Elio Crowdfunding

[AriLea]

I'm one of the low ballers, and a good example in this, for my part $400 was at the limit of what I could do. So $600 puts it out of my comfort zone. Given they may not really need my money, I'm OK with this as an exit plan.

I do feel for those who wanted in, but may not get in. But, now that so much has been committed, their (our) affect on the entire success is very minimal as best I can deduce. What percent of the total could they represent given an overall average of 3700 per expression? If everyone but one person expressed at $600, that's only around 6million, or 16% of the 'expressions' in money.

If all you can put on the line is $600, it's possible it's kinder to not consume their money. But of course, I wouldn't want to make that call.

 

[LillyMayPatterson #1685 & #5648]

Hey CompTrex, I believe the people pledged $250.00 will be honored. There are many of them and they were the spring board of this fund raising. Elio has in the past showed his gratitude to the early supporters. The semi-agreement will be honored on Elio's side. The game change was a good business decision. Like it or not, it worked. It caused me to up my pledge and well as many others. And it encouraged larger pledges. Speak of which ;;;

Ekh, The spike September 18th was directly cause by the Motley Fool test drive & dire warning. That Fool operation has a zillion followers. Again, the whole thing worked. These are some really smart people doing this. AND please forgive me but A whole lot of ... luck / intervention / support / kindness / trust . Who read that shit Motley Fool writes about? Successful Deep Pockets .. not me, lol. The pledges are larger because of that investment pool was exposed to Elio. And of course they fell in love with it just like we did.

What is next? Where is the next pool of investors? Hate to wait for the LA show in California ... An October Surprise would do it. Maybe Forbes Mag again but better? Dreaming again ..........

 

[Ekh]

One issue is that if they change the rules of the game before they actually offer the stock.
They start out with a minimum commitment of $250, but if they change that to be a minimum of $600 when they finally ask for money, this makes any speculation near impossible.
Some people will up their amount from the 250 to 600. Others will drop out altogether. Tough to figure that in and impossible to try to deduct motives. Are they dropping out because they never intended to give money? Or they can't / aren't willing to up the amount? Are they upset with the rule change?

Statistically, the average "bid" is around $3,700 ... and as we've watched the numbers over the months, that appears to be actually about par. The number of people bidding in the low hundreds (and I'm one) are, it appears, a relatively low percentage, both in terms of percent of total money "expressed" AND in terms of percentage of total participants.

In other words, I don''t think low-bidders have much effect on the overall outcome of the process. And BTW, you're right -- I'm on the fence about raising my bid to $600. I did say I would, and would like to, but I'll have to see what cash is available when the request arrives. I've said before, I consider this a very risky, not to say lousy, investment in cash terms, but a great one in terms of contributing to something you believe in.

 

[AriLea]

BTW, thinking back to the 2000 original commitments, people expressing $600 or less were no more than 5% at that time. So using the self proclaimed right to 'rule of thumb' (guesimating), I say they averaged $500, and 5% of 10k is 500, so $500 x 500 = $250,000 i.e. less than 1% of the $37mil in current expressions.

As LillyMay indicates, we should at least thank them for encouraging everyone to take this seriously.

 

[slinches]

The way to figure out whether you should invest or not is if this equation is true:
(likely ROI if successful)*(likelihood of success)>1 + (opportunity cost of investment)

So, if the stock is likely to be worth 10x at an IPO in a few years and the likelihood of success is 20% (0.2), then you should invest unless there's a way to get 1.5x or more ROI over the same span with much lower risk or the lack of liquidity will put you at significant risk of additional costs.

Fill that in with your own estimation of the values, but remember this applies to all investment opportunities and your goal is to optimize for the maximum total ROI over your expected lifetime (not necessarily for each investment). That generally means you should continually reduce risk as you approach retirement.

 

[John-b-gone]

You got it.. Attached inside Zip. (Won't upload PDF's directly)

Hey EKH have you tried Ctrl + +. Pushing these two buttons/keys will enlarge any font/type sometimes with out enlarging the pictures. Don't know what I'd do with out this feature. Likewise if you press Ctrl + - it will make things smaller. Just hold down the Ctrl key ( bottom left corner of the keyboard) and then start pressing the + key ( just to the left of the Backspace key) any number of times, till you reach a readable size. Excuse me if I'm being too elemental for you, no disrespect, I have a hard time explaining myself in the written word.

 

[Bert]

I raised my pledge twice from the 250 I first put down, to 500, then a couple of days ago to the 600.
It's the money I'm saving FOR the Elio, therefore I don't feel I'm robbing peter to pay Paul.

I'm still dying for info on the build(s). Other than the joy of driving the finished product, it is what I'm most interested in!

GO ELIO!!!

 

[slinches]

Be careful unless you're planning to invest instead of buying an Elio. There likely won't be a chance to sell your shares until well after production starts.

 

[Bert]

Be careful unless you're planning to invest instead of buying an Elio. There likely won't be a chance to sell your shares until well after production starts.

No chance of that! It'll just a a little longer to "bank" my one easy payment!

 

[Ekh]

The way to figure out whether you should invest or not is if this equation is true:
(likely ROI if successful)*(likelihood of success)>1 + (opportunity cost of investment)

So, if the stock is likely to be worth 10x at an IPO in a few years and the likelihood of success is 20% (0.2), then you should invest unless there's a way to get 1.5x or more ROI over the same span with much lower risk or the lack of liquidity will put you at significant risk of additional costs.

Fill that in with your own estimation of the values, but remember this applies to all investment opportunities and your goal is to optimize for the maximum total ROI over your expected lifetime (not necessarily for each investment). That generally means you should continually reduce risk as you approach retirement.

Well, since my total expected lifetime is getting significantly shorter (on a percentage basis) every day, maybe I should go for a 3 year ROI. See why I want my Elio sooner rather than later?