It has been a crazy 10 days - we had two charities give us Board approval to work with us and we were at the Angel Forum. We have had moderate interest from Investors but it is a crazy time, we have customers, traffic, charity signing contracts and investors are still elusive.
Today I went out to see a Charity and discuss our launch plans and to get pen to paper. It was quite exciting going to collect it. Possibly get it done first part of the meeting so we clear that out and move on. it happened just that way and they signed!
Tech is slowly moving along loading images of restaurants onto the drupal site so we can be ready for new version.
Training 2 restauarnts this week on the new system, closed a new restaurant on Friday. I got training as well.
Progress at least
This weeks change of weather has brought on the dreaded fall lurgy. This is slowing me down and as such I do not like talking to investors or charities, so I am emailing which is cheating really. Hopefully it will pass quickly.
Investors, post the Vantec presentation have been elusive, maybe the long weekend but no replies to our emails after expressed interest. Will be chasing shortly.
Met with Lyal on version 2.0 of the software and is looking promising. Meeting Rick tomorrow to discuss the same thing. Looking forward to getting this away. Our existing developer has left us in a pickle
Presneted to a charity, was contacted by another one while there, another replied, spoke to a VC in the US who approached us, spoke to a restauarnt interested in the solution and investing, another angel has come out of the woodwork, met 2 developers, spoke with UBC coop about Jan student, put forward development for equity, old developer helped out.. nice and asking for other bits to get POS/Squirrel live, analysed 2 weeks of Kidney Data, all in the last 2 days and 35 memberships out
The Rotary Club Vancouver Sunrise came back and let us know they like the new contract and hopefully we get the signed agreement in a few days. We are just now getting the logo for the card… 3 weeks lead time.
Speaking of the cards… tested it out for myself and it all went smoothly.. card accepted, swiped and redeemed seemlessly, waiter said it even thanked him, even on my own account page was updated, brilliant.
We made the shortlist of presenters at Vantec for October 7th and afterwards we will be meeting a venture capitalist to discuss our project. We know that this is a long process with venture capitalists but you have to start and be in for the long haul.
Final tweaks to the old website and looks like a great solution so Calgary is still visible.
Pushing steadily on enhancements but slow
Busy weeks.. many people excited about the product. Emailed 2 non-profits - 48 hours ago 1 has come back. Still waiting on 2 other charities … going slow, looks like the inertia of their own organisations will kill the interest …it is too bad. Both came back and are wandering slowly to sign.
Spoke to two online food bloggers and they are keen to meet up .. could be some potential here.
Saw an interesting product that would allows people to round up bills and the round up would be given to a charity.. nice idea.. hard to work in practice given who they are targeting.. large corporations. Noticed that Safeway is asking for donations and overlaps on this space.
A tech blog wants to write us up in a few weeks.
Need to work on our next stage of marketing and signing restaurants.
Busy day to day.
Craig and I presented to make a short list for an Angel conference. Lets hope we were good enough. Got another introduction to a charity from one of the judges above… maybe they like what we do? Heard from one of the judges that one of our school targets does not like one of our features, we will investigate.. bit of surprise as we have not signed any schools yet but should do soon.
I spoke to one of our charities today and they like the new contract.. yeah, we shall get the contract back on Friday.. cross your fingers. Followed up with a long standing contact from last weeks Launch Party and they will inquire with their family if there is any interest with working with us in raising money for a large charity.
Passed our comments on the gift card market to our lawyer at McCarthys who may get us into a BiV article on a similar theme; been here before so it it happens great.. but these things are difficult to get right and fit with a journalists agenda.
New software features coming on every day… getting close to a site we really want.
Followed up with a few bloggers from Launch Party and Raul thanks for letting me know the name of the restaurant Red Sea Cafe and hope we can meet up to discuss the market soon
Busy, now my teeth have stopped hurting
It has been great that people have been so supportive and going further introducing their favourite charities (& contacts) to us. I met Scott Dunlop a lawyer from Davis LLP who works with BootUpLabs, one of our partners. He was very kind to make introductions to three charities that really fit. We will let you know how it goes.
Thanks Scott
We have been talking to a few charities and they keep coming back to us and saying they do not have much of a email list, further few are communicating in any regular way and when they do they do it is thru the post. This appears to be a very expensive and missed opportunity.
In our case, your cost of contacting the supporter base is close to zero and from the word go we can increase your returns over mail, becasue people can click straight thru from the email to a sign up page where they buy the Loyalty Card. Paper is complex, expensive and time consuming people have to keep the paper and type the details in … less chance of conversion. Further, all communication to be expensive and forces communication to be limited, email has no such limitations but you have to be careful in how and how frequently you communicate.
But the missed opportunity is even bigger, I met engage joe and he has built /showed me some simple tools for charities to raise money from emails as well as other types of online marketing. But without email there is little chance that many charities will be able to take advantage of this further, if charities are not collecting emails they are not likely to get/understand the other more sophisticated tools at their disposal. This is very unfortunate, as the money can be very easy to get.
So please collect emails.
