Open Access Software, Inc.

Business Plan Presentation

Anna Dirks11/29/2006

What We Do

We help businesses and federal agencies to make their electronic and information technologies accessible to people with disabilities.

We do this by providing consulting services, including:

Usability testing with disabled test subjects,

Automated testing and bug reporting using scripts,

Heuristic evaluation and design services,

Procurement counselling and market research

Why You Need Us

Accessibility is mandated by law.

From a news story this morning:

November 29 2006: 11:23 AM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people.

Also, accessibility saves you money.

Accessible technology can help reduce costs of time lost and money spent when an employee develops a temporary disability. (No need to hire temps, or to let work pile up while recovering.)

The Law

In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities.

The law applies to all federally funded agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology (E&IT).

Some key federally funded agencies: the IRS, the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Aviation Administration, the US Army , State Colleges and Universities.

What We Do, version 2.0

The agencies mentioned above all produce E&IT – and they also procure it.

Sometimes they work with private companies to this end: for example, the IRS partners with Intuit to allow people to follow their tax returns online.

So, for example, if tax returns and tax filing software is not fully accessible, then it is illegal.

Imagine what would happen if no one with any sort of disability paid his or her taxes.

Yikes!

Open Access Software can help your company to produce accessible E&IT.

Target Customers

We want to start with niche markets, before expanding to general software/hardware businesses.

Our first niche market is Tax Forms and Tax-filing websites.

Our first target customers are Intuit, the IRS, H&R Block and other authorized e-file providers.

I searched the websites of the 15 biggest e-filing entities, and found that only one mentioned accessibility.

Other Markets Linux Software

Target customers: IBM, Sun, Dell, Oracle Other Government Documents

Social security forms

FEMA forms

Veterans Benefit forms International Markets:

England, Japan, Australia, Germany, South Africa etc have laws and guidelines mandating accessibility.

The Competition

Main Competitors

Sun's Group (but they don't do testing)

IBM's Group (but they don't do testing)

Open Source Community Efforts (but they don't work on corporate schedules, or do testing)

Jim Thatcher (Just website evaluation and accessibility training)

NCR (no automated testing, procurement counselling or usability)

Rampweb

TecAccess (no development or usability testing) Lots of people participate in this market, but no one else has the

range of services and expertise that we have.

Who are you?

Management team:

Operations, Anna Dirks

Legal and Finance, Anne Oestergard

Business Development, Geeta Gupta

Testing, Poornima Nayak

Development, Varadhan Veerapuram

Design, Tuomas Kuosmanen

Where are you?

We are an international company.

Our developers and automated testers (note that this is different from usability testing) are based in Bangalore, India.

Our design staff is based in Northern Europe.

Our operations and usability consultants are based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Prague, Czech Republic.

Our main office is in Cambridge.

Why are you so special?

MIT Connections

Established leadership in this field

Speaking engagements around the world on this topic for past 5 years

Open Source community popularity

Betterdesktop.org

We've worked together internationally for years.

Kiwanis Connections

History of accessibility community participation

Structure and Funding.

Structure

Open Access Software is an S-Corporation. Financing Needs to Start Business

Incubation at MIT.

An additional $200,000 in financing. Angel investment Friends and family Personal investment Small business loans loans

Pricing and Advertising

Pricing:

Consulting time, $110/hour

Development projects, priced per project. (Average for a website the size of TurboTax is $50,000.)

Other revenue from lecturing (MIT asked for this) Advertising and Promotions:

Open Access Software Website Community forum, mailing lists, public resources

Linux Conferences

Accessibility Conferences

Government Procurement Conferences

Blogging

Writing columns for industry publications

The Numbers

Year One:

Net Sales: $250,000

Net Income: $20,000 Year Two

Net Sales: $500,000 Net Income: $70,000

Year Three

Net Sales: $1,000,000 Net Income: $300,000

The Numbers

If MIT incubates Open Access and if we have five consultants (either usability professional or developers) and if the developers are all located in Bangalore, then I can make $250,000 in Net Sales, for a Net Income of $20,000 in Year 1.

If we hire an additional five consultants and two sales people in year two, we can do $500,000 worth of sales. This leads to a Net Income of $74,000.

This is where things get really optimistic....

In year three, with a fully functional Bangalore development center, assuming that we again double our sales force and employ another five consultants, we should be able to do $1,000,000 in Sales. This leads to a Net Income of about $300,000.

The Business plan proper spells this all out.