Has anyone donated? I think Tsuji should have started a simple Gofundme page rather than put out a link to numerous different projects to donate to. It’s a little confusing and a person can’t be 100% sure that the donation is going to human clinical studies with his cellular technology or if the donation is going to something else at Riken. Imagine donating $500 - $1000 and then learning a month later that it went to the wrong project. He is listing too many projects in his solicitation for donations. Also, what happens if he doesn’t get enough money to do the trial? Does he then return the donations or what?
When you say “regenerative medicine” do you mean the category that is led by this:
Current projects
Donations to support basic and applied research for the next generation organ regenerative medicine
@jarjarbinx I noticed that too amd that’s one of the reasons I’m very skeptical about this whole approach. It can’t be used as a cover to solicit donations to RIKEN for other stuff.
yes it would be under there and you can access a PDF that shows how they are planning on using the money. Tsuji has stated that he approached Aderans but that they do not have enough financial capital to fulfill the amount Tsuji is requesting
I agree Roger. By using this method Tsuji is making it difficult for people to donate. He should just set up a simple page for donating to the project, insure that the money goes to the desired project, and return the donations if he doesn’t get enough money to do the project. I think it’s ultra-complicated because Tsuji is literally brilliant so he can’t think of simple stuff. Everything he thinks of is complex because of his brilliance.
I think the hair project donation info is bunched together with a lot of other stuff and links and stuff like that, which makes it look like a donation could easily go to the wrong project. The process to donate is a bit of a maze.
Is there a way to get in touch with Tsuji about this? He should streamline his request for donations so that it’s simple and so that when someone donates money that money can only go to the correct project and indicate what happens to the donations if the project doesn’t take place.
The donation process is too complicated. It makes donors wary. If I made a donation I would be worried whether or not the donation went to the right place. When someone makes a donation they should be able to feel assured that the donation went to the desired place.
Tsuji should post one link that goes directly to a page where people can donate specifically to the cultured hair cells technology human studies that we want to donate to. The page should also state what happens with the donations if the project doesn’t happen for some reason.
@jarjarbinx Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s MUCH more important for Dr Tsuji to seek investment from a VC firm - at least $5-10 million.
His trying to raise money directly from the public, from hair loss sufferers, definitely looks desperate, like he’s not confident enough in his own technology to seek VC funding.
But if he wants to do this as a supplement to VC funding, he should do it as you described - it has to be clearly indicated that the funds collected will be used ONLY to finance his hair regeneration research and clinical trials, and NOT for other unrelated miscellaneous projects of his or RIKEN’s.
By the way there are some medical fundraising sites now that do this specialized niche of fundraising better than GoFundMe.
I will not donate. I think Tsuji will have better luck raising money through Kickstarter.
This is misleading, Tsuji is asking US$4.8M in donations, but this is just to start the trials, don’t assume that $4.8M is all it takes for us to see a commercial product from Tsuji.
@Lucky Yes, you’re right. I thought that was obvious from everything said and reported, but some people might not understand that. This is ONLY to get to clinical trials, and frankly, in my opinion it may not even be enough to do that.
Thanks for pointing that out, though.
I think it’s very misguided of him to try to solicit “donations” directly from the public. If Dr Tsuji wants to fund his project, and is really confident that his technology works, he needs to go directly to venture capital firms and pitch it.
Scam?
Not a scam, but a combination of Dr Tsuji not being confident enough about his work to approach VC firms for financing, and RIKEN’s lack of transparency in how they collect donations from the public.
At least when Dr Terskikh at Sanford Burnham asked for public donations (as they did very briefly about 3 years ago), they made it clear that the funds would go to Dr Terksikh’s hair cloning project.
Donations to RIKEN on their website just go into a general pool for “regenerative medicine” projects. I wouldn’t call it a scam but it is a VERY sketchy way to collect donations.
Yes, a very amateurish way to ask for donations. They need professional help to raise capital. Forget about VC firms, SPAC is the way to go nowadays to raise capital, all you need is to be able to sell a good story, you don’t need earnings. Take a look at Virgin Galatic, zero earnings, they don’t even have a viable product yet and investors are pouring in already. The same can work for hair multiplication.
@LIG A SPAC might work to raise the money too. I don’t know about the SPAC market in Japan but if he came to the US he’d probably be able to raise what he needs through a SPAC.
Zero earnings but not zero revenues. Virgin has revenues. Virgin is charging people $250K each to book a space tour even before they have developed a proven technology.
Tsuji should follow what Virgin does. If I had that kind of money, I would rather pay for a full head of hair than a galaxy tour.