Pulling the Trigger

Every start-up founder knows the drill.

You have a business idea to solve a problem that goes from your imagination to some scribbles on a notepad. You see enough there to write a business plan and get feedback — or at least a sanity check — from friends, family, and colleagues.

Some customer validation makes you believe you might actually be on to something, so you decide to keep moving, despite that voice in your head saying it’s too risky and you’ll likely fail.

Bring a start-up idea to life takes money, so you ask yourself who’s going to fund a great idea with no traction and a Pro-forma built on best guesstimates? Without deep pockets, you look at crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding, accelerators/incubators, or a friends and family raise.

That’s where I find myself today with a pet start-up I’m developing called Ryde On-Demand Pet Concierge (www.petryde.com).

I made the decision to launch an equity crowdfunding campaign on Fundable this week, and the process of getting there was exciting and scary. The Fundable platform is open only to accredited investors, so if you’re curious to learn more, here’s the campaign link: https://www.fundable.com/ryde-on-demand-pet-concierge.

Running any kind of crowdfunding isn’t a “sit back and wait” opportunity, so next week is when the real work begins. I've already seen some “tire kicking” interest, which is where it usually starts, but admittedly encouraging to see.

It’s going to be an exciting ryde.