Golden Age Info Arch

May 10 is the deadline for my submission to qualify for round three of the New Ventures BC 2010 contest.  I’m writing this post to detail my current draft plans and get feedback from you.  Is it clear? Did I answer the questions? What else should I consider?  I would love your harshest criticisms and any encouraging comments you can spare.  Thanks for reading!!!

Baseline information:

Product/Service: Describe your product or service and the nature of the technology.

The QuestionCollector is an advertising delivery and identity management system in the form of an online social game. Think you have an answer to one of life’s “unanswerable” questions, share it, and get your friends to vote it up, until maybe the broader community picks up on your genius and lifts your perspective to new heights. Follow the questions you identify with, whether funny or serious; vote for the answers you like; the people you like; the brands you like; or debate the things you disagree with. It doesn’t matter to me what you want to support, or rail against, as long as you can do it without a weapon sharper than a word. Or maybe a virtual sword. Game play includes organized debate channels to do “battle” in; hierarchies to achieve prominence amongst your friends or enemies; support your true issue-by-issue thought leaders; or just watch as communities form around questions, that don’t replicate, day-after-day, like they do in today’s media. If you are as passionate about questions as I am, I want you to play this game with me.

Our focus is to supply a complete identity control experience for you and your opinion, whether you are an organization or a person. Sharing with everyone is not for everyone, and we respect that choice. If you are a rebel or a comedian, a follower or a conspiracy theorist we want to keep your secrets, manifestos, joke-lists, votes, and most of all, the questions that matter to you. When it comes to the brands you support they will be playing to gain your trust by showing their values and opinions. Thus we will provide an entertaining way for socially aware companies to engage their communities and target their advertising to the people who will most likely care about their products. If you’re trying to reach an audience with your product and you have high social capital, I want to advertise you.

Technology Development:Describe the development stage of your product/service.

I’ve been working on documenting and honing my concept for about a year. I’ve worked hard to build a well rounded concept with a core engine that can be tested before adding more advanced features. I’ve got object oriented data designs on the go. Screen designs including alpha and minimal viable product are partially complete. Object interaction diagrams with select use cases such as Doug; the comedian, Craig; the heckler, Bob; the laughing guy, and Edna; Doug’s mom. Also, I have a copious diagrams for technical explanation of core system modules. My current step is to find a technological partner to help progress prototype development and determine the best platform for delivery.

Team: Describe your company’s strengths and weaknesses. List the credentials of your technical and management teams, and if applicable, advisors and board of directors. If you don’t have a team, describe the key positions and critical skill sets that you need to add.

My technical background include data design, programming, and product support in the following industries: mentoring, forestry, and heath. My strengths are comprehensive vision, strategy, a passion for peace, visualizing and translating complex business requirements into usable interfaces, tenacity, design, adaptability, technical understanding, team support, and communication. I have a distinct love of helping and can’t wait to serve a team of talented individuals who will share our vision. My goal is to lead the design and architecture of the software, while assuring the quality of the product, and move into marketing after we have something to sell. My search for advisors and partners is accelerating, and the more people I talk to the more encouraging, and useful, feedback I’ve been getting. I am excited to bring on board my first business partners and begin development of the prototype. My major weaknesses are: my lack of business connections, systems administration, as well as missing some polish, and a shortage of cash.

Current advisors:

• Mark Payne is mentoring me through the ACETECH Market Entry Program and has been of significant help.
• Marco Guardigli is a successful business owner of a systems administration company in Italy whom I’ve been getting informal advice and encouragement from.
• A fellow entrepreneur, and ex-CTO, has recently helped me understand my revenue model ideas more concisely and may become more involved as the business grows.

Key positions I am looking to fill:

• Mentors and advisors – I need more guidance to develop myself as an entrepreneurial leader and to gain access to key talent and investment. A financial advisor would be most excellent to add to my list above.

• Technical lead / Partner – A lead developer and system administrator. I can code, but I need a better geek than me to lead on that front. I also need someone who can make IT infrastructure decisions and develop clear testing plans. I am currently in partnership discussions with another contestant, who needs a break-through client for his rapid development platform, which sounds very promising.

• CEO / Partner – I am interested in finding someone with startup business experience, especially someone with the network to attract financing and other business talent. I am slowly learning these skills, but feel my business could drastically benefit from additional experience.

Business Plan Status:What research has been conducted, what remains to be done, and how and when do you anticipate doing so. What key sources are included to document and support your plan?

Over the past six months I’ve been studying the social games and startup industry via a multitude of blogs and conferences. I’ve learned a lot about what I need to develop in order to make my business into a convincing story. A story about the questions that drive people, and organizations, to create value in their communities.

I’ve been conducting personal consumer research via one hundred or so ad hoc, undocumented conversations with a wide variety of people at parties, on the ferry, at art shows, conferences, and networking events. More recently, I’ve been finding business people to talk to about my idea and have enjoyed events such as Mentor Speed Dating and the Market Entry Program. Thus far my research suggests that 80% of people are highly enthusiastic, 19% are confused and 1% think it won’t work, or has major challenges. I need to work on formally capturing this kind of data and finding other credible sources, but the foundation is laid to begin the serious research and prove my assumptions.

I have drafted a skeleton business plan, which include my worst-case financial and hiring projections. However, my revenue model is expanding to include ideas I had discounted as secondary, so it must be revised as well as get some more experience financial eyes to validate it. I had formed most of my assumptions around getting users, who may, or may not, pay me money. Now I’m focusing on both attracting early adopters and paying customers. Specifically brands that are searching for the next step in online advertising, that gives them meaningful customer interaction.

My marketing plans rotate around how to match my company to a story. If you look at my “futuristic” organization chart you can see me as the Wizard (Product Manager), now I just need a good King/Queen (CEO) and a few Knights (Technical peeps) to get to the next step. The biggest trend I’ve been hearing, that I think is exciting for a lot of companies, and scary for some of the bigger ones is that story telling is becoming the defacto way to influence audiences to make purchase or even electoral decisions. This idea seems to attract not just the consumer but also the modern angel investor. Both want to be involved in a good story. Thus I have plans for my business story and I’m trying to tell it. Now I just need to find the other characters and storytellers to help validate and bring credibility to what I have got, as well as fill in key gaps.

Evaluation information:
Question #1: Intellectual Property. Describe the various forms of intellectual property (IP) related to your product/service that are needed in connection with your business and whether you own such IP, are developing it under license or otherwise. Describe your intellectual property strategy, including any plans for intellectual property protection.

No patents, yet. I remain unsure if any of my ideas are patentable and after conversing with my mentor about it, it seems clear that copyright will be my main tool for protecting my original way of presenting the technology. I plan to consult with my lawyer, as I complete incorporation, about potential for any patents. My website material is copyrighted and I hope to trademark my company logo once cash is available to do so. As part of my self-marketing plan, I have two amateur dance videos (more coming soon) which include copyright material produced by other musical artists. The use of the music is covered under fair dealing (aka fair use in the USA), as I have combined it with my own dance moves, have credited the artists, and am giving it away.

Development of detailed plans for IP will be produced as the business moves forward and as it becomes clear which IP has original value. We shall be vigilant in how we use others property, as we develop the technological aspects of the product, by using known verification methods and dealing fairly with any complaints.

Question #2: Market: Who is your customer? Describe the value proposition: the value your customers will derive from purchasing your products or services. Why will they buy it? Describe the target market in terms of size, segmentation and trends. What are the barriers to market entry?

My first target customer is opinionated and speaks English. Rebels and jesters are the two archetypal customers I want to focus on attracting. They will lead the generation of important and entertaining content respectively, and will attract audiences. The value I intend to provide for these customers is a feeling of empowerment, freedom, and community around the questions and debates they value and engage in. They will buy it because it’s free, entertaining, useful, and adds significance to their lives. My initial targets are students age 14-30 with a plan to expand into other segments as we achieve traction and profitability. The main barrier to entry is getting hyper busy people to try it and keep coming back at least once a week.

My second target customer are companies and organizations that want a targeted way of approaching customers with their innovations. I also believe that the organization of tomorrow wants to share their opinions, values, and stories in an environment where they can control their image and gain valuable understanding of what their customers or followers want from them.

Question #3:Distribution. Describe how you will take your product to market and reach your customers from a sales and marketing perspective. What alliances do you intend? How will you overcome barriers to market entry?

The plan is to build a stand alone web application, then as the alpha product becomes validated by test users, we want to expand the user base by creating a facebook plugin, an iPhone/iPad application, and perhaps other user platforms. We plan to partner with Google and/or other advertising platforms to provide ads for the site. My friend Jon Taylor is working on an new ad platform that provides greater returns for high traffic sites called PublisherParnter (http://www.publisherpartner.com) which could also be a strategic choice.

I use the terms alpha and beta as signposts for major new features and design upgrades. I want to use agile development practices, and continuous deployment to keep iterating as much as possible between these versions.

After the alpha version has traction (1st quarter of 2011 or sooner) development of a simple multi-theme system will be added. Then for the beta version (end of 2011 or sooner), we will create portals to the game for our initial target market, as well as expand into other verticals.

Later marketing plans include a speaking/party tour at select universities and colleges to attract beta testers. Otherwise I plan to make use of social media campaigns, viral video campaigns, and current online advertising to expand the client base. I’ve been tinkering with my own dance talent as a promotional tool, and initial test videos can be viewed for your entertainment at http://youtube.com/jazzmann71

After go live (end of 2012 or sooner) I want to add multi-language support to move into broader cultural market segments and really see if we can scale to hit as much of the world as possible.

I’ve been working on aligning “the story” of the company and the product with legendary themes like the magical peace that occurs in Arthurian legend. If plans and execution can speed up successfully, I would like to match our marketing efforts, for the launch, to the end of the Mayan calendar in late 2012 for additional effect. What better time for a revolutionary world opinion system to come into play, than the beginning of a “new” age. Also, I believe these stories are deeply embedded across cultures and provide a cheap way to catch the imagination of potential customers.

Question #4:Competition. Who are your existing or potential competitors? Describe your company and product’s primary competitive differentiators. What makes you unique, better? What makes your competition threatening? How might competitors react to the introduction of your product or service?

My competitors include: Facebook and other social networks; Yahoo Answers and other answer focused providers; eRepublik and other social gaming companies; as well as news media sites and their comment systems. I believe we are different from these sets of competitors by combining key ideas from all four in a new and unique way.

First, social networks are great for connecting and sharing thoughts and media, but they provide a one way spew of information and create massive amounts of repeat data. We want people to connect around reusable content in a much more focused environment.

Second, answer focused providers are great at providing fact based information, but what about opinions and the questions that people identity with around “unanswerable” or debatable ideas. They have the engines for what we want to accomplish, but have a very different vision of what customers want.

Third, social games are focused on creating entertainment value and are generally regarded by non-game players as a “waste of time”. eRepublik in particular has done a superb job of virtualizing ideas like newspapers, and elections, but they have included many terrible ideas too. These include the division of the world into nations and military components as the game’s main driver. Thus they tend to encourage radical nationalism and a very immature form of competition. We want to divide people into virtual roles based on how they participate in game, create collaborative competitive systems, and virtual elections based on who you know and agree with. Also, by dividing the virtual world into borderless colored kingdoms, rather than states, we hope to create a way for people to understand humanity as a whole and help encourage peace and free discussion across cultures.

Last, news media sites repeat the same questions day after day. They also provide comment sections where people tend to rage against either the media or the people in the stories. The problem is they treat these comments as “worthless” and end up shunting repeated argument after repeated argument into massive archives. Sure you can search and mine it, but why not treat users comments as more valuable by providing a system where people can share their opinion without repeating themselves. They might even feel more heard and be less angry over time.

Furthermore, privacy and sharing are common issues to all of my competition and they tend to approach it haphazardly. Social networks have gotten a handle on private and public sharing, but lack a way for anonymity. News sites provide public anonymity, but quite often lack ways to connect with other commenters. We have an advanced approach for allowing privacy and connection that no competitor I can find has implemented yet.

Facebook could pivot into us, but they seem focused on expanding their sharing model rather than changing it’s core functionality. News sites could also revamp the way they approach editorials, but are unlikely to stop their repetitive ways, since that is how they get people to come back day after day.

I’m unsure how the competition will react to our entry, but I expect the news sites to attempt to mirror what we are doing, if we are successful. There is also the potential for governments to develop similar systems, but it seems unlikely that they will pair their content management with game mechanics, since games are often viewed as not “serious”.

Feature	GAIA.org	Competitors
	QuestionCollector	Facebook & Social Networds	Yahoo! Answers and Answer focused services	eRepublik and other social games	News media and their comment sections
question centric	x		somewhat		over duplication
organized debate system	x
virtual elections	x
participation based roles	x			eRepublick, but not others
user selected themes	x			usually a different game
collaborative game	x			somewhat
user network	x	x	x	x
ranking system	x	like	x	like	thumbs up or down
privacy controls	x	public and private	all public	all public	mostly anonymous
reusable opinion storage	x	hard to get to	mostly facts	eRepublick newspaper	archived
identity management	x	x	x		mostly anonymous

Question #5:Financial. Describe your revenue model— how you plan to make money. What have you spent to date? What funds have been raised? How much money do you need? When do you need it? What will you do to raise any additional funds required for your product/service? When will your venture be cash-flow positive? What significant assumptions have you made? What risks have you identified?

The main sources of revenue I intend to go after include selling: online advertising space, a subscription model for companies and organizations to access the game, virtual goods/currency for players, and no-ad subscriptions for players who want the ad-free experience. I also have an idea for users to sell their data to subscribed organizations and collect a transaction fee while passing the payment to the user. The brokerage idea is out of scope for the moment, but I think it has potential to really add significant revenue down the line. Other ideas include brand licensing, a centralized theme store, and party tour ticket sales.

I have spent approximately $1500 to date. Mostly on hosting, logowork, and self development via business seminars, as well as, entry into this contest. I plan on spending another $1200 or so to incorporate in the coming weeks, so that I can apply for IRAP funding. I have very little funds available to me and my runway is about 6 months or I may have to get a “real” job again.

I have raised zero dollars. I am looking for a seed round of investment in the range of $50,000 to $200,000 to get to validated alpha version within the next 12 months or so. If discussions with my potential partner go well, I may need even less than this to get through these initial stages. I want to get funding of some kind arranged by September 2010 or sooner so that I can speed up my efforts. As the business grows, I, or someone more qualified than I, will raise additional funds ahead of when they are required. I would approach angel investors, investor groups, and venture capital funds to secure the required funds, but would like to run as small a ship as possible until we have some positive cash flow occurring.

I have assumed, based on overwhelmingly positive feedback, that people want such a place to vent their opinions, and while many don’t understand how it can be a game I’m positive I can build it. I am assuming that companies and advertisers are still looking for the next big thing even as facebook and twitter make moves to work out their business models. I am assuming that companies will pay a subscription fee to gain access to the valuable information that I am assuming my users will generate as the game gains traction. I assume that the online advertising market will continue to expand rapidly and that the social gaming market is going to continue to explode. I also have assumed, based on other virtual game companies success, that a small percentage of users will pay for virtual goods to enhance their experience. Lastly I’ve assumed that the site will have high repeat traffic and be able to generate significant advertising revenue.

Risks I’ve identified are Facebook or other social gaming companies developing a similar game. Another is that people won’t play or that we won’t achieve the virality necessary to retain users and keep content generation up. There is a risk that governments begin taxing virtual good sales. Another would be that advertisers may not want to advertise with us due to our policies or the customers we attract. There are technical risks associated with repeated use content, especially when many interrelationships form in the data. There is a minimal risk that storage becomes an issue as contributions of content rise quickly. Of course, we could run out of money trying to make it both fun and cool and investors might shun us for some reason, but I don’t know what reason that would be.

That’s it.  It’s due Monday the 10th at 5:30 PST. I would love any last comments or suggestions for inclusion or modification by 1pm.  Again, thanks for reading, if you made it this far, I’m forever grateful.

Tags: adviser, business, CEO, contest, design, high performance teams, marketing, problem, product, questions, solution

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