Very nice, a focus on technology and export potential. Things that I often complain about that are missing in the TCA process, where vending machines are rated higher than opportunities with global potential.

I might look up the Melbourne Angels since I am in that part of the USA that is in the same time zone as Melbourne.

Perhaps the facts that they never had a VC industry as big as the one in USA and because they have smaller local markets, necessitates that they have a focus that includes the big picture. Without local markets as big as the USA market, they either go global or never go incredibly huge.

This might be exactly what I need, Investors that have no choice but to think very very big.

The opportunity I offer is just too big for TCA members to comprehend the possibility. Plus TCA has the distraction of opportunities with smaller potential that are large enough to satisfy them.

I�m not trying to do anything that hasn�t been done successfully before. Today�s market conditions are right for someone to do it again. It�s going to make hundreds of millions of dollars for someone and just a few hundred thousand would get it started.

I have a theory as to why TCA members are so interested in statistics, passion, pitches that generate excitement, and other gimmicks that claim to hold the keys or clues to success. It's like religion, they want to find a set of simple rules they can follow, that they can apply to all situations, which will lead them to their goals.

It represents their holy grail, their El Dorado, the fountain of youth, Black Beard's treasure. After they think they know the simple formula for success, they then create their investment process which is essentially tries to fit a square pegs into a round holes.

The problem is that success is dictated by the markets and not a static formula. Markets are made up of people. People change and therefore market situations are fluid. One year the Hummer is hot. The following year the Hummer division is sold off as a loss.

John Huston says he looks to invest in Entrepreneurs with the flexibility to adjust their business model and products to the whims of the market. We don't see TCA members demonstrating that same desired flexibility themselves. They have a process and they are going to stick to it, even after the VC meltdown.

They want that simple solution, one size fits all answer. They desperately don't want to have to do the work of constantly studying changing markets.

After all, many of them are retired from business. There is a reason they have sold their companies and no longer manage them. They are no longer interested in the rat race of keeping up with the changing whims of the market.

So they invented modern venture investing as a numbers game instead of a market research game. They thought to themselves, "If I play the numbers I can still be successful without having to do the boring tedious work of thorough market research".

We know how that story turned out. They tell us about the crazy inventors and bozo entrepreneurs, but really, it's the pot calling the kettle black. Birds of a feather have been flocking together.

Any investor that tells me that he is looking to be thrilled by a fast pitch or playing the numbers is also telling me that he does not have his head in the game.

I think I'm going to stop commenting again. It's been over a month since you've talked about getting a dialogue started on your website. It doesn't look like it is going to happen. If you hadn't mentioned my name in August and expressed a desire for dialogue, I don't believe I would have ever commented again.

It seems that none of the points I bring up are even worth mentioning on the show. So it is only natural to think that your audience is not interested in dialoguing on any of those particular issues.

I'm not saying the dialogue must be about what I bring up in order to make me happy. But nobody else is offering anything to discuss either.

I thought you might find the response I received from Jordan Green interesting. He was all business, very professional, and none of this calling people bozos or crazy for having the wrong font size or what have you. He acknowledged that it is possible to establish a new standard and also stated what it takes to do it. It was the first time I didn't have to explain it to someone.

He also thought Angels in the USA would be interested. Funny how an outsider can see it, but people who have been contaminated by the dotcom craze don't seem to be able to.

Below are our emails to each other.

________________________________________
From: Matthew Artero [mailto:matthew.artero@abolishthetinykeyboard.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 9:41 PM
To:
Subject: RE: Should I Submit?

Hello Jordan,

Thank you very much. You did not come across as a naysayer. Yours has been the most intelligent, knowledgeable, and thoughtful response I have received. You obviously understand exactly what I am intending to do, every step of the way.

I assumed I would have to move to Australia if you or your group invested.

Yes, I would have to manufacture and sell at first. The cheapest way to start that is to have a wireless version to be used at home. Options include a built in webcam and a universal remote. The real key is to get into the schools. Once you have the schools, desktops, laptops, and phones fall in line.

If you follow the recent events in the smartphone industry, you will see that they are much more interested in making themselves available to the widest number of consumers rather than competing for established standards. There's the trend from everyone only offering physical keyboards to everyone having to also offer touch screens. Palm has gone from their own OS to Microsoft and now back to their own OS; which ever happens to get them more sells at the time. Motorola has gone from several OSs to just Microsoft and now also Google's Android. Other companies are also in a rush to offer Android. Microsoft's OS is said not to support some of the newly in demand touch-screen features. The business user is no longer considered the high growth area. That makes Android important for its seamless connection to cloud computing and social networking sites.

What ever the new technology is that gets them to the high growth market they grab it, from touch screens, to OS, to apps. They don't try and do their own which would slow them down and fragment them from the market, just like using the wrong OS does.

As far as the IP being robust; it can never be as robust as the patent for the QWERTY layout. That layout depended on physical linkages inside the machine. We are now in the electronic age where any key can be any letter. Another approach I have is that there is already an established procedure for creating the best layout. I have altered the procedure to be specific to my invention and intend to patent the procedure.

The big bucks are dependant on being first and being fast. We need to sell these products at the speed of light before another player enters the market. Right now is a good time to do it because the main competitors are guarding their cash flow due to the lull in the economy. Rather than get in a pissing contest with us they are better off just letting us do the grunt work of getting a single layout adopted so that they can benefit from the existence of a single large market.

If you could recommend someone who would sign an NDA I would greatly appreciate it. I need money for the patents, about $20k for a sexy demonstration model, and few hundred thousand for an initial small product run. The idea is that these three initial steps will encourage more investors so that we can quickly distribute all over the world.

Thank you for the time you took to write me such a well thought out letter.

Mat

________________________________________
From:
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 9:35 PM
To: 'Matthew Artero'
Subject: RE: Should I Submit?

Hi Matthew,

Thank you for your email and your interesting proposition. I certainly understand your basic proposition as new keyboard designs have been a persistent feature of the landscape throughout my life. I have even been involved in a number of trials of various one and two-handed keyboard designs that set out to offer the sorts of benefits of which you speak. A few have found limited success in particular niches but, as you know, so far none has overturned the dominance of the QWERTY keyboard. Even the numeric keypad has been losing sway on mobile devices to the QWERTY layout (or a modified QWERTY).

I admit to being curious about your one-handed solution that is so easy to learn and still delivers the hundreds or thousands of functions now expected of a QWERTY keyboard. However, I am not asking you to expose that information to me.

To answer your primary question, it will be quite a challenge for us, in Melbourne, to consider an investment in your Guam, USA company. I am making some unwritten assumptions here about how developed you are, about your IP protection, about the market for your design and about the strategy to get it adopted as a new standard. The distance will be a major challenge to the investment process as it will require you to make either one protracted trip (2-3 months at least), or several shorter trips to Australia to participate. Also, it is very likely that we would require you to establish an Australian company as the primary holding company of your business and its IP. Due diligence is likely to be more expensive for us due to the need to investigate USA legals and accounts. Our non-executive participation on your Board will be a significant expense for your company due to the cost of international travel which, while not essential for every Board meeting is, in our experience, essential on a regular and frequent basis to make the human interaction/relationships effective.

Even if we put these administrative challenges aside. The only way any such development has ever become a new standard is to have widespread adoption of a device using the new version demonstrate superior consumer adoption - preferably at a premium price point. In your case that would seem to mean either producing and selling your own product, or somehow getting a major product vendor to adopt your design. Typically, the latter requires the former anyway.

I'm sorry Matthew, this must read like a lot of nay saying which is not who I am but, I do not want to paint a picture of inappropriate optimism for you. I can't in good conscience encourage you to apply to Melbourne Angels unless you really feel that you can not only demonstrate an interesting invention with robust intellectual property protection but, also demonstrate a strategy that substantially overcomes the risks of achieving mass adoption for your invention within a year or two. If you were closer to home then I might be more encouraging but, I do not want you to expend your time and money to seek a few hundred thousand dollars in funding from our group unless there is a high probability of our investing. That said, while I am always concerned not to mislead entrepreneurs, it is the entrepreneurial spirit to take a risk, to bet against the odds and to persist in the face of adversity and rational argument of opposition.

I would've thought that you would have better traction with a USA Angel group but, I do not know the context of Guam, yourself, or your previous efforts at raising funding so my first thought in this regard may well be way off track. One point that may be important for you to consider is that we do not sign NDA before we get to terms sheet and, in your case, it is hard to see how we could get that far without seeing your invention.

That's probably all a very long way of saying no because I am reluctant to have you think I am not interested but, equally I do not want to offer false hope. Please do ask further questions if you would like to explore this further and, if not, I do wish you every success with your endeavour. As much as I will regret the need to relearn a lifetime of typing habits I will be pleased to find a better solution.

Best regards,
Jordan
Jordan Green
Founder/Chairman

Web: http://melbourneangels.net/

________________________________________
From: Matthew Artero [mailto:matthew.artero@abolishthetinykeyboard.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 20, 2009 10:58 AM
To: deals@melbourneangels.net
Subject: Should I Submit?
http://abolishthetinykeyboard.com/

Hello,

I need to learn if I am someone who should submit an application to your organization.

I heard Jordan Green give an interview on the Frank Peters Show. He mentioned that Melbourne Angels have a focus on industry changing technologies with export potential.

I do not live in Melbourne but I am in the same time zone. I live in Guam U.S.A. Before I pay the $150 submission fee, I would like to know if my location disqualifies me for consideration.

Below is a little information about what I have to offer.

Abolish The Tiny Keyboard is a VALIDATED early stage opportunity with a multi-billion-dollar exit potential.

The mobile workforce is making less money because it has to return to a chair and table in order to enter and edit text and graphics at the same speed as a full size keyboard and mouse. The computer and internet have become so ubiquitous that it has become important to be able to type with one hand while on the phone or while holding a briefcase, shopping bag, or baby.

We have a hand operated control that allows one hand to simultaneously hold a cellphone and type into it just as fast as two hands on a full size keyboard and mouse, but without the aid of a desk, chair, or lap. The User can be standing, sitting, or lying in bed. This is not voice recognition or predictive text software. It is operated by just a single hand and only takes one day to learn as opposed to the two months it takes to learn to type on a keyboard. This device will allow us to establish a new patented layout as the standard that will be used on every smartphone, cellphone, laptop, desktop, cash register, and so on.

Owning the patent for the industry standard layout is a better business than software. After it is adopted by the industry there is no longer a need to manufacture, distribute, or have a customer service department.

Our validation is in the form of the facts that:

1.
Establishing a new keyboard layout standard has been done before. Over one hundred years ago, the keyboard layout we use today fought and won the battle to replace the competing layouts in the marketplace, and
2.
the fact that today's mobile device industry, creates the same market conditions that existed over one hundred years ago. This allows for a new keyboard layout to be established today.

To understand these market conditions, which predict that we are on the verge of saying goodbye to the Qwerty keyboard forever, you can't let yourself be fooled by the urban legend that says the reason the alphabet is mixed up on the keyboard was to make people type slowly so that the early typewriter wouldn't jam.

We don't mix up the notes on the piano so that musicians don't play too fast. People can learn to type at the correct speed.

The real reason the letters were mixed up was so that people could type faster. The typebars of certain letters inside an old typewriter are more likely to hit each other and jam the machine. Therefore they needed to be separated.

People always want to make more money. The layout we use today allowed fewer employees to service more customers in the same amount of time, so it became the standard.

That's the first market force that has to be understood. The layout that allows people to make the most money becomes the standard. If the mobile workforce doesn't have to return to the office to do its typing, it will make more money.

The second market force that has to be understood is standardization. The reason that all smartphones have the same layout is because having a different layout would fragment the market causing manufacturers and customers to make less money.

By following an industry standard, manufacturers can potentially sell to everyone in that market. They make more money if they don't compete with each other or with us. Customers are not going to spend the time and money to learn a new layout unless there is a compelling benefit.

This market requires that there be no competition and that everyone adopt the same standard. Over one hundred years ago, only five typewriter companies adopted the Qwerty layout that we use today. All the others went out of business.

He who fails to learn from history is doomed to repeat it. Don't be doomed to repeat the mistake of those who backed the wrong standard. Back this venture and make lots of money.