While the team has been working hard, doing what they do, I have been idle the past couple days, just pondering next steps.  It’s amazing how anxious you get sitting around not being physically productive after you’ve become accustomed to working day in and day out.    The break is short lived though. Today, its time to take some matter into my own hands.  I’ve been waiting for investors to introduce us to their colleagues (aka additional investors) and we haven’t received additional feedback from our pitch at Burrell (which we did a couple weeks ago).  Too much delay I tell you.  Time to keep moving.  We’re going to pitch more agencies and find more investors while we await word from our previous meetings.

In regards to investors, I’m determined to get back in touch with Blumberg Capital, as I think we are a perfect match for their fund, and in addition I think its time to find more regionally focused funds that are 100% aligned with our mission to revitalize the economy of Detroit.  I found a great website, Michigan Venture Capital Association.  It somewhat consolidates the investment community in MI all in one place. They single out angel, VC, corporate cap and entrepreneurial services. So we’ll see what we come up with using this great resource.

As far as marketing agencies go?  They’re a dime a dozen, and the majority of them need help in properly executing online video strategy.  It’s really a matter of which agencies have the ideal clients.  It’s kind of hard to top the opportunity Burrell presents, in that they work with McDonalds, Toyota and Tide, amongst other major brands.  We are really going to have to aim at major agencies to stay within those ranks.  Looks like I’ll be taking a shot at companies like BBDO, or perhaps we go straight to brands.  Regardless, the opportunities are endless.

Well writing this entry was good ground work for this weeks work.  I’ll report back on our results in a few days.

Forgive the hiatus folks but it’s been an intense couple of weeks.  We’ve been working diligently on our formal business plan and we finally firmed up a final draft late last week.  I’m sure along the way there will be revisions and additions, but the document is in a form which I’m comfortable presenting to additional investors.  As mentioned previously, we are currently in talks with Ann Arbor Spark, however they let us know that access to their seed fund requires an outside investment match (the source doesn’t matter).  Of course, from my perspective, I think it would be odd to ask another investor to help me match unconfirmed funds.  Thus at this point, Spark funds would appear to be a “bonus” of sorts, unless we some how came up with the funds match on our own terms.

Despite the fact we don’t have money to start formal development on our broadband video project, we do still have a unique set of skills and an unrivaled expertise in online video.  We plan to use this to our advantage to generate start-up cash.   In a few weeks we’ll be going to pitch online video ad consultation and production services to a couple of major ad agencies in Chicago.  This work is a little left field in relation to our overall goals, but without the proper start-up funds there will be no way of achieving them anyways.  I think this work will show our ability to make the most of any situation.  It’s important for our investors to know that no matter what comes of the product we develop, we’re going to turn a profit and succeed at our social mission.  This approach to funding will also guarantee that we retain majority share of our company, which is never a bad thing.

So in the meantime, we’ll be creating a pitch for our prospect clients and diving into some faux creative for a couple of their key brands.  Hopefully I’ll be able to post some of the stuff we come up with in the upcoming weeks.  Happy Labor Day folks.  (back to my weekend off)