During our Business Planning and Entrepreneurship class, we launched a virtual project corresponding to a growing needs : external communication on the internet and the raise of funds.
1. PITCHES – Business Plan
THOMAS COLLET - QUENTIN GUYOT - MÉLANIE SANCTORUM - CHARLES TAFANI -
AURELINE THOORIS
2. Description of the business
Type and status of business:
Start-up of the tertiary industry
IT-based services
Helping entrepreneurs to present their business ideas
Find potential customers and investors
Online platform
Edit and upload videos
Access templates and advices
Manage profile page
3. Description of the business
Form of business
Sole proprietorship
Benefits
•Less paperwork
•No company
meetings to hold
•Less strict financial
records
•Full control from the
single owner
Drawbacks
• Responsibility of the
owner is not limited
4. Description of the business
Name of the owner
Thomas
Collet
PotentialHis idea
5. Description of the business
Hours of operations
24/7
Virtual
assistant
Call-
center
Website
6. Description of the business
“Pitches:
support
entrepreneurs to
make their ideas a
reality”
Mission
statement
“Pitches:
raise your idea”
Tagline
7. Products, Services and Sales
Student Premium Accounts
only available with email address « .edu »
Develop pitches, competences and
communication
Premium Accounts
Personal videos, templates and advices
Personal storage of videos, and private
space
Subscription fee: $9,99
Subscription fee : $14,99
8. Products, Services and Sales
Free accounts: access for everyone
A 24h and 7 days hotline for all subscribers
$1,30 the first minute, then $0,10/ minute
Adervtisement on our website: side banners for companies
Advertising Homepage: $350
Advertising on the other pages: $200
9. Products, Services and Sales
Personal data selling: 5 packages in function of the information (gender/ email/
phone)
Data Package 1: $125
Data Package 6: $750 (price is relative to the information sold)
10. SALES AND MARKETING STRATEGY
B2C approach
Target market:
US market
Three potential targets:
Millenials generation: Students (18-25)
young professionals
Professional, and Generation X people (managers, executives, professors)
11. PROMOTION
Small and young company
Blogging Banner ads, Word of mouth
Partnerships with colleges and professors
Partnerships with some companies, managers
Creation of opinion polls
Get feedbacks from users
Always improve ourselves and our subscribers
12. DISTRIBUTION
Online, with websites and video platform
Smartphone applications
Social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter)
Universities in NYC and the US: Baruch College, St John’s,,,
13. INDUSTRY OVERVIEW
Media and Communication industry composed of
The media segment:
motion pictures and video producers (photography, movies, shows etc),
Publishers of contents (books, magazines, newspapers etc.)
Television and radio broadcasters.
The telecommunication segment
Equipment (cables, electronic devices, internet box etc.)
New media (social networks, gaming sites, e-commerce, mobile media)
15. OUTLOOK
Primary demand drivers:
the technological evolution
the need of innovation
the entertainment
the sensitivity towards advertising and the
connectivity.
Demand/profitability drivers profitability drivers
the effectiveness of marketing and advertising
the possibility to brand the media/good/service
the informations available
the digital era
the new sources of financing.
17. TRENDS
Cross-support consumption
M-business
The convergence of technology
multifunctional
Exigency of control
No ads
Protection
copyright, patent, trade secrets and industrial design protection
Need of entertainment
Social gaming
Easy-to-use and easy-to-understand
Intuitive
20. TRENDS
Recent meeting of 2 needs
internet and communication campaigns
raise of funds
Pitches = new opportunity to fulfil cross social, communication and financial needs
21. COMPETITORS
No direct competitors
Indirect competitors :
video platforms (Youtube, Dailymotion… )
communication agencies B-to-B oriented (DoubleClick Digital Marketing, Sizmek, Pixability…)
crowfunding platforms (Gofundme, Indiegogo, Kickstarter, Patreon…)
Type of business – what is your business? Status of business – start up?
Pitches will be a start-up company of the tertiary industry headquartered in New York, United States providing IT-based services related to helping individuals to present their business ideas to potential customers and investors and therefore find fundings and draw client’s attention. This will be made possible thanks to an online plaform where entrepreneurs can edit and post business videos in elevator pitch format as well as access presentation templates, business advices, tools to manage the profile page of their business idea, its publication, and much more (all the service features are presented in the second part of this document).
Form of business – sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation
We thought about using a sole proprietorship form of business for our organization since it would be the easiest way to start our company. Indeed, sole proprietorship has far less paperwork and fewer ongoing formalities to adhere to in comparison to a corporation. Corporations are required to hold at least one annual meeting, while sole proprietorships do not have to hold company meetings. A corporation must keep strict financial records and keep a ledger detailing how the company reached certain decisions.
Unlike a corporation, sole proprietorships is not required to file annual reports with the state or create financial statements. Moreover, sole proprietorships have a more informal structure that does not require the selection of officers and directors. Sole proprietors have full control over every aspect of their business, he is a single owner who is responsible for making decisions, whereas partnerships and corporations have to vote on important company issues.
The name of the owner of Pitches will be Thomas Collet. He had this business idea a year ago, he reflected on it and started to develop it since then and he offered to use it as the basis of our work in Business Entrepreneurship, which we unanimously accepted since it appeared to us that this idea had the greatest development potential among all the ideas we gathered as a group.
Our website will be accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so that our customers can always work on their projects. Our automated online chat service will provide them assistance around the clock regarding basic issues through conversations with a virtual agent. Besides this system, a call-center will remain at the disposal of our clientele 24/7, should our customers need further support in their use of our online services.
In order to define the mission statement of our company, we asked us various questions such as what our business does for customers, why we are in this industry, why we want to start this business… And we came up with the following mission statement:
“Pitches: support entrepreneurs to make their ideas a reality”
As for our tagline, we chose to keep it simple by focusing on the main tool provided to our customers to present their ideas to potential clients and investors, which is the elevator pitch, and made a pun with the concept of elevation:
“Pitches: raise your idea”
