Snubbed! Why investors are rejecting this startup

Why Investors Are Snubbing This Startup

Dice Cream wants to bring a whimsical nature to the ice cream store experience, utilizing robotic arms to serve dice-shaped ice cream.

Dice Cream has all the makings of a highly successful crowdfunding campaign.

✅ Their promotional video is slick.

✅ Their concept is easy to get.

✅ Their market is huge.

And yet, they've struggled mightily to raise money from the crowd.

There's red flags in several areas, but I believe their struggles tie back to a group that operates in the shadows.

That sounds sinister, but what I'm trying to say is that you've likely never have heard of this organization, even if you've heard of the companies they've backed.

The group is called WaveMaker Labs - they're a venture studio with a less than ideal track record.

Venture studios incubate ideas and provide the initial capital for startups to get started.

They essentially create a series of startups rather than going 'all in' on one idea.

WaveMaker honed in on advanced robotics for agricultural + food preparation needs.

They've tapped the crowdfunding markets for early funding in a series of their companies, most notably Piestro, Graze, and Miso Robotics.

And they've raised big sums from the crowd - $11.7M for Piestro, $15.5M for Graze, and $97M for Miso Robotics.

Unfortunately, many of WaveMaker's ventures have flamed out in failure.

Piestro closed shop in January, leaving 2,000+ investors with a 100% loss.

Miso Robotics is nowhere close to profitability, suffering $11M in 2023 losses.

Graze lost $7.5M in 2023.

Future Acres, another Wavemaker backed business, has also shut down.

WaveMaker has since rebranded to Vebu Labs - either an attempt to hide its troubled history, or for some other reason.

Let's get back to the cube-shaped dairy dealer.

Dice Cream is actually not backed by Vebu Labs…

However, their team is almost entirely comprised of the same people that worked directly at WaveMmaker/Vebu, Piestro, Miso, and other shuttered ventures.

Dice Cream's leadership team is shaky at best, starting at the very top.

Jack Yang helms the ship as Dice Cream's CEO. According to Dice Cream's SEC filing, he only works 15-25 hours a week on the business due to his full time job at a consulting firm.

He also has ZERO equity in the business. None.

Does that sound like someone who is going to give investor's their 110% for the company?

Nicholas Degnan is the startup's CTO, and previously worked at Miso + Graze, while acting as COO at WaveMaker/Vebu.

Kevin Morris is the Chief Financial Officer, after stints at Miso + WaveMaker/Vebu. He's also getting paid $10k per month to handle fundraising activities for Dice Cream.

This is notable for two reasons.

First, the raise has gone terribly - with a few days left in the campaign they've only scraped together ~$130k. Second, he claims to only devote 5 hours per week to Dice Cream.

That means that Dice Cream (and its investors) are paying Kevin $400 an hour and seeing abysmal results.

The Dice Cream team themselves said that it will take a minimum of $4M to bring the concept to market.

Of the ~$130k raised, roughly $50k is going to Kevin if those terms are followed. At minimum, an additional $15k will be paid to StartEngine.

I've been inundated with Dice Cream ads, so there may be additional costs associated with those, but I'll leave them out for now.

Removing the $65k being paid to StartEngine + Kevin, that leaves just $65,000 for the business.

This comes out to 1.6% of their $4M goal.

Unless the company can miraculously receive a massive injection of cash, their hopes may be over before it even starts.

Venture investing is often a zero-sum game, and losing people's entire investment can easily prevent them from investing in your next venture.

I think we're seeing a lot of that here - people got burned by Piestro, Future Acres, and other WaveMaker projects.

They're not taking a chance on this one.

I would urge people to stay away from investing in Dice Cream and to just hit up their local Dairy Queen instead.