product, venture-capital, investorsI have a product idea, and I’ve invested my own money (~$5000) in a proof of principle prototype. It works, but it is finicky and hacked together. For a full scale prototype I need roughly ten times as much as the proof of principle prototype. How can I find capital to build the next prototype?
You’re looking for seed funding, and you have something to show that’s more than a pitch deck. So you could be in great shape.
My suggestion is that you go make that pitch deck as though you still had an idea and not a prototype. There are going to be a bunch of points in the deck where you want to provide evidence. At each of those points, decide how you’re best placed to gather evidence, whether:
By using specific learning you gained in building the prototype
By taking the prototype to key people (for instance, potential customers) as a way of exploring how valuable it could be in solving a real problem for them
By using the knowledge you now have to describe a feasible ready-for-market product, and using that to gather evidence (for instance, if it’s that kind of product, then creating a landing page, buying or finding traffic and measuring responses would give you data)
Then all you need is to get out there and look for potential investors, whether individuals or via one of the many crowdfunding platforms out there. You’ll learn what’s possible pretty fast by engaging people - and my guess is that if your idea has merit and if you have credibility to pursue it, your prototype and the learning it’s given you will help you stand above the crowd of hopefuls.
To find capital to build the next prototype, you’ll need to define your assumptions of why building it will enable to product to validate a market for it and most likely, nail down aspects related to bulk production.
Given you appear to be looking to raise $50k, it’s possible that venture capital might not be a good fit; the average first round is $5 million.
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