Conover Consulting
Street address
City, WA Zip


Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 20:08:54 -0700



Mr. Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net
The Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111 2496

Subject:   Systematized Business Planning and Marketing for Funding


Rod,

[Responding to your email linked to the SDS record on October 8, 2001....]

You said:


100684 - In particular, Matt's continued effort to recommend SDS for specific
100685 - applications is helpful and appreciated, as the only apparent avenue
100686 - for advancing SDS deployment, through randomly encountering someone
100687 - who will try SDS, like a lottery.
I say:

Reference to lottery and random encounters sounds as if you are discouraged in your marketing. A systematic approach is all you need to plan a campaign that will stay energized, from having imminent deadlines. A e-mailout, trade fair booth and private group speaking engagements for demos are just what the doctor ordered to kick-start your entusiasm engine!

Mailout campaign can be done by email to broadcast lists. If you distilled out of all that massive body of work you have created those paragraphs which are most potent, and pared it down to a digestible message, you'd probably get more engagement from corporate clients who could afford it. Visualizing and writing down a table with prices and deliverables would help create a transactional environment encouraging expectation of imminent purchase payment by credit card.

CompUSA has some software to do some or all of those functions.

Seems like the key to establishing your "value proposition" would be to quantify the cost-effectiveness of the software.

A lot of the qualitative claims can get mushy, and business people like to see that there is a likely cost-savings or revenue generation as the result of the expenditure of funds. Case studies are the best way, and that does depend on finding someone willing to try the beta product, but maybe you could loan it for testing and demo.

Once you have the above elements in place and set up a website with a URL, you'd have an electronic brochure everyone could read. Advertising the existence of the website will cost some dollars, but your demos to target industry groups and trade fairs should generate some early adopters who can then endorse it.

Also, creating links and incentive programs for referrals should give some initiative to the referral process. Marketing through distribution channels to VARs (value-added retailers) should also help. Perhaps you could arrange to "bundle" the software with the products of other companies. Emphasis on corporate software vendors would do the most to ensure a receptive audience that would use it and endorse it. (Require registration so that you find out who ended up receiving it, and set up a followup program to see how they like it.)

You ought to be able to hire some of these out-of-work consultants, or lacking funds, bring them in as partners for equity share in the eventual company. Finding those persons could be done through the unRev-II group, or others to which you belong, and personal references. Also venture capital and angel investor groups. The Software Development Forum has lots of members, as well as investors, and they play a match-making service enabling you to make presentations in one-on-one private sessions with investors. You have to be concise, focused, quick and quantitative to keep their attention and to gain their respect, but it's do-able.

They'll want to know that the intellectual property rights are available, or at least not tied up. And you'll want to get a form for protecting against disclosure (though many might not sign such a letter anymore). Most of the forms can be found on Findlaw, including Tech Agreements used by companies (regularly reported and archived therein.) Getting a lawyer experienced in tech and willing to work cheap for stock is also possible through these groups.

The pedigree that your software has from Intel developers is your main selling point, but intellectual property rights need to be explicitly declared. If the VCs and angels get too picky, but the Intel people and their friends are still true believers, then they should be approached about pooling funds for market development.

For mass mailing lists or even culled lists, you can go online to find specific services or sign up for newsletters. I get unsolicited offers of mailing lists like 2 million email addresses for $149. There are also CD software packages with millions of names and businesses by region that you can scan through to select those most likely to appreciate your product's benefits.

A good way to structure your planning is to buy BusinessPlanPro2002. It has linked spreadsheets with line-items for budgets already typed in. If you lack figures to enter into the cells you can click on a button to access bplan.com and select a model b-plan of your size firm in the software industry and download it right into your text sections and cells.

Then you adjust the numbers to be most realistic based on your own experience and expectations of the future. The charts and trendlines for sales forecasts and profits will all magically change in response to your changed numbers. All downstream references to the same variables will change too.

They also are linked into BizMiner.com, which will enable you to do the same simple steps to dial in and select the type of firm most similar to your own, to get standard industry financial and inventory ratios. Some have time components, which tell you functions like velocity of inventory turnover rates that should be your targets. For a startup these ratios can be targets for achievement in the future to guide you and your partners. Once you set up your own performance record these can become benchmark measures for comparing your performance to the industry. Lenders and investors will see these relative references and your awareness of quantitative objective setting for achieveability and see that you are professional in your planning.

They also provide a clickable access point to a database of venture finance groups from whom you may choose to send your business plan. Once you are done with that exercise it sends the plan.

In fact, they also include an online website address for posting your business plan on a secure server with password only acccess. Everyone that you tell about your plan and give the password to can then access the plan and read it. (Should have non-disclosure and non-compete agreements signed first though, as a condition of viewing.)

The vendor, Palo Alto Software out of Eugene, Oregon, also sells other packages like MarketingPlanPro. That one helps you to walk through your planning and costing of various media for cost-effectiveness so that one is not overwhelmed by all the options. I think that they might also have similar databases for regional media providers to contact for getting cost figures, and perhaps generalized rankings on which types of media and marketing techniques are most cost-efffective.

BusinessPlanPro2002 costs $99. Well worth it. The other packages might be similarly priced, but I think they might be congruent with BPP enabling cross-referencing of more detailed information and maybe import-export capabilities between modules for an integrated package.

Even at several hundred dollars the opportunities to raise funding are so much greater that it seems like a worthy investment before paying for a color glossy brochure and handing out copies that disappear and get trashed quickly.

For followup after prospective customers view the electronic brochure, a color glossy paper brochure might become a necessity. But at least with BPP you might be able to raise the funds first to pay for it.

The brochure could include your essential value proposition with cost effectiveness quantification, as well as the endorsements from all those people who have made positive comments, like PG&E, Corps of Engineers, Justice Mosk, Intel, IBM and others. Documentation of a capability to install and repair the service for warranty work would help as well, for those who fear getting stuck with product from a solo who might eventually go out of business. In fact, maybe getting someone in as a partner who knows how to install and repair the software would add a lot to reassuring prospective purchasers. Warranty assurances and a service contract would help too.

Offers of free demo trials or periodic timeouts would help. Creating those capabilities might cost something, but assumedly there would be more money after your business planning and marketing secure funding frm investors.

Another idea that just came to me is getting university faculty and graduate students to work with it. That might really create some legitimacy that could be parlayed into endorsements and improvement ideas. John Deneen just sent me the name of a developer in Boston, Mr. LeLiberte, who developed HyperNews discussion groupware, who is going through some of the same business plan generating. Perhaps he or others like him would be intrigued with SDS and be willing to partner up with you. He had a lot of depth of imagination in his structuring of alternative combinations of financing.

Finally, non-software sources of funding, such as the law firms with which you work, might be a source of pooled private funds. Just sitting down and brainstorming through all the networks of people you know and interviewing them as to who they know with funds to invest in your 30-second elevator pitch can create a "buzz."

As to "Buzz", the popular wisdom in "the literature" says that you ought to get a lot of industry interest among developers and prospective purchasers. They will tell others and create a popular expectation of some hot product about to come out. Releasing alpha and beta versions in which others use it and comment on it in discussions group threads that you set up on the net can generate further interest.

You already know all this, and are doing some of it, but I just wanted to work through some systematized progression so that it would be useful to you as a rough plan for referral. The NYFD disaster and popular response reminded me that we're all in this together and should be available to support each other whether we get paid for it or not.

Good Luck and Perseverance To You,

Matt

Setting up a website doesn't have to cost a lot.

----- Original Message -----
From:   "Rod Welch"
"Matt Conover"
"Deneen, John J."
Monday, October 08, 2001 7:36 PM
SDS and Speech Recognition, Military, Intelligence

> Matt, > > Thanks very much for continued interest in SDS, per analysis of your letter > below, and the follow up letter you submitted notifying of a professional > conference on speech recognition..... > > > http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/01/10/08/181444.HTM#L1005 > > Thanks. > > Rod > > > > > Matt Conover wrote: > > > > Hi, Rod, > > > > I just forwarded one of your messages and access link URLs to Bill Lehrman, an > > architect, former professor at Diablo Valley College in real estate economics, > > and expert witness for the State in eminent domain. He is into speech > > technology. Is installing computerized kiosk networks. He's intrigued > > with your concept, and is demo'ing for me the Sony Digital Voice Recorder. He > > has a variety of recording devices that create computer files that can be cut > > and pasted from voice mail files. Seems like a natural link to SyberSay. > > > > Did you ever get back with Steve Poffut, CEO of SyberSay for that narration > > link? > > > > Land Warrior recording of battlefield events might be a timely issue again. > > And voice-activated blackbox cockpit recorders? > > > > > > > > Have Fun, > > Get Rich, > > > > Matt > > >









Sincerely,



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