Elio Crowdfunding

[Ty]

This is a disappointing outcome. It leaves a terribly bad taste in the mouth. Obviously, future campaigns are going to have to enforce the limit of money that can be "pledged". Likewise, verified contact information for every "investor" will be required prior to accepting a "pledge." Some assholes have to ruin things for the honest people .... every (87q34597843**&)6E982 time.

The folks at EM must be fit to be tied. What percentage of their "pledged" money might be real? Yes, 5,500 people aren't all going to be phonies... less than 1% are malicious trolls, I would guess. But the whole mechanism of recording your interest is going to have to be revised, thoroughly and quickly. The whole system is now deep suspect. What a heartbreak.

Of course, all these amounts could be genuine -- and I have sunshine flying out of my butt.

Again, you are assuming that a single person made a large pledge (multiple people, of course). Just because the tracker went up by one person doesn't mean that 30 people didn't increase their amounts. Many people probably went in low to make sure it was legit and later upped their amount. Since this "A" funding is capped by law at $50M for all uncredited sources, if someone wanted to really invest and saw the cap coming close, they would have had to up their pledge or they wouldn't be able to invest later.

 

[Ekh]

I find it a bit difficult to believe that prior to agreeing to the crowd funding that EM (probably though Start Engine) wasn't a good deal more than pretty sure they would qualify if the funding program was successful

Of course they were confident. And I'm sure they will qualify. But legally they can't contact any of the pledgers UNTIL the SEC signs off. Them's the rules, gang. Now StartEngine might be able to do some weeding (and i don't know that they can), but Elio absolutely cannot touch the pledgers and have to live with the campaign results until the actual solicitation. The results are spectacular, even without the phonies included.

 

[AriLea]

I'm now finding all kinds of crowd-funding discussions in progress. It's made any news searching more difficult. I won't be able to get a good feel for the volume of reactions in the news world. But maybe the talk-on-the-vine has become more important until Friday.

We'll just have to wait for the more official postings and officially stated results after they are made available.

 

[Ekh]

Again, you are assuming that a single person made a large pledge (multiple people, of course). Just because the tracker went up by one person doesn't mean that 30 people didn't increase their amounts. Many people probably went in low to make sure it was legit and later upped their amount. Since this "A" funding is capped by law at $50M for all uncredited sources, if someone wanted to really invest and saw the cap coming close, they would have had to up their pledge or they wouldn't be able to invest later.

Take a look at Lily May's chart, earlier in this thread. While we can't tell from the data EXACTLY what happened, obvious spikes of similar amounts (say, 4 bids of 16K in a 12 minute time period) are NOT coincidental. If it smells like a fish, swims like a fish, and looks like a fish ... it's a fish. And there are some definite fish in this pool. Undercuts the validity of the method. Not good.

BUT there are enough bids in reasonable amounts spread over reasonable time periods so that on the whole, the campaign is an obvious success. I'm sure the SEC will see that.

 

[Ekh]

Again, you are assuming that a single person made a large pledge (multiple people, of course). Just because the tracker went up by one person doesn't mean that 30 people didn't increase their amounts. Many people probably went in low to make sure it was legit and later upped their amount. Since this "A" funding is capped by law at $50M for all uncredited sources, if someone wanted to really invest and saw the cap coming close, they would have had to up their pledge or they wouldn't be able to invest later.

Technically, you're right about the POSSIBILITY that a 500K dollar increase in half an hour with just 12 new investors on the counter is real, but it's damned unlikely.

 

[AriLea]

I just upped my amount by 150, didn't see it tick up. Edited: was sitting at $23,019,176

And can confirm that it does say, $250-$500,000. And no limit to set it back down either.

 

[bowers baldwin]

I just upped my amount by 150, didn't see it tick up. Edited: was sitting at $23,019,176

And can confirm that it does say, $250-$500,000. And no limit to set it back down either.

Try $150,000 and let us know..

 

[Ty]

historically, on the other hand, a large number of our folks have commented at just how much the savings in having an 84 mpg vehicle would help them financially .... for many others it is reported that it will be their only vehicle .... I know that we are pulling down the forum's $3K average so we have to have a pretty significant number of folks who are in a position to and willing to purchase significantly more stock

ACTUALLY,
Our website's average could be as high as $5,746. Since our simple poll is a grouping of ranges...

Go ahead.. add in the number of $2,500 and $5,000 and $10,000 and $20,000 and $30,000 and $40,000 and $50,000 (this one is open ended so I'll just use the actual figure there)

Eliminate the 10 who said $0 because, well, not one single pledge on startengine was for $0. Anyway, add all the pledges together and you get $442,500 split among 77 people (pledgers) which gives us an average of $5,746. To be fair, I'll try using the minimums too. I come up with a grand (minimum) total of $2,275. Now, the REAL answer is between those two numbers somewhere... which is $4010. However, our actual average is a range and is $2,275 - $5,746.

 

[Ty]

Take a look at Lily May's chart, earlier in this thread. While we can't tell from the data EXACTLY what happened, obvious spikes of similar amounts (say, 4 bids of 16K in a 12 minute time period) are NOT coincidental. If it smells like a fish, swims like a fish, and looks like a fish ... it's a fish. And there are some definite fish in this pool. Undercuts the validity of the method. Not good.

BUT there are enough bids in reasonable amounts spread over reasonable time periods so that on the whole, the campaign is an obvious success. I'm sure the SEC will see that.

You could very well be right. Also, there will be some who intend to invest but life gets in the way. There are others who may have pledged low but will invest higher if things get more firm.

 

[Devilstower]

While you can argue that having a general investment rate higher than the rate of people here may indicate that there are still some "jokers" in the deck, here's another way to look at it:

Prospective Elio investors might have quite a different fiscal profile than prospective Elio owners.

That is, not everyone who might think this is a good investment may be interested in driving a $6,800 vehicle, and not everyone who is interested in driving a $6,800 vehicle may have that much to throw into an investment pool. I think there are sound reasons why the investment numbers should be higher than the average here.