investment networking business

ad83

I'm launching a startup with some partners currently. It's an investment networking & education business based in Europe. Our aim is to bring individuals together to form partnerships or "clubs" of between five and ten people who will manage and develop their own investment strategies, whilst developing and educating themselves together as a group over a period of years.

We want to highlight to interested people that there is no shortage of people in this world who will offer to manage your money and that we are not another adviser looking to handle your cash for a price nor are we another company aiming to tell you the 10 secrets of making money in the stock market.etc...

We plan to run seminars periodically with a number of professional investors, university lecturers and others over time who would focus not only imparting their extensive knowledge in their varying fields of finance and investments, but also on teaching participants to teach and develop themselves independently, investing in themselves as we see it

We have had some very strong interest from a university who were looking to partner with us and would obviously be in a position to provide proper funding however we believe that they are looking for too much in terms of equity so we will see how negotiations continue

The belief of the university is that the appetite of students to become involved is really great.

We had planned to market the company to final year and masters students in business and finance fields with the idea of creating competitions between MBA classes of different schools aswell as highlighting the benefit of demonstrating to potential employers an interest and involvement of managing investments

Marketing to students formed only a part of our initial strategy alongside young professionals, older more experienced people,.small and medium sized business owners etc....

Following on from our meeting with the university there has been quite some discussion between my partners as to whether we should focus so heavily on the student market. One believes that we should focus on establishing the business with the older generation who have money to invest whereas the other believes that the students will grow with the business over time and will be a vital part of our ability to build a brand.

Has anyone any experience or advice they would wish to share as to the direction we need to take. Presumably somewhere in the middle? Any and all opinions welcome

Many thanks

How is the company going to make any money, whats the business model?

Do you expect to make a profit through students paying for investment seminars?

Peterdalkey

Deleted User wrote: »

How is the company going to make any money, whats the business model?

Do you expect to make a profit through students paying for investment seminars?

+1

ad83

[Deleted User] wrote: »

How is the company going to make any money, whats the business model?

Do you expect to make a profit through students paying for investment seminars?

Hi el rifle,
Yes that is the idea. We have some really excellent speakers who like the project and want to be involved. We have a couple of wall st. Guys/portfolio managers turned university lecturers lined up for the initial seminars. The idea is to get really high calibre people involved aswell as really good educators who can teach people with zero experience but who want to learn.

We would not look to charge students for the initial introduction we bring to universities focusing more so on creating interest and a future client base but would charge for the commercial seminars

We have agreements lined up with publishers for books our speakers recommend aswell as agreements with certain brokerage houses we would endorse

Many thanks for your response

Any opinions most welcome

As a business proposition I'll be honest with you it screams high risk to me. If I was investing in it I'd be thinking how am I going to get my money back and when?
As an entrepreneur I'd ask the question are the people you are targeting capable of giving you enough revenue to pay all the people involved. How are you going to avoid running up huge debts, until your target market becomes capable to attend paid seminars? And are students the right target market in the first place? Do they care enough about investing money they don't have? Do they have enough foresight to be thinking about that kind of thing? I'm not so sure.
Are the high calibre people you get involved going to do it for free at the beginning? If they are really high calibre they are probably not realistically as they will be getting a lot of speaking offers anyway most of them paid.

The only way I can see you being able to sustain such a company until you have built a brand for putting on events like this and seminars is if you have a big sponsor willing to bankroll the idea based on future revenue.
But how you can estimate that future revenue off a student target market that A arent capable of investment, and B a market that may not be interested enough to attend at a price for another 5-10 years I don't know.

Maybe another poster has some more insights on some positive things I might not be seeing!

Atomico

ad83 wrote: »

I'm launching a startup with some partners currently. It's an investment networking & education business based in Europe. Our aim is to bring individuals together to form partnerships or "clubs" of between five and ten people who will manage and develop their own investment strategies, whilst developing and educating themselves together as a group over a period of years.

We want to highlight to interested people that there is no shortage of people in this world who will offer to manage your money and that we are not another adviser looking to handle your cash for a price nor are we another company aiming to tell you the 10 secrets of making money in the stock market.etc...

We plan to run seminars periodically with a number of professional investors, university lecturers and others over time who would focus not only imparting their extensive knowledge in their varying fields of finance and investments, but also on teaching participants to teach and develop themselves independently, investing in themselves as we see it

We have had some very strong interest from a university who were looking to partner with us and would obviously be in a position to provide proper funding however we believe that they are looking for too much in terms of equity so we will see how negotiations continue

The belief of the university is that the appetite of students to become involved is really great.

We had planned to market the company to final year and masters students in business and finance fields with the idea of creating competitions between MBA classes of different schools aswell as highlighting the benefit of demonstrating to potential employers an interest and involvement of managing investments

Marketing to students formed only a part of our initial strategy alongside young professionals, older more experienced people,.small and medium sized business owners etc....

Following on from our meeting with the university there has been quite some discussion between my partners as to whether we should focus so heavily on the student market. One believes that we should focus on establishing the business with the older generation who have money to invest whereas the other believes that the students will grow with the business over time and will be a vital part of our ability to build a brand.

Has anyone any experience or advice they would wish to share as to the direction we need to take. Presumably somewhere in the middle? Any and all opinions welcome

Many thanks

Hey OP,

I had to read the posts above a few times to make sure I got the idea, so that can't be a good thing. Whenever I come up with an idea but can't sum it up in one sentence, I usually drop it (eventually)

I am mystified as to why you would be targeting students as your main market. They have no money and their tastes / goals / ambitions are going to change like the weather.

ad83 wrote: »

We would not look to charge students for the initial introduction we bring to universities focusing more so on creating interest and a future client base...

I think you probably realise that is a long shot and not really a business model (in my humble opinion).

The only target market that makes sense for me would be 'high net worth individuals', or maybe retired individuals with fairly large sums of cash in the bank, or maybe plenty of assets. So what you would be doing then is marketing seminars to those target audiences, which I would imagine is currently being done by loads of established companies already?

Maybe it could work as a primarily online model, where you can pay a monthly or yearly subscription to access the expert advice of seasoned investment consultants?

Otherwise it all seems more than a bit nebulous to me.

Peterdalkey

Seems rather like a college project challenge to me, seeking to make something out of, or at least cogent arguments in favour of the basic scenario as a feasible business model.

if I am wrong, my other comment would be rather rude!

ad83

[Deleted User] wrote: »

As a business proposition I'll be honest with you it screams high risk to me. If I was investing in it I'd be thinking how am I going to get my money back and when?
As an entrepreneur I'd ask the question are the people you are targeting capable of giving you enough revenue to pay all the people involved. How are you going to avoid running up huge debts, until your target market becomes capable to attend paid seminars? And are students the right target market in the first place? Do they care enough about investing money they don't have? Do they have enough foresight to be thinking about that kind of thing? I'm not so sure.
Are the high calibre people you get involved going to do it for free at the beginning? If they are really high calibre they are probably not realistically as they will be getting a lot of speaking offers anyway most of them paid.

The only way I can see you being able to sustain such a company until you have built a brand for putting on events like this and seminars is if you have a big sponsor willing to bankroll the idea based on future revenue.
But how you can estimate that future revenue off a student target market that A arent capable of investment, and B a market that may not be interested enough to attend at a price for another 5-10 years I don't know.

Maybe another poster has some more insights on some positive things I might not be seeing!

Thanks for your response rifle. Your point very much reflects what one of my partners is saying. We are very much split mainly as a result of the university offering to inject capital into the business which has shifted focus to the student market which was initially only a very small part of the strategy.

We sold the idea to get the speakers involved by partnering with them for the individual seminars . Ie letting them take a percentage of the receipts. We have not taken on any debt

I really appreciate your input as I am not an experienced business person and have a lot to learn and consider

Will take this away and give it some serious thought

ad83

Peterdalkey wrote: »

Seems rather like a college project challenge to me, seeking to make something out of, or at least cogent arguments in favour of the basic scenario as a feasible business model.

if I am wrong, my other comment would be rather rude!

It's not a college project but please fire ahead with your other comment. I'm not overly sensitive and would love to hear feedback, both positive and negative. I've no doubt we have a lot to learn

Peterdalkey

No thanks and I would rather not be negative in my posts if possible. I am a modest investor mostly in commercial property syndicates ( not in Ireland) and in equities. I get lots of "free" investment advice/information from stockbrokers and all the usual online and pink print media stuff. If anything I have information overload.

So I try to use other stuff I read to spark my investment interest. For instance, I was reading about the innovative moves Nokia have been making on lower priced smart phones, the comp[any has been in the gutter, the share price in the toilet but I have done some desk research and reckon there is 15-20 to be had over the next few months out of them.

Investment pros and gurus always have their own agenda, and my making money off those is not their top priority!! I am a cynic when it comes to much of this stuff.

ad83

ad83 wrote: »

Thanks for your response rifle. Your point very much reflects what one of my partners is saying. We are very much split mainly as a result of the university offering to inject capital into the business which has shifted focus to the student market which was initially only a very small part of the strategy.

We sold the idea to get the speakers involved by partnering with them for the individual seminars . Ie letting them take a percentage of the receipts. We have not taken on any debt

I really appreciate your input as I am not an experienced business person and have a lot to learn and consider

Will take this away and give it some serious thought

Most likely the university are tied into a bank. (I dont see an evil icon to insert!) I went to DIT and at the time they were tied up with AIB. Student accounts are obviously very valuable to a bank with all those loans people need after education. So perhaps this is why they are pushing for that! Otherwise its a bit mindless, despite the fact they are a university, I don't see why they would have an interest in promoting investment clubs and so on.

ad83

Atomico wrote: »

Hey OP,

I had to read the posts above a few times to make sure I got the idea, so that can't be a good thing. Whenever I come up with an idea but can't sum it up in one sentence, I usually drop it (eventually)

I am mystified as to why you would be targeting students as your main market. They have no money and their tastes / goals / ambitions are going to change like the weather.



I think you probably realise that is a long shot and not really a business model (in my humble opinion).

The only target market that makes sense for me would be 'high net worth individuals', or maybe retired individuals with fairly large sums of cash in the bank, or maybe plenty of assets. So what you would be doing then is marketing seminars to those target audiences, which I would imagine is currently being done by loads of established companies already?

Maybe it could work as a primarily online model, where you can pay a monthly or yearly subscription to access the expert advice of seasoned investment consultants?

Otherwise it all seems more than a bit nebulous to me.

Hi Atomico, thanks for you feedback

Like I said to rifle targeting students was not our intention. the focus has shifted following the university offering to take a stake in the venture, as presumably the student world is what they know and what they want us to focus on

We really want to stress that we are not investment advisers but rather are creating an investment network for like minded people who want to educate themselves and manage their own investments. We do plan to move somewhat towards an online model as we expand and have the infrastructure in place for webinars, online discussion etc...

I really apprecate your feedback. I will take this into account and post as to the direction we go

Kind Regards,
thomas

ad83

Investment pros and gurus always have their own agenda, and my making money off those is not their top priority!! I am a cynic when it comes to much of this stuff.[/quote]

I feel the exact same way. Information overload exactly. What is there to differentiate any of the brokers out there? Ask a barber do you need a haircut. I fail to see how anybody had faith in any broker, adviser, investment bank,.asset manager or any other middle man. What we want is to create a network for people who create their own strategies, manage their own investments, research and identify real value. I cannot tell you how little time I have for front running gurus and their agendas

ad83

Hi all, just a note to say thank you for all your interest and constructive feedback. Your comments and opinions were taken under real consideration by my partners and I and have really helped us in our strategic planning.

Just writing to let you know we have rejected the universities offer for investment and have instead begun agreeing non exclusive strategic partnership agreements with existing investment education companies allowing us to focus on continuing to build the network internationally

We feel this offers the best opportunity for generating real income in order to grow our venture into a viable business whilst not restricting us to change direction in future if needed.

Just like to say that as i have not alot of experience in launching my own business the feedback received here has been really useful. I used to read similar threads and think people were being unneccesarily negative but my perspective has totally changed and am starting to see serious insight and experience behind such comments no matter how harsh. Hoping i can continue to learn from you all and one day be in a position to offer help people based on my experience.

As always please feel free to keep the comments flowing. I hope to continue to detail our progress over time until the stage that we are a household name and beyond

Kind regards,
AD

Graham

Thanks for sharing ad83, and congratulations on getting so far so quickly.

You've certainly had a busy few months since last December, to go from contemplating a construction course/bar job to turning down an offer of investment from a University is an unbelievable turnaround.

PlanBee

Hello,
I am new one here and would like to continue discussion of the tread, my question is:
has anybody know already existed club or network which one I would like to join, please

Thanks