buyfromfarm

How do you approach investors or investor firms when you have a product and a business plan? I understand many investors prefer a referral of "someone I know". What if I don't have this kind of connection, and I am not at Silicon Valley.

I am a solo founder of a startup company "Buy From Farm" (http://buyfrom.farm) - a marketplace for farmers, neighborhood producers and buyers. I am looking for a co-founder in marketing and sales, so I posted the job info at angellist.com. I got quite a few emails. I asked the interested party that it's better download our apps and sign up before we talk. By the time we talk, I realize that some of them just downloaded and played a little. The most fun part of this app is to become a vendor.

I have also worked with a few developers who wanted to be part of this project. And I got the feeling that they don't like to play this app either.

I am actually disappointed.

For the fairness of the discussion, the app itself is solid with decent UI and UX.

So did I ask too much? Or I expect too much?

Hi, I am the founder of Buy From Farm (http://buyfrom.farm) - let people sell/buy produce from/to their neighbors. I believe vendors at farmers' markets would be my potential customers so I visited local farmers' markets at Austin, Texas. I talked about what our app can do, demoed the push notification features to show a vendor can reach people at farmer's markets in a real-time. I also noticed all of them are using smart phones, majority of them are android's. They understand what's push notification. They understood our app is free to download. I also talked to them when they were free, no customer there. I ended our conversion as quickly as I could while someone stopped by at their stands. I received very positive feedback. 19 of 20 I have talked likes the idea very much. The only one thought I was selling cell phones since we didn't really have conversion and they turned me down. I collected their business cards, also left a flyer with download instruction to each one I talked. And I sent followup emails to them next Monday.

But it turned out no single downloaded happened from this visit. 0 of 19 doesn't sound right.

What did I do wrong? Or there is something I missed.