Some software investment questions

[xentagz]

Hi guys,

I hope someone can help me with the following:

I wondered if there are any pitch events to get investors for new software ideas (mobile apps)?
And what can i do to get investors for a brilliant software idea?

Thanks in advance

Dennis from Holland

[akula]

hii...what's your education/work experience?

[xentagz]

Hi Akula,

We are a group of people (designers, programmers, public relations) who create software applications. I hope you guys can help us with the questions from the first post.

[akula]

yea...sure, I can answer all your questions
...but you are asking the wrong kind of questions

it goes like this:
- sometimes founders find an interesting opportunity
- to commercialise the opportunity, they may need finance
- there are many different ways to finance mobile apps
- sometimes, in a very limited number of circumstances, it is appropriate for the founders to shop for external debt or equity

what this means is that, your question should be "how do I finance our opportunity?"
if you asked that question, I can walk you through the alternatives
it is possible that external debt/equity may be an appropriate option for your deal
if that's the case, which is unlikely, I'll tell you about the pitch events and "what can i do to get investors for a brilliant software idea?"

next step:
I want you to pick the top 10 most popular iphone apps and tell me how they were financed
if you can find this information, you'll be on your way to understanding what it's gonna take to finance your opportunity

I would be doing you a disservice if I only covered external debt/equity finance with you
the reason being that it is unlikely that this option is appropriate for you...so there is no point talking about it

[xentagz]

So my question will be "how do I finance our opportunity?"
Because this is our first project, we hoped people in here could tell us if there are official pitch rounds for investors.
Also we want to ask which steps to take to search for an investor.

[akula]

okey dokey..
i'll cover it point by point..

1. normally, mob apps are bootstrapped
this means that north of 80% of mob aps are financed by a mixture of founder savings, consumer credit, trade credit, family/friend loans, sweat equity, donations and customer finance
the reason is that these methods are the cheapest and most appropriate

so, if you wanna finance your thing;
a) cut all costs
b) get a job, save some money
c) get a credit card, max it out
d) get a buddy, go partners
e) beg a friend, borrow some equipment
f) ask mom/dad, borrow some money
g) ask customers for prepayments
h) use your programming skills, work your ass off
i) use trade credit

that should be enough..

2. however, your opportunity might be something like Callaway Digital Arts
you might realise that betting everything on one app is stupid, and you want to develop a portfolio of apps
if you're doing that, it might be taking you a long time to break even, so you'll need equity finance from someone like KPCB - iFund
to get to this stage, you'll need to get filtered by people like Master of 500 Hats ..and to meet people like that, you'll go to events like Upcoming Events | Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE)

etc etc etc..but none of this should matter to you.

3. so yeah..in all probability you've gotta bootstrap.

why do you think you need external finance?

[veikoh]

How much do you want to raise for a mobile app? The cost should be something few thousands, so investors won't be interested to put less than 150K in. For 150K you should offer some infrastructure project which have high potential changing the key economy areas rather than simple app.
I need only MacBook and iPhone to do some apps based on unique product ideas, so you could support me at Do we need a decent programmers again? | Invested.in - Raise Money, Reach Goals, Build Community!
I could write your app as well, I'm still one of the best programmers left from old generation.