Your answers 1 and 2 are superlative and make me want to work with you.
On, 3, I looked at Zmorph and they have amazing tech: I am concerned that their media presence isn't bigger, i.e. this means it does not reflect the involvement of strategic partners, who could get the word out: they're not even on reddit - r/ZMorph3DPrinter/ has 3 subscribers. There is a single reference on my main Startup news site, ever, with 2 comments.
Let's reflect about this a moment. The first time I've heard about this amazing company that I've actually followed the industry of (including Makerbot through their acquisition by Stratisys) - is when an investment gave them as a reference when I asked for references on Reddit. (Not even promoting them casually or including them in your main messages.)
Here is where I checked. Zmorph Zmorph3D on:
Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) YCombinator's huge-reach news source. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11359485](One single story) 111 days ago, with 2 comments.
Hackaday: 0 references. Perfect outlet for their community. searches performedn: https://www.google.com/search?q=hackaday+zmorph and https://www.google.hu/search?q=hackaday+zmorph3d
Reddit: 188 or 299 times that the word Zmorph3d or Zmorph has ever been uttered in all of Reddit, including by its submitters or on its own subreddit: searched performed: 1 2
The very top comment says: "How do people launch products without a demo video these days?" which received a downvoted reply -
[–]tqg_emter[S] 0 points 3 months ago It's just a reveal and first look - a video and more details will be available before the machine gets on the market.
And the upvoted: [–]GeorgePantsMcG 2 points 3 months ago Marketing-wise, as a first look it fell flat. All the wall of text and claims mean nothing if you don't show me what it can do. Make a video.
I agree completely with that comment. I couldn't even make a kickstarter or indiegogo campaign without a video, i.e. using a budget of precisely $0.00. It takes no money to make a video. If any single person has or can buy a used iPhone (price: $67) and takes the time to make a video, they are able to do so.
Here is a resource for you: "The world's largest maker survey results are out.". Click the first link "download a copy of the report" (you'll get a dropbox link, you don't need to sign up, you can just press X, nor do you need to sign up to download it) and you will see that 20% of makers make over $100K, meaning they can afford the printer (and this is only a representative sample, and another 18% decline to answer). Instead, even Zmorph's own forum - I assume it's their own forum, as I googled Zmorph forum - has a total of 61 followers, with 0 points, 1 point, and 2 points, on the last three posts (made 7 months ago, 4 months ago, and 4 months ago respectively) and 7,1,2 comments. That place is dead.
On the other hand, how interesting is the tech? Does it deserve to be dead? This is what I found from industry insiders:
"Lots of Z's going around this week, this one is Zmorph"
which mentioned:
Should other manufacturers of prosumer home 3D printers be worried that the ZMorph has leapt ahead of them?
Yes. Very.
So the technology is great. What else could justify zero mentions? Well, if there are very strong patent filings then it makes sense to do things in that order and keep submarine. However, there is no mention of any such endeavor. Searches performed. "zmorph patent" - 0 apparent mentions as read in Google's snippets. "zmorph3d patent" - 0 apparent mentions as read in Google's snippets.
This is also something a strategic investment partner could have helped with, like social media.
They should be featured in startup news sites, I've searched several and did not find references to that. So this means that if we were in the position of Zmorph3D with the exact same investors, we would have to do the investor's job for them, opening doors for us or getting us connected with their network of media and other contacts.
As a reference, #3 is a Fail, due to their lack of media profile or adoption despite having superior technology, which speaks to a lack of opening doors by their strategic investors - or even having their investors tell them how important this is.
Finally, you declined to answer Question 4, what you consider reasonable terms. I gave you a hypothetical company with the following key metrics:
What is the valuation that you would consider reasonable given these financial metrics? I'd like to hear a number or range of numbers, since we are only just discussing hypotheticals? You mention "I don't think any investor would take a company serious if they gave away 3/4's of their company during a seed round" but you do not mention what valuation you would consider reasonable for the above hypothetical situation, nor do you give a range.
Your answers so far: 1 Excellent 2 Excellent 3 (not a solid reference) 4 No answer