Re: [kFW] Kendra Foundation funding strategy...

[Paul Evans <paul.evans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Daniel

Thanks for your email.

I believe you do need a business plan for setting up the Kendra foundation.
Although it might not have investors in the traditional sense, whoever
contributes these massive sums will want to see (i) clear objectives for the
foundation (ii) competent financial and business planning (iii) make sure
the management knows what they're doing (iv) that enough (but not too much)
money is being raised to do the job properly (v) that money will be well
spent.

Each stakeholder in the foundation will have objectives. For instance some
public funding bodies will want to look for benefits to the community at
large, such as making it easier for smaller organisations to sell their
content world-wide. A content organisation would look it as a way of making
their content more easily accessible to customers. You need to find the
'hotspot' for each organisation you talk to about funding. All will most
certainly want a business plan before seriously considering your request.

Granted, as there is a large Research element to the project and costings /
timings are difficult, but you really need to carefully consider what you
need to do and come up with an educated & realistic time / cost plan. Saying
you might possibly need around £5M over 5 to 10 years simply won't cut it.

You may be incredibly lucky and find somebody who will give you the money
without too many questions asked. However I think this is very unlikely -
especially in today's economic climate where people have to clearly justify
why they are spending considerable sums of money.

By taking a professional, business oriented approach to funding I think your
chances will improve considerably.

I'd be interested in other people's thoughts and comments - particularly
from some of the larger commercial organisations following Kendra.

Cheers,


Paul.

On 3/11/03 6:43 pm, "Daniel Harris" <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Paul,
> 
> Thanks for your speedy email. I like your questions. I wish I could
> answer them right now. But let me preamble. Perhaps I shouldn't be
> asking for money at this stage. Perhaps I should be asking for someone
> who knows how to answer these questions.
> 
> Points 1, 5 and 9 are fully answerable. I can give you the final stage
> of 8 as that's the vision. I could do a rough 10. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, the
> bulk of 8 and 11 are all unanswerable in any detail by me unless I get
> some good detailed questions.
> 
> If I knew how to answer all the questions then I would have gone about
> this in a completely different way. I would have built a business plan,
> got the money and built the system and sold it for loads. So, I set up
> a non-profit company instead and put the end vision out there in the
> world. Bear in mind there will be no "investors" in Kendra - only
> sponsorship and grants. The value they get back is not in cash but in
> having the system built and up and running.
> 
> Is it arrogant of me to even suggest that business plans are a waste of
> time? I and 2 other lads built up an ISP (Cerbernet) with a turnover of
> just over 1M and sold it for over 4M. We never had a business plan. We
> sold to First Telecom (they had business plans) and they sold to
> Atlantic (they had business plans). Atlantic went bust.
> 
> Does the method of having a vision and setting short term goals based
> on that vision and implementing and then revising those goals as we go
> forward have any worth in this world? I did very well by using this
> method. And, so far, that's how Kendra's moved forward.
> 
> The real problem I have with business plans is that it's pretty much
> all guess work. The scope of the project is so huge that we just don't
> know what's going to happen or who the best people are to get involved.
> My heart is in doing the project not trying to prove to someone that
> it's possible. To answer some of your questions one would need to trawl
> through much of the web. This could take a lifetime. There are so many
> projects that overlap Kendra and none are the same that display
> Kendra's staying power - meaning there are similar ones but they come
> and go - usually just dreamers (without the doing bit).
> 
> The reason why the time scale is 5 years and counting is that this is
> not just a technology development project. We want to see the system in
> use. So, it's not only about getting the technology to work together
> but also getting the people to use it. That education takes a long
> time. There's a lot of inertia out there.
> 
> In 1994/5 I was part of the Cerberus Digital Jukebox project. We
> predicted that "in 5 years there would be mass piracy of music on the
> Internet" - admittedly we wanted to sell our music encryption download
> system ;-) Now it's almost 10 years since then and the music industry
> is only just (JUST!) starting to begin to be serious about online music
> sales. No blame. I understand the forces afoot. Perhaps we should say
> 10M seed money for a 10 year project.
> 
> So, where does that leave us? What are our options?
> 
> All that said I am very willing to put much effort into writing a
> business plan if I can get help to do it...
> 
>> 1) Clear objectives and overview of the opportunity
> 
> See: http://www.kendra.org.uk/index.php
> and: http://www.kendra.org.uk/about.php
> and:  
> http://www.kendra.org.uk/documents/kendra-an-introduction-draft-
> current.html
> 
>> 2) (Preferably) a design for the software - if possible
> 
> We design as we go. But there are lots of interface goals on the Wiki.
> See:
> 
> http://www.kendra.org.uk/wiki/wiki.pl?KendraToolsDemo
> http://www.kendra.org.uk/wiki/wiki.pl?KendraToolsProjectPlan
> 
>> 3) Timescales for design, implementation, testing, deployment
> 
> I hope to have a prototype to demo at Milia 2004. Then I hope to get
> funding in.
> 
>> 4) Management team details e.g. who will manage the project. If you're
>> looking at obtaining significant money you really need somebody who is
>> experienced in these matters
> 
> So far I have Neil Harris hired to build the prototype.
> 
>> 5) A clear proposition to third parties as to why they should
>> contribute the money i.e. What commercial / other benefit they would
>> get out of it. The 'good publicity' angle simply isn't enough
> 
> Having an open market for content would increase the amount of money
> changing hands and so increase prosperity - I guess - I'm no economist.
> If one personally can't see the benefit of having "I want what I want,
> when I want and I want to be able to pay for it!" then I can't do much
> about it. That's the goal. For all I know it may be bad for big
> business. It may level the playing field - shock horror. How could the
> world function if everybody had the same amount of money? Those aren't
> my problems. It's for people to decide where the benefits are for them
> selves - I can't do it for them.
> 
>> 6) What equipment would be needed for development and testing
> 
> Lots of lovely Apple kit please! ;-) Seriously, servers and bandwidth.
> But we're only testing on Kendra servers so I don't think it'll be
> astronomical costs here.
> 
>> 7) An exploitation (marketing) plan
> 
> Much of this will be done by building useful products and get people to
> market by word of mouth. Most effective way.
> 
>> 8) Product road map
> 
> I can give you the end goal. For starters see:
> 
> http://www.kendra.org.uk/wiki/wiki.pl?KendraToolsProjectPlan
> 
>> 9) How you will work with standards institutes
> 
> All the way. This project is all about technology aggregation. If we
> can help it we don't want to create anything new we just want things to
> work better. So, think of Kendra as a thin skeleton to hang existing
> standards and competing technology off.
> 
>> 10) Cashflow forecasts for at least 2 years
> 
> I reckon 10 people maximum. 100K each. I want to work with the top
> people. I'd prefer not to have an office as people will be spread out
> globally. We'll be working remotely. Most people will be broadband
> enabled and that is not a significant cost. Then marketing is the other
> big spend.
> 
>> 11) Competitor analysis
> 
> There is no body out there with our clear goals. Have you seen anyone?
> 
> ----
> 
> Cheers Daniel
> 
> On 2 Nov 2003, at 12:25, Paul Evans wrote:
>> If you're looking at obtaining funding you need to create a business
>> plan,
>> which normally contains:
> 
>