Politik Inn

Agenda• Background• Market Analysis• Competitive Landscape• Business Canvas• Consumer Insights• Pivoted Model• Key Value Proposition• Prototype• Revenue Model• Critical Success Factors• Milestone• User Acquisition• Risks• Team• Company• Our motivation• Exit Strategy

The Social Media Space: Cluttered

What is Social Media?• Primarily a two sided market• Even the Instant Messaging Services like Yahoo, AOL, etc also fall

under the same broad category• Google Search & Bing• Metcalfe’s Law

Subsidized Premium Pricing

So which are the ones that stand out?

So why do they stand out? • Initial Segmentation to get the critical mass

Platforms Primary Initial Target

College students

Professionals

Celebrities

Dating

LA musicians

Doctors

Based on Users Based on UsagePlatforms Primary Initial Target

Rich Media

Pictures

Stealth mode / Privacy

Let’s watch the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ve2FQx21Q

So the next Big Question is…

• Do we have a common platform for politics?• Or for the politically active people?• Or for the political eco system?• Or maybe just for politicians?

Our Initial Idea

Voters/Common People Elected Politicians

Non - Elected Politicians

Entire political eco

system

Political Parties

Political ScientistPolitical Journalist

Public policy MakerMacroeconomistProfessors/Experts/Authors

Market Analysis

• “Politicians use Twitter knowing that journals and newspapers follow them there.”

• “The role of [Social Media] in increasing political engagement and electoral participation is neither clear nor simple.”

• “Contrary to concerns about social media causing civic disengagement, numbers out of Pew Research show that 66% of social media users actively engage in political activism online.”

• “While smartphone penetration stood at only 14 percent during the last election in Q4 2008, it’s now at 57 percent as of August 2012. So it’s little surprise that both major party candidates have developed their own smartphone apps and mobile sites to promote their campaigns to this growing audience of smartphone owners.”

Source: http://epthinktank.eu/2014/02/12/the-role-played-by-social-media-in-political-participation-and-electoral-campaigns/; http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-social-media-battle-in-the-2012-presidential-campaign/; http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2012/all-politics-are-local-presidential-candidates-embrace-mobile-apps.html

The Social Media Success of Barack Obama 2008The 2008 Election

Barack Obama created his own social network for his 2008 campaign.

"Over the past 21 months, millions of individuals have used My.BarackObama to organize their local communities on behalf of Barack Obama. The scale and size of this community and its work is unprecedented. Individuals in all 50 states have created more than 35,000 local organizing groups, hosted over 200,000 events and made millions upon millions of calls to neighbors about this campaign. There can be no question that these local, grassroots organizations played a critical role in Tuesday's victory.”

The website was eventually swallowed by Barack Obama’s main website and most of the functionality disappeared.

The Social Media Success of Barack Obama 2012The 2012 Election“Obama is the first social media president. In 2012, Obama not only had the expertise on his team, he had an established social media machine up and running. Since social media is about relationships, having a running start building those connections is a distinct benefit.”

Smart Social Media Strategy Matters“As the 2012 elections show, social media is no longer the ‘exciting new frontier’ for political campaigning. Social media is a normal and central form of communications with distinctly different properties than traditional mass media approaches. Obama has set the bar for future campaigns but social media and network structures should be given serious attention in the media strategy, whether it’s for politicians, organizations, brands or public service initiatives.”

Source: http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-social-media-battle-in-the-2012-presidential-campaign/

Brigade Volkalize Microsoft Town hall Political People

Segments The whole political ecosystem

The whole political ecosystem

The whole political ecosystem

The whole political ecosystem in Italy

# of users Unknown. Will be getting the

Causes.com users, but not organic growth

N/A N/A N/A

Business Model Database/Analytics. Database/Analytics(?) Pay-for-use. Customer/Voter targeting. Database/Analytics.

Database/Analytics.

Visitors 28,088 (March, 2015)

2,176 (March, 2015)

N/A 0 (March, 2015)

Press TIMEPoliticoMashableThe VergeTechCrunchVentureBeat

RedstateSharkTank (FL)

MashableInformationWeek

Employees 53 1 N/A 8

Social Following Facebook – 1,461FTwitter - 1,185FLinkedIn – 433F Instagram – 107F

Facebook – 56,000FTwitter – 11,100FLinkedIn – 29F YouTube – 7F

N/A Facebook – 2380FTwitter – 272FLinkedIn – 31FYouTube – 24F

Competitive Landscape•Almost a blue ocean product

Competitors/Partners

• Popvox• Maplight• Thunderclap• Sunlight Foundation• Action Sprout• Buzzoole• Action Kit• Nation Builder

Business CanvasProblem Solution Key Value

PropositionUnfair Advantage Customer Segment/User Types

1) No central repository to know and connect to our politicians.2) Low interest from masses in politics.

1) Create a dynamic repository (updated by users consistently) of related content for the political eco system.2) Increase engagement and interactions between voters and politician.3) Connect the entire political eco system.

1) Will increase transparency2) Will reduce corruption3) Will connect politicians with the mass4) Politicians can in turn use this for their campaign and voter research

1) Blue Ocean: No major competitors as of now.

1) For the millennial and Gen X2) Two sided market: For the entire political eco system such as Politicians at all levelsVoters/Common PeoplePolitical PartiesPoliticians who contested and lost Political scientistsJournalist/reporters specialized on politicspublic policy makers/decision makersMacroeconomistsProfessors/Experts/Authors related to this field

Key Metrics Channels

1) No. of politicians who signed up2) Site traffic3) No. of users4) Engagement metrics (comments/likes, etc)

1)Own WebPages and mobile apps along with datacenters.2) Will be integrated with all leading social media channelsand digital newspapers

Do they care? Hell Yeah!!

Stage1

Stage 2

Consumer Insights

• “Most elected officials do not even have up-to-date profiles on their own website.”

• “Politicians don’t realize the utility of the existing platforms.”- Ford’s faster horses

• “Need a platform where people are eager to share their thoughts.”

• “If there is a platform that people can bitch and moan about elected officials.”

• “The site could be something like Rate-my-professor.”• “There is no Yelp for politicians”.

So we Pivoted (Per Lean Start Up)

•From a 2 sided platform to a User Generation Model

Key Value Proposition

• Transparent and Unbiased Politician Information• Gamification to generate interest• Flags tied to issues• Causes• Customized Political Feeds• Online Polls and Analytics• Campaign Management• Donation Management & Fund Raising

Prototype

Revenue: The Numbers

What’s common amongst them?

Source: https://medium.com/@todfrancis/what-did-billion-dollar-companies-look-like-at-the-series-a-e53ea8043a85

Start Up has Stages

• Empathy(Problem Validation & Solution Validation)

• Stickiness Stage• Virality Stage• Revenue Stage• Scale Stage (Revenue from other channels)

Revenue Streams: Social Enterprise• Advertising

– Local (Pay Per Click) Sponsored Ads (Pay Per Click)

– Brand AdvertisingDisplay Ads (Pay Per Click)Banner Ads (Pay Per Click)Sponsored Ads (Pay Per Click)

• High price for expert, extreme and analogous users (Political Journalist, Public policy makers, Professors, academicians)

• Price for no advertisements• Resale of data (APIs, Email, mobile ads )• Retargeted Ads• Tiered pricing • Partnerships• % of donations (Pay for Performance)• Subscription Model

Advertisement Revenue Models

• Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)• Pay Per Click (PPC)• Affiliate/Revenue percentage share

The Revenue Model

Is this a good number?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/yelp-analysis-2012-3

Everything is Relative: Usage

Source: http://blog.backupify.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Backupify-Social-Data-Infographic-.pdf

Content = Usage = Monetization

Source: http://blog.backupify.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Backupify-Social-Data-Infographic-.pdf

Critical Success Factors

• Usage• Search• Monitoring & Metrics• Community Managers• Bias free platform (Astroturfing)

Milestones

• Releasing for alpha testing: 09/07/2015• Roll out for beta testing: 10/5/2015• Acquiring 100 users: 11/16/2015• Acquiring 500 users: 02/15/2016

User Acquisition Strategy

Awareness: SEO, Survey, Concept Video, Viral Videos, Word of Mouth, 1-1 Sales to Politicians

Consideration: Event Marketing,1-1 Sales to Politicians

Preference: Political Evangelists, Word of Mouth,1-1 Sales to Politicians

Action: Email Marketing, Notification, Cognitive Biases in the product

Loyalty: Cohort Analysis

Advocacy: Survey

Risks

• Key team member leaves• Not meeting deadlines• Not getting enough investment for scaling• Competitor: Brigade• Dispute with investors• Lack of marketing and advertisement

strategies

The Team

• Great solutions can’t be built without a great Team

• A total of 10 members • 3 interns• A Phd and a Serial Enterpreneur

Over 50 years of Cumulative Experience• TEAM: Together Everyone Achieves More• Serial Entrepreneur (Member of One Young

World)

The Advisors• Morgan Pehme

Director of Effective NY : EffectiveNY is a nonpartisan government watchdog group and public policy think tank dedicated to finding and implementing innovative solutions to make New York better.

• Kate Albright-HannaNew York-based journalist and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker covering hope, change, fear, and the use and abuse of power. Worked with Obama and Howard Dean.

• Aaron WelchCEO of Advomatic (a company providing IT services for Campaign Management)

• Gianluca Giansante PhD, Top Italian political journalist, Author of the “The online political communication (book reading by former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta) ”

Source: http://effectiveny.com/

The Company

• Politik Inn• S - Corp • Based out of New York City (NYC)• Part of the NYC Bitcoin Incubator Program• Filing a provisional patent

Achievements so far…• Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Electifi/• slideshare link: http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/politik-inn-nyu-2015• Released the app in app store which is now in beta phase (invite only

mode).• -- This tech start up is operated out of the New York City (NYC) Bitcoin

Incubator• -- Now part of the City University of New York's (CUNY) Incubator

program• -- Was part of the Lean Launchpad class with Steve Blank at the New

York University (NYU) Entrepreneurial Institute• -- Now part of the NYU Stern School of Business' W. R. Berkley

Innovation Lab• -- Attended a Y Combinator event at NYU for this start up

Why do we want to do this?

• “Entrepreneurship isn’t about profits, it is about creating solutions that will change the world” – Steve Case

• We believe in this idea.• We are eating, sleeping and drinking

this idea!!• It is about converting our passion into

profession.

Has an Inbuilt Potential to Scale

Exit Strategy

• Monetize Patents and Trademarks• Sell Off• Merge with Competitors/Partners• Resell Data

Back Up

Brigade Volkalize Microsoft Town hall

Political People

Segments 5 5 5 6

# of users 6 7 N/A 7

Business Model 5 7 6 6

Visitors 7 7 N/A 0

Press 6 7 6 0

Employees 4 7 N/A 7

Social Following 7 6 N/A 7

Internal Rating

Detailed Competitive AnalysisCategory Competitor Features Their key value propositionPains points that they are not solvingOur key value propositionPolitical Information

Popvox Information on Bills in congress- User opinions- Politicians involved- Stakeholder opinions

Information about bills in congress and who are involved with each bill

Does not gather up the users opinions in a meaningful way and does not enable back and forth communication with on the bill in question

Our platform is designed for interaction and expression. Creating intellectual conversation on how bills and politicans are affecting society and stakeholders (or the other way around).

E-politics

Provides- Books- Content: Articles, Podcasts etc- Events- Consulting

Shares knowledge on how politicians and political institutions can utilize digital media to promote themselves

Only offers recommendations and consulting, but no actual hands on solution

We will create a easy-to-use campaigning tool for our website. To reach and measure the appropriate demographic effortlessly

Maplight

Connects money with political votes through:- Tracking donations- Allowing companies to track their donations- Tracks interest groups

They reveal the influence of money on politics - let people know who paid money for what

Does not allow user interaction and expressionDoes not allow much two way communication

Our solution will give users a chance to express themselves and their political views. They can discuss the influence of money through several different interections

Sunlight Foundation

Congress- Information on bills - Involved politicians - Status - Activity- Information on politicians - General Info - Area represented - Social pages - Bills sponsored and voted on- Info on committees- Information on hearingsOpenStates- Find your representatives- Local committees, legislators, bills and events- District map

Information on what is going on in the areas you care about and who and what is affecting it.

Get information on bills in congress and who influences those bills

Lacks user expression on bills, committees and politicians

Our platform is designed to be social and enable user expression on what is going on in the political system

Causes

Causes.comFunctionality- Campaign for your local cause- Support others' causes

Allows people to campaign for their own causes and support other peoples causes

Does not allow interaction with other peoples campaigns beyond supporting them. The company has been bought by Brigade

Allows user to discuss and share their contributions to a cause

Social

Brigade Media UnknownEnables civic engagement and political expression Unknown Unknown

VolkalizeA forum on politics- Post threads on your opinions and questions on a theme- Respond to others threads Allows free expression on political issues

Does not allow any interaction beyond what is discussed in a thread and no information is displayed beyond threads

We will provide an interactive site where people can discuss politicians and causes as well as interact with each other

Political People

Functionality- Post your opioions- Interact with others post- Post polls- Political calendar

Allows free expression on political issues and interaction with politicians (provided that they register for the site)

Does not give any details or personal information on politicians and requires the politicians to be on the site to be refered to. The site didn't have solid base and had no functionality beyond interacting with friends

Our solution is a repository that gives information on politicians and allow people to review them

Campaigning Tools

Thunderclap

Spread your message by- Inviting your friends to give you access to your social reach- Set time and at that time the message will be posted to all supporters social page- Gives a database of supporters from campaigns to have them available for yoyr next campaign

Enables your idea to be heard in the cluttered space that is social media

Enables outreach to the masses, but might not reach the appropriate audience

We will get appropriate analytics and data about users to be able to target more precisely

ActionKit

Toolkit for- Fundraising- Mailing- Advocacy- Mobile friendly pages- Database creation and analysis- Events- International targeting (translation etc.) A toolkit for simplifying your campaigning

Enables outreach to the masses, but might not reach the appropriate audience

We will get appropriate analytics and data about users to be able to target more precisely

NationBuilder

Functionality- Social matching- Website setup- Donation solutions- E-mai, sociall and text message blasting- Web and social addons- Virtual currency for gamification

Simplifying your campaign by taking care of the social, website, donation and communication aspect for you

Enables outreach to the masses, but might not reach the appropriate audience

We will get appropriate analytics and data about users to be able to target more precisely

ActionSproutFacebook app to create engagement for non-profits

Grow email lists, cultivate donors, and increase your Facebook engagement with ActionSprout–an easy to use Facebook app built specifically for non-profits. The app is limited to Facebook

We can grow your reach to the right audience while also reach other social media platform (social sharing)

Detailed Competitive Analysis

Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet