Stanford - Venture Lab Submission by team Data Insights

1. nickelring corp.
OEP Interim Submission
Team Data Insights
7 July 2012
Confidential

2. Executive Summary
• Based on our successful market testing and analysis during the OAP phase, we pursued developing
the specifics of a data analytics solution for the SME’s as per the OEP guidelines
• We understand that our product is complex and requires a longer timeframe to finalise the go-to-market
strategy; therefore, we chose to extensively focus on the primary building blocks of the execution plan
achieving considerable success as outlined below
Key milestones achieved during the OEP phase
• Technical components
• System architecture – We have developed a detailed solution overview and associated architecture
for implementation
• Website – We have developed a functional website to enhance our online presence and to support
our marketing efforts (www.nickelring.com)
• Prototype – We have also developed a basic prototype for the product and market tested with SME’s
• Partnership analysis – Partnerships will be key to our success, therefore we identified & initiated contact
with a few of the key technical and distribution partners
• Marketing plan – Reaching out to the SME’s without a large sales force implies smart marketing and
therefore we have spent considerable effort in devising a strong marketing plan
• Financial analysis – Finally, we have developed a comprehensive template that will enable us to
conduct robust financial analysis as we finalise the different cost and revenue components
Confidential

3. Business Model Canvas
Confidential

4. Team composition
Name Location Work Core competence Team / Effort
experience per month
Alessandro Sweden 2 Years Software Engineering (C++, VHDL) Finance / 0.5
Arnaud Tahiti, French 13 Years Marketing & Business development Distribution / 0.5
Polynesia
Bharath Singapore 2 Years Software Engineering, Database Tech / 1.0
Administration
Deepak Singapore 8 Years Software Engineering, Machine Learning Tech / 1.0
Techniques
Filip Antwerp Area, 10 Years Business Consultancy Product / 0.5
Belgium
Matej Slovenia, EU 2 Years Software Engineering, System Tech / 0.5
Administrator
Munir NC, USA 15 Years PLM, Business Analytics (Data Mining) Product / 0.5
Patrick CA, USA 1 Year Software Engineering Tech / 0.5
Romil New Delhi, 10 Years Internet Marketing & Branding, E- Marketing / 0.5
India commerce and Web development
Sajith Singapore 5 years Software Engineering, Data Mining, Tech / 1.0
Semantics
Sandeep Singapore 14 years Strategy Consulting Lead / 0.5
Business case development
Total – 7 FTE
Confidential

5. Solution Overview
The core process underpinning our system is as outlined below with three key areas of
differentiation
Ability to connect
with multiple Easy user interface
data sources to conduct ETL
relative to
competitors
State-of-the-art
visualisation for
advanced
analytics
Confidential

6. Architecture Overview
A comprehensive &
scalable system
architecture
Architecture was
whetted by our
technical mentor
Confidential

7. Technology stack
We have chosen our technologies that are scalable and provide us with the appropriate
platform to develop a competitive solution
Confidential

8. Partnerships
• A partnership is an arrangement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual
interests (Source: wikipedia)
• Partnerships are a significant strategy used in the current business environment in order to
achieve economies of scale, effort, distribution and penetration
• Partnerships will be one of the major initiatives we will use at nickelring in order to achieve a
fast time-to-market as well as to supplement our organization with best-of-breed capabilities
in the technology stack as well as sales and distribution
• Partnerships can be classified across the following 2 axes:
• Technology Partnerships
• Front-end/Presentation Layer
• Back-end/Database Layer
• Databases
• Data Sources (public econometric data, census data, demographic data)
• Integration/ETL
• Analytics
We are pursuing partnerships
• Sales/Distribution Partnerships
that are the most beneficial to us
• Value Added Reseller
in terms of Relevance, Fit,
• OEM / License
• Self Service (Cloud) Overlap, Defensibility and
• Affiliate Revenue impact
Confidential

9. Partnership Evaluation (Analytics)
Identify the right partner that can deliver a wide range of standard statistical/analytical
functionality upon which we will build.
Size of Org/Relevance/Private,Public
Potential Benefit
R Project
Fit/Overlap/defensibility/Revenue
MADLib
impact
Feasibility/Expected
Growth
Confidential

10. Partnership Evaluation (Data Sources)
Partners to deliver supplementary data sources based on which we can provide a right application
delivery as well as implement demonstrations and application templates
Size of Org/Relevance/Private,Public
U.S. Bureau
Potential Benefit
of the
Fit/Overlap/defensibility/Revenue
Census
Ameristat
Bloomberg
Google
Analytics
Facebook
Insights
impact
Feasibility/Expected
Growth
Confidential

11. Partnership Evaluation (Databases)
What data source/s will we use as our backend? We have to choose from a wide range of
choices including existing customer base and ease of implementation/deployment.
Size of Org/Relevance/Private,Public
Potential Benefit
Fit/Overlap/defensibility/Revenue
Netezza
Teradata
MySQL
SQL
Server
Oracle
impact
Feasibility/Expected
Growth
Confidential

12. Partnership Evaluation (Vizualization)
We can partner with technology companies that provide breakthrough
visualization platforms.
Size of Org/Relevance/Private,Public
Potential Benefit
Fit/Overlap/defensibility/Revenue
Google
Maps
Google
Charts
Quantu
m GIS
Yahoo Tableau
Pipes VIDI
Choosel
impact
Feasibility/Expected
Growth
Confidential

13. Partnership Evaluation (ETL/Integration)
We can leverage existing open-source or other ETL tools that have a proven track
record. It will be idea to use one that can be customized for a good fit with our user-
interface.
Size of Org/Relevance/Private,Public
Potential Benefit
Fit/Overlap/defensibility/Revenue
Informatica
CloverETL
Pentaho
Apatar
Scriptella
impact
Feasibility/Expected
Growth
Confidential

14. Marketing plan
Key Elements
• Agile marketing approach – endeavoring to involve prospective
customers, distributors and various stakeholders for real-time feedback on
product development
• Branding and product positioning – created a brand image, logo, colors,
feel and setup a website (nickelring.com) with clear value proposition
(including a beta signup page)
• Demand creation experiments - utilizing set of popular tools such as
social media, newsletters, analytics related forums we tested our value
proposition
• Cost of customer acquisition and selecting right promotional tools –
we tested our hypothesis and came up with and ideal set of tools to run a
cost-effective marketing campaign
Confidential

15. Marketing Evaluation (Promotional Tools)
Various tools we tested to run our pilot marketing campaigns in the most cost
effective manner possible
Relevance
Potential Benefit
Fit/Overlap/defensibility/Revenue
SEO
(organic)
Twitter
Facebok SEM
Page (Google,
BI market
Google+ sites)
impact
Feasibility/Expected
Growth
Confidential

16. Distribution
• Distribution is the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a
consumer or business user, using direct means, or using indirect means with intermediaries.
(Wikipedia)
• Distribution is a key element in our entire marketing strategy as it will help us to expand our reach
and grow our revenues
• Nickelring is addressing Small and Medium Enterprises and should consider the most effective
channels but also the most efficient in terms of Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)
• Nickelring will use a combination of direct and indirect channels to deliver its software to potential
customers
• Direct to end users
• Website and marketing campaigns
• Affiliate
• Channel partners
• Marketplaces
• VARs (Value Added Reseller)
• OEM and ISV
• We should look for companies that have a trusted relationship with our end-users : consultants,
accountants, banks could be natural partners.
Confidential

17. Distribution Evaluation (Marketplaces)
What type of software application is complimentary to our solution on marketplaces ? We
have a good fit with accounting software, ERP, CRM.
Size of Org/Relevance
Potential Benefit
Fit/Overlap/defensibility/Revenue
Salesforce
Appexchange
Google
Apps
Intuit App
Center
Microsoft
office 365
impact
Feasibility/Expected
Growth
Confidential

18. Distribution Evaluation (VARs)
Understanding who the end-customer is and who they trust. It requires a strategic planning, a
software channel manager, motivation and strong support to succeed.
Size of Org/Relevance
Potential Benefit
Fit/Overlap/defensibility/Revenue
Salesforce
Keyrus
Business
& Decision
Accounting
firms
impact
Feasibility/Expected
Growth
Confidential

19. Distribution Evaluation (OEM and ISV)
OEM and ISV partners will take advantage of our extensibility to embed analytics easily into
new application offerings. It integrates with the partner's offering and becomes transparent to
the end user.
Size of Org/Relevance
Potential Benefit
Fit/Overlap/defensibility/Revenue
Intuit
Zoho
Salesforce
SugarCRM
impact
Feasibility/Expected
Growth
Confidential

20. Revenue Model (Market Share)
• The total 2012 market size for analytics is USD 12 billion
• The analytics market is expected to grow at a rate of ~16%
• A simple extrapolation assuming that growth remains at 16% or less
provides the following projections:
2011 $12.2 billion
2012(+16,4%) $14.2 billion
2013(15%) $16.3 billion
2014(+14%) $18.5 billion
2015(+10%) $20.4 billion
• We are in the process of pricing our product and finalising our revenue
models
• However we expect our primary revenue stream to be subscription
based (direct as well as reseller) with additional revenue from
associated services (implementation,
• We make a conservative estimate of 0.1%-0.5% market share for
nickelring in 5 years – giving us total revenues in the range of $20-100
million
Confidential

21. Cost Analysis
We have estimated the cost for the first year of operation since this is the “nearest truth” for
our operations and is a basis for requesting funds from potential investors
Cost element Annualised cost Comments
estimate (USD)
Personnel cost $420,000 • We estimate 7 FTE’s will be part of the startup
• Average salary – USD 60,000
• Salary range varies from $40k (for programmers) to $ 80k
(for senior management)
Office rental $24,000 • Office will be based in Singapore
• Monthly rental – USD 2,000
Infrastructure costs $49,000 • This includes utilities, hardware, software, hosting
charges, etc.,
• Estimated cost of USD 7k per person
Legal costs $30,000 • This includes patents, trademarks, contracts, partnership
agreements, etc.,
Marketing costs $50,000 • This includes cost of branding, enhancing our website and
online marketing (SEO, SEM, etc.,)
• Costs also cover attending key events, booths and
associated costs such as travel & collateral development
Other costs $50,000 • This would cover incidental expenses, consulting fees,
etc.,
Total costs $623,000
Confidential

22. Next Steps
• In order to successfully take the product to market, we are working on the
following key activities:
• Finalise the prototype & commence V 1.0 product development
• Finalise product pricing
• Perform detailed analysis of partnerships and prepare an engagement
model
• Register corporation and logos
• Enhance our marketing efforts and engage prospects from our website
alpha interests
• Seek capital ( we intend to bootstrap as long as we can to increase the
value of the company before seeking investment)
Confidential