You’re not alone. I’m a self-funded startup founder and I still buy Made in USA goods (clothes, appliances, tools, supplies, equipment, etc). For me the price isn’t the main factor, it’s simply that I want to support the countries I like. Been doing this for 10 years now. Based in London so I also buy Made in England things too. Never ever support authoritarian regimes!
I never ever buy any crowdfunded product, because the moron that makes it always offshores production to China. I support local businesses, with a local supply chain. Please do that too, it’s how we get a better future!
Insults / name calling aside, can products like this even be manufactured domestically? Is there a US based LED manufacturer, for starters? Cables / connectors? Final assembly? And do the ones that make the bespoke parts and final assembly even take orders for 500 units like this one?
I want to support local manufacturing too, but in many cases the choice isn't there. The Trump dictatorship's tariffs are an attempt to "encourage" this manufacturing back to the US, but redeveloping the factories and supply chains will take years - if there's even people willing to commit to it, because despite high import tariffs, it's still cheaper to import things. And even if it wasn't, it'd still be cheaper and easier to go through a 3rd party and back channels, or to a country not affected as much by the import tariffs. Whole manufacturing lines are / have been moved to e.g. Vietnam or India to avoid the tariffs, and that's still cheaper than moving to the US.
Thanks for the suggestion! At this stage, debt is not a feasible option for us. Our focus is on scaling the business quickly and VC funding is the preferable route to achieve that. Having the runway and support from investors will allow us to fully dedicate ourselves to growth and execute our vision effectively.
Re value prop - true. While the existing clients are using FIXParser as a plain old library I was thinking where the puck is going to be, it's going to be all MCP with A2A frameworks so i pivoted and most of the focus was on building the MCP features. We have received interest from VERY prominent firms in finance thanks to our focus on MCP FIX features. I doubt that a sr engineer can put that together in a few days.
Thank you, this is very helpful! Will keep this points in mind. Regarding exit, yes that is certainly one outcome. But it’s not something that we have mentioned in any of the pitch materials. Regarding shares I’ve followed the YC standard.
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