The document describes WeSpline, a social network and search engine designed to connect startups, enterprises, investors, and other stakeholders. It aims to foster business and innovation through features like an intelligent search engine, communications tools, and AI recommendations. The platform will help users find partners, clients, mentors, and opportunities. Revenue will come from free basic services and premium subscriptions, as well as targeted ads.

1. Dec/2018
A Community-Built Database of companies and individuals
who can find each other and interact in a Social Network Framework
with Artificial Intelligence Capabilities

2. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
WeSpline is a "one stop shop", a mix of social
network, search engine, and AI recommendations
algorithm specifically designed for the startups’
ecosystem.

3. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Enterprises
innovation adopters
Startups / Innovative Companies
innovation developers
By building a Community of Users, we aim to foster Business, and
the development and spread of Innovation across the globe:
Hubs
Incubators, Accelerators,
Universities,
Research Parks,
Government Agencies, etc.
Service Providers
Law Firms,
Accountants, Auditors,
Consultants, Advisors,
Media Companies, etc.
Investors
VC Funds,
Private Equity Funds,
Banks,
Crowdfunding Platforms,
Angel Investor Institutions
Community of Users:

4. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
- Intelligent Search Engine, with powerful filters and tags to find
companies and technologies
- Tools to build confidential portfolio of Favorite companies
- Communications capabilities connecting users to key contacts
within the platform
- Channel to promote Special Programs for startups
- Channel to offer Challenges from the industry to startups and
entrepreneurs
- Conference / Meetup page that allows users to interact before,
during, and after an event
- Artificial Intelligence algorithm to generate meaningful
Recommendations of companies
- Matching system to help entrepreneurs find Mentors in specific
fields and location
Main Features:

5. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Startups/Innovative Companies:
Startups/Innovative Companies will have the opportunity to actively
search, get exposed to, and communicate with hundreds of Enterprises
and Investors worldwide.
Potential clients and investors will be able to learn about their businesses,
products/services, and founding partners. Also, it will be easier for Startups
to find and contact the "right" investors, i.e., those investors who have a
particular focus on their sectors and locations.
Moreover, entrepreneurs will be able to use our intelligent matching/search
system to find mentors in specific fields and location.
Core Solutions:

6. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Enterprises:
For Enterprises, it will be easier to discover and learn (Intelligent
Search Engine) about a given innovation/startup through WeSpline and
seize opportunities of collaboration that may otherwise be missed (AI
Recommendations Algorithm).
If they cannot find what they are looking for, they can post Challenges to
startups and entrepreneurs to get tailor-made solutions.
Core Solutions:

7. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Investors:
Investors will be able to better identify and follow up on opportunities,
especially if they happen to be in different geographies.
According to the Financial Times article entitled “Artificial intelligence is
guiding venture capital to start-ups”, one of the biggest challenges for venture
capital companies is finding interesting investment targets before anyone
else. ‘My job used to be about getting on a plane once a week and going to a
different European city to try to find people who were doing interesting
things,’ says Roberto Bonanzinga, co-founder of InReach Ventures. ‘It was
inefficient’, he says.”
Core Solutions:

8. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Hubs:
Hubs will also benefit from this interaction. For example:
• Accelerators / Incubators / Government Agencies will be able to
better advertise their Special Programs for Startups and Entrepreneurs,
organize their meetups and conferences in the Conferences/Meetups
page, and spread the word about the technologies that they help build;
• Universities – students and researchers – will be able to take Challenges
from Enterprises and develop tailor-made solutions for the Industry.
They will also be able to find partners and sponsors in the Industry for
their own projects and new technologies. This will hopefully bring tech
transfer from Academia to the Industry to a whole new level.
Core Solutions:

9. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Pre-Companies:
Entrepreneurs / Researchers will be able to build profile pages for their
prototypes and research. They will also be able to find partners, sponsors,
potential clients, and investors for their projects and new technologies.
This will hopefully bring tech transfer from Academia to the Industry to
a whole new level.
Service Providers:
Service Providers will be able to reach potential clients more easily and be
reached by them as well;
Core Solutions:

10. Global Market Size – For Companies:
CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Large + SMEs (142 Selected Countries)
Source: World Bank, 2014
~30 mn
companies
~70 K
companies
Technology-Driven Startups
Source: Nasscom Report 2016
Global Market Size – For Individuals behind these companies: ???
Addressable Market:

11. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
FINDER: Search & Find Companies and Individuals
Selected Screens:

12. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Selected Screens:
FAVORITES: Build your Portfolio of (Confidential) Favorite Companies

13. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Selected Screens:
NEWSFEED: Learn and Stay Updated

14. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Selected Screens:
MESSAGES: Connect & Communicate

15. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Selected Screens:
RECOMMENDATIONS: Get Relevant Recommendations of Companies
(Artificial Intelligence Algorithm)

16. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
WeSpline provides its users with multiple novel Intelligent functions by leveraging the
state of the art technology in:
• Information Retrieval,
• Natural Language Processing,
• Text Mining, and
• Machine Learning
- Intelligent semantic Search technology enables flexible and effective exploration of
relevant companies to engage in business;
- Semantic understanding of company profiles and challenges enhances state of the art
Recommender System technology to provide accurate matching of tech
developers and tech adopters, thus enabling accurate recommendations of
companies, technologies or challenges;
- Powerful Machine Learning techniques will be applied across all functions in
WeSpline to enable the system to learn from the user interaction data that will be
accumulated naturally as the system is being used, and self-improve its own
performance for all the tasks overtime.
Technology:

17. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Basic Services (FREE): include company/user profiles, finder, basic search,
newsfeed, messages, among others.
Premium Services (subscription): business analytics, posting challenges,
posting special programs, posting job ads, among others.
Revenue from Ads:
• Text Ads: ads will show for a given target audience on the right-hand side
of their pages.
• Sponsored Newsfeed Content: companies can boost their Newsfeed
publications, Challenge posts, Special Programs posts, and Job Ads.
• Sponsored In-Mail: companies can do in-mail targeted campaigns.
• Sponsored Finder Results: Companies can pay to appear at the top of
the search result list (sponsored results). Other useful (non-paid) results
will typically follow below.
Business Model:

18. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Phase in the Release according to:
• Features – we plan to release “core” features first;
• Countries – we plan to release WeSpline in the US, Israel, and Brazil first.
• Small Groups – to create critical mass, we are working on successful short-
term "user cases" that are scalable and can be can be reproduced many times in
different countries. Our 1st “back door” strategy is Conferences/Meetups (as
explained in the next page).
For Scale & Traction – focus on distributing our product through Hubs:
• Accelerators, Incubators, Universities, and VCs to reach Startups and
Innovative Companies;
• Industry Associations for Corporations and Mid-Sized Companies.
Product Release / Distribution Strategy:

19. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
The Conferences/Meetups page will basically show (i) the program for that
conference/meetup, (ii) the participants, i.e., users/companies (organizers, speakers,
sponsors, panelists, attendees) with hyperlinks to their company/ personal profiles
in our platform, and (iii) conference Newsfeed.
Users will be able to see each other’s profiles, message each other, and interact
before, during, and after an event.
This page will never be erased or lost, so the "memory" of pitches (YouTube
videos can be posted on the page) and interactions (newsfeed and chats) will be
kept "forever".
Also, since the list of all participants will be shown, users will be able to easily
identify each other and send invitations to connect, sparing cards.
And it will be possible to search and find this page in our platform in the future,
so investors or anyone will be able to revisit these companies, people, and
information, if they want to. This is totally different from all the other support
conference websites currently available.
In the future, we will allow companies to sell tickets through our platform too.
“User Case” – Conferences / Meetups:

20. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
EFFICIENT
AFFORDABLEEXPENSIVE
INEFFICIENT
(time consuming, biased, or
not adequately designed for that purpose)
Tech Scouters
Competition - Examples:

21. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
• It unifies Search + Social Media + AI Recommendations in a one-stop shop solution
• Finder allows users to access our database and find exactly what they are looking for
inside our platform (Intelligent Advanced Search with filters and tags). It’s a build-in
“Google”. Database / Search solution…
• Users can then browse the profiles of companies they have found, build their
(confidential) Favorites portfolio of selected companies, and connect and communicate
with other companies/users inside our platform. Social Media solution…
• AI algorithm to generate meaningful Recommendations of companies.
• Specifically Designed for Business Purposes
• WeSpline is a “task-driven” business network where Companies are the “first class users”.
• User-friendly and intuitive navigation: menus are very straightforward, with no labyrinths
of links to reach the features in the platform.
• Fair and Meaningful Recommendations
• WeSpline’s Artificial Intelligence Algorithm generates unbiased and meaningful
recommendations of companies to users. Our goal is to facilitate/foster business and
help users – from startups to corporations, investors, etc. – to seize opportunities they
would have otherwise missed. There is no regional bias in these recommendations. Also,
we do not charge an absurd fee for introducing ideas and companies to our users
(disruption in the business intermediation market).
• Other Features Will Follow: we plan to expand our one-stop shop solution to areas such as
content creation, job boards, among others. Our MVP is just the tip of the iceberg.
What Makes WeSpline So Special:

22. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
ChengXiang Zhai, PhD
Mentor / Advisor (& Future Partner)
Fernanda Torós, PhD
Founder
Patrick Gallagher
Software Engineer / Backend Developer
Pedro Richa Dabarian
Partner
Leonardo Bispo de Oliveira
Mentor / Software Engineer @ WeSpline via
Prototype.tech – Services include assisting with
infrastructure and backend developmentRomer Zandomingos Alves
Web Designer @ WeSpline via
Fator Criativo - web design &
frontend development
Team:

23. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Fernanda Torós, PhD – Founder
Previously: Founding Partner & CEO at Sabra Capital, Partner & Portfolio Manager at Oren Investimentos, Portfolio Manager
& Head of Equity Research at Nest Investimentos, Equity Analyst at Investidor Profissional and Leblon Equities, Economist at
Credit Suisse, and executive at AmBev. In Academia, she was visiting assistant professor at Virginia Tech, where she taught
courses in International Finance, lecturer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where she taught courses in
Corporate Finance, and researcher at the Inter-American Development Bank in D.C., where she worked during Summer 2002.
She has PhD in Economics & MS in Finance from UIUC, and BA and MA in Economics from PUC-Rio, Brazil.
ChengXiang Zhai, PhD – Mentor / Advisor (& Future Partner)
Dr. Zhai is Professor of Computer Science and Willett Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where
he also holds a joint appointment at the Institute for Genomic Biology, Statistics, and the Graduate School of Library and
Information Science. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Nanjing University in 1990, and a Ph.D. in Language and
Information Technologies from Carnegie Mellon University in 2002. He worked at Clairvoyance Corp. as a Research Scientist
and a Senior Research Scientist from 1997 to 2000. He has over 25 years of experience in R&D of novel intelligent information
systems from both academia and industry. His research interests include information retrieval, text mining, natural language
processing, machine learning, biomedical informatics, and intelligent education systems. He has published over 200 papers and
holds 5 patents in these areas. He is the major contributor of the Lemur toolkit (http://www.lemurproject.org), an information
retrieval and text mining toolkit used by many people. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and received multiple awards from
industry, including IBM Faculty Award, HP Innovation Research Award, Microsoft Beyond Search Research Award, Google
Research Grant Award, and Yahoo Faculty Research Engagement Program Award. More info: http://czhai.cs.illinois.edu/.
Pedro Richa Dabarian – Partner
Previously: Partner & Risk/Compliance Officer at Sabra Capital, and Financial Analyst at Koin Latam. MBA in Investment
Management and BA in Industrial Engineering from PUC-Rio, Brazil, with credits obtained at California Polytechnic University.
Team Members:

24. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Leonardo Bispo de Oliveira – Software Engineer / Backend Developer
Founder at Prototype; Co-Founder/CTO at Notejuri. Previously: Co-Founder/Technical Leader at RockSpoon; Senior Software
Engineer at mbr targeting GmbH, VOIPFUTURE, and Orolix; Software Engineer at Cinq Technologies; Intern at HP; MS in
Distributed Systems and BS in Computer Science from PUC-Paraná, Brazil.
Romer Zandomingos Alves – Web Designer / Frontend Developer
Founder at Fator Criativo; UX Designer at Icatu Seguros. Previously: Web Designer at Petrobras; BS in Industrial Design from
UFRJ, Brazil.
Patrick Gallagher – Software Engineer / Backend Developer
BS candidate in Computer Science, with a dual degree in Technological Entrepreneurship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign (UIUC). Co-Founder and Primary Developer of Fraktl.net. Course staff for UIUC's Software Design course.
Team Members:

25. Use of Proceeds: mainly to hire Software Engineers , Sales people, and pay for Office/Marketing/Trip Expenses.
Suggested Structure: convertible note, with a discount to next round's valuation.
CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
US$ 200 K
US$ 500 K
-
US$ 1 mn
We are looking for funding to accelerate the distribution of the platform in 1H19.
Bootstrap
(from Founder 2016-18)
Pre-Seed round
(to be raised 2019)
Funding:

26. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
contact@wespline.comResearch Park @ UIUC
1800 South Oak St., suite 106
Champaign, IL 61820, USA
Social Network:
www.wespline.com
Investor Relations:
www.ir-wespline.com
+1 217 418-7350 Institutional Video:
https://youtu.be/Z6lfiItIGnE