Tia,

Sounds like you are doing a lot of great things! It also sounds like you're trying to raise $$$s form investors (as your primary hurdle / what you are trying to overcome).

I'm not sure what stage your company is in (pre-product; pre-revenue; pre-profit; pre-positive cash flow), but something to consider (if it fits with your current "stage")...

If you are able to get Letters of Intent from potential customers, your value will increase, your (perceived) risk will decrease and the probability of investment will also increase. If you can get 10 - 20 LOIs, then you may even be able to obtain debt instead of equity... lowering the amount of your company you have to give up. Taking *that* money and moving forward (i.e., making significant progress) will further increase your value as well as your "investability".

I can go into further detail, but I'm sure others have insights as well.

Regards,

Mark

- "Sticky" applications are good. For example, General Ledger is sticky -- it's a bear to change. Search is not sticky. All the Google users could start using some newer search engine tomorrow with little pain.

- Recurring revenue is good. A hundred customers contracted to pay you $1000 month each for the next five years is much better than one $6MM sale.

- "b) r&d lead c) good execution mgmt team d) good service/support and e) prdt line depth" probably won't impress, as you have learned. Your R&D lead could evaporate. A good team and good service can't be reduced to provable numbers and therefore does not impress the bean-counters who make these decisions.

As Bert says, success is good. "We've got a great product, all we need is some cash for marketing" makes investors run the other way. They want to look at sales for the past twelve months.