SlangDang: News the Moment it Happens
This is the presentation to potential angel investors for the web application SlangDang. SlangDang uses social media to identify breaking news and then displays real time search results and relevant news content so that users can follow all available information related to a breaking news story as it happens.
7. Financials Sept - Dec 2010 10 2011 2012 Assumptions Page Views /Mo Avg 1 600,000 6,000,000 30,000,000 Investment = $250,000 Advertising Stake = 10% Ads 2,3 $12,000 $360,000 $1,800,000 Hurdle Rate = 5% Media Referrals 2,4 $10,000 $300,000 $1,500,000 News Wire Pro Service 5 $27,000 $63,000 SmartPhone App 6 $45,500 $227,500 Total Revenue $22,000 $732,500 $3,590,500 IRR = Research and Development 7 $33,750 $90,000 $135,000 Sales and Direct Marketing 8 $16,100 $64,350 $198,150 28% General and Adminstrative 9 $1,898 $18,980 $94,900 Total Expenses $51,748 $173,330 $428,050 EBIT ($29,748) $559,170 $3,162,450
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9. User Acquisition Launch Growth Maturity Breaking news and getting word of mouth referrals Directly approaching journalists, technologists, and news junkies Being placed in RTS results Marketing additional algorithms for other niches Posting SlangDang news on social media networks and websites like Digg, Fark, Hacker News Linked back by media partners Custom algorithms for governments, marketing departments and financial services firms SEO search results on recent news events
10. Value to Users and Partners SlangDang combines the appeal of BNO with the audience of CNN or Drudge Report – and uses both business models: Custom news wire service and online advertising.
11. Exit Strategy News Wire Services News Organizations Information Services SlangDang would add value to their existing news wires and customers. SlangDang would provide a social media breaking news component to existing audience. SlangDang would offer suggestions improving the usability of real-time search results.
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Notes de l'éditeur
January 15 th , 3:31pm – I’m sitting at my desk at 40 th and Broadway, 23 rd floor. I receive a text message from a friend that works over by the New York Times building. There has been a plane crash. I quickly jump on Google, then Google News, then CNN then Drudge Report. Nothing. There will be no regular news report for another 20-minutes, which didn’t seem right to me.
That was what brought these three people together: That’s me, Trent, Im a serial entrepreneur still managing two non-tech start ups. After the Miracle on the Hudson, Mike and I contacted Talat: A brilliant mathematician out of IIT Delphi and currently a brain for hire with Quantips, his consulting firm, and a track record for developing successful web-apps. And then Mike, who is also in his own start-up and has specialized in online marketing - essentially getting eyeballs on to products and then on to profit.
So to solve the Miracle on the Hudson problem we first looked at what we knew: People were texting information before major news organizations could report on the event. As it turns out, people were also tweeting information. So what we did was take the twitter feed, analyzed a few different variables we thought would be important for indentifying “breaking news” or as we call it unpredictable, high-impact events. Bingo. Every time something news worthy happens, we get it first, before the major news outlets and also before it starts trending on Twitter. We also took it one step further: Users are able to click on the event and then see aggregated relevant information that is popping up on the internet, so users can follow the event as it unfolds in real-time. You can see that this slide is a screen shot from April 10 th , when the President of Poland’s plane crashed.
The market is huge for online news: Roughly 76.5MM, just in the US, use the internet as their primary news source. We also have a couple of other secondary markets, like news data and smart phone apps, that look promising.
Our main competitor BNO News, which is trying to solve the same problem, but they do so by using a combination of resourceful humans and social media. We don’t use humans to find our stories, only algorithms. This gives us better uptime and lower overhead.
Pretty simple initial business model – Break news, get users, target advertising and then profit. Down the line there is a lot of fun stuff we can do with the business model, ala Digg.com, but we are going to keep it simple for now.
These are typically financial projections for news websites that rely on advertising, with us projecting roughly 5MM uniques per month by 2012. Even with this old-school business model, we believe strongly that a 28% IRR is possible off of a 250k investment that we are seeking. The investment will go exclusively to Talat and a team of developers in Malaysia to build out and improve functionality.
Breaking news is key. Initially pointing aggregators to ours feed will be crucial, but after the site tips and gets a few 100k uniques, will generate traffic and grow via word of mouth.
SD cherry picks the advantages of BNO, Drudge and CNN and presents this to the user. SlangDang offers users up to the minute news headlines, plus RTS information on the developing news story as well as content from news partners on one site. This is a one stop shop, which is easy and attractive for users to follow, and makes our audience perfect for funneling to advertisers and media partners.