Funding a GoGo - Transparency

As my publishing startup starts to take flight, my full time job right now is finding financing. So to be clear the different sources of funding and allocations, to avoid confusion I will offer full transparency about each of these sources.

The Kickstarter is for the Anthology', our first published title. The funds raised will not go towards overall larger business costs. This is to pay the writers and artists we hope to feature as many of each as the budget allows.

Three Dragons Press as a company to startup has large overhead costs. As the founder enrolled in structured programs, my full time job is now creating the business plan and founding this company. This is now my main source of income, but it is a start up and doesn't have any revenue to pay me or any of the staff. I am allowed/ required to work on more than 20 hours per week par time as part of these programs.

The first grant the company will receive is a federal women founders grant. This funding will go towards initial items, and has limits for certain categories like new technology. There is a high cost certificate that I might use funds to obtain. 

I have already subbmitted an application for a bigger, major project specific funding amount - building the platform will be a major cost to hire developers and an engineer/ architect. Other large overhead costs will involve marketing, hiring, and potential author acquisition. The next grant application I submitted was for myself and my digital design/ mareting team member to work for a year with a stipend on developing, beta testing, the content creation. For this I made it through to be invited for the first zoom pitch session, which will be followed by an in person pitch session.

May will be busy, with an event for the women's program online, and the potential live pitch in Dresden. Followed in June by an in person event in Berlin for the women's grant recipients. In the Start-up world, the more programs and grants which your company is awarded, the more credibility it builds. In addition, they always like to see that you can convince your friends and family to support you. In this regard, a successful Kickstarter campaign continues to build momentum for continued progress. When I ran an ambitious timeline for growth, I compared two models, if you are familiar with start-up theories and types. I ran a business model of a high growth version versus a lean growth model. There is a local media VC that requires a high growth model to obtain investment. However, for me fit and buidling specific brand identity in line with my mission and building a quality team that believe in the mission are a higher priority. A high growth model would require large cash infusion from a VC to hire a full team, churn out high volume immediately, to possibly gain high revenues in a shorter time and be able to sell off at a high valuation to get their ROI back. However, a high growth model is high risk, and because of the larger up front costs, still takes a long time to be cash positive, and a higher revenue stream to reach that point. A Lean starttup model would be more modest, with lower cash infusion but potentially be able to be cash positive in year three, and then scaling up by growing the team and volume of production. I was inspired by Tenebrous Press who spent time building community and brand and was winning awards in their third year.

From this first grant application onward, I am ready and want to win all the awards. The current women's program will provide mentorship and have the goal of finalizing the business model and pitch deck, even though I have to pitch for the second grant long before the program is over. Prior to the pandemic I went to so many cringy pitch events, and hope I can deliver professional quality pitches in contrast. Following these steps, the intention is to enroll/ join a digital incubator in the fall, while we are testing content and building the platform. The incubator program goal is to end maret ready, and during this program the business is elligible to apply for the major federal grant for a team of three. In addition to myself and the design team member, I envision the third person being an editor, so this is the time frame I hope to meet the right person for this role. Hopefully this makes the different sources of fudning less confusion and why obtaining grants for the company are good for the kickstarter to demonstrate that this is a serious project with low risk and high credibility. It also means the kickstarter is important to succeed with our first title and group of writers, many I hope will represent the types of voices for the future, if not specific writers we might be able to continue working with. If all of these steps continue successfullly, that would make the company elligib le next year for the German Publishers Association accelerator and innovation prize competition for another $10,000. ALL the prizes....