Today was focused on looking over the RedStores valuation.  Met with C… and went over what my detailed plan for Shareholder structure.    Basically, great further guidance from C… on how to proceed.

Basically,  pretty easy steps:

1. One page pitch
2. 10 page slide ware deck
3. Sale/investor oriented business plan

In terms of valuations – some nice high level input – buy speed for equity.  Another words- if I”m looking for funding, be willing to trade of higher % for faster cash, vs shopping around for the right investor – but giving up time.

Car… came along- and he is very fluent in working DCF, etc.  so I will have some great help in putting forecasts, etc. together.

In the evening, Skyped with J…. whom I met at GLC – we talked for 1.5 hours about his experiences in ‘plat forming’ companies online.

Some good lessons learned.  For example, for Genie, if it was to be done through his, it would have been $1-2MM just for the platform – never mind the rest of the effort.  So, it looks good.

We also talked about onboarding private label sites outside of my current model.  Bottom line is that to onboard a startup under a private label should be at least a $100K touch.  Many reasons for that, but basically, a startup that wants to online – doesn’t know what they want – so there is a big process of trial-and-error – and if you are ‘helping’ them online – it sucks time. 

So, for startups – first rule – $ upfront in form of a retainer as well as prepaid 1 year op costs.  This will likely mean that some of the people that are interested in talking to me now, will not be so interested soon.    Filtering in effect! 🙂

To handle this – I have put together a prequalification document (I based it on M.. work) – and will use that to screen out those that don’t fit my profile.

Protecting my and companies time is crucial – so need to make sure that I don’t allow us to get distracted with things that will not drive our mission forward.

I had discussions with my Japanese sourcing partner – to look at our Japanese sourced product lines.  Basically, I put everything on the table – and have allowed ANYTHING to be changed or altered to better leverage the local on-the-ground Japanese market conditions.  Prelim info suggests that going forward on the Tahitian line with J…. is solid – still need to review the Akoya side – that one maybe not as attractive.   But, should have this week some hard data from my purchasing team – so should be able to push on that.