You should reach out directly to the silver spoon kid in NYC to see if he is interested in investing. You both seem cut from the same cloth TBT. Honestly, it may work out well for both of you.

Why would you muddy the waters with a ton of individual investors, when you can just have the bank give you all the money you need in one shot? Is the bank charging a much higher interest rate?

So if I understand correctly Nic, you want to take over my territory in route operation so I can work for you? Why did I work hard the last 16 years for you to rule me? Do you think us as operators are just going to let you do that? I'm just puzzled. I talked with many of my peers at IAAPA about your venture and you will have adversaries at ever level. Do you not think pinball is coming back to the masses already? I mean no disrespect whatsoever but I must be confused. Good luck and know that there are many big fish in this pond that make their livings off of the same business you are trying to dominate.

On a personal note I contacted you once to talk about purchasing from you and you never answered or returned. You sent me a message here stating for me to hit the buy now shopping cart on your site. Ummm, I'm an operator. I'm not paying retail for anything but you left it at that.

Again, good luck. This is an Everest climb and none of this is personal. Maybe you can help me better understand.

Sounds like you're all set then.

I will. What time zone are you?

Kelso says, Burn!

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/another-gofundme-the-pinball-company

Do you have a bulldog, two Porsches, and a 70-inch 4k screen?

I’m pretty sure he is talking about a pinball podcaster that you can’t mention on these forums without getting your message moderated.

I think it’s a great idea (not being a distributor myself). There are many areas of the country that have no showrooms or barcades for people to check out the new games. Then, when they hate the new games they bought, sight unseen, they are out thousands of dollars.

Even here in Northern California, I know of only 1 distributor and his shop is over an hour away. I’m in a city of 300,000 with a whopping 2 pinball machines on route. When you get your funding together, I recommend looking at Manteca, CA as a good spot for a showroom. They are opening up a Great Wolf Lodge water park in the area and I think it will draw a lot of people with money in their pockets from the Bay Area, while not having Bay Area commercial rent prices.

Good luck with your vision! I just wish I had money to invest.

I remember when a fellow called Otaku tried funding something like this....

I'll guess this is a bigger more plausible scale and the architect for the plan is a little more savy and has some life experience on his side.

Good luck, but I don't think the pinside audience is a real good marketing target for this venture. Skepticism abounds and for good reason based on what has happened in recent years with both big and little fish. All the way up to upstart upscale pinball companies.

.........................................

Hopefully your locations are not prone to flooding. ( sorry couldn't resist ) This is a Otaku saga reference.

Don't let haters kill your dream. I admire your drive. Best of luck in your ventures.

80% of these posters don't even know what a convertible note is.....don't waste your time.

The opportunity for creating a national chain pinmuseum approach is certainly there. Margins are tight but it can probably work. I don’t have the ambition to go there, but somebody should. I don’t know whether Nic will succeed or not. But I admire the vision and ambition to at least try. And yes as poster above says, pinsiders are NOT the intended audience. While I am fortunate to have a very supportive pinball league, the reality is that the vast majority of our income is from those who haven’t played a machine in years if ever. That’s the audience that will be served by this . Good luck.

In Chicgao the Distributors here free ship to our homes and even a flight a stairs, ive even had game room guys from Michigan free deliver here and bring it in my house. Will you be doing that here for us? Yes im a buyer and rotate machines yearly, nowhere near as big as a lot of guys here with 20 plus machines.

Sure I do! That’s when some midlife crisis jagoff parks across two spaces to protect his Corvette and I leave a “learn to park, asshole” note on his windshield.

Sorry, I’m confused. You say your bank will give you all you want, yet you are issuing notes that pay 6%. 6% is a pretty high rate so I’m guessing your bank is charging you more. Also, unlike a bank, which will take your assets if you default, the investor assumes all of the risk, which benefits the start up. Convertible notes into equity are among the most speculative investments you can make and not something I’d offer to friends and family.

You sold other machines? Like....ever? What are the names of them? I'm totally serious. Never heard of you guys until Jetsons. *edit* Unless you meant selling games from other manufacturer...er..wait...you're not really a manufacturer...um....other DESIGNERS.

He is a Jersey Jack Pinball distributor. I've had contact with a few of his customers through the years. I believe the remakes too.

LTG : )

You know I love pinside for what it can provide. A support community to help others solve their problems.

I absolutely HATE pinside for what it often devolves into. A total pissing match. I don’t even have a horse in this race, but damn why don’t you go design a pinball machine, arrange the financing to get it produced, arrange the distribution channels, get it sold, get vendors paid, and then make crappy comments like this. But no, you have an opinion and it must be heard, informed or not.

We get it pinside members, you think this isn’t worth investing in, you think that someone is invading your territory, you want to know what said person can do to make you life better, you want to comments when you decide it’s more important to take down anyone else’s achievement.

Walk away, troll another thread. But damn just leave the poor guy alone, go invest in whatever you think is worth putting your money into.

It is so damn easy to be a naysayer, take others down. If that energy was actually invested into doing something useful we might all be better off as a forum, as a pinball industry, as a hobby, as a country.

And yeah I can be sure this starting dumpster fire will now aim it’s rhetoric at me as it is often want to do. Go right ahead. If it makes you all feel better just crap all over me too.

I can guarantee that probably the worst place to go looking for support from anyone for anything outside the box is on this forum

I’m not particularly familiar with this method you are using for raising capital. How do you insure your investors are accredited or otherwise not legally required to be accredited under your state’s blue sky laws? Where would the private placement memorandum or other similar documentation be available to review?

I think he’s trying to make a joke along the lines of that was your only independent machine so of course it was your best seller. Clearly you guys sell other machines from other manufacturers and what you meant was you sold more copies of Jetsons than any of those other machines you sell.

Sure. But, the world is a harsh place and many people are simply not suited (either personality wise or otherwise) to invest in small companies under the control of others. Many people are not qualified to differentiate a good deal from a risky deal to simply a bad deal, and for these people the blue sky laws are there to protect.

While I agree with much of the spirit of your post (people need to be nicer), this portion of your post is simply not correct. Sadly, the Pinside population base has been targeted over the years by people that simply couldn’t or wouldn’t do what they said they could do after they hit us for every penny they could liberate from our pockets (either through their own malfeasance like Skit-B or their incompetence and dishonesty like J-Pop).

The Pinside population has been mined repeatedly by people like Andrew, Dutch Pinball, and the 30 year memorial book by Stern...etc etc etc.

A little bit of doubt is a healthy thing and is the result of negative expierences. Anyone asking this community for money is going to be met with initial skepticism and questioned. Don’t confuse caution and asking questions for a community that lacks the ability or desire to be helpful.

* edit - I’m certainly not inferring there is anything wrong or improper with the investment being discussed here. I know nothing about it at all, just making some general friendly observations about why there will be a negative reception to a new project at this moment in time. *

What the status of Scooby-Doo? Any idea when we can expect the game? Great license and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Fingers crossed! I really want to see this made.

There is no question many have been taken down by people who were earnest but very poor businessmen. And I agree it is on Nic to make more transparent the risk profile here. To the degree he doesn’t or it is perceived he doesn’t then he is open to criticism.

The one big difference here is that Nic didn’t go asking the forum for money. Someone found his posting and then the crapfest began.

Platforms like WeFunder do run the risk of having uninformed investors who can little afford the risk involved. I am sure given they are one of the first of their kind they are under quite a bit of scrutiny because of that (or I would hope so).

To the degree we can minimize the middleman (which is all a hedge fund is for the most part in many instances) here while protecting the investor, avoiding this nanny state is a good direction. Whether we can avoid the abuses typified by several Kickstarter failures and our own pinside hat in hand pinball companies, I fully agree remains to be seen.

I'm confused. I thought Stern outlawed distributors who sell their product from also sell JJP?

Sounds like an opportunity to print money. Man invests $50k, two years later he’s received $500k back and still owns a $2M stake? That must be like a brazillian percent roi. Too good to be true

That may have some antitrust facets if it were true. If Stern did indeed do that I’d be interested to see what the arguement would be from Stern for why it isn’t anti-competitive.

I do not believe Stern put any rule like this in place.

If you sell Sterns, chances are high that you’re in the Stern Army. Mingling with other manufacturers might be seen as insubordination - awol.

Any potential investor should read the risks page on the TPC WeFunder page very carefully. Promissory notes are NOT stock, or vice versa. Rules governing such options are not protected. Investors cannot redirect company policies or management. Success can be entirely dependent on external factors in pinball such as ability to acquire examples of titles of games that in most cases have not be made for over 25-30 years. This essentially is free disposeable capital to TPC with crossed fingers to individuals, despite supposed limitations of non-secured investors, which is specifically designed to protect a parent company, not an investor themselves.

People have a right to be skeptical when offers are asked to invest in a luxury, non essential commodity (pinball) or a company that offers this commodity as primary part of their sales model that historically has been determined to be questionable during poor economic periods. That also comes with experience. Many long time distributors had to further diversify their equipment sales significantly for this exact reason to survive in the past for the same above reasons.

I don't have any issues with TPC or their sales, I only dislike investment pitches that make it sound like it a dream come true when the reality of the numbers of pinball game distributors dwindle to a handful during fluctuations of economy. Most resalers have not even been around since the last game sales depression.

You buy a licence like Scooby Doo you better damn well make the game

Hope you get this done, it’s a fantastic licence and could be brilliant, as you say if done right.

Quite a few Stern distributors sell other manufacturers pins. Just off the top of my head I can think of Automated, Cointaker, GEX, GRG, I'm sure there's more.

But skeptics also avoid major disappointments every day as well.

Sounds like you are rolling in money....

I bought a machine from you guys years ago. Great service and no problems. I was a business owner until recently when I sold it and understand vision better than most. Small piece of advice. I agree with you defending your intentions/plan. You did a good job conveying what you are trying to do. However besides answering legit questions about product offerings and your actual business I wouldn’t bother responding to the trolls anymore. My biggest problem with the internet is everyone is an anonymous critic but won’t speak that way to your face. Keep positive and best of luck with your venture.

Hey Nic, wishing you luck on your venture. Unrelated question...why do you guys not include descriptions of any of your game's condition on your website? Just curious as it seems any collector would find that information imperative.