We spline invdeck_feb2018
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This document proposes a business-oriented social network that connects enterprises, startups, investors and other players in the high-tech ecosystem globally. It aims to solve the fragmented and inefficient process of enterprises finding technological solutions and startups finding clients. The network will use intelligent algorithms to help users search, learn about each other and get matched through personalized recommendations. Revenue will come from premium subscriptions and ads. The product will be released focusing on key industries, countries and features, and distributed through industry hubs initially.
We spline invdeck_feb2018
- 1. Feb/2018 Business-Oriented Social Network connecting players in the High-Tech Ecosystem
- 2. Building a Global Community of Users… CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Enterprises that want to adopt technologies Find Technological Solutions and Improve Results Through Innovation Startups / Innovative Companies that develop such technologies Get Exposed to Enterprises and Find Clients, Partners, and More - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - “Core” Users: “Non-Core” Users: Hubs Universities Research Parks Incubators / Accelerators Government Agencies Investors VC Funds PE Funds Banks Service Providers Lawyers Media Accountants / Auditors Consultants / Advisors
- 3. Core Problem CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED For Enterprises: it is simply too overwhelming to keep up with what's new. Executives have to travel around the world just to attend conferences or to spend days on the road to talk to dozens of innovative companies they can hardly remember afterwards. For Startups: it is hard for them to get new clients because they don’t have a big sales team. This is a real pain for them and also for more mature innovative companies that want to penetrate new markets / countries. In fact, this “Matching Game” between different players is: • very fragmented, • biased (regional bias), • expensive, and • inefficient
- 4. Solution to Core Problem CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED A Business-Oriented Social Network where a Community of Users can easily find each other, interact, and communicate across the globe. For Enterprises: it will be cheaper, quicker, and more efficient for them to discover and learn (Intelligent Search Algorithm) about a given technology/startup through WeSpline and seize opportunities of collaboration that may otherwise be missed (Intelligent Recommendations Algorithm). Startups/Innovative Companies will have the opportunity to actively search, get exposed to, and communicate with hundreds of Enterprises and Investors around the world. Enterprises and Investors will be able to learn about their businesses, products/services, and founding partners. Save Time & Money when searching & learning Expand your Horizons when looking for tech or clients or investment opportunities
- 5. Enriching our Community… CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Investors will be able to better identify and follow up on opportunities, especially if they happen to be in different geographies. According to the Financial Times article entitled “Artificial intelligence is guiding venture capital to start-ups”, one of the biggest challenges for venture capital companies is finding interesting investment targets before anyone else. ‘My job used to be about getting on a plane once a week and going to a different European city to try to find people who were doing interesting things,’ says Roberto Bonanzinga, co-founder of InReach Ventures. ‘It was inefficient’, he says.” Service Providers will be able to reach potential clients more easily and be reached by them as well; Hubs will also benefit from this interaction. For example: • Accelerators / Incubators will be able to better advertise their Special Programs for Startups and Entrepreneurs, and spread the word about the technologies that they help build; • Universities – students and researchers – will be able to take Challenges from Enterprises and develop tailor-made solutions for the Industry. They will also be able to find partners and sponsors in the Industry for their own projects and new technologies. This will hopefully bring tech transfer from Academia to the Industry to a whole new level. Hubs Service ProvidersInvestors
- 6. Global Market Size CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Large + SMEs (142 Selected Countries) Source: World Bank, 2014 ~30 mn companies ~70 K companies Technology-Driven Startups Source: Nasscom Report 2016
- 7. Product CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Search & Browse Profiles Connect & Communicate Learn & Stay Updated Take Advantage of Premium Features & Engagement Tools
- 8. Technology CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED WeSpline will provide its users with multiple novel Intelligent functions by leveraging the state of the art technology in: • Information Retrieval, • Natural Language Processing, • Text Mining, and • Machine Learning - Intelligent semantic Search technology enables flexible and effective exploration of relevant companies to engage in business; - Semantic understanding of company profiles and challenges would enhance state of the art Recommender System technology to provide accurate matching of tech developers and tech providers, thus enabling accurate recommendations of companies, technologies or challenges; - Powerful Machine Learning techniques would be applied across all the functions in WeSpline to enable the system to learn from the user interaction data that would be accumulated naturally as the system is being used, and self-improve its own performance for all the tasks overtime.
- 9. Business Model CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Basic Services (FREE) include company/user profiles, dashboard, search, newsfeed, getting messages. Premium Services (subscription) include sending messages, chat, advanced search, alerts/notifications, recommendations, page insights, business analytics, among others. For premium plan subscribers, we also offer “Pay per Use” packages. Pay per Use packages include extra in-mails, post at Job Board, offer Courses, and offer Conferences/Meetups (not all these features will be available at the release date). Revenue from Ads: the ads will typically show for a given target audience on their newsfeeds and on the right-hand side of their Dashboards. Users will also be invited to pay to boost their Newsfeed publications, Challenge posts, or Special Programs posts.
- 10. Product Release / Distribution Strategy CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Phase in the Release of our product according to the following vectors: • Features & Users – we plan to release “core” features to “core” users first; • Countries – we plan to release WeSpline in the US, Israel, and Brazil first. • Industries – we plan to create critical mass in certain “popular” industries first, so that we can become a relevant reference for users there. “Popular” industries would be those that are interesting for most companies such as Cyber Security, Logistics Tech, among others. For Scale & Traction, we will focus on distributing our product through Hubs: • Industry Associations that have Corporations and Mid-Sized Companies as members; • Accelerators, Incubators, Universities, and VCs, as these hubs may be an efficient way to reach Startups and Innovative Companies.
- 11. Competition (examples) CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED EFFICIENT AFFORDABLEEXPENSIVE INEFFICIENT (time consuming, biased/regional, or not adequately designed for that purpose) Tech Scouters
- 12. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Team Members ChengXiang Zhai, PhD Mentor / Advisor (& Future Partner) Fernanda Torós, PhD Founder / CEO Patrick Gallagher Software Engineer / Backend Developer Pedro Richa Dabarian CFO / Partner Cassio R. Carvalho Oliveira Head of Sales Brazil / Partner Leonardo Bispo de Oliveira Mentor @ WeSpline Founder / Software Engineer @ Prototype.tech Services include assisting with infrastructure, backend, and product release Romer Zandomingos Alves Web Designer @ Fator Criativo Web design services Karthik Ravi Software Engineer / Backend Developer
- 13. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Fernanda Torós, PhD – Founder & CEO Dr Torós is Founding Partner & CEO at Sabra Capital. Previously, she was partner & portfolio manager at Oren Investimentos, portfolio manager & head of equity research at Nest Investimentos, equity analyst at Investidor Profissional and Leblon Equities, economist at Credit Suisse, and executive at AmBev. In Academia, she was visiting assistant professor at Virginia Tech, where she taught courses in International Finance, lecturer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where she taught courses in Corporate Finance, and researcher at the Inter-American Development Bank in D.C., where she worked during Summer 2002. She has PhD in Economics & MS in Finance from UIUC, and BA and MA in Economics from PUC-Rio, Brazil. ChengXiang Zhai, PhD – Mentor / Advisor (& Future Partner) Dr. Zhai is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research interests include information retrieval, text mining, natural language processing, and machine learning. He holds 5 patents in these areas. Pedro Richa Dabarian – CFO / Partner Previously, Partner and Risk Manager / Compliance Officer at Sabra Capital, and Financial Analyst at Koin Latam. MBA in Investment Management and BA in Industrial Engineering from PUC-Rio, Brazil, with credits obtained at California Polytechnic University. Cassio R. Carvalho Oliveira – Head of Sales Brazil / Partner Previously, Partner and Sales Officer at Sabra Capital; Middle Office Analyst at Bozano Investimentos, CCN Invest and Oren Investimentos; Member of the Sales team at The BNY Mellon. BA in Business Administration from Universidade Candido Mendes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Patrick Gallagher – Software Engineer / Backend Developer BS candidate in Computer Science, with a dual degree in Technological Entrepreneurship. Co-Founder and Primary Developer of Fraktl.net. Course staff for UIUC's Software Design course. Karthik Ravi – Software Engineer / Backend Developer BS candidate in Computer Science at UIUC, with a minor in Statistics and Informatics and specialization in Data Science and Machine Learning. Previously, Data Analytics Intern at Knowles Electronics, and Data Science Intern at Celectiv. Team Members
- 14. Use of Proceeds: mainly to hire Software Engineers and pay for Office/Marketing/Trip Expenses. Suggested Structure: convertible note, with a discount to next round's valuation. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Funding US$ 200 K US$ 300 K - US$ 1 mn We are looking for funding to finish a fully functional MVP of the system by 1H18 and pre-launch it to selected users (if US$ 300 K is raised) or to launch a MVP by 1H18 to a larger # of users (if US$ 1 mn is raised). Angel round (raised 2016/17) Pre-Seed round (to be raised 2018)
- 15. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Appendix – Financial Projection US$ 200 K Valuation: Facebook currently trades at EV/Sales = 14x. If Sales are US$ 926 mn at year 10 (2027) and we value WeSpline at a conservative EV/Sales = 10x, then our Enterprise Value would be: EV = US$ 9.2 bn.
- 16. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Appendix – Financial Projection US$ 200 K
- 17. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED Appendix – Financial Projection US$ 200 K
- 18. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED contact@wespline.comResearch Park @ UIUC 1800 South Oak St., suite 106 Champaign, IL 61820, USA Social Network: www.wespline.com Investor Relations: www.ir-wespline.com +1 312 330 2543 Institutional Video: https://youtu.be/Z6lfiItIGnE