Together we raised $100,000 from 200+ investors.
What a great day! Over TWO HUNDRED small investors (you guys!) helped us bust through the $100k milestone. This is a crowdfund achievement. Every small investor who put in $100 up to you big investors who put in thousands, we did this together.
Amazing. Simply amazing. Some people had their doubts that we could get even this far but doubt no more, we hit our first milestone!
While $100k is a round number and psychological milestone, it also means that our crowdfund is now "funded" because we met our minimum. From now until the campaign closes we will see how high we can reach!
Our funding target is $500,000 and the crowdfund maximum is $1 million, so there is still a lot of room left to go...
Let's take a step back... so what does more capital mean for our company? (That is "our" as in the founders plus the 200 new investors - we are all owners of AmmoSquared now...)
More capital means lot of things... here are some thoughts:
Our biggest focus right now is on our technology. Anyone that has been to our site realizes the challenges potential customers face in signing up. Once you get signed up you have to jump through some difficult UX hurdles to get subscriptions changed. It is frustrating experience and we keep customers happy by handling change requests through email. Obviously as we grow this isn't the best way to scale!
Right now we have budget of $150k for our Digital Ammunition Exchange build-out. Anyone who has been in technology knows that kind of money won't go very far. So more funds means more tech functionality. If we don't meet our target then we'll likely have to scale back our plans. We'll get there, but it will take longer.
Once we have our technology built then it will be time to pour on some gasoline, not to burn the place down, but to rev up the marketing engine! You see, what we know today is that we have a proven business model, awesome customer service, unique service, and... a leaky bucket.
We know potential customers are coming to our site and leaving because they are confused or frustrated with the sign up process. So all along our plan has been to fix the technology first - then pour resources into visibility.
To get more visibility and "virtual feet" in the door we'll need to do more marketing. Up until now we have keep our marketing costs low because we knew our leaky bucket would mean wasting money. Once the bucket is fixed we can add water to it (site visitors) and know we'll retain more than we lose.
As an investor and owner in the company, it is important to see revenue increase (ideally in an exponential curve), but to see more income month after month and year after year, but you also want to see net profits increase because that is what provides cash for the business to grow and eventually to be distributed to investors.
You improve your net profits or "bottom line" by lowering costs and improving efficiency. Those two areas are what the rest of our capital is reserved for: buying in larger quantities so we can improve our margins and implementing operational efficiencies so we can get boxes out the door quicker at a lower cost. More capital in the beginning just means more resources we can put to good use.
So while we are are ecstatic that we broke through the $100k milestone - we also realize that this is just the first step. We're only 20% to our target and 10% to our maximum - we've got a long road ahead still.
Now that we have reached our minimum, the campaign is guaranteed to fund. (Yeah!)
If you haven't invested yet, take note that we have less than $50k worth of Early Bird pricing left so this would be a GREAT time to jump in! If you have ALREADY INVESTED consider adding to your investment so you can get in at the lower stock price. We're adding new investors every day so the Early Bird pricing won't last long.