$200k in sales from a $6k advertisement • Hacker News Board

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#51

Post by daxfohl » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

nelsondev wrote: post #36

Pyramus wrote: post #34

The project is very interesting and I hope it succeeds, yet from a financial perspective I do not understand why to fund it through retail investors/franchise model/crowd debt funding. From an investor's perspective there is limited upside with full default risk, yet the risk is hardly addressed. If the risk really was low, then why not self-fund the first X PoPs and convince with data on customers, ROI etc.? See als…

Same question, why not “laser focus” your efforts on convincing one technically proficient investor with deep pockets, rather than having to convince 100s-1000s via crowd-funding? Is it that investors need to provide the roof top too, so it’s a way to reach out to property owners?

Per Wikipedia, "Franchising is one of the few means available to access venture capital without the need to give up control of the operation of the chain and build a distribution system for servicing it."

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#52

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

Pyramus wrote: post #34

The project is very interesting and I hope it succeeds, yet from a financial perspective I do not understand why to fund it through retail investors/franchise model/crowd debt funding. From an investor's perspective there is limited upside with full default risk, yet the risk is hardly addressed. If the risk really was low, then why not self-fund the first X PoPs and convince with data on customers, ROI etc.? See als…

This is exactly why the JOBS-act style crowdfunding model doesn't work, and may harm small-time investors. If your business is low-risk, you self-fund or bootstrap. If your business is high-risk but has a decent team you can just raise from a VC. It's only high-risk, low-reward ventures that can't raise from a VC that will seek funding from a boatload of zero-value-add small-time investors.

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#53

Post by lifty » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #39

I have to commend this article for actually doing the thing HN constantly demands. The article introduces the company and the problem it's solving to contextualize the story, rather than assuming you're a faithful reader of their newsletter. The article structure here assumes a successful viral spread out of its little bubble into the wider world, where people have no idea what this company is. Copywriters working fo…

The video about their tech is also on point. I think they have a thing for no bullshit communication.

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#54

Post by Pyramus » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

mildlyclassic wrote: post #37

nelsondev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same question, why not “laser focus” your efforts on convincing one technically proficient investor with deep pockets, rather than having to convince 100s-1000s via crowd-funding? Is it that investors need to provide the roof top too, so it’s a way to reach out to property owners?

Great question. There's a few reasons. First, It's taken ~20yrs, the Indian government, 15 telecom companies and more than $200B to bring ~600M out of 1B Indians 4G. Broadband deployment is more expensive and currently only 20M Indians have 10mbps or greater 'broadband' connections. Even at Wifi Dabba's dramatically lower deployment cost, the price tag to connect 500M Indians is enormous and we're not willing to wait…

Thank you for the reply.

I do understand your capital requirements in X years down the line.

I also respect your goal of decentralisation and community ownership. (As an aside, what does ownership mean? If illegal things were to happen on my PoP are you saying I am liable?)

Yet, my question stands: Why do you want USD 2M in cash from retail investors today? Why not self-fund the first X PoPs, show it works, then scale?

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#55

Post by dilippkumar » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

> The $20,000 price point of our product + the high friction of the contact process + users that are OK with ads = A high signal to noise ratio from DF visitors.

I’m curious about the “users that are OK with ads” part of the equation. (From the article - these are DF readers who don’t have ad blockers and are willing to click on ads). I can’t wrap my head around how this is a signal. Are seasoned tech investors (the target audience for the product) more likely to browse the internet without ad blockers and more likely to click on an advertisement? Is it the other way around - people browsing the internet without ad blockers signal some amount of naivety that somehow makes them better customers?

I don’t understand this. Can someone please explain?

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#56

Post by lxe » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

I haven't been more excited for a company and their model like this before. Everything they do just seems to... make sense. I really wish them best and hope the bureaucrats won't catch up.

I'm imagining in the US they will be met with a bunch of hurdles and legal stuff due to "lasers bad"

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#57

Post by tobyjsullivan » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

Pyramus wrote: post #54

mildlyclassic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question. There's a few reasons. First, It's taken ~20yrs, the Indian government, 15 telecom companies and more than $200B to bring ~600M out of 1B Indians 4G. Broadband deployment is more expensive and currently only 20M Indians have 10mbps or greater 'broadband' connections. Even at Wifi Dabba's dramatically lower deployment cost, the price tag to connect 500M Indians is enormous and we're not willing to wait…

Thank you for the reply. I do understand your capital requirements in X years down the line. I also respect your goal of decentralisation and community ownership. (As an aside, what does ownership mean? If illegal things were to happen on my PoP are you saying I am liable?) Yet, my question stands: Why do you want USD 2M in cash from retail investors today? Why not self-fund the first X PoPs, show it works, then scal…

> This approach we are taking at Wifi Dabba is one small step in exploring more scalable ownership, deployment and maintainence models.

It sounds like this $2M raise is an experiment more than the end goal.

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#58

Post by eyvindn » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

This is an interesting idea and innovative approach - exciting stuff and congratulations on securing the 200k investment.

Some questions regarding the underlying technology:

You mention a "self-healing" grid. If one of these laser lines gets disrupted, say by a bird, or someone knocks over the laser receiver - how quickly does the PoP reroute traffic over a different path in the grid? Does it wait for a timeout, or is there some meta-data from the laser link to know when the interface is down?

One of the reasons you use the laser PoPs is that underground fibre is expensive. However - given that you have to pull overground fibre to every customer within the PoP - the total "length" of fibre in play will be roughly equal to the length of fibre required in a traditional underground installation. What's the advantage then? Why can't you pull all the fibre overground and bypass having laser PoPs completely?

Finally - given the massive investment in 4G and price wars in India, I would assume you are competing with mobile broadband routers. How is performance of such solutions in dense cities like Bengaluru? Is it unreliable or congested enough for people to want to pay for a dedicated fibre/laser internet connection?

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#59

Post by corytheboyd » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

lxe wrote: post #56

I haven't been more excited for a company and their model like this before. Everything they do just seems to... make sense. I really wish them best and hope the bureaucrats won't catch up. I'm imagining in the US they will be met with a bunch of hurdles and legal stuff due to "lasers bad"

Pretty sure one of the local ISPs here in San Francisco (Money Brains) already uses lasers for their consumer network (as opposed to their business network, which is something else iirc)

The reason it will be hard in the US overall is that Comcast lobbied their monopoly into local law across the entire country, and the fight to revert it is fought one city at a time it seems. I don’t think Comcast will reign like this forever, but things are going to be shit for many more years.

Re: $200k in sales from a $6k advertisement

#60

Post by irowe » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #55

> The $20,000 price point of our product + the high friction of the contact process + users that are OK with ads = A high signal to noise ratio from DF visitors. I’m curious about the “users that are OK with ads” part of the equation. (From the article - these are DF readers who don’t have ad blockers and are willing to click on ads). I can’t wrap my head around how this is a signal. Are seasoned tech investors (the…

I’m not sure what the author intended this to mean, but I know that I whitelist sites like daringfireball because I respect the author and the ad platform (Carbon and its ilk) are very non-intrusive. For what it’s worth, I am not part of the target audience.