Under 2 minutes, he sold the idea and made billion of $$$ – Very impressive!
He clearly,
No, I would not invest in this venture. While I will agree that the CEO is present he comes off as a little nervous about this venture. As an avid coffee drinker, I don't remember spending much time looking at the cup and once its finished it ends up in the trash. The biggest red flag for me was the environmental factors going against this product. As the world moves to a more green environment way of thinking, there will be a push to eliminate paper cups from fast food chains including coffee outlets. I can see other third parties moving in and eliminating the cups altogether. Another red flag that came into my mind was how could this be profitable? Paper cup ads would be constantly changing and that would cost lots for the companies to print new cups.
No, I would not invest in this venture. While the CEO presents well and clearly is passionate about his idea, the biggest red flag is there are no barriers, or minimal barriers, to entry to any other group who could easily enter this space. Also, there is not really a pain point so much as an opportunity (lots of blank space on a paper cup). The most critical point is that most coffee shops brand their own paper cups -- Starbucks or Second Cup or Good Earth so that biggest market opportunity is inaccessible. I would suggest to this young entrepreneur to harness his passion and enthusiasm into a new venture!
“YES, I would invest in this venture” Josh Light takes traditional advertising methods and converts it into an original idea in this elevator pitch. Marketing and branding across food labels as been completed by an abundance of companies in the past. However, CupAd, targets a wider audience and transforms this technique into something fresh and new. Josh identifies a compounding problem in the coffee distribution world and solves each problem with a unique answer through CupAd. Josh speaks with fluency and enthusiasm throughout the pitch. He has evidently researched his statistics and has practiced has pitch in order to perform the pitch in a clear and concise manner. In the pitch, he clearly states the problems he has identified with advertising and places a solution that targets each problem he has run into. Josh also brings a relevancy of the product to the potential users through his Starbucks cup presentation which leads into the plain white cup that smaller brands cannot afford to advertise across. He has expressed the potential benefits for the coffee stand party, his own company and the purchaser. The one thing lacking in Josh’s pitch is his evidence of success. This venture has a bright future, and Josh has done his research well. According to “Coffee by the Numbers” (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/multimedia-article/facts/), a study completed by Harvard University, over 54% of Americans over the age of 18 consume coffee. The average American drinks 3.1 cups of 9 oz coffee a day and in total, the US spends approximately $40 billion on coffee per year. With these statistics in mind, the market that Josh is targeting is definitely a feasible one. While he is a successful person in his own right, according to his LinkedIn, he has not presented a team or other resources in which he will use to propel CupAd into a successful future. Continuing with the previous statistic, the market space is approximately $40 billion of coffee consumed per year. With that in mind, the volume of coffee cups produced and sold each year is staggering. Every 1000 cups produced yields 130 dollars for the company and multiplying that number by the multi-millions returns a high profit margin for the company. The biggest competition to CupAd are established companies that will already produce their own cups with their own advertisements. Large companies like Starbucks will opt out of these services and the several other companies producing their own company logos or branding will also be excluded. This realistically lowers the share of the market CupAd has, but with exclusivity deals being signed, the feasibility is still high. The biggest capture and innovative advantage to CupAd is the fact that they will produce and give the cups to companies for free. As stated in the video, Josh makes the claim that those companies would save somewhere around $15, 000 per year on cups alone. This statistic already entices companies, especially newer ones, to sign on with exclusivity deals on sheer savings alone. If CupAd can continue to produce free cups for coffee stands and create fair margins, the company should remain successful. The market of CupAd’s campaign is also US based, but has the potential to go international. https://www.statista.com/statistics/695772/average-daily-coffee-consumption-by-country/ presents a variety of statistics related to coffee consumption, and on a global scale, the European nations seem to have a larger share in coffee consumption. With a successful campaign in the US, CupAd can expand its production to the global scale. The video itself seems to be incomplete as it is a quick pitch. From the presented information, the future of CupAd gears towards success. However, if you break the video down, Josh does not clearly explain market readiness, as there is no stated time frame and the risks are not listed. Personally, it seems as if these statistics were left out to promote more positive thinking towards the company advertisement and with the time available, Josh presents the necessary information in order to hook investors in. The exit strategies and related information seems to be set for another proposal time.
Pitch Pool Review YES, I would invest in this venture. Advertising on a coffee cup is a fantastic idea for marketing especially when it is mutually beneficial for both the cup supplier and coffee distributer. The CEO of CupAd, Josh Light, comes across as extremely capable and confident in his product. Josh has a clear focus and a clear target audience for his product. He has been involved in many other business ventures and start-ups since 2010 (according to https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuajameslight) . Based on this short video of this elevator pitch, it is unclear how large his team is or how experienced they are. This venture is a very original idea and is certainly one that may entice many small coffee shops across the USA. It appears to be marketable because the product is free for the small coffee stands who are willing to distribute the cups that advertise for other products or companies. Josh has tested this product with coffee stands in California and this venture appears to have the ability to expand. Furthermore, 80% of the businesses that used the cups signed exclusivity agreements for distributing the cups in the future. With only 700 coffee shops using this product across the United States, it has the potential to make $1,000,000 profit per month by selling 8,000,000 cups. In the United States, there are over 25,000 coffee stands which currently pay $15,000 per year on white coffee cups. This market has the ability to become much larger if it grows outside the United States. It does not have innovative advantage; however, it is one of the first ideas like this on the market. With the addition of 58 coffee stands carrying the CupAd cups per month (696 per year), this venture has the potential to become very successful very quickly. I personally believe in the CEO because of his personality and clear focus. I believe that his other start-ups are a good indicator of what I would be able to expect if I were to invest in this venture. The injection of money would be useful for this venture because it would allow them to hire more employees to spread this product to small coffee stands across the United states. I believe that this venture is a fairly low risk venture because there would be very few coffee chains interested in advertising for companies other than their own.
