Find it!~ if it's in Romania you'll find it right away ~

© RoadTech

2012

Contents

• Working in a team with geographically spread members

• Brainstorming and voting the startup idea• Developing the first Business Model Canvas• Initial Market Research• Survey• Face to face interviews – questions• Results of a Deeper Market Research analysis• Conclusions

Working in a team with geographically spread members

Working in a team with geographically spread members

- initially our team had 11 members, only 5 remaining until the present moment- our team is formed from people from different cities in Romania, and we also have members from abroad

Means of communication:- e-mail- Skype conferences- Doodle polls- Google Docs

Communication flow:

1)an e-mail is sent to the team members containing the Doodle poll link in order to vote the time frame of our next meeting

2)voting on Doodle3)meeting on Skype; during the meeting an online document is created

with everything that is discussed during that meeting4)After the meeting an e-mail is sent containing the link of the document

, some observations and the conclusions

Brainstorming and voting the startup idea

Brainstorming and voting the startup idea

- initially we came with a list of good and bad ideas

- some bad ideas we liked very much because it stretched of understanding of the problem and forced us to have better approaches in order to implement it, even if it was a bad idea:

Rent a fire arm

- Working on other people's bad ideas was also fun because it helped us see and understand different points of view, forcing us to walk in their shoes for a while:

The "Beer buddy" app

Developing the first Business Model Canvas

Developing the first Business Model Canvas(1)

Customer segment- Smartphone and internet users;- Foreign and domestic tourists;- People that like doing sports;- Hikers and nature lovers;- People that need to find the nearest place to buy stuff;- Companies that pay for the advertisement

Value proposition- Basic module (free) - Find places of interest in any city in Romania (Parkings, Shops, Administration buildings, Public WCs, etc.);- (Basic) Find events and stuff happening now around you (events, festivals, specials in pubs, movies, etc.);- (Basic) Tourist module - Find tourist attractions and other touristy things (hotels, restaurants, etc.); show places where historical events took place (battles, birthplaces, etc.)- Shopping module - Where to find specific items to buy;- Nature module - Find trails in the mountains to enjoy nature, cabins in the mountains, (future: free places, reservation online), sightseeing places with Wiki to description (waterfalls, caves, climbing routes);- Sports module - Find places where you can bungee, raft, cycle, climb, skydive, paraglide, etc. + schools, rent shops, where to do them, etc.- Available on the net and as an App;- Reviews from other members (how nice is a pub, etc.)-News alert about a specific area (important for every person in a specific area, like roadblocks, landslides, broken bridges);- Users can add / vote / review POIs, trails, etc.; users can become power users and get discounts;- Users can set Alerts for different events; they can add events to a calendar and invite friends;- Create itineraries and share them with others (Create routes between selected POIs.)

Developing the first Business Model Canvas(2)

Channels- internet;- app;- tourist websites and magazines;

Customer relationships- Ranking users: users get points for adding, validating, etc.;- Customer support (for app maintenance);- Users that have a lot of activity can become power users; power users get discounts and other advantages;

Revenue Streams- fee for having a bigger priority in the results (sponsored ads)- receive money for special modules (with very specific information)

Key Resources- Web developers;- Web domain;- Relationship with banks;- Servers containing all the databases

Key Activities- Create app & website- Create a banking contract that allows us to get paid- Insert points of interest- Add and update ever changing information (events,shopping, news, etc)- Collect customer opinions and improve the App and website based on that

Developing the first Business Model Canvas(3)

Key Partners- Companies that appear in our results (from every market segment);- Public Institutions;- Tourism Agencies;- Mountain & Sea rescue;- Magazines that advertise events;

Cost Structure- registration and start-up costs;- employee fees (web developers, app developers);- web services (bandwidth, storage, etc.);- people to add POIs (in the beginning);- banks fees;- marketing costs;

Initial Market Research

Initial Market Research (1)

Initial Market Research (2)

Initial Market Research( 3)

Survey

Survey (1)

Survey description:

This survey has been realized to gather information about the need for a software application, which will make easier the process of finding specific information about locations in Romania. This application aims to provide detailed information about:- Points of interest in cities (sights, administrative buildings, restaurants, bars, clubs, cultural sites, hotels, parks, banks, etc..)- Events that are happening in a certain location (concerts, festivals, parties in clubs, movies in cinemas, plays in theater, Flash Mob's, etc..)- Historical monuments and tourist attractions (castles, battlefields, places where historic events happened, etc..)- Location of stores that sell a particular product (clothing stores of some kind, jewelry, electronics, furniture, appliances, etc..)- Tourist routes, lodges, tourist areas (waterfalls, mountain peaks, tourist attractions in the nature, caves, glaciers, deltas, mud volcanoes, lakes, etc..)- Practice areas of certain sports, rental equipment, working hours (cycling, paragliding, skiing, climbing routes, rafting, etc..)

Survey (2)

Our questions were:

1. Are you a smart phone user?2. How often, over the past year, have you needed to find information about:a. POI (points of interest) around the city;b. events (concerts, parties, etc.);c. historical monuments and tourist attractions;d. shops for specific products;e. hiking routes, cabins and other natural attractions (waterfalls, caves, etc.);f. places where people can practice, learn sports and rent sporting equipment.

3. How much are you willing to pay for the above mentioned information ?4. What are your motivations for adding or reviewing information ?5. How often users will add and review current information ?6. What is your previous experience with similar applications ?7. What is your gender, age and education information?

Survey (3)

Our results were:

1. Of the total responders, 65% are smart phone users.2. Our responders found most valuable information about events, shop locations and touristic routes. The distribution of responder interests is as follows:a. 37.5% would never access the app, 52.5% would access it around 5 times, 10% would access it more than 20 times;b. 35% would never access the app, 55% would access it around 5 times, 10% would access it more than 20 times;c. 55% would never access the app, 37.5% would access it around 5 times, 7.5% would access it more than 20 times;d. 35% would never access the app, 52.5% would access it around 5 times, 12.5% would access it more than 20 times;e. 42.5% would never access the app, 52.5% would access it around 5 times, 5% would access it more than 20 times;f. 57.5% would never access the app, 40% would access it around 5 times, 2.5% would access it more than 20 times;3. Of our responders around 74% would like the app to be free, 20% would pay between 1 and 2 EUR and 4% would pay between 2 and 3 EUR, 2% would pay between 3 and 4 EUR and none would pay over 4 EUR.4. 85% of responders would add new information to the app voluntarily and 82.5% would review information added by other people.5. Around 80% of responders would add or review information less than 10 times a month and around 20% would review or add it at least 10 but less than 20 times.6. 72.5% of respondents never used this kind of application before but would like to try it.7. Our responders have ages between 18 and 35 years, out of which 47.5% are female. 82.5% have at least a Bachelor’s degree.

Face to face interviews – questions

Smartphone owner?

Any problems finding places?

When do they need to find places?

At home? Or in the city?

Face to face interviews – questions (1)

What apps do they currently use?

• ability to create itineraries between locations;• setting alerts for specific events• an user community (being able to rate places, add

reviews and suggest places/events to friends);• a point system where users would earn points for

certain tasks (e.g. adding places) and get rewards (e.g. discounts) in return.

Are they interested in our application?

Face to face interviews – questions (2)

For what are they willing to pay?

What is their preferred payment method?

Open discussion

Face to face interviews – questions (3)

Results of a Deeper Market Research analysis

Results of a Deeper market research analysis (1)

General feedback:

-users would be interested about what this application has to offer, but not very willing to pay for it

Most interesting areas:

1) access to information about events (5/5)2) access to information about where to shop for certain

products(5/5) 3) access to information about sporting events (rent shops, sport areas, training camps, etc.) (3/5)

Results of a Deeper market research analysis (2)

Advices received :

A) Shopping module:-users would like not just to know the position of the gas stations,

but also the price of the gas in order to compare and be able to choose the cheapest oneB) Tourism & Hiking module:

-the ability to save an itinerary (with everything to see and do on the way) which could also be made public: some of the information should be saved on the terminal device

-users wanted to be able to find and save places where they could enjoy the view

-they were interested about an option to be able to save their personal hiking trails

C) Rewarding system:-users will received points for commenting about the existing

information in the app (or adding new ones): users are willing to do this without being paid, but it should not get out of the screen that they are currently on in order to do so

Results of a Deeper market research analysis (3)

Rating of our certain features:

-set and receive alerts about certain events : well received

- the ability to save an itinerary (with everything to see and do on the way) which could also be made public: well received (4/5)

Results of a Deeper market research analysis (4)

Payment:

-some users would rather pay once for the application, or for a newer database instead of paying a monthly fee-users would be willing to pay an initial price of the application of : - for gas station locations: 1-1.5 euro - for the shopping module: 0.5 euro - for events: 0.4 euro-users would be willing to pay for updates the following fees: - for gas station locations: 0.8 euro - for the shopping module:0.3 euro - for events: 0.2 euro

-even if finding events near them was an important feature, our possible customers are not willing to pay very much because in general this information is already on the Internet in an unstructured format.

- the users seem to have a minimum price or even free mentality

Conclusions

Conclusions

Still, from the market analysis and all the information we’ve gathered this far we concluded that the local market size is too small. Furthermore there are some similar apps on the local market (e.g. OrasulMeu, Sapte Seri, Redescopera Romania) which are developed by firms that do advertising for events (e.g. Sapte seri, 24 FUN). Then we wanted to expand to the international market. After we researched this possibility, we concluded that the competition level is much higher for the app to be a good start-up idea. All the major players have apps available (e.g. FourSquare, Google Maps, Ovi Maps) and free services are available on the web (Open Street Map, Wikimapia, Google Maps).We then explored the possibility of “attacking” only niche markets like creating an app only for tracking events or markets or stores. It seems that for both niches apps are available with quite complete information. For concerts people use apps like “onTour - concert finder” and for shopping all the major brands have their own free app. As a result, we concluded that this app would not be a viable start-up idea and we are working on finding a new idea.