Musings and venting some stress…
I'm actively searching for a co-founder. Y Combinator Startup School has been the source of some potential contacts. I'm hopeful that will pan out, because being a solo founder is lonely, a lot of work, and generally frowned upon by VC's and incubators/accelerators. Plus, I know I'm not the best person to handle Marketing, Sales, Branding, Advertising. I have no special connections to the transportation sector. (See “founder - market fit.”)
Everything always proceeds more slowly than you would expect, but I'm not naive. I know that's how things go sometimes.
Hopefully, next week the model trailer will finally be able to provide some real data on relative performance when pushing a vehicle, something to extract the marketing copy wherein I can proudly announce, “ELTRA eliminates up to 95% of emissions and saves up to 50% of the cost of fuel after accounting for the cost of electricity (under test conditions and certain assumptions).” That little parenthetical does a lot of work.
It's tough to look around and hear everybody talking about how they want to invest great sums of money in clean tech and transportation tech, electrification and fossil fuel emissions reduction, and yet it's so hard to find the right partners for sources of capital and get noticed. I'm sure every founder goes through the same process and ordeal.
Being a generalist means that you're ready for anything the world might throw at you, any kinks that might come your way, but it means that you're never the best at any one individual thing, whether it's design or website creation or blog posting or marketing. So I look at “decks” far superior to mine and wonder: is being a hyperactive braggart with a keen sense of visual design really what's most important in order to get noticed? Can't these super-smart VC's see through all the marketing BS and engage in the actual concept? Well yes, they probably can. But if it's not pitch perfect, I'm told, might as well forget it because they'll be on to the next pitch faster than I can say “click through.”
I can have a conversation. I love being in front of an audience. But for some reason everybody wants to see a homemade video of me presenting my idea in a one to three minute video format. C'mon! I already have written a one to three minute introduction in text on the website! Besides, I'm working from my home office. It's ugly. There's no good backdrop. The camera is attached to my desktop computer! When did our society become solely fixated on visual media? (See, e.g., instructions for anything at all requested from a Google search.) Doesn't anybody read anymore? (You, Dear Reader, of course are excepted from that gripe.)
What surprising to me is that the concept behind ELTRA seems so obvious, so simple. Sure there are practicalities and details to be worked out, but these things can be managed. SO WHY DON'T WE HAVE IT ALREADY? (This question also buggers me with respect to “smart” traffic lights. Why aren't they here already?)
It feels like we're about to turn a corner though. I'll have great pictures and video and data to share next week! Fingers crossed!
Just needs to be wired up. Right?