Lots Of Ideas on the Forum: So Crowdfund

[DepressedByHairLoss]

I've been to Norway, its a fantastic country. Taxes actually benefit the people there. USA and Canada (to an extent) are good examples of how tax money is squandered on shit. 3 billion dollars went 'missing' under current conservative canadian government. Unacceptable. 5 million of that is a drop in the bucket which could easily support Aderans and get the job done.

Getting a hold of lauster is easy, his info is posted on the University of Berlin's website.

I normally agree with you post hellouser and I agree with this one too. Spencer even stated that if a concerted and collective initiative was started, Washenik and his team could receive the necessary funding to continue within a couple of weeks. That should really be our first goal.

I also like your idea of starting an initiative similar to 'Who Killed the Electric Car?', but related to hair loss. We all know about the obvious and extreme lack of innovation within the hair loss industry and highlighting it on a website would be a great idea. I mean, here's an example: http://www.google.com/patents/US20110305671. Apparently this method regrew 114% of hair in slick bald areas, which would essentially be a cure for hair loss. Yet instead it sits languishing in a laboratory instead being available to us hair loss sufferers.

[Thinning87]

I'm sorry guys, maybe it's because I just watched an episode of American Greed on CNBC, but are we sure we can trust Aderans' claims about almost having a working product?

How do we know the parent company in Japan didn't simply cut the funding due to the fact that once the last phase 2 trial was completed, the product wasn't good enough, or at all?

Not because they are a bunch of stupid new board members... not because there is a world conspiracy run secretly by wig makers.... and not even because they are heartless and do not care about the "hairloss community".... (but this one is probably true).

As far as I can see, they haven't published much evidence.

I am really sorry to bring this perspective after reading all your pragmatic contributions, which are very appreciated by many I'm sure, but it seems to me that we are making the assumption that we can trust Washenik without any sort of evidence of his credibility on the matter.

I would be very happy if someone can prove me wrong.

[hellouser]

I'm sorry guys, maybe it's because I just watched an episode of American Greed on CNBC, but are we sure we can trust Aderans' claims about almost having a working product?

How do we know the parent company in Japan didn't simply cut the funding due to the fact that once the last phase 2 trial was completed, the product wasn't good enough, or at all?

Not because they are a bunch of stupid new board members... not because there is a world conspiracy run secretly by wig makers.... and not even because they are heartless and do not care about the "hairloss community".... (but this one is probably true).

As far as I can see, they haven't published much evidence.

I am really sorry to bring this perspective after reading all your pragmatic contributions, which are very appreciated by many I'm sure, but it seems to me that we are making the assumption that we can trust Washenik without any sort of evidence of his credibility on the matter.

I would be very happy if someone can prove me wrong.

Thats the thing, if we had enough cash raised we could legitimately say 'we'll fund your project, but we need to see progress thus far'.

No progress to show? No cash.

[brunobald]

If we were to fund an external company like aderans I would like to see all patents released to the general public similer to an open source crowd funded project. This would mean the final product could be accessed worldwide, and wouldn't be restricted by licence deals. Also Adreans would have to become super transparent and give us weekly updateds maybe in a format like spences show where we could phone in and ask questions. If we had the money it would be done on our terms, drip feeding the funds and I anything went sour it would be pulled.

[UK_]

If we were to fund an external company like aderans I would like to see all patents released to the general public similer to an open source crowd funded project. This would mean the final product could be accessed worldwide, and wouldn't be restricted by licence deals. Also Adreans would have to become super transparent and give us weekly updateds maybe in a format like spences show where we could phone in and ask questions. If we had the money it would be done on our terms, drip feeding the funds and I anything went sour it would be pulled.

This is just a pipe dream, the hair loss cure is a century away.

Just buy one of their wigs instead.

I think we should crowdfund and do a kickstarter for another Aderans advert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7SwA1ENqxI

[garethbale]

This is just a pipe dream, the hair loss cure is a century away.

Just buy one of their wigs instead.

I think we should crowdfund and do a kickstarter for another Aderans advert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7SwA1ENqxI

Weren't you advocating setting up a kickstarter for Histogen a couple of months ago?

[UK_]

Weren't you advocating setting up a kickstarter for Histogen a couple of months ago?

Yes but I think an Aderans advert about wigs would be more effective and more likely to get funds given how stupid people are.

[Axel]

You're getting a wrong idea of the campaigns platform... We still have to discuss about all the strategy but since we don't want to close any door, it should allow all kind of projects (with the whole community filtering the legit ones) and be along this lines:

Two kind of projects

- Community Driven Projects: The community will suggest projects like "Funds for CB Vehicle Design" or "Dermarolling+Minox Efficiency Study/Trial". This projects would issue RFPs or similar, and research teams or companies would bid for the collected funds. If the community has the money, the community makes the rules of engagement. It is on our interest to fund first the projects that are more feasible/closer to a hypothetical release (CB being a clear example)

- Company Projects: (typical kickstarter approach): Given a certain topics by the community, companies and research teams will use the platform in order to show solutions that fit the community given guidelines. This means we should divide the projects in several categories:

• CB projects
• Wound Healing
• Regenerative & Stem Cell projects
• Hair Multiplication
• Innovative Hair Transplant devices
• etc
  

In each of the categories some minor guidelines could be given, like for example for Wound Healing projects: "Based on recent studies from Penn Uni and dermarolling trials we issue this call for projects that aim to design hair loss solutions that use this approach and blablabla, etc"


The funds won't be used/charged to the backers unless the project is succesfully funded, so nobody would lose money.


A Kickstarter for Hair Research and MPB projects is really appealing to companies in the industry (old and specially NEW) and specially for patients. It also is one of the only options we have left in order to change the state of things.

[brunobald]

Axel has perfectly described what I had in my mind. We just need a web domain and some hosting and we can get a forum up a going in 30 mins. The website can come later.

Did you know you can have a phd student from a top university like MIT or Cambridge work for a year on your project for 30,000 dollars. That gives you one student plus access to top resources.

[hellouser]

A Kickstarter for Hair Research and MPB projects is really appealing to companies in the industry (old and specially NEW) and specially for patients. It also is one of the only options we have left in order to change the state of things.

I think it appeals more so to new companies. The current ones are perfectly fine with selling snake oil as theyre already making huge profits. Essentially, if it isnt broken, dont fix it. No wonder Aderans chose to continue selling their fvcking wigs.

A new company/organisation *needs* to emerge to break that fvcking mold. *WE* could make that happen, because nobody in the last 20 years seems to have given a shit about us other than to rip us off with shit treatments.

[Axel]

Axel has perfectly described what I had in my mind. We just need a web domain and some hosting and we can get a forum up a going in 30 mins. The website can come later.

I'm already working on a proposal. The logo/website stuff is so easy that on Monday/Tuesday I will probably have a prototype of the platform for you to play and see. Been designing websites for 15 years, so this will be done rather quickly.

I think it appeals more so to new companies. The current ones are perfectly fine with selling snake oil as theyre already making huge profits. Essentially, if it isnt broken, dont fix it. No wonder Aderans chose to continue selling their fvcking wigs.

A new company/organisation *needs* to emerge to break that fvcking mold. *WE* could make that happen, because nobody in the last 20 years seems to have given a shit about us other than to rip us off with shit treatments.

A global and well organised effort in order to raise funds certainly can be a tipping point, and give promising teams access to proper funding.

Lets make this take off...

[hellouser]

I'm already working on a proposal. The logo/website stuff is so easy that on Monday/Tuesday I will probably have a prototype of the platform for you to play and see. Been designing websites for 15 years, so this will be done rather quickly.




A global and well organised effort in order to raise funds certainly can be a tipping point, and give promising teams access to proper funding.

Lets make this take off...

We should exchange emails somehow, privately.. once I see your online, i'll quickly post mine and take it down before the edit time limit comes into play on this site.

I'd really like to see the website first though, graphic design in my forte, i'll send you my portfolio once we get in touch and we can start collaborating on a good aesthetic.

I did some math, and the numbers are mind boggling:

Assuming there are 300,000,000 citizens in USA... if we reached out to everyone single one, the ARI project for a cell beased therapy would only need between 2-3 CENTS from each citizen as a donation. Of course, theres no way everyone is going to contributue, but if reached into the millions, we could easily achieve all the necessary funds for the ARI stem cell therapy and probably even more to help other projects gain momentum and find an even better solution when combined with ARI... we know it didnt restore an NW7 down to an NW0.

[Axel]

We should exchange emails somehow, privately.. once I see your online, i'll quickly post mine and take it down before the edit time limit comes into play on this site.

I'd really like to see the website first though, graphic design in my forte, i'll send you my portfolio once we get in touch and we can start collaborating on a good aesthetic.

I thought we could send PM's in this forums but it seems it is not an available option... Ok, when you are online let me know replying to this thread and I will confirm you I'm watching the thread in that moment with another reply.

After we exchange some emails we can setup a google group or similar so others can join the discussion quickly. Of course everybody in the community is invited to participate.

I did some math, and the numbers are mind boggling:

Assuming there are 300,000,000 citizens in USA... if we reached out to everyone single one, the ARI project for a cell beased therapy would only need between 2-3 CENTS from each citizen as a donation. Of course, theres no way everyone is going to contributue, but if reached into the millions, we could easily achieve all the necessary funds for the ARI stem cell therapy and probably even more to help other projects gain momentum and find an even better solution when combined with ARI... we know it didnt restore an NW7 down to an NW0.

Hair Loss is a global problem. You should count the rest of the world also, or at least also the EU (western world). We are 500,000,000 citizens here, plus USA's population, then thats 800,000,000

The correct way of doing market size calculations is with Fermi estimates + confirmed statistical data. But usually the fermi estimates alone are really close to real data (prob +20% or -20%). We can do a really close estimation of how many people would be willing to pledge 500$ or more... We'll talk about that later... I've got the impression we will have a (positive) surprise...

[pocketmerlin]

All right!

Guys, I am so behind this.

I'm only 21 years old, started losing hair when I was only 16, now I'm a Norwood 3. I want more than anything to get a hair transplant but I fear that I'll be advised to just deal with it until I'm older/lose more hair because I'd be wasting my donor hair. I just want to look like I'm 21, especially because I'm trying to get a band going and I want to make it (to whatever level I can) in music as a singer...it's a HUGE disadvantage to have a balding look.

I was so excited about Aderans and was hopeful that an age of unlimited donor hair for transplants was right around the corner. I am exasperated that the project was dropped if indeed what Spencer relayed from Dr. Washenik is true. Like seriously, what the f*ck?

What I was wondering after recently watching Spencer's show and seeing some early crowdfunding discussion before this thread all got up, was whether Spencer could maybe help us get in contact with Dr. Washenik or ARI? I don't understand exactly the relationship between Washenik/ARI and the parent company, but maybe if we were able to delegate someone to be a representative, we could get Spencer to help us arrange communication between Washenik and our representative to bring this crowdfunding idea to the table.

Like I said, I don't exactly understand the relationship between Washenik's group and the parent company right now...are Washenik and his team basically free agents acting independently now, or are they still under the control of Aderans Co., Ltd.? If it's the former, maybe the crowdfunding thing really would be a relatively simple thing to execute as far as the logistics and at that point the only thing left to do would be to make sure they've gotten some really solid results in their trials and then get an actual crowd to support the thing financially. If it's the case that his team is still controlled by Aderans Co somehow then obviously things would be a little more complicated. Either way, it would definitely help to try to talk to Washenik or someone on the team first rather than going into this naively, thinking we'll just get a fat stack of cash and then we'll call the shots and get this baldness thing resolved quickly. I think we will need to figure out the details of (1) whether and how a crowdfunding partnership with Washenik's team (or whoever else) would work and (2) whether REAL, PROMISING RESULTS have been proven by a method, before we rally a bunch of support.

If indeed Washenik's team has found in their clinical trials that what they hoped to do has actually been done--that they can essentially take only a few follicles from the donor area and create a large number of follicles to implant into the bald area--then they are by far the most worthwhile thing to get behind right now, and if that treatment becomes available to the public then it's game over for hair loss for anyone willing to pay for the treatment.


I don't have much experience in marketing per se, I've never done a Kickstarter campaign, and I only know a little bit of web programming/design (though I am enrolled in classes for it right now), but I do think that I have good basic organizational and economic sense, decent people skills, and very strong writing/language skills. Not that a college degree is the most important thing or the only indicator of intelligence, but just to give you an idea of my educational background, I recently completed my bachelor's degree (in civil engineering) from a well-regarded university. I also have some basic video production and editing skills. I would be thrilled to help with this project in whatever way I can, including financially if I believe that we have something truly good set up.

[pocketmerlin]

Uh...

Well, frick, I just learned that pretty much any possible means of getting other forum members' contact information is against the forum's posting rules and terms of serivce, including telling other members to contact you on another forum. And the moderation of this forum is apparently pretty speedy. So uh...what the heck are we gonna do?

Any help with this, mods? I don't want to sound like I'm against you, I'm sure it's a lot of work to keep a forum in good shape...but surely there must be some reasonable way that members can get in contact with one another when it's for a purpose that I would have to think is within the spirit of this particular forum in the first place?