Preparing for Germany (2011-08-26)

[F_Slim]

I see, I think now I know rather exactly what it's about. So would it also be possible to put in 2000 now and maybe in a year or so add another 2000 as investment? Or is this a one-time-only investment chance?


(Ok, provided that there are still parts available, I guess you will in any case be the owner of at least 51% of your company, to prevent an ... "enemy takeover"? Or are there other means to prevent something like that?)


(oh man, I should have started asking such question in the german forum, where I at least know the terminology ... well at least half way )

 

[EvilDragon]

I see, I think now I know rather exactly what it's about. So would it also be possible to put in 2000 now and maybe in a year or so add another 2000 as investment? Or is this a one-time-only investment chance?


(Ok, provided that there are still parts available, I guess you will in any case be the owner of at least 51% of your company, to prevent an ... "enemy takeover"? Or are there other means to prevent something like that?)


(oh man, I should have started asking such question in the german forum, where I at least know the terminology ... well at least half way )

If there are parts of the pie left, you should be able to invest later if you want.


Additional money could be used to make stuff like aluminium cases, etc.


Don't worry, the whole thing is laid out that I always keep the biggest share of my company.

 

[neko]

I can't believe you would really take a €2000 investment with an expected annual return of €200, especially with international investors.


That 200 EUR is going to get eaten up by accounting costs, currency conversion, bank fees, and taxes.

 

[WizardStan]

Will these shares be transferable? What about recall? Will the cost per share be fixed or fluctuate?

 

[EvilDragon]

I can't believe you would really take a €2000 investment with an expected annual return of €200, especially with international investors.


That 200 EUR is going to get eaten up by accounting costs, currency conversion, bank fees, and taxes.

Accounting costs and the taxes from my company are already included in the calculation.


Currency conversion, bank fees and taxes depend on where the investor sits, so of course this needs to be checked individually.


If you're from the EU, there are no currency conversion or bank fees for the transfer, so except for the taxes you have to pay onto all income, you have no more costs.


Here the 2000 EUR make sense.


If you're outside the EU, of course it might not make sense, but that's a different issue and doesn't have anything to do with the limit itself, it needs to be checked for the person who is interested in investing.

 

[neko]

If you're from the EU, there are no currency conversion or bank fees for the transfer, so except for the taxes you have to pay onto all income, you have no more costs.


Here the 2000 EUR make sense.


If you're outside the EU, of course it might not make sense, but that's a different issue and doesn't have anything to do with the limit itself, it needs to be checked for the person who is interested in investing.

If the investors are within the EU, it might work from a banking perspective, but having 200 investors is just as bad as having 200 pre-order customers.  People will be wanting status updates, demanding their money back, etc.


I thought the whole point of this was to get away from the pre-order mess.

 

[WizardStan]

Investors have different legal rights and responsibilities from customers. Things will necessarily be much better laid out.


OPT wasn't prepared for the volume of cancellations and resales they experienced due to unforseen circumstances. With an investment, sales, resales, and buy-backs will be written into the contract. There won't be a mess simply because everything will be well defined ahead of time.

 

[EvilDragon]

Oh, I never said I'd rather take many small investments rather than a big one.


2000 is the minimum theoretical amount that makes sense, but I'm trying to keep those in little numbers.


The goal is still having 1 - 3 big investors and maybe a few smaller ones.

 

[milkshake]

Yes. Well, with 2000 EUR, you own a part of my company and will get a share of the winnings (about 10%, AFAIR).

hmm I'm confused about this.. ok say you invest €2000 and get aprox €200 (or 10%) back in profits each year how does the next sentence work with that theory?

The better the Pandora sells, the more money you will make from that.

 

[kyuu]

Sounds good so far.


But what about advertising the Pandora? Ok, you have investors. Ok, you probably have enough interested people to sell the 4000 Pandoras. But what next? At some point, in order to survive and evolve on the market the Pandora will need a well thought out ad campaign and - what is most important - good software support. In order to sell the Pandora it will need software. In order to get software it will need developers. In order to get developers it will need advertisement and a good support for developers.

 

[fusion_power]

If I could travel back in time, I would warn OPT about the bad decissions. If they did the investor route and the Production in germany straight from the beginning, I'm sure, they would have saved more money with that than they have saved with producing in China and USA. RMA around the whole world alone costs a fortune, important Devs not having their Pandora because of this mess also is one of many disadvantages.


With this plan from the Beginning, we would be at Pandora Nr. 10000 easily now and OPT may even be in the $Plus.

 

[EvilDragon]

Sounds good so far.


But what about advertising the Pandora? Ok, you have investors. Ok, you probably have enough interested people to sell the 4000 Pandoras. But what next? At some point, in order to survive and evolve on the market the Pandora will need a well thought out ad campaign and - what is most important - good software support. In order to sell the Pandora it will need software. In order to get software it will need developers. In order to get developers it will need advertisement and a good support for developers.

Within the business plan, 30000 EUR are planned for devs, marketing and advertising per 1000 Pandoras.

 

[EvilDragon]

Yes. Well, with 2000 EUR, you own a part of my company and will get a share of the winnings (about 10%, AFAIR).

hmm I'm confused about this.. ok say you invest €2000 and get aprox €200 (or 10%) back in profits each year how does the next sentence work with that theory?

The better the Pandora sells, the more money you will make from that.

No, it's pretty easy if you know how it works.


You buy a share of my company. Let's make things easy and say you pay 100.000 EUR and own 10%.


That means: You will get 10% of the profit.


If the profit would be 200.000 EUR, you would get 20.000 EUR (the 10% share)


As you invested 100.000 EUR, 20.000 EUR would be 20%.


If the profit would be 400.000 EUR, you would get 40.000 EUR (the 10% share)


As you invested 100.000 EUR, 40.000 EUR would be 40%.


An investor usually doesn't care how much of a company he will own.


He usually cares how much his profit might be.


So you have to plan and think through a realistic scenario, define a realistic profit, value the company.


I made the business plan, my tax counsellor calculated the value, calculated the taxes, etc. the company would have to pay and therefore, we could define a realistic profit.


With that, you can define how much a person will own if he invests xxx EUR in your company and therefore can calculate, what profit he could expect.


Of course, profit can be way lower or way higher. This is always a risk.


If the Pandora doesn't sell well, the profit will be lower. If it sells exceptionally good and we can keep up with production, the profit can be way higher.

 

[milkshake]

i c thanks for the 101 lesson

 

[EvilDragon]

i c thanks for the 101 lesson

Just learnt it myself a few days ago

 

[diligentcircle]

i c thanks for the 101 lesson

Just learnt it myself a few days ago

Heh, my limited experience is the more familiar you are with a topic, the more difficult of a time you have explaining it to those who are unfamiliar with it.

 

[kyuu]

Within the business plan, 30000 EUR are planned for devs, marketing and advertising per 1000 Pandoras.

Have you consulted someone with experience in advertising and supporting such products? Or is this money only a first guess without a underlying concept?


30000 EUR per 1000 Pandoras, that means 30 EUR per Pandora. Sounds not much to me as a layperson, but of course it's much better than nothing.

 

[EvilDragon]

Within the business plan, 30000 EUR are planned for devs, marketing and advertising per 1000 Pandoras.

Have you consulted someone with experience in advertising and supporting such products? Or is this money only a first guess without a underlying concept?


30000 EUR per 1000 Pandoras, that means 30 EUR per Pandora. Sounds not much to me as a layperson, but of course it's much better than nothing.

Well, the plan is to produce 1000 Pandoras each 2 / 3 months.


As I own a TV production company (including one guy also experienced in internet and magazine advertisment creation), I save a lot of money there and only need to pay for the ad itself.


30000 is plenty here, I doubt I'll need that much. It should also be used to pay some devs, etc.

 

[fusion_power]

Is there are actualy money left from the old DEV FUND to pay the devs? I can't find any news about this. I actualy never found news about this. ^^"


Is the dev fund molten into the actual Pandora production money or does it still sleep somewhere or are some devs actualy payed with the fund or whatever? The fund maybe could accelerate the Software production quite a bit if there is some money left over. Software sells Hardware so with better Software, you sell more Pandoras.

 

[EvilDragon]

Is there are actualy money left from the old DEV FUND to pay the devs? I can't find any news about this. I actualy never found news about this. ^^"


Is the dev fund molten into the actual Pandora production money or does it still sleep somewhere or are some devs actualy payed with the fund or whatever? The fund maybe could accelerate the Software production quite a bit if there is some money left over.

Well, I got about 1300 EUR in the Dev Fund (those are the orders placed in my shop), so it's not that much.

Software sells Hardware so with better Software, you sell more Pandoras.

That's why my business plan includes 30.000 EUR per 1000 Pandoras for advertising and development.