large scope of experience and knowledge when it comes to altcoin mining. I have mined altcoins "professionally", if such a term could be applied, since the beginning of 2012, and I have a LOT of historical data (earnings, exchange data from now-defunct exchanges, difficulty changes, pump-and-dumps, etc.)

Based on that I can tell you that $10k worth of equipment will net $600 - $2000 in a month before electricity if you are particularly clever at guessing which altcoins to preemptively mine and have written the tools to segment and route portions of your farm. Electricity on that is a pretty static $400 if you aren't in the US (or if you are in the US and have negotiated with your power company). Overheads (replacements, salaries, rent, etc.) are about $100 on top of that. That means that a GPU mining operation can make, pretty statically, $100 - $1500. The good months are few and far between, so we can average that out to $700 profit a month over a year (again, assuming you're particularly good at tooling up by writing your own python or whatever to switch segments over to profitable coins, bearing in mind that profit is a product of trade value more than a product of difficulty and available hashrate) and a gross revenue of ~$1300 a month.

Those amounts are all averaged out for auto-switching between different altcoins, holding and trading on necessity only, and for rapidly changing difficulty / block rewards.

Thus on a proposed gross revenue of $1 million monthly your electricity cost will be ~$308 000, which is the amount of electricity a factory uses. Your capex to meet that revenue will be around $7.7 million. If your claimed amount of "$1 million a month" is net profit...well...then the capex you're looking to spend is $14.3 million.

You should not be asking about fair value, it's the wrong question. You should be proving yourself to investors first, and then saying "this is how we want to raise funds" to get input from them.

WTB 2500 for 0.5 BTC

What is this drug you are taking that causes these glorious statements, and how can I go about acquiring said drug?

Well now you're just making yourself look silly. His first language is Spanish (see Blockchain.info links), but there're is a legitimate contraction of "there are" and is perfectly grammatically correct in the sentence "[There are] big guys involved in this scam". Being incapable of parsing that and assuming he meant "they're" is just puerile, most especially coming from someone that fails to spell "holy" correctly when throwing profanities around.

No it's not, it's by far the stupidest idea yet.

What if one of those intermediary addresses between the "stolen mtgox coins" address and the MaidSafe address is an exchange? The thief dumps some coins on an exchange, and some innocent third party withdraws coins later on and "invests" in ScamSafeMaidSafe. Now MaidSafe hold the coins hostage (not that anyone investing has a signed GPG contract with some indication as to what remedies are available or what arbitration could be accepted) and the poor innocent person is screwed out of their money.

Which is why you should NOT play Bitcoin Police, not even if you believe you have "direct evidence" of someone directly spending coins they have stolen.

Yes - wasn't disagreeing with you, Blockchain.info still have to approve tags based on the reference material:)

Huh? Those aren't "open comments" and they certainly aren't put there by the sender. Bitcoin doesn't have transaction comments or transaction messages or whatever. Anyone can label an address on blockchain.info, see https://blockchain.info/tags - those tags then show up everywhere the address appears on blockchain.info