Acting on Constructive Feedback

We've been hard at work the last couple of weeks building scale 3d models of our facility and creating the right balance of storage, event, and operations space to make sure we do have a viable business model.

It had it's moments where we definitely upside down in our numbers, but the end of the day, it's been a great exercise because it came out of the constructive feedback we received (thank you Matt, in particular) and made us figure out not "if" Vino Veritas is going to be a viable business, but "what" it was going to take exactly to make it work.

And it *will* work.

We're even more excited now because we can see in real terms what we need to do.

For all the supporters and fans of Vino Veritas, here's a couple of pics from the 3D models we created for the facility.

From the entryway looking towards the "Rotunda"

The "Rotunda"
A wine tasting area in the center of the facility, water walls in the back will be tied into climate control systems to help control humidity levels in the caves.

It's going to be a great place to hang out and enjoy your wines, and we'll be sharing future models with you all as we finish them out!

(Thanks Google Sketchup for providing such a great toolset that allows us to do modeling like this on a shoestring budget!!!!)

On Competition

Competition is healthy, and necessary for any business to survive and grow.

If you don't have competition, you don't have business.

Interestingly, in a business that has traditionally been very quiet, barely marketed, and highly protectionist (and in some cases, wine storage itself being claimed an intellectual propertly - uh, ok), we seem to be stirring the wine storage pot up a bit.

To that, we say "GREAT!"

The wine business is changing, and the old way of storing wine someplace you can't even find on a map, or online, is not the direction it's headed in.

Personally, I like competition. It means that sometimes we win, and sometimes we just get the bar moved up to a new playing field - which is good for us in many ways.

How Do You Value Sweat Equity?

There's definitely two sides to what seems to be a bit of a loaded question.

Of course, people we're meeting with are bringing capital to the table, and it's valid to say that "well, you can't do this without our real dollars."

At the same time, it's safe to say that we (as a whole company, including our capital partners) "can't do this without our real work already invested."

Personally, I understand very clearly that there isn't a formula for a clearcut hours-to-dollars translation for the sweat equity we as founders have put into the gamble of entrepreneurship.

An investor of capital has in his or her best interest, maximizing the value of their real dollars.

Entrepreneurs have in their best interest, maximizing, or at the very least finding a fair value for their sweat equity.

There's a lot of things that we as Vino Veritas have been able to achieve by sweat equity. Several of those things we can point to right away and we know very well what those things would have cost if we hadn't done them ourselves (and thankfully had the skill sets to get them done on our own), but how do you value those things?

Do entrepreneurs count the real costs of keeping their families afloat during a startup before they start drawing salaries?

I'd love to hear from some investors and other entrepreneurs on how they've valued these intangibles in the past and what they think is fair.