ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Market Size[1]
· In 2007, 131MM people will shop online; 90MM originate their purchase process by visiting an aggregator site, 60MM use comparison shopping sites.
· 100MM read reviews, 70MM use online coupons. 100MM search product information online, 120MM do research online.
· Over 65MM spend 10-30 hours per week online. 18% of the time is spent in online commerce, 46% in consuming content.
· Online advertisement spending was $20bn in 2006 (expected $81bn by 2011).
Additionally, 65% cited convenience as the primary reason for online shopping, and 53% cited time-savings. Customer acquisition costs are about $10-20/user, and online advertisers will spend an average of $88/user in 2007.
Users
Individual Users: We expect the time-saving, convenience and lower-costs benefits of the site to attract online users in the age group 15-50. We will initially target online electronics shoppers, especially busy professionals and mobile device users. Some users could simply benefit from the sophisticated list making capabilities of the Portal too.
Expected User Growth
We expect a viral, marketing and web-advertising driven user growth rate of about 30% initially, leading to about 1.8 MM users in 24 months after launch (1.5% of the market). Because people are very comfortable with online shopping (131MM) and comparison sites (60MM), and keeping in mind the explosive growth rates of recent sites such as flickr.com, del.icio.us etc, our growth rates seem reasonable. Comparable numbers are PriceGrabber (21MM), PepperJam.com (6.5MM) and Amazon’s “WishLists” (3.5MM).
Business Customers
Online retailers and Service Providers: Businesses that sell goods or services online to the Inoof user demographic will use the Inoof channel to advertise more effectively, provide services and sell to the “ready to buy” Inoof users. These companies will also be customers of Inoof Business Intelligence (BI) data. With a critical mass of users, Inoof will be able to provide predictive demand information to the retailers.
Business Partnerships
Inoof will partner with some of the existing providers of data about consumer goods such as mysimon.com, epinions.com, fatwallet.com, cnet.com, restaurants.com, Edmunds.com etc, in addition to websites that provide localized information. Partners that provide online services include news aggregators, deep search services etc. Inoof will benefit by leveraging the information base of these partners in exchange for advertisement revenue and user traffic. Inoof will also provide co-branded capabilities for some non competing sites. Example, we can provide the Portal features to premium content provider sites.
Affiliate Partnerships
Inoof will be affiliate partners with the online retailers and also with intermediaries that broker advertisements.
Technology Partnerships
Inoof will partner with companies that provide the technology for building and extending the Inoof Platform. This includes mobile service providers, Business Intelligence technology vendors, application integrators etc.
[1] Gomez.com research (http://www.gomez.com/); Online Publishers Association (http://www.online-publishers.org/); Shop.org statistics; IT Facts (http://www.itfacts.biz/); Online publishers Association (http://www.online-publishers.org/); Neilsen Media Research
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
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)
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)
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
