Toward Near Term Hardware Implementation of the P2
rjo__
Posts: 2,114
In my experience, money is never the problem. Lack of money can be a problem, but there is always a solution to that problem.
I am not a rich person. I didn't start out that way, and I certainly won't end up that way. But I can honestly say that everything
that I have ever really wanted to do in life, I have done. Many times this involved relatively large sums, which I certainly didn't have.
I never lost control of any project that I didn't want to lose control of.
And many times, once I had done whatever it was that I wanted to do, you would have asked "Why in the World would you want to do that?"
There was always a good reason, but it was rarely obvious and it was never primarily to make money.
Parallax really doesn't have to make much money from the P2 effort. But they can't really afford to throw money at it either.
Crowd funding doesn't fit. And OnSemi doesn't do partnerships.
Maybe what is need is an investor class that can't get in the way, isn't primarily profit driven, and matches the personality, business ethics and drive of the ownership.
I couldn't invest seriously at this time. This is not an offer. Just my guess is that there is a world of potential such investors who have never heard of Parallax.
People just like me(except of course, I have heard of Parallax:).
I am not a rich person. I didn't start out that way, and I certainly won't end up that way. But I can honestly say that everything
that I have ever really wanted to do in life, I have done. Many times this involved relatively large sums, which I certainly didn't have.
I never lost control of any project that I didn't want to lose control of.
And many times, once I had done whatever it was that I wanted to do, you would have asked "Why in the World would you want to do that?"
There was always a good reason, but it was rarely obvious and it was never primarily to make money.
Parallax really doesn't have to make much money from the P2 effort. But they can't really afford to throw money at it either.
Crowd funding doesn't fit. And OnSemi doesn't do partnerships.
Maybe what is need is an investor class that can't get in the way, isn't primarily profit driven, and matches the personality, business ethics and drive of the ownership.
I couldn't invest seriously at this time. This is not an offer. Just my guess is that there is a world of potential such investors who have never heard of Parallax.
People just like me(except of course, I have heard of Parallax:).
Comments
Crowd funding is about why in the World do we need a P2, P1+, P2-, P3, ... And this allows parallax to avoid throwing their money (we will throw our own money for them). We are the investors, their customers will be their investors. No customers, no Px. Simple.
Maybe it doesn't fit because we feel fear. Our subconscious says that the world doesn't need P2. We need more ARMs, x86, x64, ... So there is no way we can make it happen.
Maybe I misunderstood.
But for 180nm we are talking about one ($30,000 / $60,000 ?) or two ($60,000 - $120,000 ?) shuttle runs.
I put up a strawman for Kickstarter type funding with amounts, rewards and Parallax's net from each level. With the numbers I used, I didn't see it as workable. Feel free to come up with a model that can raise enough for two shuttle runs plus a production run if needed to cover any chip rewards.
make sure you take into account all expenses and resources involved in running the program, completing development and testing, documentation, designing and building any boards for rewards and producing and delivering rewards. This gives you a true idea of what the total money you need to raise beyond the shuttle runs is. Then you can figure out how many people you need to have at each reward level versus what you think you can really get at each reward level.
And then don't forget the COST to Parallax from negative publicity if it fails to fund or if it gets funded and fails to deliver.
People can see if your numbers are workable.
EDIT: I linked my strawman numbers.
As I understand it ...
Crowdfunding is a term used by the recently passed JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups) act in the USA. Crowdfunding allows "investors" to take an equity stake in a small business without some of the older SEC rules getting in the way. Crowdsourcing is limited to $1M a year fundraising (in the USA). The SEC is slowly handing out new rules, so it is hard to tell when Crowdsourcing will be really actionable. There is some confusion about what different kinds of investors can do.
Kickstarter does not take "investors" and has no current plans to offer Crowdsourcing. Kickstarter is exempt from SEC rules because there is no "investing" in projects. Kickstarter simply connects contributors "donations" to ideas without any kind of expected investment return on equity. Contributors may be rewarded in some small way like getting a product in return for their donation. Contributors can not expect any kind of stake, and guidance to the project can be ignored. The kickstarter is legally required to finish the project in the terms that were set, or in the event of failure the project owner must refund contributors (losing the 5% Kickstarter fee).
Here is one lawyer's view on Kickstarter. http://www.nwcorporatelaw.com/kickstarter-legal-guide/
Good points.
I like you LLC loan you had posted about earlier. Everyone thinks it is so easy to raise money, someone should start an LLC for the forums and raise money and then make an LLC loan to Parallax. Parallax pays the interest until the note is due. make it forum funded an legal. Parallax repays the loan in merchandise credits and folks can come buy stuff with their "shares" when the loan is paid off (that part sounds a little shady to me). All we need is someone to setup the LLC and manage things (pro bono,of course).
Slight misinterpretation ;-) I didn't suggest starting an LLC company to make a loan to Parallax.
I suggested Parallax could make LLP (Limited Liability Partner) loans if necessary.
Kickstarter is kind of like a loan except that it is an agreement to deliver "something" only if the kickstarter funding succeeds, and Kickstarter gets 5%. If funding fails on an LLP basis, only the principal would need to be paid back. The only real advantage of Kickstarter is that you'll find out if there is enough interest by a certain date without too much trouble.
I never raised money like that and probably couldn't have raise money like that because at the time I was "doing"… everybody I knew who had any money thought my enthusiasm was very cute, and possibly laudable … but equally likely just nuts.
@jazzed, Kickstarter is crowdfunding. It has been crowd funding years before some politicians found out that they were making two digits billions of US dollars and made a law for it (EDIT: I apologize. some offensive and strong political opinion removed). You must read more about what is crowd funding. You will found that something like the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty (NY, USA) was made using crowd funding several houndred years ago. Crowd funding can be as old as society. No need to have a law to define it. Said that, I am not talking at all about equity crowdfunding. I am talking about "all or nothing, reward based crowd funding". Yes, it's Kickstarter, and it is crowd funding. You are right about one thing: I should must call it donator (not investor). And that is actually what I want. I want to free parallax from debt. I want to make it possible, I will take the risk of failure. A lot of people joined together. Each one individually taking small risk, to make one big awesome and high risk thing. That's the wonder of crowd funding in kickstarter.
@mindrobots, I have no idea about the pricing ($) and conditions (number of waffers) of shuttle runs. So that is a task that only parallax can do.