Читать книгу Wake Up and Sell the Coffee! - Martyn Dawes - Страница 20

I continued working hard to raise money and met with 3i (the leading international venture capital firm). My presentation to them sold hard on me and my background, the Coffee Nation vision, research, customer and supplier relationships, and current status. Trouble was, it was light on results.

The outcome of the meeting was predictable. They wanted to stay in contact but identified a lack of hard evidence in the form of compelling sales results from our pilot sites as a reason not to arrange a follow up meeting. They were also highly wary of our relationship with Nestlé.

I had also met with Venture Capital Report (VCR), based in Oxford. Interestingly, Coffee Republic, a start-up coffee bar chain had just months before been featured in the same report. VCR wrote up a four-page piece on my business, presenting various profit and loss scenarios. The base case was 100 stores doing 100 cups per week. At this level the business would break even, but at present out of my nine stores not one of them was averaging more than 100 cups per week.

I was pinning my hopes on my business being “a new concept at the very early stage of sales.” The problem was that I couldn’t be in enough stores quick enough for the concept to become part of everyday life; for that I’d need £millions.

I was offering 45% of the company in return for £250k investment. There were no takers. My enthusiasm remained undiminished as I strongly believed the concept would come good eventually. I still had almost 2500 people buying my coffee every month – but these numbers just weren’t enough.

Life away from Coffee Nation had also taken an unexpected twist in the road; my wife and I had separated in the summer. Trudi and I simply grew apart; we still loved each other but I was 29 and she was 37. I think we both realised we probably wanted different things at that time in our lives. We remained close and I saw her and my little girl Maia (who was born in 1995) at least twice every week. I moved into a house share in west London and maintained a small income from the consultancy.

The year drew to a close. It was certainly not how I had expected it to be 12 months earlier. The strengths and weaknesses table in the VCR article was chillingly accurate:

What a difference a year makes!