venture lab freem: oep final report - partnerships and risk
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TRANSCRIPT
EM Simulation software and computing infrastructure is beyond the budget of most engineers who need it. FREeM changes the way design automation works.
FREeM lets you…
GET AWAY FROM THE SIMULATOR AND BACK TO DESIGNING...
FREeM simulation
An Introduction to FREeM and our Business ModelFIRST
Residual Risk and its Reduction SECOND
FREeM : Affordable E.M. Simulation Tool for Enterprise
Re-Cap of the Problem
Explosive growth in the wireless device market (see report 1).
Every device has an antenna – but antenna design isExpensive!
A significant factor is the cost of design tools (seeReport 1).
Another aspect is the cost of infrastructure ownership and obselesence.
To date there are several work arounds employed that are terribly inefficient, inaccurate and expensive (see OAP).
What is FREeM ?
FREeM is a licence on the fly antenna simulator package
FREeM runs all simulation on the cloud : no hardware expense
FREeM simplifies the antenna design process
FREeM can seemlessly talk to your other CAD packages
FREeM simplifies the antenna design process
FREeM is powerful, yet affordable: no punitive multi-core cost
How Does it Work ?
Customer runs a client application that connects to acloud based solver.
Partnerships ?
Value Chain analysisrevealed 2 potential types of channel partner which satisfy the criterion of mutually beneficial (revenue generating).
Three of the first type to be used have been contacted and have shown interest...
Also generate value for each other but only through FREeM!
Partnerships ?
This technique is protectable IP.(hence no disclose here – sorry!)
FREeM enables a technologically unique means of adding value for both channel type providers
Partnerships & Alliances
What our channel partner brings to us?● New customers● Technical expertise● Use of their Sales Channels
What can we offer to a partner? ● Money (Commision)● Better customer satifaction.● Affiliate system.● New customers (less so to begin with).● Strong synergy.
Variable Costs
Use of the cloud gives rise to a recurring overhead for each user depenedent upon computing resource.
D a t a T r a n s f e r $ 1 5
C o m p u t e $ 1 1 5 . 2
S t o r a g e $ 1 5 . 6 2 5
X f e r F e e s $ 0 . 6
Fixed Costs
We identified the price a typical user was willing to pay (during OAP surveys).
We surveyed to find the typical use case(report 2 of OEP).
We understand our recurring expenses support cost and cost of customer aquisition.
We have estimated our fixed costs (office space, salaries, insurance etc)
Interviews with Channel Partners Suggest the following projected Y1 income:
Estimated incomes for early adopters: - France: 50 customers- UK: 30 customers- US: 20 customers
Total 100 customers
The Tight Vertical
Restricting to Western Europe in Y1 Only
Break Even
Y1 Y2 Y3
80 Customers = Break Even
40 Customers, existing contacts etc
>120 Customers
Assume we meet half of projections...
?
An Introduction to FREeM and our Business ModelFIRST
Residual Risk and its Reduction SECOND
FREeM : Affordable E.M. Simulation Tool for Enterprise
Residual Risk
- Proof of concept - own funds- Basic demo – own funds
Investment needed to fund Y1- Early adopters, further code & product
maintenance and customer support investments needed (e.g., grant support, Angel Investors).
Funding & Market Risk
Market Risk
Y1 Y2 Y3
Break Even
Early Adopters will get us to break even
- Similar business model applied by competitors
- Unique selling point of the product is copied/engineered around by competitors
- Technical support do not meet requirement of customers
Residual Commercial Risk
- Algorithms failure (low risk for the first release of the product)
- Finite-difference time-domain FDTD method failure (high risk in the future product releases)
- Expert system for antenna design- New GUI, that discourage users to learn it.
Technological Risk
Team Risk
Areas of expertise from team:● Antenna design● Software design● High speed / low level computing● RF Industry knowledge
Areas lacking expertise from team:●Sales and marketing●International business acumen
Channel partners will help reduce this !