Document Text Content
CONFIDENTIAL
InsightsPod
Gather, Visualize, Analyze Public Opinion to make Intelligent Decisions
Business P' -
Prepared September 2016
Contact Information
Zubair Khan
www.insightspod.com
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InsightsPod
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.....................................................................................................................1
Opportunity..........................................................................................................................1
Expectations..........................................................................................................................3
Opportunity..................................................................................................................................5
Problem & Solution............................................................................................................5
Target Market.......................................................................................................................6
Competition..........................................................................................................................6
Execution.......................................................................................................................................8
Marketing & Sales...............................................................................................................8
Operations...........................................................................................................................10
Milestones & Metrics........................................................................................................10
Company......................................................................................................................................11
Overview.............................................................................................................................11
Team.....................................................................................................................................11
Financial Plan.............................................................................................................................13
Forecast................................................................................................................................13
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Financing.............................................................................................................................15
Statements...........................................................................................................................17
Appendix.....................................................................................................................................20
Profit and Loss Statement................................................................................................20
Balance Sheet......................................................................................................................23
Cash Flow Statement........................................................................................................26
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Executive Summary
Opportunity
Problem
The power of word of mouth is becoming more critical to businesses as has never been
witnessed before. Negative aspects associated with a brand can leave a long-term
impact on its reputation. If a customer is facing a problem with your product or service,
the world is going to hear about it. On the contrary, social media has the ultimate ability
to turn audiences into customers and communicate positive messages.
A marketer's worst nightmare is a social media campaign gone wrong. In such a
situation, resources are diverted to fix the problem, disrupting the entire workflow.
During a social media crisis, marketers are left with limited control over the market as
the news spreads like wildfire. Businesses need to choose the right strategy and the
most appropriate way to respond.
With an increase in social media, marketing has become a two-way conversation
between brand and consumer. Customers demand businesses to be proactive and
efficient to meet their demands and InsightsPod provides businesses with the data to do
just that and more.
Solution
InsightsPod is an ambitious, innovative new company that is helping businesses,
governments, and investors in analyzing opinions, sentiments, emotions, and attitudes
of people from social media.
Imagine a customer leaves a bad review for your product. To improve your reputation
and the overall customer experience, we help you identify which customer is
dissatisfied in minutes. We help businesses determine a customer's intent and buying
habits.
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Through the vast amounts of data available across social media, we not only help
politicians to understand what their constituencies are talking about but also to
influence people, track voters, and get them to vote.
Investors who predict stock behavior by interpreting the news and public sentiment
make better trades. InsightsPod can give an insight into public sentiment quickly and
can aid financial institutions, as well as individuals, to make sound investment
decisions
InsightsPod offers advanced analytics to businesses for better marketing and product
development decisions. Businesses can be aware of their product's demand, likability,
strengths, and weaknesses. InsightsPod has the ability to study products and brands
through social listening and customer engagement.
Market
Our primary market is:
• Well-known businesses such as Nike, McDonalds, Starbucks.
• Political parties - InsightsPod aims to provide consulting services to political
parties. We can help political parties in improving their reputation and increase
public following. InsightsPod aids in analyzing the data on social media and the
opinions of the general public on the Internet. Likewise, individual political
figures can examine the political landscape and the effects on their public image.
• Government sector - This mainly involves law enforcement agencies. InsightsPod
can aid LEA in tracking criminals and terrorist activities. The platform can also
provide data and analyze public opinion regarding various government projects
and initiatives.
• Investors - Fluctuation in the stock market, global economic activities and their
impacts on financial markets; all of this can be analyzed through InsightsPod.
Competition
Our main competitors in the market are:
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• IBM Watson Analytics: A data discovery service available on the cloud. It guides
data exploration and automates predictive analytics.
• Lexatytics: Text Analytics company.
• Falcon.I0: Uses social media analytics to measure success. It also tracks channel
performance, monitors response times and benchmark against competitors.
Our competitors are offering a variety of services but the distinguishing factor between
us and the competitors is that we support 73 languages and offer location based
sentiment analysis. We also support multiple data sources including
Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and discussion boards.
Expectations
Forecast
We are projecting sales of $400,000 in Year 1, $850,000 in Year 2, and $1.6 million in Year
3 with a profit margin of 100%. This assumes we are serving around 20 customers in
Year 1. Our co-founders will not draw any salary in the first 2 years so that we can
reinvest our profits into growing the business. PR/Marketing and staff working on the
product and business development will be our largest expense.
Revenue
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Financing Needed
Currently the business receives $8000 as funding by the founder every month. No loans
have been taken. Founders are not taking any salaries and will not do so for another 2
years.
We are looking to raise $2.4 million at a $10 million valuation to scale. We require
$800,000 per year for the next three years. The proceedings will be used to:
- Refine our sentiment analysis system (currently 5% false positives)
- Hire a PR firm
- Hire a Data Scientist
- Marketing and Sales (UK and US Market)
- Office space in London and San Francisco
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Opportunity
Problem Et Solution
InsightsPod offers services such as marketing research, reports composed with said
research, and plan consultation. The service is extremely relevant, timely, and accurate
enabling clients to make informed decisions. Social media platforms such as Facebook,
YouTube, and Twitter are used to gather live feeds on which we run a sentiment
analysis, and in turn, offer our clients a superior approach to market research. We
provide the expertise to companies seeking the means to develop and improve their
products and services. To improve a company's reputation and overall customer
experience, we help identify which customer is dissatisfied in minutes. We help
businesses determine a customer's intent and buying habits. Through the vast amounts
of data available across social media, we not only help politicians to understand what
their constituencies are talking about but also to influence people, track voters and get
them to vote. Investors who predict stock behavior by interpreting the news and public
sentiment make better trades. InsightsPod can give an insight into public sentiment
quickly and can aid financial institutions, as well as individuals, to make sound
investment decisions.
InsightsPod has already been tested during the recent EU referendum and it is
currently evaluating public opinion on the two US presidential candidates; Donald
Trump and Hillary Clinton. The results that InsightsPod produced during the
referendum proved to be positive in favour of a Brexit, and a week later, Britain voted
to leave the EU, indicating that our model was reliable. The final results of the
referendum were the complete opposite of the poll projected figures; the Leave
campaign won with a 51.9% majority. This is potentially a great example of how polls
are not as reliable as we originally thought them to be when it comes to collecting data
on general public consensus. In contrast, we gather live feeds on significant political
events to aid political figures in their campaigns and activities.
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Target Market
Our target market will range from individuals, political parties, well-known
businesses e.g. McDonalds, Nike, Apple, and government institutions needing
information on any particular areas of concern.
Businesses, such as the aforementioned, have a huge social media presence on a global
level. This is essential and effective in being able to communicate information to a mass
of consumers, both current and potential, and to receive feedback faster than you would
via other means of communication. However, with such global exposure combined
with the speed of social media, the brand image and company reputation of these
businesses is now more vulnerable to change than ever before. There are many
examples from the past that can be cited in which negative tweets about companies
products, services, and even marketing strategies, went viral causing a huge onslaught
of negative public opinion, thus, having an adverse effect on the company in question.
In a similar fashion, government institutions have also been the victim of negative
public sentiment posted online on various social media platforms directly affecting
political parties and their reputations, and the number of votes in a particular party's
favour (on both local and national levels).
The stock market is malleable and is affected by global consensus in various circles of
interest, therefore, an investor keeps a close eye on that consensus when it comes to
making profitable trades and investment decisions. An ill-informed investment decision
made based on inaccurate information on global consensus could result in huge losses
for an investor. Clearly, the problems our target clients face are all similar in nature and,
in one way or another, affect each other.
Competition
Current Alternatives
Competition does exist in the industry InsightsPod is operating in. IBM Watson
Analytics, Lexalytics, and Falcon.I0 are some of our competitors. However, we have an
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edge in providing sentiment analysis which is based on geographical location and can
support 70+ languages.
Our Advantages
InsightsPod is different from our competitors based on a number of reasons;
• Highly accurate and intelligent sentiment analysis system
• Data is gathered and analyzed on a broader level unlike some of our competitors.
For instance, our competitors do not process data from Facebook and YouTube.
Our custom crawler can extract data from other sources.
• InsightsPod can give results based on specific geographical locations. This could
be significant to both retail brands and political parties, or individuals too.
• Our platform also has the potential to process data in a multitude of languages,
hence, the outcome tends to be more precise and effective.
• Highly customizable service - we assist our customers in engaging their target
audience
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Execution
Marketing Et Sales
Marketing Plan
We have planned to hire a PR and marketing agency to help create awareness and
spread the word out about our company. There are four companies in San Francisco
that are under consideration amongst which we will opt for one; The Outcast Agency,
Spark, SutherlandGold Group, and Brew. Usually, these companies charge $15,000 to
$20,000 per month for their services.
Feature articles and product reviews will help launch awareness of our platform.
Online advertisement will help with buyer impressions. The top 20 to 30 customers in
each segment will be approached first; a few sales hits in these top tiers will enable
achievement of targeted forecasts.
Sales Plan
In the first couple of months, the company will set up the office, hire a competent PR
firm and members of sales/business development to generate sales. There will be no
sales activity during this time span. Revenue will begin to flow in by the end of the first
six months.
InsightsPod expects to generate revenue from a subscription-based model. In order to
demonstrate the capability of our platform, InsightsPod's website will display limited
live insights on popular topics. Currently, we are displaying live insights on the US
presidential election's candidates and the Apple iPhone 7. In addition to this, key
contacts with senior writers at Wired Magazine, Business Week, CNet, and ZDnet
will bring positive national attention to our technology.
We anticipate that the initial revenues will come from businesses who will subscribe to
our service. InsightsPod will rigorously pursue government contracts from federal, state
and local governments. InsightsPod can be used by LEA to detect criminal and terrorist
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activities. We will enlist the help of consultants familiar with government bidding
processes, and those who have contacts within different departments. We will also
pursue political parties.
Due to InsightsPod being a new entity, we understand that we will have to prove our
company's worth to businesses in order to earn their respect and business. We will
provide free sample reports to potential clients. InsightsPod will also offer an 800
number phone line for customer service purposes.
Pricing
Customers will be charged according to the number of impressions being processed by
InsightsPod. Customers will pay an optional consulting fee for specialized services. For
example helping a political party in engaging voters during elections.
No. of Impressions (Monthly Subscription) Cost (USD)
0-100,000 $999
100,001-250,000 $1,999
250,001-500,000 $2,600
500,001-1,000,000 $3,500
1,000,001-2,000,000 $5,000
*Impression = 1 Facebook comment or 1 Tweet
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Operations
Locations a Facilities
The locations we have shortlisted to host our office space are San Francisco and
Oakland. We have yet to decide on the two locations, however, we are leaning towards
Oakland due to lower running costs and the accessibility of tech resources. We will also
have one office set up in London where we will appoint one salesperson. We currently
have an operating office space in Islamabad and our back-end developers will be
working from this location.
Technology
Our platform acquires data from different social media sites and discussion forums.
Currently, we are supporting Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. We can acquire
unlimited Twitter data which includes historical data for $60,000 per year. For Facebook
and YouTube, we have developed our own crawler that collects data from both
websites. Our platform can also collect data from any discussion forum and news
website.
Milestones Et Metrics
Milestone Due Date Who's Responsible
Business Plan September 24, 2016 Business Development
Start up Investment October 15, 2016 Finance
Set up office facility October 31, 2016 Management
Hire a PR firm November 07, 2016 Marketing
Hire sales team November 21, 2016 Sales
First Sales April 17, 2017 Sales
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Company
Overview
Ownership a Structure
InsightsPod will be registered as a limited-liability corporation. Zubair Khan will own
90% shares and 10% will be owned by Anya Rasulova. No outside investors are
involved at this point in time.
Team
The executive team at InsightsPod has two members - Zubair Khan and Anya Rasulova.
Zubair will manage the day-to-day operations and company strategy, whereas Anya
will be the strategic advisor and overlooking product enhancement.
Zubair Khan (CEO)
• CEO, Tranchulas - A multinational IT Security Company (10 Years)
• Accomplished and result oriented with proficiency in information security
services and IT business management
• Analytical expertise in overseeing technology improvement initiatives
• Pursuing MBA from Harvard
• Bachelors in Business IT from Curtin University of Technology, Australia
Anya Rasulova (Director)
• Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, Google
• Product Marketing Manager, Google
• Strategy Manager, Ebay
• Wharton MBA (Marketing and Operations)
• BA Economics, Brown University
• Solid career track record in consulting and intern& services
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The technical team will consist of a Chief Data Scientist and five programmers who will
be based in Pakistan. We will have two business development and sales executives
based in San Francisco and London.
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Financial Plan
Forecast
Key Assumptions
The financial plan relies on certain underlying assumptions;
• A gradual start since we are gathering potential customers.
• The technology is not very common, therefore, educating potential clients and
the public will require some time.
• We are expecting steady growth once the accuracy of the platform has been
demonstrated.
• The technology is new and updated so there's only a minimal chance that the
product immediately obsoletes.
According to the assumptions and the timeline we have predicted, our first sales will be
after six months. From each brand/retailer, we have assumed to earn a revenue of
$25,000 to $30,000 per year. Additional revenue will be received through providing
consulting services to clients, especially government sectors and political parties.
In our first three years, we are projecting $400,000 in Year 1, $850,000 in Year 2 and
$1.6 million in Year 3 in revenue with a 100% profit margin. We expect PR and
Marketing to be our top expense. The first 2 years' payroll costs will be minimal as
founding members are not taking any salary for that period of time.
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Revenue by Month
560K
520K
111111
$0 — 11
Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Months in Year 1
Expenses by Year
$7SOK
$500K
$200K
$0
FY2017
FY2018 FY2019
Direct Cost
• Other Expenses
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Net Profit (or Loss) by Year
$200K
$0
($200K)
Financing
Use of Funds
FY2017 FY2018 FY2019
The total expense in Year 1 is around $548,000 and $624,000 in Year 2. The biggest
expense will be contracting of a PR/Marketing Agency. We have allocated $192,000 for
this.
We have allocated $103,000 per year for product development. The breakdown of this
amount is as follows:
• We plan to hire a Data Scientist who will be paid $24,000 per year. To reduce the
expense we will hire a Data Scientist in Pakistan. The current salary of an
experienced Data Scientist working for companies like Teradata and Telenor is
$2000-$2500 per month.
• Our development team in Pakistan will consist of five team members. The
salaries for our two senior developers will be $18,000 each, making that a total of
$36,000 per year. Our programmers will be paid $14,400 each per year, making
that a total of $43,200.
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We do not, and will not, compromise on the quality of our work; superior technical
expertise is our top priority. Experts need to be highly paid as per market standards,
and well-trained, in order to put in their best efforts.
The Business Development Team will consist of two members of staff to manage sales
activities, maintaining valuable relationships with existing clients and identifying new
sales leads.
The marketing will be outsourced to a PR/Marketing agency located in San Francisco
which will cost us approximately $15,000 to $20,000 per month. Also, we plan on
participating in industry related events every quarter such as exhibitions and trade
shows.
Data acquisition from Twitter will cost us $60,000 per year. Our office space expense
is for two locations, i.e. Oakland or San Francisco and London.
We don't plan on paying ourselves salaries until after 2 years, and even then, we will
keep them low so we can invest as much as we can back into the business.
Sources of Funds
We have already covered our startup costs. The founder is currently paying the salaries
of programmers and the back-end office of Tranchulas Islamabad is being used to
facilitate the development process. All servers are currently hosted in Germany which is
also funded by the founder. The company has no loans and has no intention of taking
out any loans from banks. We plan to grow through bootstrapping, keeping our salaries
low and reinvesting our profits in the business, rather than taking on any additional
debt.
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Statements
Projected Profit a Loss
FY2017 FY2018 FY2019
Revenue $400,000 $850,000 $1,600,000
Direct Costs
Gross Margin $400,000 $850,000 $1,600,000
Gross Margin % 100% 100% 100%
Operating Expenses
Salary $263,200 $284,720 $548,056
Employee Related Expenses $48,000
Office Space / Utilities $29,333 $32,000 $32,000
Insurance $500 $500 $500
Accounting and Legal Expenses $5,000 $5,000 $5,000
Servers $7,200 $14,400 $14,400
Trade Shows and Exhibitions $11,250 $15,000 $15,000
PR / Marketing Agency $176,000 $192,000 $192,000
Twitter Data acquisition $55,000 $60,000 $60,000
Total Operating Expenses $547,483 $603,620 $914,956
Operating Income ($147,483) $246,380 $685,044
Interest Incurred
Depreciation and Amortization
Income Taxes $0 $19,779 $137,009
Total Expenses $547,483 $623,399 $1,051,965
Net Profit ($147,483) $226,601 $548,035
Net Profit / Sales (37%) 27% 34%
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