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Can anyone tell me if they’ve had any luck in finding an investor through this site at all? We have been in contact with many funding companies to try and find the capital we need to finance our start-up business www.luxurysfinest.com but they all seem to want you to pay them a fee first. How does that make any sense? The reason you need money in the first place is so that you can get your business off the ground. It is so frustrating.

Can anyone help me please. Do you know where the best place to find an investor would be?

We are looking for around $4.5 Million and we have our business plan, financial appendix and company bios ready for anyone that is interested in funding our company. This will turn into something big if we can just get the funding.

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Kathryn, you answered other member’s questions, but no one seems to have answered the ones you asked as yet.

Any luck in finding an investor through this site? I haven’t personally tried, but I doubt it — just because I haven’t seen any pitches here that made me think, Wow I wish I had the capital to get in on that!

+Does it make sense to pay a fee in advance to someone who will try to find funding for your business+? In general, no — but if you really have a business plan you believe in, yet lack the experience and contacts to raise the seed capital, then you may have no choice but to hire or partner with someone who does (but as you seem to have determined, most firms that are posting offers in these forums to secure funding for your business don’t qualify in that regard — in fact, many aren’t even legitimate).

Where would be the best place to find an angel investor? The $4.5 million you are seeking is a lot in the angel investor world. My thought is that you’ll probably need to approach an angel group or a VC firm, and your best bets will likely be (a) groups that historically have invested in start-ups for your type of business (so you’d need to research that), and (b) groups that are close to home (this could be a very promising option if your business launch would guarantee new jobs and generate local economic growth that’s not dependent on tourism, motion picture/TV, or housing — i.e. the industries that have driven your local growth and that may suffer the most in a slumping economy).

Other people’s experience may differ, but in mine, almost every business founder who sought and the actually obtained start-up capital was only two or three degrees of separation from the money at the outset. In other words, the founder knew someone who knew someone with the money or a connection to the money. So I would exhaust EVERY potential contact and connection I had before I went out into the world at-large trolling for seed money.

Hope that helps a little. Best wishes.

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I wish you had the capital too Lighthouse24, it would certainly be a good investment for someone. What Investors should be doing is putting more money into main street rather than wall street which would help the economy grow.

Anyway this is what we have found through our research:

Competitive Comparison

A) We offer a lower transaction rate that our competitors cannot touch. Because our competitors have already set their operating cost and set their charges as standard, for them to change would mean a damaging cut into profit margins.

Competition cost example’s:

Wigix

For items $1,000.00+ Wigix charge the seller $19.50, plus 1% of the portion above $100. Their Reserve Fee, Buy It Now Fee, Listing Upgrades Fees, Additional Picture fee, Hosting Fees and Seller Tools are all included, however when you assess the $1,000.00+ and work out the fee, you see that it will cost the individual $29.50 just to list their list item! Our fee, $20.00, an impressive $9.50 lower. Not happy with just charging the seller, Wigix then hit the buyer with a $1.50 charge just for making a purchase from their website! Luxury’s Finest believe that low costs and great consumer ethics will excel our business way ahead of our competitors.

eBay

For items $1,000.00+ eBay charge the seller $36.31 plus 1.5%. Their Reserve Fees are between $2 and $50, Buy It Now Fees are $.05 — $.25, Listing Upgrade Fees and Additional Picture fees work out at $.10 — $80.00 per upgrade, Hosting Fees are $.15 — $1.00 and Seller Tools Fee — $25.00. When you add this up, just to list one item, eBay charge a massive $51.31. Our fee. just $20.00! A stagering $31.31 cheeper!

At Luxury’s Finest — we throw away the petty charges and offer just one charge, 2%. As our website is only for merchandise that is $1,000.00+, we will be receiving $20.00 per $1,000.00. If we have 1,000 users selling the minimum $1,000.00, equaling $1,000,000.00 passing through our site, giving us a profitable $20,000.00. There are 9.5 million millionaires out there, if we get just 5,000 users (out of 9.5 million) that is only .0526% of our target demographic. We are looking to shoot our way past that with a major advertising campaign.

Our marketing has to ‘HIT HARD’ and ‘FAST’ before competition has time to adjust.

If there are any serious investors out there that would like to invest in our company please contact me kjlawrence63@yahoo.com

I look forward to hearing from you.