tech start up

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

I'm convinced that is a new approach to nutrition/diets especialy as I've successfully shaken off diabetes by diet for over 5 years.

Your procedural approach may be amazing - your presentation & application isn't!

If you don't improve the latter, you are unlikely to get traction with the former.

 

[fisicx]

@RME - going back to your original post:

The important component is the code that does the calculations and displays the results. This needs to be fully tested and certified by an appropriate agency or qualified person.

Once that has been done you need to get quotes on how to build a container (app and website) for those calculations. Excel is not the solution. It needs to be something you can install on your phone or login to on a desktop.

Forget the videos and documentation. If it's not intuitive it's not going to succeed.

 

[RevoMark]

Monitoring and calculating macros is even more important than calculating calories. There are already a plethora of apps that automatically calculate both macros and calories automatically. In most cases all you need to do is scan a bar code and the app does the rest. Manual input is obviously available too. If I was in your position I would move on to the next project.

 

[RME]

Many thanks to all of you who replied. I will bear in mind your views.

 

[Porky]

@RME
I'm pro anyone giving it a go but seriously, save your money, this really is a tough love reply from me, i think you have between Bob Hope and No Hope of you getting this off the ground and into a viable concern. Posters here have been very kind to you, i get that but its false hope IMO.

I have a lot of experience in the tech sector but put simply:- you will need capital and skills to get an APP and website built correctly and illustrate your USP to a decent standard - that's the easy bit. You will then need buckets of cash to market this to gain any decent traction, the route to market will be challenging and further I'm not convinced the market demand is there especially when it comes to someone handing over their hard earned to subscribe/ purchase from you depending on your model. The diet sector is saturated and you need to stand out from the others.

I know its not the reply you want, but lets say you raise some cash via family, friends, crowd etc, use EIS /SEIS and convince some backers and its enough seed capital to get your tech launched, get some proper stats and your marketing messages right and some early stage traction to prove concept. You will then need a much bigger raise for a series A raise early growth for a decent marketing budget and growth plans to hit this hard.

The market meanwhile is absolutely saturated with hungry mouths to feed all needing investment, check out pitching events for a flavour of that, you will see some amazing businesses struggling to get investment, you will see deals done at ridiculously low values and you will see M & A at low ball levels. My gut feeling is that this would struggle to secure/ wont get funding support - thats my view, sorry.

If despite my reply you still want to proceed, i would suggest you focus on gathering solid data, feedback from possible user groups and put a decent business plan together and make contact with a regional funder, find your regional VC :-

Discover British Business Bank

British Business Bank is a government-owned economic bank specialised in helping businesses in the UK access financial support. Find out more.

www.british-business-bank.co.uk

They will tell you what you need to demonstrate to have any chance of investment success - Even if you didn't go on to raise via a regional VC any other capital provider will want similar proof of concept information. In doing this step you will at least save yourself the initial seed capital and stress and heartache of building an APP and getting your message right only to find its wasted money spent if you cant then raise to scale.

Good luck to you anyhow, you sound like a really nice guy and i'm sure you can do well, just don't think this idea is the one that will do it for you. I really don't like trying to burst someone's bubble here, but equally would hate to see you chuck tens of thousands at this to find you cant take it further.

 

[RME]

From a business model perspective, my main asset are my costs. To date, I've spent about £500 on this project. If I were to spend another £250, I would have a fully working website.

In addition, CAL100 uses a "grab" feature to copy the food information directly from online Supermarkets. This is done by the user themselves, so will not be subject to commercial copyright.

Consequently, I don't have the horrendous costs that some apps must be paying to maintain an up-to-date "food" database.

Implementing this feature on a mobile would, however, be far too involved for a user.

However, the video introduction is poor, but I decided it was the best I could do for £200. It did teach me that lighting is a son of a bitch.

Like Steven King, who submitted his top-selling book “Carrie” thirty-one times for publication, I've reassessed my strategy based on UK Business Forum feedback and will not be pursuing a website launch to the general public.



Thanks for your comments.

 

[fisicx]

Unfortunately you still have the elephant in the room: mobile use.

If you can’t get it to work on a phone then it’s a dead duck.