Personally, my investment goal in this specific case is incompatible with the opportunity
Thank you for confirming your incompatibility with the opportunity, as Philip and I both suspected and counseled you directly offline. We can now prioritize other interest accordingly.
If you wouldn't mind, please allow us to run the process one-on-one with interested parties and answer their questions, rather than yours. As many issues as you may enjoy highlighting, private investments do not get made by airing every detail on a public forum. We may get there our way, we may not get there at all. Your way (i.e., death by a thousand public critiques without ability or intention to invest) will break it.
This NewCo is new = both risk and opportunity.
It is an unlikely a fit for someone to take a significant portion of their savings in retirement and invest in this new business, or any new business. Folks should invest only at a level that they would be prepared to lose, even if that's not the plan. Buying shares is like buying a ticket to ride. It represents ownership = a share of the profits. If there are no profits, it was likely a crap bet.
However, there are some cases in which non-profitable businesses are sold at large share price premiums compared to the pricing for early investors (e.g., anything "successful" out of Silicon Valley). Riding hype cycle dynamics isn't the intention here. Besides, VCs view moto as a bad neighborhood anyway - too many craters in the ground surrounded by nuclear fallout, fear over larger market forces at work with the macroeconomic cycle approaching a shift, and concern over competition from primarily Asian OEMs. Very few businesses on two wheels make money and 99% of investors remain fearful of product liability from those that do. Selling them on the idea so their greed overcomes their fear has been unsuccessful to date - it's not fusion, flying cars, or scooters... so no.
We'd rather build something holistically sustainable for all stakeholders. An enthusiast-owned near-term financing path helps us do that. It gives us a start and is likely necessary, but not sufficient. We will need other capital sources to make it all work in the medium term.
I appreciate your intentions thus far to keep us all on the same page and find a way to make magic happen. If you wish to continue to help, please restrain from slinging arrows from the sidelines. Out of necessity, we're running full steam, head down trying to play n-dimensional sudoku with a herd of hornets. Getting stung makes every other hornet angrier and increases the number "n" by one.
If you can (1) reduce the complexity, (2) shepherd folks to us that may be interested, or (3) just stop stirring up the pot - we'd be grateful.
