Hello, I am a creator of Pickroulette

[AnitaK]

Hi, everybody,

My name is Anita. I live in Paris. I my educational background is in social sciences, but I have decided to try myself in entrepreneurship. Time to time ideas arrive to me and I cannot let them simply disappear.

I have started new initiative in internet entertainment - just look for Pickroulette.com in google. This website, which is based on FB connect, allows for Facebook users to find single people from any country or city very simply, funny and fast. There are more features on the way (e.g. free and paid gifts) - we are still in the process of development.

I would be happy to hear some feedback. Also, some advices where to find investors. I think its promising project, just marketing needs money.

Thank you for your time and good luck to everybody!

Anita

[questeds]

Welcome aboard. I just responded to a post about where to find investors, have a look there and see if that info helps

[akula]

hi, i like Pickroulette. it's good product..a little dated, but online dating's still hot...somewhat...on mobile platforms.
you seem pretty capable as well...getting the site up and everything. good job.
the whole financing thing's tricky..being consumer internet and all
you're outside the ecosystem. if private equity really is what you're interested in (and it doesn't have to be), you'd need to think about moving to california or NY.
deals get done at conferences and events where financiers/founders meet up and talk shop
being in paris, it might be difficult for you to meet face to face the sort of people you need to meet
that said, there are specific people you might want to contact..like, seedcamp's got managers in france etc

if you want to know something about private equity it's this: people invest money in startups because they expect those startups to get bought out. startups get bough out for one of three reasons. tech - the acquirer wants some proprietary technology that the founder has. the team - the acquirer wants to employ the founders. the customers - the acquirer wants the customers that the target has

wih your opportunity; 1 and 2 mostly fall out. so, you're really looking at mass adoption. this is gonna be tricky because websites like yours either go viral or they don't. no amount of marketing dollars is a solution for you to get your user numbers up. Pickroulette is not a defensible solution to any kind of quantifiable problem. there isn't much you can do to win and keep your clients. it's just an easily replicable, fun little novelty product that competes with a few hundred others that do exactle the same thing. you've chosen a hard place for your self to win customers in. it's hard to imagine that you could become a leader in your industry because you don't have any observable competitive advantage and all the industry leaders and large and entrenched.
i'm not saying this to discourage you. this is simply that's the sort of hard nosed issues that get debated when you shop for money.
you'd ask the same things if you were being pitched.

at any rate, you've just gotta sit down and think about how you're gonna make your site go viral. i don't have the answers for you at this stage.
if you want my feedback, I think that pickroulette is an excellent first effort. promote it the best you can. make a little bit of money if you can find people who wanna become paid subscribers...but mostly, if you wanna do a venture, raise a whole bunch of venture capital and get acquired..you may need to find another opportunity. you've come to this space a little bit too late. all the winners have mostly been decided already.

it's shitty advice. when I was doing what you're doing, they told me the same thing and I hated it. but, that's just the way things go. you're 5 years too late.

Hi, everybody,

My name is Anita. I live in Paris. I my educational background is in social sciences, but I have decided to try myself in entrepreneurship. Time to time ideas arrive to me and I cannot let them simply disappear.

I have started new initiative in internet entertainment - just look for Pickroulette.com in google. This website, which is based on FB connect, allows for Facebook users to find single people from any country or city very simply, funny and fast. There are more features on the way (e.g. free and paid gifts) - we are still in the process of development.

I would be happy to hear some feedback. Also, some advices where to find investors. I think its promising project, just marketing needs money.

Thank you for your time and good luck to everybody!

Anita

[AnitaK]

Ok, thanks, I will check it out!

[AnitaK]

Thank you Akula for your consideration. Well, I dont know if it works or not. I am here in the world to try.. If we would all stop just because we would think it doesn't work what the world would look like? i've just my interest and intention to make it easier to meet. Huh, its difficult to find a man or a woman you like! I guess Pickroulette is easier way. We will see. Also, this is not just about dating. Lets see whats coming up. Ideas are burning!

[akula]

No worries.
Yeah, tech entrepreneurship might seem a little tricky at first, but then people get the hang of it.
Basically, it's all about understanding that with tech, customers are not your only stakeholders.
It's about seeing the innovation ecosystem as a whole.

For example, in your industry, there is a number of large competitors like Match and Eharmony.
These guys are at each others throats. To compete against each other, they need to innovate.
They can't innovate them selves because of the innovator's dilemma.
This is why it's cheaper for companies like Match to buy out startups rather than create new things themselves.
This is why dating startups get funded...for the purpose of being sold to a larger competitor so they can win against their larger competitor.
It's like a food chain, the little fish are eaten by bigger fish which needs to eat in order to survive in its competition with even bigger fish.
Therefore, if you wanna be the girl that makes startups which get bought out, you gotta think beyond just what your customers want and more about what your acquirers might want.
For example, who has better geo-location capabilities? Match or Eharmony?
That's where you'd want to innovate...by creating a matchmaking solution with geo-location capabilities.
The acquisition of a startup like that would make sense to larger competitors, and therefore it would make sense to fund this sort of venture.
This is an essential part of the tech entrepreneurship skill set: understanding the needs of the acquisition market.

Anyway, that's what private equity finance is all about.
if you're not shooting for equity finance, none of this applies
then, you just finance using alternatives and try to run a self sustaining business that doesn't need a huge capital buffer to finance its losses