Un caso real, a partir de un proyecto de internet B2B que buscaba financiamiento en EE.UU. durante el año 2003.
1. Introducción
El presente Plan de Negocios está en inglés y en formato casi idéntico a como fue presentado ante un Fondo de Capital Riesgo norteamericano durante 2003. Más allá del éxito o no del fundraising, creemos que puede ser interesante leerlo a los fines de analizar lo que piden los fondos norteamericanos a los emprendedores con buenas ideas.
2. El Plan de Negocios en inglés
Company Overview
Localize: a web based metasearch engine for trade leads
I think investing in Localize will be a great decision because the company helps to solve a problem most companies engaged into foreign trade face in the internet world today when looking for new opportunities: chaos and enormous quantity of web-sites providing the same kind of info that makes impossible the task of using well all the info. Localize robot will do metasearch into most world free trade leads sites -more than 1000 today-, so a company engaged into foreign trade and today user of 5 to 10 trade leads sites will find, using Localize.com, a device to have a first look about which sites, of all the possible universe, have the info it is looking for, and then come into the selected site. This way, Localize is about helping companies not spending so much time with web trade leads searches; we are sure companies will appreciate this advantage and pay accordingly.
Legal counsel: Business Description
Mission
- To help companies engaged into foreign trade avoid enormous losses of time doing trade leads web search.
- To help organize the chaotic web trade leads market, helping companies to really take advantage of trade information published in the web.
- To become the world trade leads marketplace, drawing to play into our field best world web sites engaged into trade leads publication.
Stage: Developing_Product/Service
Demo or Prototype: no
Product or Service
Problem Solved
Localize, a web trade leads metasearch engine, will try to help solve the enormous necessity today have people or companies engaged with foreign trade when sourcing themselves with trade leads over the web. There are today more than one thousand trade leads sites with important info about foreign business opportunities but today doesn’t exist a metasearch engine capable to search into all of these sites. This is the added value Localize will bring the industry and surely will be paid enough.
Suppose a winery of California interested in finding buy trade leads of wine into the web to get new contacts in order to expand its business, and it knows about the info web trade leads sites bring today, and what is more, the company is user of the service of 3 big players into this market: e-trader, alibaba and ecrobot. The winery CEO will ask its foreign trade department to look, into these sites, companies interested to buy wine from the US. If this winery additionally was suscribed to Localize services, it could accede to more than 1000 trade leads sites that could bring it valuable info and not only be conformed with results of only 3 sites, and with the valuable feature that the metasearch operation will last just seconds, and not the enormous time it would take to put a person or a entire department to search into more than 1000 web sites. And when, thanks to Localize, the searcher have clear where the information needed is, he will enter just to the specific site. That way Localize would help to expand the vision of millions of web trade leads info users.
Revenue Model
Localize will offer its main service, trade leads web metasearch, to companies and foreign trade professionals for an anual or proportional monthly payment, we are thinking about U$S 30 per year or monthly proportional, with a discount if paid all in one payment. This will be the basic service, and we think the most demanded, but there will exist more customized web metasearch services, a little more expensive than U$S 30 per year, and a service related with tracking information, even a little more expensive. If needed, we could describe all services in other presentation, but now we conform to present the basic one because it shows investors the whole idea of the project.
We think will have many interested people/companies in the service, today is chaotic this market over the web. Costumers could be multiplied ready, again, there are no competitors today and our service will be worldwide, if funded enough to promote our company globally.
Top Competitors
There are no direct competitors today. We list below 4 top world web trade leads sites that will be included into our search database, but they are not competitors, we are fully complementaries:
- www. e-trader.com
- www.alibaba.com
- www.ec21.com
- www.ecrobot.com
As we said above, we point to become a big trade leads marketplace, the one that helps classify and sort the fragmented information without competing with existing trade leads sites, so we will add new value to the existing value these sites bring companies and will be paid enough.
Other Competitors
Again, today aren’t direct competitors. In the future surely will appear some -maybe other economist as the creator of localize would be interested to develop one, economists love to create and analyze whole markets-.
Competitive Advantage
When competitors appear, I think first we must compete maintaining Localize technologically at the top, in the cutting edge border, that’s one of the reasons why we are interested to have our central base in the US, of course without leaving aside our development center in Mendoza, Argentina; we know being settled in the US -specially Silicon Valley- we have more possibilities to reach top new technologies.
Second, we will explode the advantage of being the first player into the market.
Third, we will try to compete creating and maintaining a community idea with our customers, and practicing one to one marketing and other marketing practices to get brand loyalty.
Current Customers
Today we aren’t operating, so we have no clients yet.
Instead we mention here our short run projections, the fundamentals of numbers we show in the revenue table. If we first start operating only in Argentine, we have as an initial target a portion (3%)of the 40,000 companies that today are engaged in foreign trade in our country. This way, we have as a primary objective to reach at least 1,200 companies in the first 3 years. To facilitate this process, we are currently pursuing strategic agreement with organism that promotes expo business in Argentina, such us Pro-Mendoza and Fundacion Exportar, to help reach easier our target.
So, operating only in Argentine, revenues will be humble at first times, but big enough to cover all costs, small fix structure costs included.
But if we could raise enough funds to establish localize into the US and operate from there to all the world, revenues projections will increase.
Operating from the US, «the market» in the web trade leads industry jointly with some Asian countries such as South Korea, we could reach thousands more customers in the first 3 years than operating just in Argentine and near countries.
The revenue table shown below in this presentation form shows moderated expectations, but supposing localize established into the US, what we are looking through Garage.com. Specifically, projections suppose reaching at the finalization of year 3:
- 3% -1,200 companies- from 40,000 that today are engaged into foreign trade operations in Argentina
- 20,000 companies abroad from Argentine, a number possible to reach operating all over the world, it means for example reaching 2,000 companies in 10 big countries, something reachable if we compare it with our 1,200 companies target for Argentine, a middle size economy.
- totalizing 21,200 companies paying on average U$S 30 each one per year.
Management & Staffing
Full-time permanent employees:
Personnel
Capitalization
Total funding to date: $6,000
Now seeking: $100,000
Months it will last: 12
Approached For Capital
Fondo Tecnologico Argentino -FONTAR- in english Technological Argentinean Fund, an angel investment program to help innovative technological entrepreneurs.
Seeking in future round: $150,000
Financial Data
| ($ numbers in 000s) | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 |
| Year: | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 |
| Revenues: | $63 | $254 | $636 |
Year profitable: 2005
Capital needed to break even: $100,000
