> - The $20k price point hasn't been much of an issue so far, but happy to hear more feedback on that. We're thinking about setting aside a few PoPs where a group of people can pool money to purchase one. Would love to hear your thoughts on that.
I think the biggest question for the casual retail investor would be how well will a given PoP perform. If there is high revenue variability between PoPs due to housing density, per capita income, etc., you will start facing disgruntled investors pretty soon. The other issue with smaller investment size is that the "management fees" are likely to be higher - you need to address more questions and concerns from individuals about your product. Pooling PoPs might solve both of these issues elegantly with a more complicated financial instrument.
Edit: I also noticed you used the term "franchisee" agreement. I think this might be slightly misleading to investors because franchise owners generally have a lot of control over aspects of the business, whereas what you're selling is a more traditional financial instrument.
We've got a live network with thousands of users across the city and have got 3 years of experience in this market, so we've got good sense of the expected performance per PoP.
Furthermore, we also offer minimum guaranteed revenue to PoP owners in case a region takes a little while to grow.
Regarding the use of the word franchisee, we've actually had a really counter-intuitive lesson while selling the PoPs. Initially we always referred to it in financial terms but what we found was that buyers were using the word franchisee themselves and preferred the term. It makes sense if you look at it from an absentee landlord share-cropping view, except in our case, we provide a fully managed service where you don't have to actually do any work.
We've set aside 5 PoPs for people that want to be part of a pool in case the $20k price tag is too high for them. We've just started to see some traction on that, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes.
I think the biggest question for the casual retail investor would be how well will a given PoP perform. If there is high revenue variability between PoPs due to housing density, per capita income, etc., you will start facing disgruntled investors pretty soon. The other issue with smaller investment size is that the "management fees" are likely to be higher - you need to address more questions and concerns from individuals about your product. Pooling PoPs might solve both of these issues elegantly with a more complicated financial instrument.
Edit: I also noticed you used the term "franchisee" agreement. I think this might be slightly misleading to investors because franchise owners generally have a lot of control over aspects of the business, whereas what you're selling is a more traditional financial instrument.