as an investor in many projects one of the few things i would be looking at to even take a funds beg serious are:
Franky1,
Most interesting critique, and a ...unique style; thank you for it. I'll take it as if it were addressed to Blueseed, even though you used "he" most of the time. Blueseed isn't "my idea"; we're a team that's been working on it since 2011, and I'm the most technical of us, hence my posting here on Bitcointalk.
That said, at the moment, Blueseed indeed isn't at a stage where all the research had been done, and it would be just a mechanistic matter of finding $18M to launch. That's why the funding stage is seed, not Series A. The reason is simple - the studies that need to be done, cost money. That said, since 2011, we've done
a lot, with
very little, and
succeeded where
others have failed spectacularly.
To address your requirement for design, estimates, and lists - here are some examples. The companies and items below have been anonymized, because we can't make them public at this stage.
An engineering study by the best provider of near-zero-speed stabilization systems for the MS XX ship that's the best candidate for chartering, costs $268k to start.
An environmental impact study costs $60k.
Retrofitting the MS XX ship with a bow helipad configured to hold up to 22,000 pounds costs $550k. The schedule is 4-weeks for design; 6-weeks for fabrication; 3-weeks for installation.
We have precise quotes for hospitality and technical costs for the MS XX, obtained from the two best ship management companies in the world, International Shipping Partners, and V.Ships.
I could go on, but this is the sort of information that's generally discussed in a confidential investor meeting, as you surely know as an investor in many projects.
im sorry but blue seed has been showing off this idea since 2011, looking for investors from different walks of life. business people, developers, banks governments, and yet still do not have the funding.
Apologies accepted. We've never looked for investors among developers (?), banks, or governments. At this stage, we've received investments from angel investors (as all startups do first) and research institutions.
Our mistake was to seek investments among venture capitalists, because we wanted to establish relationships with them in order to offer them access to the startups aboard. It turned out that most VCs are 1) uncomfortable investing outside spaces they're familiar with (in Silicon Valley, mobile/social/gaming/e-commerce, most often), and 2) not mandated by their LPs to invest in real estate plays or accelerators.
We've pivoted since towards more "traditional" investors, who are more comfortable with brick&mortar (or metal) ventures.
after 2 years he has still not even come up with a final design to then make proper blueprints to atleast get the materials costs/engineering labour to have an accurate idea of funds requirements, instead he has 4 design idea's.. which even during his writing of these posts he has made comments that things are not finalised by mentioning changes/adaptations that are possible.[1]
I "have 4 design idea's"? In case you're referring to the
concept renderings, those are a marketing tool, as it's explained at the top of the page.
As I mentioned before, Blueseed has a quote from the management company of a certain cruise ship that we plan to charter.
i think that not having a final design he cannot accurately know the costs or the timescale to say it will be in the water by summer 2014.[2]
Another reference to "design". Perhaps you've read some press suggesting that we'd design and build a ship? Well, surprise, press gets things wrong some times! Stop the presses!
We're not going to do any grand design; rather, we'll charter an existing cruise ship. Thus, one can reasonably estimate a year's lead time.
and as for their series A funding which was $500k in 2011[3],
$500k is not Series A funding, as you must surely know. Please listen again to
Max's talk at 1:35 - he said "$500k in seed money".
they could have got the money easily from under 10 entrepreneurs that may wished to go to the UK and convince them to move near silicon valley - [4]
http://imgur.com/nSi26jyThe chart you reference indicates the minimum amounts a startup needs to get in investments in order to get a visa in certain countries. That means
the startup needs to get that investment, and they need it to ensure runway. They can't just fork that over to Blueseed.
Plus, as you surely know as an investor in many projects, startups are highly risky, with a success rate of (optimistically) only 10% within a year. How many early-stage startups would be so confident that they'll be around a year later,
plus be at a stage where they'd still be interested in coming to the ship (e.g. team still has no kids, is of a suitable size, still wants to leave their country and ecosystem and customer base etc.), to give Blueseed $50k now?
Hopefully the magnitude of the chicken-and-egg problem will now be apparent: Blueseed can't realistically crowdfund from startups - since you suggested a "pledge" stage. Build it and they'll come - yes, probably in droves, but we have to build it first. And you can't build a prototype, as Elon Musk did with Tesla. Blueseed
is the prototype for a completely new industry: ocean-based jurisdictional arbitration.
and where suppliers deal with FIAT, i think asking for any bitcoin investment is just absurd.
As absurd as it is to suggest that I've asked for Bitcoin investments. Please do reference that, since you're quite good with references
(By the way, you probably also know as an investor in many projects, that the public solicitation of investments in a private U.S. company is
still illegal under SEC regulations, even though the JOBS Act passed more than a year ago.)
What I did was to asked for topics to discuss during my talk at the conference, and some members of the forum expressed unprompted interest to invest.
what this OP should be doing is going to FIAT investors, but just highlight the project as requiring bitcoin once the project has finished, to be used as a functional currency on the ship. as its not strictly required for the building of the ship.
Um... duh? That's exactly what we
are doing, and Bitcoin is
not required once the project has finished, nor is it required for the... wait, what building of the ship? Are we talking about the same Blueseed? Please see the FAQ, more specifically
What ship will Blueseed use?in short, im not going to invest.
the idea is good, but i feel that he is playing on bitcoiner's dreams of a sanctuary place to use bitcoin[5]. to grab money for his bottomless pit.
That's a good one
If we wanted to get money form people and run with it, we would've done that since 2011, taking deposits from startups and claiming we'd charter a ship in 3 months.
I'm not sure I understand the rest of the critique, and after this repeated allegation, I'd rather just not reply to it.
Anyway, last night I went to GigaOM's pre-conference meetup and had a great time. I met in person a bunch of people I knew of before, and one of them, Multibit developer Jim Burton (jim618 here) told me that the buzz and the atmosphere were fantastic, and much better than last year. Roger Ver also electrified the audience with one of his passionate speeches, and Mike Hearn made me realize something quite profound:
In the world of Bitcoin, you don't need to be a person in order to have an account. Computer programs can have accounts. Software-run businesses can have accounts, and if they're profitable, they can even hire humans to improve their code. They can spawn off new businesses, and the best will survive and grow.
The singularity is here.
