FAQs
What is a Lucky Napkin?
What is the Lucky Napkin Company?
Are you a Venture Capital Company?
Are you a Not-For-Profit company?
Why did you start Luck Napkin?
Who is the Lucky Napkin Company?
What can Lucky Napkin do for me?
Are you consultants?
What if I’ve already started a business and now I’m stuck?
Are you going to steal my great idea?
My idea is so great, why do I need you?
My great idea is not really new, but a reinvention of something that exists, can it still work?
What kind of ideas is the Lucky Napkin looking for?
What qualifies as a Lucky Napkin idea?
Do you offer free help to everyone who contacts you?
A great idea, simply planned and properly executed that achieves monumental business success. Our company is here to find them, and help them grow.
Q. What is the Lucky Napkin Company?
We’re an entrepreneurial catapult, in the business of launching great ideas. Think of us as your closest friend on your journey toward the American dream. A team of experts who have all been beat up, knocked down, kicked to the curb and pulled themselves back up again to win the fight of making our individual goals reality. Now we’re looking for a few great people with game changing ideas that we can help by lessening the lumps and paving the road.
Q. Are you a Venture Capital Company?
Partly, yes. There are four legs to the Lucky Napkin Company; One is Education, Two is Mentorship, Three is Management and Four is Venture Capital. After qualified entrepreneurial candidates are screened and ideas evaluated our team looks for the great ideas where our expertise can add value. We have over $100,000 million venture capital dollars at our discretion and a golden rolodex of experts in virtually every industry and we apply them both with cautious optimism to the great ideas we feel have the best chance of creating and sustaining profitability over the long haul. But we don’t give them away.
Q. Are you a Not-For-Profit company?
No. We really enjoy making money, and we get juiced helping others with the passion for entrepreneurship make money and have their dreams come true.
Q. Why did you start Luck Napkin?
Truth is each of us has our own hard-luck story when we were struggling and when we asked around for help, we often wasted more time and money asking the right questions to the wrong people who spat back bad answers and sent us in the wrong directions, or worse tried to fill our heads with there own negativity. But on the flip side along the way each of us were lucky to find a mentor, and other successful friends who in seconds, understood us, our ideas and what we were trying to do and they reached out their hand, rolled up their sleeves and in some cases dug into their own pockets and helped us. We now want to carry that idea forward with the Lucky Napkin.
Q. Who is the Lucky Napkin Company?
Our company was founded by 4 of the country’s top self-made entrepreneurs and has assembled an extended board of experts, including leading academics from some of the most important business schools in the country and other powerful self made entrepreneurs who have built fortunes and reputations in virtually every major industry. Read the bios page, to get a better idea of the founding partners and if that doesn’t do it for you, Google our names and do your own research.
Q. What can Lucky Napkin do for me?
Maybe help you make your entrepreneurial dreams come true, maybe tell you not to quit your day job. We’re a company designed to launch great ideas from mind to market, and if it’s not a great idea or we feel after looking at all the pieces it’s not a right fit for us we’ll just say so. We’re hunting for great ideas and great people in all stages of the entrepreneurial journey and we’re offering virtually everything you might need to get it rolling. From education, expertise, money, contacts, management, marketing, design, infrastructure, or just a swift kick in your proverbial butt, to let you know we too believe in you and what you’re capable of. But trust us when we say, if we think the idea is not right or you just don’t have what it takes, we’ll let you know that too.
At times yes, but frankly we hate that word. “Doers” is a more accurate description. We are in business to get entrepreneurs off the ground, and we recognize very quickly what it takes to make that happen and more importantly we have the resources at our disposal to do it right and do it quickly. We do get paid for our time and the results we bring to the table, but we do not waste time accumulating billable hours providing useless business metaphors that don’t relate to the business at hand.
Q. What if I’ve already started a business and now I’m stuck?
Take a deep breath and make sure you’re ready to hear our real world view, then talk to us. Our company is designed to provide entrepreneurs of all stages get to where they want to go. So if your great idea has been on the market for 5 years already and is going nowhere, but you still believe it can make it with a missing piece, let us take a look and see if we agree. If we do, we may jump in to help you right the ship and if we don’t our advice just may save what’s left of your life savings, before you throw more good money after bad.
Q. Are you going to steal my great idea?
NO. And frankly if you are more concerned about people stealing your idea than you are about getting it to market and making money, then feel free to keep it locked away in your brain safe from the real world. Our process is designed to help you realize your entrepreneurial vision, not take it from you. In fact when you fill out the first level of submission forms we won’t even ask you to tell us the idea, only general information that will give us insight into who you are, what you want to accomplish and what potential the market has that you want to enter. From that we’ll have enough to help us make a preliminary decision and provide you feedback if we think we can assist.
Q. My idea is so great, why do I need you?
You don’t. You just have to ask yourself if you have the resources and guts necessary to help your great idea reach it’s full potential and if not you’re going to have to ask for help from someone. Otherwise you will attempt it and fail or hold onto it and it will evaporate never to be, or worse you will be reminded of it once again some day when you see an incarnation of your great idea appear on a market shelf making someone else a lot of money. If you decide you would like our help, just fill out the questionnaire and lets get started and if you decide you would like to go it alone we wish you nothing but the best. Either way we want you to succeed and if along the way we can offer you any assistance we are here.
Q. My great idea is not really new, but a reinvention of something that exists, can it still work?
Yes, but it still depends on lots of factors; money, markets and contacts to name a few. We’ve each learned that all great ideas already exist in one form or another and reside in many people’s mind at once, the difference between the winners and the losers in the race to market are the ones who don’t stop for a moment of reflection when the should plowing ahead. If it’s truly a Lucky Napkin, regardless of its “newness” get it done and get it going. The only way to know if the world will embrace your great idea is if you put it out there.
Q. What kind of ideas is the Lucky Napkin looking for?
Great ideas in virtually any scalable market. Unlike venture capitalists who focus exclusively on projects in highly specialized and very large markets such as bio-tech or IT, we believe all great ideas should be explored to determine their merit, without excluding those that don’t automatically meet specific criteria. Because we are entrepreneurs ourselves and not corporate finance types, we make our own rules and more easily think outside the proverbial box, able to see hidden opportunities where others might close the door before even hearing the presentation. The bottom line is, if it’s a great idea that has legs, we’ll see it quickly and figure out how to get it done, regardless of the specific industry.
Q. What qualifies as a Lucky Napkin idea?
Ideas come in all shapes and sizes, but great ideas can change the way people think. To be frank, most ideas are not great, they are moderately good at best. To qualify as a Lucky Napkin, your idea should meet 3 qualifications; It should be profitable, protect-able and scalable, meaning you should be able to make solid margins selling it, you should be able to legally shield yourself from rabid competitors and it should be in a market that will allow it to grow.
For example, if your idea is to sell your own home grown plants at local farmers markets with a cute logo your children drew in art class on the carton, we wish you the best of luck in your small business, but it’s not a Lucky Napkin. However if through your years of farming experience you’ve developed a measurable proprietary fertilization method that can stimulate organic growth in all weather conditions and your preliminary research has shown it is patentable and unique to the market, than we would say, lets get to work.
Q. Do you offer free help to everyone who contacts you?
No. I wish we could say that we could, but frankly that would be impossible. Our goal, albeit lofty, is to point as many people in the right direction toward their dreams as possible but it is not to hold everyone's hand. The view we share of entrepreneurism is simple. It is the purest expression of individual freedom and the greatest demonstration of the principles this great country was founded upon. Being an entrepreneur means taking control of your life and taking ultimate responsibility for your own destiny.
Our purpose is to advance those ideals and discover the people and ideas that can ultimately achieve and maintain their visions. We find them and give them the guidance, support and resources necessary to navigate the shark infested waters of real business, where good people sometimes get eaten alive before they even wade past the beach. In return we look for our fulfillment in the journey and our reward in the results.