The Weekend Business Plan

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“Expand your weekend horizons.”

The Weekend Guru Llc.2000 Madison Avenue

New York, NYCEO: Telephone:Matthew Magaldi 800-777-7777

Business PlanPrepared for BEE 4890: Entrepreneurship for Engineers

CEO: Matthew MagaldiCFO: Mackenzie LynchCOO: Tamara Lambert

Chief Strategist: Anthony Mohammed

The Weekend Guru, Inc.

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Confidential Information This Business Plan is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to sell securities or a solicitation of an offer to purchase securities. Any prospective investor interested in the investing in The Weekend Guru, LLC should rely only on the company’s Offering Memorandum, when it is available, in making an investment decision.

The contents of this Plan are proprietary and represent significant investment in time and resources by The Weekend Guru, LLC. The plan is intended to be used by potential investors, funding sources, and partners for the sole purpose of evaluating the business opportunity described. Any other use is strictly prohibited. In accepting this Plan for review, the reader expressly agrees: 1) to keep the contents confidential, 2) not to copy the Plan, 3) to use the information for the sole purpose of evaluating whether to invest in The Weekend Guru, LLC or become a partner in the company, and 4) to return the Plan to The Weekend Guru, LLC when no longer interested or when requested to do so by The Weekend Guru, LLC.


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Table Of Contents:

Executive Summary 4

Mission Statement 5

Business Profile 6

Market Analysis 8

Market Strategy 13

Business Strategy 14

Operations Plan 16

Funding Plan 18

Management Team 18

Financial Analysis 19

Appendices 21


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Executive SummaryOur Product

The Weekend Planner is a web-based service platform created to transform the way friends and families spend their weekend hours. It connects local businesses with the surrounding community, and allows for the user to add events occurring that weekend to their calendar and alert those who may be attending with them. Our product allows for the user to see others who they don’t know who are also attending the event and connect with them via messaging. For those who are seeking adventure outside their comfort zone, there is a randomizer tool that creates a schedule for the user to create an experience different from their typical weekend. We strive to strengthen the community by forming relationships between fellow community members through our event sharing feature, and businesses to their clients through our advertising.

Marketing Opportunity

The Internet search engine industry is a booming market showing an annual growth rate of 7.3% from 2009 to 2015. The second focus for our service is the mobile smartphone industry. The number of people having mobile connections in 2015 is 250 million and growing by 22.9% per year. In addition, the Internet Publishing and Broadcasting industry which is responsible for much of the online advertising sales is growing at 10% each year. With the massive growth projected in these industries, this is a prime opportunity for the Weekend Planner to enter the market and capitalize on these growing trends. This web-based service combines both industries, offering the convenience of being mobile friendly, having access to limitless opportunities through a search engine, and a schedule all on one platform. It is unique in its integration of several services at once, as opposed to having to go to several different websites for planning, organizing, and GPS services. Through the various scheduling tools already available such as the Google calendar and the iPhone calendar, we understand how important it is for users to maximize their free time. The randomizing tool allows for businesses to expand their customer base by advertising to customers who would not normally use their service, and therefore offer them a more diverse customer background. Through the Weekend Planner, everyone profits; users spend their weekend hours effectively, large corporations like Google receive more traffic on their website, and local businesses have the opportunity to expand their customer base and save money on advertising expenses. Competitive Advantage

Some of our competitors are Yelp, TripAdvisor, Kayak, and “Weekender- Calendar for your weekends” in the App Store. Competitors like Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Kayak typically focus on different aspects of trip/weekend planning; for example Yelp with restaurants and food, TripAdvisor with hotels, resorts, and vacation destinations, and Kayak with hotels and flights, and rental cars. Another competitor, the Weekender calendar is a blank calendar for users to input their weekend events into the calendar manually. Compared to competing products, our product is comprehensive, combining the services offered in these existing websites into one. With our website, the user can find events, connect with locals, and expand their weekend


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possibilities wherever they are. Unlike our competitors, the Weekend Guru will have a randomizer button that will allow for our web service to produce a random schedule or a random event that the user would normally not attend. We want to appeal to our user’s sense of adventure, and increase the visibility of businesses that struggle with the costs of advertising. We will also improve community connections by allowing people with similar interests or those who are seeking a new experience to connect with each other. Our platform will set up a user profile, save past events, and generate new opportunities based on the user’s history and interests. The Weekend Guru would benefit from partnering with companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Groupon in order to provide cheap and alternative travel as well as local deals and discounts on events. Furthermore, we will protect our competitive advantage through an intellectual property patent in the form of a design patent or software copyright. Funding

In our first stage, we seek $75,000 to cover future costs in both the first stage and the second stage. The first stage consists of hiring web developers to help construct the Weekend Planner. This stage will last for approximately one year. In the second stage when we launch our web platform and kick-start our marketing campaign we will have additional costs in the form of website maintenance and equipment costs. Our third and final stage happens once we have established success and the possibility for high advertising revenue of our web platform. The goal is to pitch and sell our company to a large technology-advertising firm in order to initiate our product vision faster and offer more autonomy. Exit Strategy

As we mentioned above, our end goal is to sell our product to a larger advertising firm after we have proven that our product is effective. However, if we are unsuccessful in this goal, we have a couple of actions that we can take. The first would be to continue to run the company and expand our user base into more cities until we are successfully able to pitch our idea. The second plan would be to sell our intellectual property rights.

Mission Statement

Empower technology users to optimize free time, explore new experiences and connect with their communities.


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Business ProfileCompany Overview

At The Weekend Guru we seek to provide our users with fresh weekend experiences through a collection of new features and abilities. Our randomizer concept allows our users to participate in activities that they typically would not, in order to promote personal exploration and stepping outside your comfort zone every once in awhile. This web-based service can save user preferences or if the user wants to have completely different experiences, past activities can be filtered out. The web interface is consolidated into a weekend calendar, map, and friend view so that users can drag and drop the events that interest them into their calendar and then tell their friends about it as well. The focus on the weekend is a core, differentiating strategy of our web platform. Instead of having to do multiple searches and having to plan weekends in a separate planner, everything including the planner is consolidated into one website for the user’s convenience. Users do not have to pay to use the service and they take advantage of the wealth of new opportunities and connections that the platform offers them. We have the capability of expanding globally within a short amount of time due to our service being online. We also want to distinguish between our users and our customers. Our users are the community members who use the platform to plan their weekend while our customers are the large companies that we will pitch to in our last stage. In promoting our service to our users, we will go door to door to local businesses, gaining connections and contacts to add value to our expanding network.

Business Overview- Who are we?

The Weekend Guru was founded in 2015 by four Cornell University students who realized the need for more effective weekend planning for those who desire to make the most of their weekend. The weekend is time period most look forward to for enjoyment and to spend time with loved ones. By providing this service, we also provide a medium for friends and family to connect with each other and anticipate this time together. This product makes it possible for the user to add others who will be joining them for their events. In addition, it’s also a great place to meet new people and develop relationships with others who share the same interests and passions, whatever the skill level or levels of involvement.

Our target customers will be large companies like Google and Apple. The world is getting increasingly connected through the Internet, and we can reach millions of users through a search engine like Google. Our plan is to merge our service with a large technology firm so it will leverage off their wealth of resources. The user will then be brought to the Weekend application where they will be connected to limitless weekend events. Successfully selling this platform to a large company such as Google will automatically expand our customer base in a way we wouldn’t be able to if we were to reach out to individual businesses and local events ourselves. Selling our product to a company like Google gives our company a greater chance to expand internationally as opposed to waiting for growth within our local area. Companies in the same industry as Google already has a great stake in tourism, advertisement and businesses so our product should fare well given an opportunity to pitch the idea to them.

What makes The Weekend Planner unique?


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We stand out from the competition because this is the first service of its kind that combines a planner with weekend events and encourages personal growth and improves quality of life. Another unique feature is our platform’s user-friendly and convenience focus. Instead of having multiple pages, the planner and the events will all be visible on one page. The user will have seemingly limitless opportunities to plan an exciting weekend, or a relaxed weekend if they choose to. If the user is up for a bit of adventure, they can click the randomizer tool that will add events to their calendar for the times they specify, taking into account travel time and meal times. The planner and events are on one user interface, so all it takes is a simple click for users to add the event to their planner. If the user is going with others, the user can sink their contacts to this site so they can add their friends with one click. Users can select a visible option, where they can see who else is attending the same business or event. Others can see them as well so they can make new connections with people who have similar interests or are simply trying something new. Lastly, the Weekend is really all about the weekend. Our calendar will only show a user’s schedule from Friday afternoon to Sunday night so the user can spend less time figuring out what to do when he or she is bored and more time having fun.

Sustainable Competitive Advantages

We expect to have a sustainable competitive advantage over similar products because we are planning to apply for a utility patent or copyright, which will give us intellectual property rights and prevent our product from being stolen. Our core value of encouraging personal growth and adventure in the form of our randomizer is sustainable because people enjoy learning and doing new things.


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Market AnalysisIndustry Overview:

The Internet search engine industry is a fully developed, mature market with revenues around $22.4 billion annually and a consistent 7.3% growth rate per year from 2009 through 2015. Three major players dominate the search engine industry with respect to market share with Google at 75.2%, Yahoo! Inc. at 11.8% and Microsoft Corporation around 8.7%. The industry is relatively new with respect to the emergence and boom of the internet around the turn of the century and is expected to experience high consistent growth over the next 5 years. One factor that has had a tremendous effect in driving growth in this industry is the number of mobile internet connections which has been increasing from 2006 when there was merely a couple million mobile connections to a value of around 250 million mobile connections in the year 2015. According to IBIS World, a foremost industry research reporter, “the number of mobile internet connections in the US has increased at an annualized rate of 22.9% over the past five years”.i The graph below illustrates the upward trend of mobile connections in the United States.

Figure 1: Trend exhibiting growth of mobile connections in the United States.ii

This high growth in the number of mobile devices and availability to a majority of the United States population leads to massive amounts of data being gathered about potential consumers at home, at work, and on the move. Again, according to research done by IBIS World, “50.0% of mobile searches have local intent. Similarly, according to Google, more than 29.0% of mobile searches are related to restaurants and 15.0% of searches are related to consumer electronics. Meanwhile, 46.0% of online users rely on social media when making purchasing decisions”.i Another industry that we are entering is the Internet Publishing and Broadcasting industry which focuses on offering non-physical products exclusively through the internet such as ad space, subscriptions, intellectual property licensing, and the sale of user information to third parties. This industry is massive with $39.4 billion in revenue, a consistent growth rate around 10%, and once again dominated by the major technological players including Google, Apple, and Facebook.i The last industry that our product is highly dependent on includes


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the mobile phone and smartphone industry. As mobile phone growth explodes, users are spending more time away from home and thus spending more time connecting with local businesses, products, and services with their smartphones. A trend that continues to expand this market is the increasing percentage of services that are conducted online such as online retailer shopping which has grown from less than 1% in 1996 to more than 10% in 2015.i

The majority of the products offered in the search engine industry include paid advertisement to generate brand awareness, online sales, and drive traffic. The industry is characterized by light regulation from the government and high levels of rapid technology change as well as high barriers to entry and high levels of competition, obviously resulting from the major market leaders. Revenue for the industry as a whole is expected to increase as an effect of search engines pulling advertising investments away from all other sources of media due to the quantifiable success and the lower costs associated with the industry. The ability to measure specific advertisement effectiveness proves a critical aspect of the industry in implementing small changes and tweaks to advertising and proprietary advertising algorithms. The majority of the services offered by companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook in the Internet Publishing and Broadcasting industry show a trend toward mobilization, social connectivity and a very high demand for the most recent technological product. On September 28, 2015, the New York Times released an article saying that over the course of Apple’s opening weekend for the new iPhone 6s, they sold 13 million phones, breaking the record set last year at 10 million iPhones.iii These numbers are incredible and show the almost insatiable demand for new, faster technology all across the globe.

Another key piece of information that also should be considered is the track record for large technology companies in acquiring smaller companies and what their sort of checklist or similar set of requirements are of them. Google, like other technology companies in its industry, grow at a very rapid pace and this is sort of growth is only achieved through a very aggressive acquiring strategy. In order to keep these companies at the top, they must constantly be on the lookout for the next new idea that could provide significant synergies to their business and their breadth of services. In 2014, $140 million dollars were spent on tech acquisitions. This number is more than double what was spent in 2010 according to Time Magazine.iv The article goes on to explain that, “As the core of dominant technology companies get larger, they have come to depend on acquisitions not only to broaden their businesses but also to sustain the pace of innovation.” In addition, just as these companies are seeking out start-ups, Venture capital firms are becoming more abundant in Silicon Valley. Since 2001, Google has acquired 186 smaller companies with about 130 of these acquisitions occurring after 2010. Clearly, Google relies on these types of acquisitions to survive as a business, but we need to find out what all these companies have in common that makes them attractive opportunities for companies like Google.

Our Product and Need:

This product is a web-based service that provides for a greater level of organization in social events and recreational activities. Our service provides time management, organization and opportunity in a convenient user-friendly manner. Our service goes beyond a general search tool; it connects local businesses with the community to transform the average weekend experience into a fresh new experience through posting exciting weekend events and powerful new scheduling tools. This service would make Google more ergonomic in combining current geo, web, mobile, social, and specialized search products into one convenient tool. It would give the user what they want all in one place.


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According to the trend toward mobile connections and activity discussed above in the industry overview, our service fulfills the mobile needs of our users. Our service, as a web-based platform, allows anyone to use it at any time even on your smartphone. We intend to connect users to the various events, activities, and recreational spots around their local areas. Not only does the service alert the user to the activities around them, but it generates potential schedules for them to follow, accounting for distance from one place to the next, general proximity, time spent at each place, and time between each place. The service will also be able to accept user preferences and filter out unwanted destinations. In addition, destinations the users have already traveled to can be filtered out if they desire to have a new experience.

Users will want something like this as a simplification of existing navigation sites or programs. Through integration with Google operations such as Google Maps and Google Calendar, our website will be an easy way to organize one’s weekend plans. Blocks of time can be set aside to account for busy or pre-occupied hours, and the schedule can be amended on the spot if obstructions like a change in plans or traffic become issues. The user-friendly interface will be simplistic and slick to maximize ergonomic utility. Users do not have to browse various pages to make an arrangement; it is all offered on one page, differentiating us from the competition. Schedules can be optimized, and a nifty randomizer with optional filtering allows for more adventurous planning.

This service will not only work fast so that people can maximize their free time, it will schedule activities to do during that time. Instead of spending time figuring out what there is to do in the area, or what exactly users want to do, this service does that for them, so they can have more time actually experiencing them. Our service understands that user’s time is valuable and it is designed to optimize customer’s time. The demand for new faster technology creates a desire that our product can fulfill.

Our service caters to both the people and the businesses. Currently what Google does for businesses is helps them find customers, our product would make that exchange easier as well as make it easier for customers to find businesses. The growing advertising cost trends illustrates a need for local business to find alternative ways to market in their community. Our service enables these local businesses to advertise on a local scale to customers that would potentially be interested in their business. There would be an increase in advertisement that would help businesses succeed, however at the same time a decrease in their marketing costs.

The appeal to Google comes in as being a way to connect the more remote and less technologically inclined to their user base. We as a business would reach out to those areas to learn about their local activities and planned events to keep everyone up to date, and to increase Google’s popularity. Not only would it keep them more connected, but also native residents and visitors would have easy access to local weekend events all aggregated in The Weekend Guru.v

Now, with a trend toward mobilization for these companies, coupled with the fact that 92% of U.S. adults now have a cellphone of some kind, these companies are facing increasing competitive pressure from social networks and search engines over the success of their business. Additionally, the majority of a user’s mobile time isn’t in booking an expensive, big ordeal vacation, it is often simply setting up dinner plans later that day or scheduling a reminder for a time to meet up later in the week. According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, the most frequent reasons for frequent and occasional public cellphone use is: looking up information about where you are going (65%), coordinating get together meetings with others (70%), and catching up with family and friends (67%).vi This illustrates that


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a lot of attention would be drawn to our service on both a mobile as well as a portable laptop or tablet platform.

Competition and differentiation:

As we have defined earlier, the search engine industry with Google in particular is our customer and market. Google, like its competitors Microsoft and Yahoo and even Apple in the mobile phone industry, has almost limitless information at its disposal. As shown from technological trends, ‘To Google’ something has replaced the archaic ‘researching books in the library’ and has become a commonplace phrase among a growing number of people worldwide. In fact, ‘Google’ is now a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary as defined: “to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the World Wide Web.” However, there are certain Google products that are more successful than others. According to a search done on Google Trends, a search for interest between Google Calendar and Google Maps reveals an extremely high level of discrepancy in the success of two different products. While Google Maps has grown almost linearly since 2005, other Google products including Calendar and Google+ have remained nearly stagnant over the course of the past 8 years. If we can combine these features into a single application, we believe the overall success and popularity of both will experience significant success. One key thing that we can learn from the internet search engine and publishing industry is that competing with them would be impossible, and likewise as the old saying goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, which is what we exactly plan to do.

Many of the current “calendar, time management, weekend” apps on places like Google Play or the Apple App Store are very limited in their scope and functionality as to what they offer. A search for the “weekend” on the App Store highlighted one app called the “Weekender- Calendar for your weekends” which focuses on showing upcoming weekend events that the user must manually input and planning empty time to make the most of the your weekend. The interface is very simple and allows one to look ahead multiple weeks in advance, which is a good feature to allow for better future planning. While this service would be a competitor for us, we would incorporate many other features including a robust search on vast arrays of country, regional, and local data to highlight the best opportunities for a user’s most relevant interests.Looking at other similar services, which tailor services toward leisure and tourism, our competitors in the end-user market would include companies such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Kayak. These companies, while they all offer different services, often focus on particular segments of the market like Yelp with restaurants and food, TripAdvisor with hotels, resorts, and vacation destinations, and Kayak with hotels and flights, and rental cars.

With a plethora of resources available, this is exactly why Google is the optimal market for our service. In addition to their Search function, Google has popular web applications such as Mail, Maps, YouTube, News, Calendar, Drive, and even a social networking site called Google+ and so much more. This is where our differentiation sets us apart from Google’s current product lineup.

The first differentiator is that our service enables the user to plan their free time in a convenient, efficient, and simple process. This would be a huge selling point for our company in that we can seamlessly combine all the advantages of a calendar, a map, and a social network along with the enormous capabilities of a search engine. Our service is geared toward maximizing fun, new, and exciting opportunities for say for example Google or Apple users.

The second aspect that sets our service apart from any existing travel or scheduling tool on the market is that we are focused on broadening the horizons of our end users.


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Psychologically, people like doing the things they know they love. However, this attitude is not the kind of behavior that we would encourage. Although users have the ability to search based on things they love, we have a different feature that would mimic the “I’m feeling lucky” button on the Google Search except that it would essentially pick a pseudo-random event for a user to include in his or her calendar. This essentially gives our end-users the ability to think outside the box, be more courageous, and consider options for adventures that they wouldn’t normally choose in the first place. Just like the “I’m feeling lucky” button, this would be a core aspect of the design of our web application. Unlike other competitors that focus on offering similar events based on the event history, we are the only service that offers adventure by suggesting new and different opportunities.

The third and final differentiator for our web application or service would be the ability to connect with friends and people of common interest. Due to the fact that many people have Google accounts or say Apple ID accounts for example naturally leads these companies to collect specific information about different people and to advertise more effectively by knowing their customer really well. This is where data mining for possible relationships and interests is possible for our web application. Having the ability to socialize with others on something you are very passionate about or re-assuring with others on something you may be anxious or nervous about would enable the creation of networks between close friends, others of common interest, as well as beginners and experts.

Overall, our differentiators set us largely apart from any similar services or competitors in our potential market space. In addition, the strategy which we will discuss next, to focus on filling the gaps in Google’s vast amounts of nationwide resources with activities and events at the local level, will be a key strategy in proving our services’ worth and the high end-user demand in the current market to an already existing large internet/mobile company.

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i. Palmer, Taylor. “Search Engines in the US: 51913a.” IBISWorld, November 2015. Web. 10 December 2015.ii. Krabeepetcharat, Andrew. "Advanced Technology Drives Prices Down." Media Center RSS. IBISWorld, 23 July 2014. Web. 14 Dec. 2015. iii. Benner, Katie. "Apple IPhone 6s Breaks First-Weekend Sales Record." The New York Times. The New York Times, 28 Sept. 2015. Web. Oct. 2015.

iv. "How Google Has Perfected the Silicon Valley Acquisition." Time. Time Magazine, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.v. "Our Products and Services – Company – Google." Our Products and Services – Company – Google. N.p., n.d. Web. Oct. 2015.vi. "Americans' Views on Mobile Etiquette." Pew Research Center Internet Science Tech RSS. N.p., 25 Aug. 2015. Web. 09 Oct. 2015.


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Market StrategyProduct The Weekend Guru is delivering a service called The Weekend planner that makes it easier to plan weekend events and get together with your friends while providing new ideas and activities to explore. This service minimizes time planning in order to maximize time of the experience. The Weekend considers a customer’s location and preferences to develop a schedule of events to do. There are many features including multiple filters such as outdoor activities, indoor activities, concerts, restaurants etc. There is also a randomizer for those who wish to try new things. Or one can be provided with recommendations based on event history. This service stores previous activities so that if you don’t wish to repeat events you can choose not to. There is a proximity feature to help schedule events based on how far a customer is willing to travel. Each user will create a personal account so that specific information can be stored. This will also allow users to connect with friends on the site to collaborate plans. Messaging tools and time and location polls will be available. Each event, whether it is skydiving or a fancy dinner at a local restaurant, will have a detailed description and a link to reviews. Place/Distribution We will first begin marketing our web-based service within a city of our choice. The Weekend will be available on a desktop, laptop, and mobile device. There will be a data storage center for our service. This center will store information from the company and the users.

Price

This is the price of selling our service in the last stage of our business. We want to be clear that our service is free to use for users. Once we have reached the stage to pitch our company to another larger technology company, our pricing strategy is yet unclear however we have a couple options for valuation. The first option would be to value proportional to the number of hits or clicks on our site. The second option would be to value our company based on what we believe our future advertising cash flows to be. In both of these options, we consider our time and effort into the development of this service as well as investor’s interests to make up the minimum amount that we would sell this company for. In the end, this pricing would come down to negotiation with the purchasing firm.

Promotion

For promoting our service, we would reach out to the various communities, to find out what activities, festivals, events, cuisines, and other local things are there and what is being planned for the future. In the first stage, we would reach out to all of the businesses by going door to door and offering them a trial run. We can offer discounts to companies for every 5 new businesses or events they invite to use our website. After we’ve established a name for ourselves and have a logo to associate with the company, we can proceed to make merchandise for The Weekend Guru to be sold to customers. We will encourage our users to post on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where they can show their experiences that they gained from our service (#weekendguru).


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Business Strategy

Our business strategy will be broken down into three phases based on chronological intervals. The overall strategy will be accomplished by proving our product’s credibility through its need and the market niche to large international technology firms.

Phase I (Year 1) - Start-Up:

The first phase of our business strategy is focused on the time from incorporation to the time of the first marketable product. Essentially, this is the start-up phase of the business. This first year will consist of developing the software, applying for patents, and fundraising within the team and from families and friends for approximately $75,000. The goal of this first phase is to create the basic project concept and finish a polished and professional website design. We will do a majority of the work within our team to help build the company's foundation. In order to complete most of the front-end web development as well as the back-end server support for our service in the following phase, we expect to hire one or two web developers to do contracted work. At this point, full time employees do not make sense because we will not have an official central workspace or office in order to save on start-up costs. In addition, this phase will consist of a lot of field research and local area contact and involvement. We will try and form healthy relationships with local activity committee boards and local town communities in order to become more "in the know" about small town local events throughout the areas in which we live. We will also conduct extensive primary survey research for our end-users to find out more about what they want to know and how we can help them get there. Additionally, we believe establishing a patent in order to protect our idea will help guarantee a sustainable competitive advantage for the following business phases. Lastly, once we have a marketable product, we will obtain extensive feedback for our idea from potential customers and evaluate whether we believe we will continue with the business venture and seek outside fundraising and full time commitments.

Phase II (Year 2 + 3) - Website Launch

At the start of this phase, we expect to have zero revenue. The second phase of the business will focus on the time from first product to an extensive and active market and customer base in specific geographical regions. This phase will focus on getting investors on board with investments and also building a strong management team. We will hire our first full time employees during this period as well. These will include a full stack web developer to maintain the site and provide updates and continually improvements and a small marketing and outreach team to build our customer and business relationship base. We will geographically focus on one specific area such as New York City in order to maximize most of our team's time and become as cost-efficient as possible as we do not want to spread out our limited resources too thin at this time. The website will be fully operational and we will be closely recording and monitoring views as well as customer's ad data. Our hope is that we will be receiving our first revenues during this phase in the form of advertisements from companies, restaurants, and entertainment businesses. Our marketing campaign will be in full force as we try and get the word out. We will be trying to increase our customer base as quickly as possible so our own advertisements will be


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essential in growing this number. At the tail-end of this phase, we would have a huge presence in our primary location of focus and are looking to expand geographically and internally as well.

Phase III & Beyond (Year 4 + 5 +) - Expansion & Sell

The beginning of this phase is marked by the expansion of our website service outside our primary region. This phase is distinguished by increasing the number of employees throughout different regions as well as increasing fundraising with venture capital investors. We will also purchase an entire data storage center for our back-end servers to store all of our data from customers and businesses. At this stage, we will definitely be on the radar of large high-tech companies as a possible takeover target. This path is not a negative one because we believe we will achieve a huge potential for growth with companies like Google with already established huge data capabilities. This is the point where we focus on marketing our product to our intended market: the large technology advertising company and hopefully negotiating a deal with them to sell our intellectual property and incorporate our service within their set of established web services. The graph below shows the expected value of our company throughout the three phases of our business strategy.

Figure 2: Weekend Guru Expected Company Valuation in 3 phases. The graph above shows the expected value of our company throughout the three phases of our business strategy. Valuation

methods such as discounted cash flows, comparable analysis, and estimated number of clicks/users.


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Operations Plan

DesignWe plan to contract work from software web developers to begin designing the Weekend.

During this phase, we will not have an office because the work will be outsourced, so web developers can work on the website from wherever they are located. Construction of the website will be done after the workday because the majority of the team will have another job. Due to the limited amount of resources and workers that will be working on this project, our incurred costs will be minimal.

TestingTo test our product, we require a team of hired people or we ourselves will have to live in

the same geographical area or city. This team will have to work full time; going into the community, talking to businesses, and searching external and online advertisements for opportunities. A team of hired staff will maintain the website and the data servers. The goal of our testing phase is to broaden the user base exponentially and to generate revenue from ‘direct advertising’.

SellOur final objective will be to sell our company or intellectual property to a much larger

company, officially ending our business. With a successful sale, we expect our compensation to be in the form of a lump cash sum and the option to still own a part of our company through stocks, or being offered a job at the larger company with the benefits of a full time worker.


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Weekend Guru Phase I Pert Chart*All times are in weeks

Task Descriptor Predecessor Optimistic Most Likely Pessimistic Expected Duration Variance

A Draw up website concept - 1 2 3 2 0.666666667

B Hire & Negotiate Programmers Contracts

A 1 3 6 3.166666667 0.833333333

C Purchase and Set Up First Server - 1 2 3 2 0.666666667

D Write First Copy of Website Design A, B 4 6 8 6 0.5

E Obtain Design Patent D 12 16 30 17.66666667 0.6

F Initial Website Test & User Review C,D 3 4 7 4.333333333 0.571428571

G 1st Update and design revision F 2 4 6 4 0.666666667

H Talk to local businesses E,G 8 10 13 10.16666667 0.384615385

I Talk to local community boards E,G 7 8 10 8.166666667 0.3

J Negotiate Deals with for local advertising

H,I 6 8 14 8.666666667 0.571428571

K 2nd Update and design revision H,I 3 4 6 4.166666667 0.5

L Raise First Stage Capital ($100K) - 16 22 32 22.66666667 0.5

M Purchase Small Data Server Room or Center

L,K 2 4 6 4 0.666666667

N Hire 1 Server Maintenance guy M 5 8 10 7.833333333 0.5

O Re-negotiate programmer's contracts

K 2 3 4 3 0.5

P Hire 2 Community Outreach & Marketing Employees

L 6 10 15 10.16666667 0.6

Q Company is at new level and ready to expand and grow within market

P,L 0 0 0 0 #DIV/0!

Table 1: Pert Chart Analysis. Outlines the operation plan for our company in the first two phases based on specific tasks and milestone objectives. The visual form is provided below.


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Figure 3: Pert diagram showing the critical path of the operations of our company in the first two phases. The critical path is outlined in RED, which means the early start time equals the late

start time and the early finish time equals the late finish time for each node.

Funding Plan

The first and second phases of development will require approximately $75,000 to cover startup costs. We also plan to utilize our own personal funds or income to cover additional costs of the business.

Management Team

The Weekend Guru team is composed of its four founding members: Tamara Lambert, Mackenzie Lynch, Matthew Magaldi, and Anthony Mohammed. Forming the company in the fall of 2015 during their senior year together at Cornell University, the team comes from a diverse set of backgrounds with the unified goal of successfully launching an entrepreneurial venture. With hopes to tackle the frustrations of a weekend with too little or too much in mind to do, the team’s efforts became devoted to organizing weekend activities. Matthew and Anthony are enrolled in the College of Engineering. Matthew studies electrical and computer engineering with a minor in business while Anthony is majoring in mechanical & aerospace. Both Tamara and Mackenzie are in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Tamara is majoring in biological engineering and Mackenzie is pursuing her environmental engineering degree. With a diverse set of backgrounds and skills, they collectively bring very unique and complementary competencies to the team.


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Financial Analysis

Sources and Uses of FundsWe are asking for $75,000 as an equity investment to cover startup costs while we

develop our website and reach out to businesses. This will carry the company through year two, after which we expect revenue from businesses advertising on our site. Details on use of funds are provided in the Proforma statements.

Start-Up CostsWeb Developers: In the first year we would hire web developers to build our webpage

which would cost a total of $10,000.Computers/Servers: Equipment consisting of computers and servers cost $50,000. From

the estimated number of users that will visit our site❑i we will need 6 Blackblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867 each.❑ii

Legal Fees: $25 filing fee in New York (for net income not more than $100,000)Annual Costs

LLC Tax: 6.5% tax rate Rent: For the first year, an office and storage unit for our servers will not be needed. the

second year rent will cost $1,000 a month and increase the following years by 1.08.❑iv

Utilities: Internet, phone, and electricity will be needed. Starting the second year when we will have an office, we estimate these services will cost about $450 per month. One year of utilities will cost approximately $5,230.❑iii

Travel: The first year we will not have travel expenses. Starting year two we will travel to different businesses and events making deals and expanding our company. This year we estimate a cost of $45 per week which brings the year total expense to $2,340. The next year we estimate an increase of 1.5 times which brings the year three total to $3,510.

Management Salary: To maintain, update and improve our webpage, we will have an annual cost of about $20,000, which also includes server maintenance, starting in year two for web developers to work on our site.

Advertising expenses: Marketing and advertising for The Weekend Guru will cost $60,000 in year two and that will increase by a multiple of 1.2 in year three.

RevenuesThe Weekend Guru will generate revenue by allowing businesses to advertise on our site.

This will be done on a cost per click basis. We estimate a $0.50 cost per click and at about 5,000 clicks per week, our year two revenue will be $260,000. In year three, the number of clicks will increase by three bringing our year three revenue to $780,000.❑i

Pro forma AssumptionsIn the Pro forma financial model, the following assumptions were made:

1) Round I of funding was $75,000.


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2) Web developers total cost in the first year is $10,000.3) Design patent value is $25,000.4) Equipment consisting of computers and servers cost $50,000.❑ii

5) Rent starting in year two is $20,000 which would increase by a multiple of 1.08 each year.

6) Utilities per month is $450.❑iii

7) Travel costs per week is $45 for year two which would increase by 1.5 the next year.8) Clicks per week for a business’s advertising (in year two) is 5,000, which will cost $0.50

per click. Our company would grow in the third year which we estimate would increase the number of clicks by 300%.

__________________________________________________________________________i. "How Many People Use Foursquare?Frequently Asked in." How Many People Use Foursquare? N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2015. ii. "Petabytes on a Budget: How to Build Cheap Cloud Storage." Backblaze Blog RSS. N.p., 01 Sept. 2009. Web. Nov. 2015.iii. "Vertatique." Average Power Use Per Server. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2015. "Average Business Energy Bill | Gas & Electricity Prices - Make It Cheaper." Average Business Energy Bill | Gas & Electricity Prices - Make It Cheaper. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2015.iv. "Coworking, Office Space in New York City | WeWork." WeWork. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2015.

APPENDICES – Pro Forma


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Statement of Cash Flows


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Income Statement


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Balance Sheet


Documents

The Weekend Business Plan