Growth And Exit Strategy
Inoof will be good fit in the Portal strategy of companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Interactive Corp. Yahoo, for example, would benefit from adding such a service to its portfolio of consumer oriented offerings across its multiple channels (Yahoo.com, Mail and Messenger). Inoof’s IP would be an asset to Yahoo. Inoof would benefit from Yahoo’s massive web-savvy user base, its network of data providers and partners, development resources, Yahoo’s content and Advertisement program. Our long-term vision, which is the user declaring what they want and intelligent web-bots delivering it to them, aligns more with the kind of work at Google.
Sources and Uses of Funds
Inoof plans to raise funds in two stages. The first stage will be used to prove the business plan. The management team expects to raise $1.1 MM in the first stage to get to version 1.0, in 12 months, with 5 partners and 3 retail / business customers. The use of funds during this stage will mainly comprise the following:
Development team salaries (4 developers/2 testers/1 manager): $720K
Business Development (2 people): $250K
Office space and related: 75K
Legal/Administrative/misc: $30K
Hardware/software/hosting: $25K
Inoof expects to raise its first round nine months after angel funding. The initial requirements are scoped at $2.1 MM to get to version 2.0 in twelve months. Some of the milestones will include getting 7 additional partners and 3 major customers. Funds will primarily be used to hire a full time team, and advertise, as below:
Onsite Development/QA team (6 developers/2 testers/1 manager) $900K
Offshore Development team (4 developers+1 tester+1 lead): 150K
CTO and VP of Engineering (2 people): $300K
Head of Business Development and Sales & Marketing (3 people): $400K
Advertising using Google/Yahoo, reviews by Tech/Review websites such as TechCrunch, Digg.com and viral marketing / promotions / giveaways: 150K
Patents/HR/Administrative/Legal: $50K.
Office space etc: 75K; Hardware/software/hosting: $50K
Management Team
(deleted)
Board of Advisors
(deleted)
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Business / Revenue Model
Inoof will generate revenue primarily from the following sources: (see Additional Information for actual figures)
1. Hyper-targeted advertisements displayed with the users lists – These are premium advertisements, because they are targeted to a ready-to-buy user and reflect what they want, more accurately than the current web advertisements. These advertisements will also be displayed on additional channels such as IM/SMS/Email.
2. Subscription fees for the Business Intelligence (BI) data – Inoof will enhance and sell the “wanted” data shared by the consumers with Inoof. This is invaluable demand information for retailers that they currently do not possess. Further the Business Intelligence data can be analyzed in many different ways to give retailers (customers of Inoof), critical information to predict demand accurately.
3. Auctioning the Portal Services – Online service providers will bid for servicing the aggregated demand from the users for services such as photo printing, premium content etc. Example: Inoof’s BI partners would be notified that 10000 photo prints are needed in the zip code 01824. The providers will bid for a lease to this service.
Competitive Landscape
Inoof aims to create a new space in which the consumer declares what they want and custom engines deliver the information/services to them, while providing retailers a new sales/marketing channel as well as predictive business intelligence. Because we are defining this space, Inoof has the first mover advantage here. Additionally, with more patents, a critical mass of users, partnerships and service providers Inoof will create significant barriers to entry for other entrants, while being a good acquisition target for large established portals.
The Social Shopping sites listed below are in an area similar to the initial space that we are targeting, however, we are different in the following ways
1. These sites enable the users to manually collect and share data about their shopping interests while browsing the web. Our goal is to automate the process of collecting this data, ‘digest’ it via proprietary models and present customized information to the user.
2. In the shopping space, we will aggregate consumer demand and funnel it to the businesses and enable them to market/sell/advertise to the user directly via the Inoof Portal. We will provide predictive sales intelligence to the businesses.
3. Our vision is to expand this convenience of “here’s what I want, let the market come to me” to other areas of our daily web usage such as data research, personalized pages providing hyper-aggregated content, personal finance and more, possibly even leveraging the semantic-web.
Social shopping sites: kaboodle.com, thisnext.com
Other social shopping sites: RightCart, MyPickList, WhatsBuzzing, ShopWiki, Zlio, Wists, Crowdstorm, Pepperjam, Jellyfish
Comparison shopping sites: MySimon.com, mpire.com, NexTag.com, Froogle.com, Yahoo Shopping, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber.com, PriceRunner.com etc
Data Aggregation and Presentation sites: Zillow.com
Inoof will generate revenue primarily from the following sources: (see Additional Information for actual figures)
1. Hyper-targeted advertisements displayed with the users lists – These are premium advertisements, because they are targeted to a ready-to-buy user and reflect what they want, more accurately than the current web advertisements. These advertisements will also be displayed on additional channels such as IM/SMS/Email.
2. Subscription fees for the Business Intelligence (BI) data – Inoof will enhance and sell the “wanted” data shared by the consumers with Inoof. This is invaluable demand information for retailers that they currently do not possess. Further the Business Intelligence data can be analyzed in many different ways to give retailers (customers of Inoof), critical information to predict demand accurately.
3. Auctioning the Portal Services – Online service providers will bid for servicing the aggregated demand from the users for services such as photo printing, premium content etc. Example: Inoof’s BI partners would be notified that 10000 photo prints are needed in the zip code 01824. The providers will bid for a lease to this service.
Competitive Landscape
Inoof aims to create a new space in which the consumer declares what they want and custom engines deliver the information/services to them, while providing retailers a new sales/marketing channel as well as predictive business intelligence. Because we are defining this space, Inoof has the first mover advantage here. Additionally, with more patents, a critical mass of users, partnerships and service providers Inoof will create significant barriers to entry for other entrants, while being a good acquisition target for large established portals.
The Social Shopping sites listed below are in an area similar to the initial space that we are targeting, however, we are different in the following ways
1. These sites enable the users to manually collect and share data about their shopping interests while browsing the web. Our goal is to automate the process of collecting this data, ‘digest’ it via proprietary models and present customized information to the user.
2. In the shopping space, we will aggregate consumer demand and funnel it to the businesses and enable them to market/sell/advertise to the user directly via the Inoof Portal. We will provide predictive sales intelligence to the businesses.
3. Our vision is to expand this convenience of “here’s what I want, let the market come to me” to other areas of our daily web usage such as data research, personalized pages providing hyper-aggregated content, personal finance and more, possibly even leveraging the semantic-web.
Social shopping sites: kaboodle.com, thisnext.com
Other social shopping sites: RightCart, MyPickList, WhatsBuzzing, ShopWiki, Zlio, Wists, Crowdstorm, Pepperjam, Jellyfish
Comparison shopping sites: MySimon.com, mpire.com, NexTag.com, Froogle.com, Yahoo Shopping, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber.com, PriceRunner.com etc
Data Aggregation and Presentation sites: Zillow.com
Product
Inoof comprises three main parts:
1. User Portal (product screenshots on page 9)
2. Matching/Aggregation/Delivery Engines
3. Inoof Platform
1. The User Portal: http://www.inoof.com This Web 2.0 Portal presents hyper aggregated information to the user, in a simple convenient format. It contains shareable lists such as shopping, to-do, contacts, calendar, etc, by which the users declare what they want. Each list is backed by custom engines that deliver highly targeted advertisements and services for items in the lists. Eventually, these lists will morph into highly customizable pages that display relevant information such as deals, reviews, news, special offers, asynchronous research and more. The users can access this information via multiple channels such as the web, email, Instant Messaging (IM) and text messaging (SMS). The user controls what data is shared, and with whom.
2. Matching/Aggregation/Delivery Engines: These engines match the items in the users’ lists with information aggregated from a wide variety of online sources, including value added services and promotions provided by Inoof’s business partners, and user generated content etc. These engines will also deliver targeted advertisements related to the products or services in the users’ lists. For example, the users shopping list can be enriched with information aggregated by the “deal” recommendation engines, coupons, review consolidation engines etc. Special incentives from retailers or service providers will be presented to the user, thereby reducing the net cost to the user. Similarly, the calendar list can display information from local events and restaurants and more. The engines will crawl thousands of sites in each category, collate the data, parse and interpret it, apply custom algorithms to convert this data into information and thereby come up with “digests” that will be presented to the user, along with tailored recommendations.
There is a significant amount of proprietary development involved in creating these engines, and this will constitute the IP at Inoof.
Inoof will also provide some special engines that enable the users to offload time consuming web oriented tasks to the Portal. Example: a student wanting to research a specific topic could add it to their “research list” on the Portal. This list would be served by an asynchronous meta/deep search engine that would present a unified context-sensitive report to the user, with text/images/video and more.
3. The Inoof Platform: Inoof will also provide the technology platform for the retailers to access the Inoof Business Intelligence (BI) information and for them to provide retail services that will be integrated with the Portal. The BI information and all processes related to these will be part of the Inoof IP too. The platform includes tools, browser plug-ins and widgets etc that will enrich the user experience on Inoof’s partner sites too.
Inoof comprises three main parts:
1. User Portal (product screenshots on page 9)
2. Matching/Aggregation/Delivery Engines
3. Inoof Platform
1. The User Portal: http://www.inoof.com This Web 2.0 Portal presents hyper aggregated information to the user, in a simple convenient format. It contains shareable lists such as shopping, to-do, contacts, calendar, etc, by which the users declare what they want. Each list is backed by custom engines that deliver highly targeted advertisements and services for items in the lists. Eventually, these lists will morph into highly customizable pages that display relevant information such as deals, reviews, news, special offers, asynchronous research and more. The users can access this information via multiple channels such as the web, email, Instant Messaging (IM) and text messaging (SMS). The user controls what data is shared, and with whom.
2. Matching/Aggregation/Delivery Engines: These engines match the items in the users’ lists with information aggregated from a wide variety of online sources, including value added services and promotions provided by Inoof’s business partners, and user generated content etc. These engines will also deliver targeted advertisements related to the products or services in the users’ lists. For example, the users shopping list can be enriched with information aggregated by the “deal” recommendation engines, coupons, review consolidation engines etc. Special incentives from retailers or service providers will be presented to the user, thereby reducing the net cost to the user. Similarly, the calendar list can display information from local events and restaurants and more. The engines will crawl thousands of sites in each category, collate the data, parse and interpret it, apply custom algorithms to convert this data into information and thereby come up with “digests” that will be presented to the user, along with tailored recommendations.
There is a significant amount of proprietary development involved in creating these engines, and this will constitute the IP at Inoof.
Inoof will also provide some special engines that enable the users to offload time consuming web oriented tasks to the Portal. Example: a student wanting to research a specific topic could add it to their “research list” on the Portal. This list would be served by an asynchronous meta/deep search engine that would present a unified context-sensitive report to the user, with text/images/video and more.
3. The Inoof Platform: Inoof will also provide the technology platform for the retailers to access the Inoof Business Intelligence (BI) information and for them to provide retail services that will be integrated with the Portal. The BI information and all processes related to these will be part of the Inoof IP too. The platform includes tools, browser plug-ins and widgets etc that will enrich the user experience on Inoof’s partner sites too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
