

Show HN: Kickfurther – interact directly with small biz, cut out banks - drewbix
http://kickfurther.com

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drewbix
Would love any feedback whatsoever on our site/business/etc.

Specifically: do you like the name? is it clear from our homepage what we do?
would you use this, why/why not?

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notahacker
Your home page could be a lot clearer.

The word "inventory", which is what distinguishes your business from a
Kickstarter-like reward model and all those loan and equity crowdfunding
sites, is halfway down the page and since the summary is still too brief and
confusing I still have to scroll down the bottom and click on a small text
"how it works" link to actually understand what it is you do; "promoting them
to help sell" turns out to be completely optional.

Your expected returns also look quite low relative to the risk (although I
guess they're pretty good on an APR basis) and you don't provide me enough
information to help quantify that risk - _how much will the company 's current
sales have to change to hit that PSR_ would seem to be a pretty critical
metric, for example. That's a criticism I'd levy at _most_ crowd-"investment"
sites though, including some highly successful ones.

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drewbix
Hey thanks for the reply, these are definitely some of the things we've
struggled with the most. We have a message that is challenging to communicate
clearly and succinctly. This is something we will continue to iterate on and
test in the early stages.

We think the returns are excellent, "on an APR basis" as you said, which is
another thing we need to communicate better. A 10% return in 6 months is kind
of the same as a 5% return in 3 months, both of which are 20% in a year which
is great. We don't think APR really captures this idea correctly though and
may want to instead come up with some similar metric that will allow you to
better compare the offerings.

We also need to better communicate the backers' responsibilities in that
promoting isn't exactly optional. This is a similar transaction as buying
goods on Ali Baba then putting them up for sale on Amazon and Ebay. If you do
that but don't do any marketing, you can't have an expectation of profit. Some
goods may sell naturally, and especially with the help of the other backers,
but you should do your part to help with the marketing.

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notahacker
To clarify my earlier comment, the APR is the upside but you also could
benefit from some metric which more clearly indicates the risk factor. If ACME
Fashion needs to shift $6k worth of stock [representing half the consignment]
in the next six months to repay their backers, is that substantially less,
about the same or substantially more than the amount of stock they managed to
shift over the last six months?

For example with Allegory Handcrafted Goods I can see they made $183,500 in
sales last year, so sticking a couple of hundred bucks towards buying them
$12k worth of stock to shift doesn't seem too risky; probably you could
highlight that figure more... With some of the other products though, I'm left
with numbers of social followers in lieu of any indication of whether they've
actually sold comparable quantities of stock before.

And frankly, I'd want rather more than 10% to front up cash if these vendors'
recognition was so low the actually needed _my_ contribution to their social
marketing campaigns.

I doubt I'm your target audience for this anyway :-)

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1986v
Freakin' A - I love this.

