Disclaimer All research on startup and the whole investment memo has been done for personal use of Akim Arhipov.
Solution
Votemo is interaction tool for virtual events.
Founders:
Lean canvas
Product
Stakeholders: Event organisers, Viewers, Online/Hybrid conferences
Problem: Biggest concern of event organisers is how to engage their audience and how to match live engagement experience. This all translates into ROI / The greatest challenge for hybrid and online event organisers is How to increase ROI?
Also:
- How to reduce drop off rates
- How to increase show up rates
- How to personalise and improve post event communication.
Solution: Interaction tool with Live screen graphics (custom overlay options) and Powerful API.
Use Cases: Online events, conferences, festivals, webinars, Television (pivoted from this as TV has no big future), Streamers (potentially)
Value Proposition: Combination of end user widget with graphic engine to run screen graphics and Powerful public API + voting option for Rev. Gen + integrated payment solution for sales.
Clients are "in-love" with customisable options of Votemo, colour schemes, custom emojis etc.
Market size:
Business model:
- At the moment Votemo is mainly using the "per event" pricing. Votemo has proposed subscription models to their clients and some are using subscription for small events and paying extra for customised, bigger, events. After Votemo has developed solution for admins to customise animations (Color, font, theme) automatically, with no human interaction, we can add customers to XL subscription package.
- Per event pricing is a good way in for first time customers as they get a good overview of the functionality and potential.
- Monthly subscription (also threshold based options) still need validation. So far one of their clients has asked for a subscription based pricing but eventually still opted for event based pricing as they don’t have a stable flow of events and are working on events of very different scales.
- Votemo also allows to conduct Payments for products and "Paid Voting" on the platform, which is also an extra rev stream. They have been using it for X factor - model is a Rev Share and looks (in the case they had) like this: Rev Share was - 65% paid out 35% kept to Votemo. Generally, Rev Share % really depends on the TELCOs of each country as majority of interactive votings are being done through the smartphones.
- While the paid voting share with the client is 65% and 35%, Votemo also needs to share part of the earnings with Micropayment provider who then shares it with Telcos.
- Currently Votemo is adding new payment tool additional for micropayment to offer lower fee on revenue sharing. Options are EveryPay or Stripe.
Also: Votemo is storing data of all the voting / engagement / behaviour result / QnAs + all the feedback from people after the events. All this data can help Votemo to understand different event audience behaviour and improve the next event with the same profile. Data can be stored, sorted and, once there is a great pool of data available, potentially can be turned into a valuable business direction in itself.
This data has been aggregated from August 2020.
Validation
Clients:
Potential Clients:
All sort of online / hybrid events. Most valuable client is event agency (one onboarding, many clients and projects).At the moment Votemo closed and delivered on the deal with Cannes Lions Live (London) | 21-25 June 2021, and also Simple Session (10m + audience worldwide). Which are really big if not the biggest clients profile Votemo has had so far.
Competition:
Slido is the biggest competitor of Votemo according to the founders opinion. This due to the fact that they are tapping into same market mostly. Cannes Lions switched from Slido to Votemo this year. Agency, who delivered Cannes Lions is UK based Ascential who was onboarded through AdWords campaign in June. Cannes Lions said they chose Votemo because of customisable Screen graphics solution (animated layer on top of the video - overlay), this is something Slido or any other competitor doesn't offer.
Also:
Operations
Stage:
Core IP built, company is in the revenue stage. As things stand they have stable customers, which are coming back on the monthly basis. Number is growing but Votemo is struggling to handle the needs as there is quite some interest coming from within. This data has been aggregated from August 2020 as then the third version of the product has been released.
Business:
Since August, 100% return rate of the customers. The MRR is not stable as customers need different amounts of events time to time.
Current investors:
Pre-seed investor Levira invested 150k for an option for 10%
VNTRS investing 50 000 eur for 1000 dev hours
Team:
Future:
Expansion to London, UK, best market to spend on the events (stats) + English is common language. Expansion to Germany. Building the SAAS platform to make it easily usable for bigger masses. Launch new bundle for Micropayment option beginning of October (Micropayment solution ready, will add Stripe or similar solution for bigger global purchases)
Fundraising Summary
Funds would mostly be spent on: development + sales & marketing. Votemo has now opened German office as well, as there is inbound interest coming from Germany. Sales person in Germany was signed purely on the pay-per-lead basis.
Ask: seed-round € 250K (200K committed)
Valuation: € 3m
Cap Table:
Founders agreement (vesting agreement for time spent) set for founders
- 3 founders 60% (currently 20% / 20% / 20%)
- shareholder animator/designer 3%
- Levira option for 10%
- Option pool 27%
Pitch:
Pros:
- Solid team (communication / skill match / knowledge of market)
- Good tech understanding of products needs
- Client profile until today
- Pre-seed, hands-on investor with a good match ( operating in the same vertical )
Cons:
- Core IP built, company is in the revenue stage. Currently there is too much manual work that team has actually do while serving the client. At the moment Votemo is offering clients project based solution (clients are recurring), aim is to give a chance for clients to use the platform independently (SAAS model), with no need of the Votemo's team getting involved. Biggest issue is "Tech challenges" - how to guarantee stable dev flow. Options are in house or extended team. Documentation creation and sharing the knowledge is key. Votemo need to have structure and knowledge base present and available during the course of development. Important part is to have a possibility to on-board and off board people for Votemo;
- Unstable MRR - VNTRS is here to help with scaling
- CEO is working full time, but most team is currently committed part-time, and needs to be switched to full-time ASAP.