COMPETITION
Karl Dakin
Capital Coach | Stakeholder Investor Campaigns | Design, Stage, and Manage or Support | Reduce Time, Money, and Risk of Raising Funding | Increase Probability of Success! | Opportunity Management
CONTENTS
?·?????? Quick Calendar
·?????? Funding Points – Weekly Compilation
·?????? Anniversaries
·?????? Quotation
·?????? Capital Coach
·?????? Quick Assessment
·?????? Successful Funding
·?????? Don Cohen Show
·?????? SuperCrowd Chicago
·?????? Opportunities
·?????? Subscribe – Daily or Weekly Editions
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?QUICK CALENDAR
?I quickly list here upcoming opportunities where I will be sharing information, lessons in funding, or meeting in person or via videoconferencing.
?May 31 (change of date from Tuesday to Friday) – Successful Funding - Back Office – Justin Lowell
June 4 – Successful Funding – Leadership – Kon Apostolopoulos
?June 12 - SuperCrowd Chicago – Workshop on Crafting Crowdfunding Offers
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?FUNDING POINTS - COMPETITION
?In development of a business model the final test is its ability to meet the competition. Without the ability to complete sales in the face of all the choices offered to prospective, the business model is simply an unproven theory.
?I have heard countless pitches where a small business asserts that it has no competition. This foolish statement fails to recognize that a customer may choose the status quo and do nothing. To purchase a new product or service from a new vendor represents a risk that a consumer may be unwilling to take.
?Anything that may be viewed by a prospective customer as an alternative is a form of competition. Competition is not limited to a similar product or service, but extends to anything that causes the prospective customer to not purchase the product or service of the small business. ?
?A failure to buy a product or service may be due to a variety of challenges that have nothing to do with the features and characteristics of the offered product or service. A failure to purchase may be due to:
·?????? A lack of awareness
·?????? No need for the product or service at the moment
·?????? Convenience
·?????? Lack of available money
·?????? Preference for other beverages
?Using the illustration of the glass of lemonade, the following may be viewed as competition:
·?????? Water
·?????? Any other beverage
·?????? Any lemonade that is a shorter distance away
·?????? Lemonade mixed with something else
·?????? Lemonade that is in a container
·?????? Lemonade that is chilled
·?????? Lemonade that may be made from a powder
·?????? Lemonade served in different quantities
?The business model for something as simple as selling a glass of lemonade is inadequate if it does not address all of these challenges. Although I have listed several challenges, an investor candidate may have many others. A small business must be prepared to speak to these challenges within its pitch.
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ANNIVERSARIES
1-Year Anniversary – Giving to Kiva
I am celebrating my first anniversary in giving to Kiva, resulting in no-interest loans to businesses worldwide.
19 Years With LinkedIn!
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QUOTATION
?“He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.â€
?Knebel's?Sammlung kleiner Gedichte?(1815), issued anonymously, and?Distichen?(1827) contain many graceful?sonnets, but it is as a translator that he is best known. His translation of the elegies of?Propertius,?Elegien von Properz?(1798), and that of?Lucretius,?De Rerum Natura?(2?vols., 1821) are deservedly praised.
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SUCCESSFUL FUNDING
Friday, May 31st (not the usual Tuesday date), the next show for Successful Funding, will feature my guest, Justin Lowell, with Form Factor. We will discuss getting the back office of a small business in order to support a capital campaign.
?You may register to attend this show at:
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Emiliano De Laurentiis, the CEO and Founder of Knowledge Avatars, was a guest on my Successful Funding show earlier today where we talked about key questions about what is called artificial intelligence (AI). We demonstrated CAP by giving it prompts that generated responses out of proprietary data that I had provided and generated responses out of OpenAI’s Chat GPT 4.0.
领英推è
?You can see all of my shows at the time of broadcast or recordings of past shows at my profile on LinkedIn.
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CAPITAL COACH
?I am now field evaluating the Capital Coach, an artificial intelligence learning management system avatar (AILMSA) that I have trained on the topic of funding. The Capital Coach is embedded as a widget on my Dakin Capital website at https://dakincapital.com/CAP. The Capital Coach represents a proprietary data set on the Knowledge Avatars learning management system with licensed access to Open AI. Could you give the Capital Coach a try and ask it questions about funding?
I am working with Knowledge Avatars to make CAP the ultimate tool to support small businesses and community projects in raising funding. Two current challenges are (1) training the AI avatar to match specific funding situations and (2) explaining that a highly personalized AI avatar is so much more than a chatbot powered by a Large Language platform. Unique, non-public information about an individual or an organization cannot be obtained through a chatbot. The recent advances in AI have narrowed the field of prospects who stand to gain from personalized AI to high-net-worth individuals, professional service providers, organizational leaders, and other similarly placed who work with fast-moving, fast-changing information that may never be public.
Please share your feedback. Karl Dakin at kdakin@dakincapital.com
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QUICK ASSESSMENT
?I frequently receive direct requests for assistance in funding. As much as I would like to help everyone, I realize that constraints of time, money, distance, prior knowledge of an industry or capital market may prevent me from making a significant contribution.
?People send me slide decks and ask for money or for me to introduce them to an investor. It takes time to evaluate an investment opportunity. I cannot refer to an investment opportunity without completing an evaluation first.
?To aid me in assessing an investment opportunity and determining if I may be of help, I have created a short set of questions that span a variety of small business topics. Anyone seeking my assistance may download and complete these questions from a folder I have set up in my Box.com account. The answers may be sent to me at Karl Dakin – kdakin@dakincapital.com.
?DON COHEN SHOW
On Monday, I was a guest on Don Cohen’s show, where we talked about promotion – the act of sharing information to gain awareness and solicit action. You may see a recording of the show at:
I enjoy being a guest and engaging in conversations with other guests and with Don on building communities and using LinkedIn as a communication channel. Every show is its own adventure as we start with a word of the day and then see where the conversation goes from there.
Don is an expert on LinkedIn, particularly on the use of Live streaming to build brands and communities. We will discuss using LinkedIn as a social media platform for building communities that support raising funding.
All shows where I have been a guest can be viewed on Don Cohen's LinkedIn page under Posts.
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SUPERCROWD CHICAGO
?SuperCrowd Chicago will be held on June 12th in Chicago. It represents the next opportunity for people interested in investing through investment crowdfunding and for businesses seeking to raise funding through investment crowdfunding to come together, meet, and share information.
?I will present a workshop for small businesses, community leaders, and service providers on how to craft investment offers that are customer focused.
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OPPORTUNITIES
Community Revitalization Funds
I am teaming with a number of experts in community engagement, organization and funding to develop a model for a community investment fund that can provide capital to a set of local projects that can collectively and interactively generate sufficient economic activity to serve as a foundation for a community’s future growth.
We are seeking seed funding in the form of a short-term loan that will be repaid out of Reg CF crowdfunding campaign. Anyone interested in learning more and discussing a demonstration, please contact:
Karl Dakin at kdakin@dakincapital.com
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AeroCine
With avian flu in the news and a growing number of cases of diseases and pathogens transmitted by air, I am advocating the use of cold plasma as a safe and effective way to continuously disinfect the air and surfaces within any kind of building.
I can provide Pathogen Focus disinfection equipment and conduct a small-scale clinical demonstration on-site in the field. Anyone interested in learning more and discussing a demonstration, please contact:
Karl Dakin at kdakin@dakincapital.com
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The Ultimate Dinosaur Park
I will be in Texas this week visiting different site candidates for a theme park that will feature full size, highly realistic, animatronic dinosaurs. The theme park would be positioned with advanced robotics, workforce training and economic development.
I am exploring possible relationships with developers, hospitality operators and other attractions.
Anyone interested in learning more and discussing a demonstration, please contact:
Karl Dakin at kdakin@dakincapital.com
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Karl Dakin, the Capital Coach
Dakin Capital LLC
Capital Coach | Stakeholder Investor Campaigns | Design, Stage, and Manage or Support | Reduce Time, Money, and Risk of Raising Funding | Increase Probability of Success! | Opportunity Management
9 个月Who, what and where is your competition?