Apparently, one of Good People’s core values may not be punctuality.  Here it is mid-November and I’m finally getting around to posting about October 2016, month 2.

We’ve been busy.  Starting a company while working day jobs and raising families isn’t easy.  We aren’t a couple of college kids working out of our dorm room.  We’re middle-aged guys with kids in elementary school, mortgages, and all sorts of other commitments.  It’s definitely slowing things down and I can’t wait to be able to put all of my energy into Good People.

The big lesson of month 2 was that investors want to see something tangible before they are going to write a check. As it turns out, tangible doesn’t mean a prototype, it means results.  Even though we have the product and can demonstrate it, we didn’t make it and haven’t sold any yet.  Our experiences from working with the company that invented the technology and has sold more than 20,000 of them is interesting and valuable, but not compelling.  We need to move the needle as Good People.

We have some leads from friends and family for funding, but now we are focusing on tying any investment to a tangible need, most likely the upfront costs for our first build.  We are working hard to setup our suppliers, update the product specs, and get the costs and timeline for 200 or so units.

Good People Month 2

  • Met with several friendly investors to get feedback on the concept and start networking for future investment

  • Signed our License Agreement with Opto Generic Devices and started working with them on an updated specification to build our Phoenix Fan Controller

  • Toured Herkimer Industries to get a better sense of how people with disabilities would benefit from meaningful work assembling our products

  • Continued working with the Herkimer Industries team on the details of making this happen, including some fantastic news about a supply chain structure that should require less upfront capital from us

  • We talked to a large company in the energy-saving aftermarket about distribution and what they would want to see to be able to sell our product to their customers

  • We worked on our pitch deck (mostly Greg) and marketing materials

Good People By the Numbers

  • We installed no units and saved no energy

  • We made it easy for 0 new leads, new customers, or new partners to save energy

  • Our team held steady at 3

  • We sourced nothing locally (other than eating at locally owned restaurants)

  • We didn’t really donate anything to the community (though I did give talks on innovation at two colleges)

  • We brought in $0 revenue and $0 investment (other than a founder’s loan for costs)

  • We spent another $21 or so, mostly on meals

Our push needs to be about building some units and finding the customer commitments and investment to support that.  With some units built and sold, we will enhance our credibility with investors and perhaps even find some space to bootstrap.

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