U control final 2012 berkeley

Editor's Notes

• #5: We all got out of the building and talked to people directly to verify our assumptions about this business model
• #6: The reactions from people ranged from it would be creepy for others to see what they were doing with their phone to excitement about getting to play games on a big screen.
• #10: Goal - identify how and where to insert ourselves into the value chain - go vertical or be a content player So we talked to several people in each link in the value chain Started with NW operators - from billboard owners to stadiums to bars.. i.e. from JC Decaux to Access 360 to Digicast. super fragmented space. each network specializing in a couple of venues at best.. people had a limited view of the whole ecosystem... it really took us a few weeks to get to terms with the entire space..so what did we really learn.. Our first goal was to evaluate if we could vertical and disrupt the value chain by bypassing all these network providers. So we dug deep into the costs associated with building & running a network. We realized that opex was 3 times the capex for these networks. Even if we could cut capex into half, it did not make sense to try and compete with existing networks as we will be playing catchup… Moreover there was excess screen capacity out there and network operators were always looking for more engaging content. Most of the people we interviewed were willing to work with us.. So we eliminated the vertical solution option.. Further most people we interviewed admitted to a key problem - lack of engaging and interactive content Triangulating these inputs, we knew that we need to insert ourselves as an interactive content provider - one of the very few folks in this system that can provide engaging interactive content to the users.. Once we knew who we were, we need to understand how to make money - that's where advertisers come into play.. Because they have $$$ to spend.. We talked to a few folks from leading brands and from marketing agencies.. They told us what we need to achieve in order to get their attention and their business. We need big footprint, need to show that our users love us, and need to show proof points on the effectiveness of our technology. Of all the people we talked to in the advertising community, we got most positive response from an event planner.. who was very enthusiastic about partnering with us. She has already spent a few hours with us discussing how we could team up.. we really believe that event planners would be our early evangelists.. so a question you may be asking is how are we really going to make money.. before we get there, i would like to highlight a few quotes we heard from industry veterans.. these are critical because they go a long way in validating our concept..
• #11: Have to talk to many people in each section
• #13: So many people to validate with, sometimes confusing to understand what the clear message was. One thing that was clear – it all comes down to user experience
• #15: When weedited our business model canvas based on the feedbacks from outside, our product also evolved several times. This is the technique we had at first. Wecan use the technique to connect smart phones with big displays and move the images. When we reach our customers, either end users or venue owners, they want to see what they can really use rather than a concept demo. …At this point, we need a demo to show the concept and the value.
• #16: We already decided to abandon the shopping mall scenario and go to group gaming. This is our second version demo. It is a game developed from scratch. People shake the phone to spin the ball and make it bigger. We found several problems by running the demo.1. More appealing game2. Users do not find themselves belonging to a team.3. Game development is hard. It requires time and experience to develop a game with good interface, rational storyboard and everything.As we do not have a lot of experience in developing a game, we wonder whether we can actually finish another version of product. Fortunately, we figure out a way to go around it and continue to push our product forward.
• #17: We not only developed our own games but also integrated the existing games into our product. We made this simple pong game into a group game. All the people in one team need to press “up” or “down” button at the same time to move the panel. A lot of synchronization happened here.By reusing the existing games, we explored more games and focused on business model and user experience. We launched several demos in three locations, all around bay area. So far, we integrated three games and more than 20 users tried our product.
• #22: Add animationBetween top half and bottom half: talk about how we understand that there is a lot of validation for how this will work. But, we do have a better idea of methods that
• #35: $3.95 billion in 20111