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.

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

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.

All points spot on. No control, high risk, they give up a little equity but not much. It’s a fine line to tow running a business that you have to promote and at the same time appropriately representing all possible risks. In my mind one would only do this with highly disposable income, if you believed in the vision and the leader, not if you thought you would make a boatload of money here. Personally if given the option I’d just go with the loan from the bank. Less hassle, as long as the debt load isn’t massive you control all levers. If this is going to be some massive $100M company then why give up the equity if you don’t have to.

If you didn’t intend this as some trolling comment and we’re just asking a question, then yeah my bad. Sorry, it didn’t read this way to me and given the tone of the other thread it seemed a continuation of the same bashing he was taking left and right here.