Ask HN: How much sells/traffic you need to attract investors?

[kuasha]

Not sure this is the right forum. I'll remove if the question is out of place.

Our startup we are trying to found has about 10K unique visitors per month and average 500 unit sells. According to our estimate we need 30% more sells to breakeven (founders do not take salary yet - only employees get money and that fixed cost can not be eliminated). We tried to do a lot of tricks (blogs, seo etc.) that do not cost money. But that 30% seems very hard. It is becoming hard to manage the money we are losing every month - we never tried for outside funding to keep things simple. We never thought we would need that. But not a single thing worked out as we planned when we started :(.

Now, we have decided we need a little funding to get to the point when we wont need outside money to survive. We are actually looking very small amount to cover the 30% for a year or a little more than that.

Whom and how should we approach? Or should we try to manage the money ourselves by some other means (consulting?)?

I'll not post details about the business since I do not want some other people who track us and try to guess our every step may identify us and our situation.

Thank you for any suggestion.

[abekarpinski]

Investors typically don't want to invest small amount in a company, they want to give you enough to make you a success right away. So if your company looks like it could become a quick success, then investors will be interested. But if youre selling something that isn't going to make a ton, than you better be close to making a profit for investors to take a peek.

[Mitchella]

It helps me when I know what the site/business model is. Every niche and business is different and should take a different strategy because of this.

[sharemywin]

the biggest problem is you don't know how to make it profitable with more money. if your capturing email address on customers visitors you can try selling other products etc to your list.

[tectonic]

How short are you each month? Would part-time consulting cover it?