Hello!

Did you know paper receipts are responsible for more rain forest destruction and CO2 emissions than the entire coffee and mining industries combined? It is truly staggering!

“I had no idea!” you say.

“That’s a lot of destruction…” you ponder.

“Is that even true?” you ask.

No, it isn’t true. But it sounds plausible. Especially if you read it really quickly and move on.

Beyond that, paper receipts are filling our nations wallets with space that could be occupied by cold, hard, cash! And then… when you finally need to expense those receipts you’ve been carrying around… they’re vanished! The Receipt Fairy’s expense account knows no bounds.

Rather than hunting down and exterminating The Receipt Fairy, Interviewables proposes bypassing paper receipts entirely. A central database would be populated via updates from enhanced POS terminals. Certainly once the receipt line items were centralized, all manner of mutually beneficial services could be provided to both customers and marketers.

Inverviewables sees creation of the receipt line item tracking service as the first step towards adoption.

A merchant isn’t going to want this on his own. There will need to be a need from the consumer to push this.

Identifying the chicken-and-egg challenges, and mapping out incentives for each party will be key to upgrading such a significant chunk of infrastructure. Certainly if there is a compelling reason for customers, merchants and POS vendors to participate before the system is widely adopted, eventually the system will be widely adopted.

To help Interviewables build the tracking service, implement a 3rd party POS module, or even help map out how each party in a sales transaction can be encouraged to participate, head on over to No More Paper Receipts and chime in!

Blue and Gord Like Stuff

Rock Band, front row seats, cute little kittens… and good ideas! (Also, Blue likes cheese. But for the purpose of this blog entry, we’ll focus on ideas.)

• Caraoke by dotcomcowboy
  

  An easy to install, aftermarket car audio system that includes either an integrated LCD or AV Outputs that would allow you to connect it to an in-vehicle LCD display.

  Blue believes this is intended for car passengers, as it would be unsafe to drive while reading lyrics. Gord believes so long as an air-guitar is not incorporated into game play, the game would have acceptable survival rates.

• Crowd Sourced Magazine by zer0
  

  With all the bloggers, photographers and design artists available on the web something truly amazing could be created, something to rival traditional magazines. A real paper magazine. Something I could show to people and say I had a part in this, instead of some cryptic web address they probably wont ever visit.

  While reading up on this, Gord compared it to Checoslovaco’s idea Wiki Word Networks which is a plan to pull together infrastructure to enable endeavors such as Crowd Sourced Magazine possible.

Lockdown, Construction and Tow Trucks

Think only homeless people and prostitutes stand around on sidewalks? Not true! Video bloggers are often known to “hang out” on sidewalks when a conference call occupies their orange couch.

Until next week: Share your ideas. Give us your precious, precious feedback… Take a look through Cambrian House Bazaar and Forums for projects to participate in…

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

Is stalking Angel Investors wrong?

There’s no easy way to answer this question. Some say stalking should only be used for celebrities. Others say it is only unspoiled virgin brides who ought to be stalked.

The truth is, stalking is the least effective use of your time. Any indication of disinterest means the conversation from that point forward will be strictly educational in nature…

Unless your idea is crap, or you stop looking for money, you will eventually find someone who will consider investing. And its extremely important that you look fundable at that moment. While you might consider yourself a person pitching a piece of technology or concept (and ultimately it is you who is being invested in), it is your company which serves as the interface for the investment.

You’re not going to have an investor wait while you customize a private equity investment template are you? That would be a pretty poor interface.

You are at your family’s annual family gathering. Your sister brought “Alan”, another strange guy in her history of strange guys. Before dinner, you blather on about a great business idea you’ve been pursuing. Blah blah blah… you’re quite the little chatterbox!

After, as the turkey and potatoes start dulling your mental reflexes… Alan approaches you with a check book and says “I like it. I just came into a little money from selling my company. What size stake would I be able to get?” You just stare at him like a deer in the headlights. Alan’s an Angel Investor, and you are about to miss a great opportunity.

If you were put on the spot for financing for your idea, how would you answer?

A little bit of stumbling might be understandable if you got asked out of the blue through pure serendipity. But what if you went to an investor forum and you didn’t know about pre-money valuation and share price? You don’t think this ever happens?

MJ was discussing his experience at the Y Combinator Demo Days and compared it to his experience at the Angel Forum…

Here is the part that is so frustrating as an investor:

Everyone is asking for money and I am asking, how much money do you want? For how much of the company? And no one can answer that question. In fact not one person answered that question.

Perhaps they didn’t know, or perhaps they have been coached to not set a valuation too early as MJ suggests. The idea being you don’t want to sell yourself short and undervalue yourself. But the reality is that…

When you are a startup, the way that you are valuing your company, it is not like it is anything real, it is completely made up. I don’t know why anyone doesn’t say that out loud, but it just is.

It is is about how much money you need to get to next definitive risk reduction point.

Your pre-money valuation then can be easily determined based on what you need. Investors aren’t going to invest for less than 20% and no one should probably be investing more that 40%. This gives you a clear range to to set your pre-money valuation.

So what does this mean to you? If you need money from investors, you need to have your ducks in a row.

Start with answers to the following questions

• What is the next definitive risk reduction point?
• How much money will it take to get there?
• How much of the business are you willing to give up? (20%-40%)

No idea how to answer these questions? Head on over to the Cambrian House Forums to ask the Cambrian House community.