Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello all,

My first real post on this website and I'm looking for funding!

A little about my creation shall we say.

Name: FindaCabbie

Url: http://www.FindaCabbie.com

What we do: We are a directory for taxi services within the UK

Basically you load up the website, select your country, type in the city you're looking for a taxi service and hit the search icon! Your search goes through our database and gives you a list of results for taxi services within that city. Simple as really...

Of course there are competitors like 118, yell, and a few other small companies but lets face it 118 you have to pay an arm and a leg just to get a number for 1 taxi service and yell.com is a directory for everything and doesnt exactly zone in on one perticular directory.

The website is up and running and has over 2000 taxi services within the database, all the identity is done, letter heads, logo, business card design, website etc..

The websites been up around 5 days, with a total of 400 unique hits so far.

What I'm looking for funding for, is to expand the website out of the UK and into Europe and the USA. Now I've built and designed this whole idea myself, the database alone took me 3 weeks to do to be able to expand to Europe and the USA I'd need alot of help. I basically need funding to hire people to improve the search, add functionality to the site, add Europe and the USA.

I'm looking for around £2m to be able to do this, this would pay for salary's, equipment and the redevelopment of the backend site and the development of mobile phone applications (iPhone, BlackBerry & Nokia).

If anyone has any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Kind Regards

Simon

How much is that in US dollars? 3.18 million?

Say someone did fund you?, how do you plan on paying back this massive loan?

Well it would be more of an investor taking shares within the company than "loaning" I should of stated that correctly in my post.

The website will make money from top page search rankings for taxi firms for each city and from advertisements on the home page.

Although I wouldn't rule out the option of a "loan", the revenue from taxi firms paying to advertise from the UK, USA and Europe would be a huge amount of revenue per year, over enough to be able to pay a substantial amount back per year.

And yes, £2,000,000 GBP into USD at the current rate of 1 GBP = 1.59278 USD would be around £3,185,553.65 USD according to XE.com.

Regards

Simon

I guess you're also aware that someone who bought this many shares would also most likely demand some type of management position.

I dont mean to sound prude, but if someone is looking for a taxi, why not just do a google search, go to yellowpages.com or something like that?

Is advertising the only source of revenue?

I am aware of this yes, this isn't the first time I've looked into angel investors.

Well I could easily say, why go to confused.com for car insurance when you can go to gocompare.com, or moneysupermarket.com.. There's always room for more than one of the same company, it just all depends on how you market and advertise that company to attract your users and how you set out your website for usability, design and attractive'ness.

Why go to a website that advertises everything when you can go to a website that's dedicated to what you're looking for and provides on giving you the best service possible. Places like Yell.com (Yellowpages.com) spend there money on working to advertise everything equally, they don't concentrate on 1 area of there directory, they have to split there revenue throughout.

Findacabbie.com put's all it's revenue/money into the concentration of advertising taxi services in your local area, allowing users to rate the taxi service they use enables other users to see the best service in there area. Giving them the comfort of knowing they can just logon to Findacabbie.com, type in the city there in, if there in a city they've never been to before and know they can find what there looking for when they need it!

Well as the website is basically an advertisement it's self, advertising taxi services to people throughout the UK and soon Europe, USA then branching off to any other countries we see fit. Yes advertising is the only form of revenue, but this doesn't restrict how much the website can potentially earn.

Regards

Simon

p.s, it's 2.30am here so I'm going to get some shut eye!.. I'll respond to any posts when I awaken (in about 5 hours).

Anyone else have any questions? Or know of any investors?

Just wondering what happened to the website?...

Under Redevelopment.

Be back up end of Febuary with a whole new layout, more functionality & online booking.