2. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
WeSpline is a Community-Built Database of
companies and individuals who can find each other
and interact in a Social Network Framework with
Artificial Intelligence Capabilities
3. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Enterprises
tech / innovation adopters
Startups / Innovative Companies
tech / 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
Crowdfunding Platforms
Angel Investor
Institutions, etc.
Service Providers
Law Firms
Accountants / Auditors
Consultants / Advisors
Media, etc.
Investors
VC Funds
Private Equity Funds
Banks
Community of Users:
4. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
With WeSpline's Intelligent Search Engine, users can find
companies and individuals of interest.
WeSpline's Recommendations Algorithm uses AI - text
mining, natural language processing, and machine learning -
to foster business among users by generating meaningful
company recommendations.
WeSpline's Communication Functions are designed to
facilitate business communications and primarily serve a
business purpose, making WeSpline a “task-driven social
network”.
Main Features:
5. 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).
Startups/Innovative Companies:
Likewise, Startups/Innovative Companies will have the opportunity to
actively search, get exposed to, and communicate with hundreds of
Enterprises and Investors around the world. Enterprises 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.
Solutions:
6. 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.”
Solutions:
7. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Hubs:
Hubs will also benefit from this interaction. For example:
• Accelerators / Incubators will be able to better advertise their Special
Programs for Startups and Entrepreneurs, 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.
Service Providers:
Service Providers will be able to reach potential clients more easily and be
reached by them as well;
Solutions:
8. 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:
9. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Search & Find
Companies and
Individuals
Connect
&
Communicate
Learn & Stay
Updated
Get Relevant
Recommendations
Selected Screens:
10. 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:
11. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Basic Services (FREE) include company/user profiles, finder, basic search,
newsfeed, getting messages, among others.
Premium Services (subscription) include sending in-mails, chat,
recommendations, business analytics, posting challenges, posting special
programs, posting job ad, among others.
Revenue from Ads:
• the ads will typically show for a given target audience on their newsfeeds
and on the right-hand side of their pages.
• Users will also be invited to pay to boost their Newsfeed publications,
Challenge posts, Special Programs posts, and Job Ads.
• Companies will be able to pay to appear at the top of the search result
list (sponsored search results). Users will be able to identify such results
as “Ads”. Other useful (non-paid) results will typically follow below.
Business Model:
12. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Phase in the Release according to:
• Features / Users – we plan to release “core” features to “core” users first;
• Countries – we plan to release WeSpline in the US, Israel, and Brazil first.
• Industries – we plan to create critical mass in certain “popular” industries first,
so that we can become a relevant reference for users there. “Popular” industries
would be those that are interesting for most companies such as Cyber Security,
Logistics Tech, among others.
For Scale & Traction – focus on distributing our product through Hubs:
• Industry Associations for Corporations and Mid-Sized Companies;
• Accelerators, Incubators, Universities, and VCs to reach Startups and
Innovative Companies.
Product Release / Distribution Strategy:
13. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
EFFICIENT
AFFORDABLEEXPENSIVE
INEFFICIENT
(time consuming, biased/regional, or
not adequately designed for that purpose)
Tech Scouters
Competition - Examples:
14. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
ChengXiang Zhai, PhD
Mentor / Advisor (& Future Partner)
Fernanda Torós, PhD
Founder / CEO
Patrick Gallagher
Software Engineer / Backend Developer
Pedro Richa Dabarian
CFO / 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
Joshua E. Sanchez
Software Engineer / Backend Developer
Team:
15. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Fernanda Torós, PhD – Founder & CEO
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 – CFO / 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:
16. 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.
Joshua E. Sanchez – Software Engineer / Backend Developer
BS candidate in Computer Engineering, with a dual degree in Technological Entrepreneurship at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Co-Founder and Development Project Manager of YourTurn.
Team Members:
17. Use of Proceeds: mainly to hire Software Engineers 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$ 300 K
-
US$ 1 mn
We are looking for funding to finish a fully functional MVP of the system by 2H18 and
pre-launch it to selected users (if US$ 300 K is raised) or to launch a MVP by 2H18 to a
larger # of users (if US$ 1 mn is raised).
Angel round
(raised 2016/17)
Pre-Seed round
(to be raised 2018)
Funding:
18. CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL; NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED
US$ 200 K
Valuation: Facebook currently trades at EV/Sales = 14x. If Sales are US$ 926 mn at
year 10 (2027) and we value WeSpline at a conservative EV/Sales = 10x, then our
Enterprise Value would be: EV = US$ 9.2 bn.
SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS - WESPLINE
share startups 67%
USD 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027
ASSUMPTIONS
AVERAGE # OF USERS PER TYPE OF COMPANY
corporations / enterprises 5
startups / innovative companies 2
non-core users 2
TOTAL # COMPANIES
corporations / enterprises - 264 792 3,168 15,312 38,280 95,040 160,512 223,080 278,784 324,720
startups / innovative companies - 536 1,608 6,432 31,088 77,720 192,960 325,888 452,920 566,016 659,280
growth rate 200% 300% 383% 150% 148% 69% 39% 25% 16%
core users (total) - annual average - 800 2,400 9,600 46,400 116,000 288,000 486,400 676,000 844,800 984,000
growth rate 500% 100% 383% 150% 148% 69% 39% 25%
non-core users (total) - annual average 200 500 3,000 6,000 29,000 72,500 180,000 304,000 422,500 528,000
TOTAL COMPANIES - 1,000 2,900 12,600 52,400 145,000 360,500 666,400 980,000 1,267,300 1,512,000
Engagement - PREMIUM SERVICES
% corporations engaged @ premium plan 0% 40% 50% 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% 80% 80%
# of users - - 1,584 7,920 45,936 124,410 332,640 601,920 892,320 1,115,136 1,298,880
rate per month - 24.00 24.00 24.00 24.00 24.00 24.00 24.00 24.00 24.00 24.00
rate per year - 288.00 288.00 288.00 288.00 288.00 288.00 288.00 288.00 288.00 288.00
% startups engaged @ premium plan 0% 40% 50% 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% 80% 80%
# of users - - 1,286 6,432 37,306 101,036 270,144 488,832 724,672 905,626 1,054,848
rate per month - 20.00 20.00 20.00 20.00 20.00 20.00 20.00 20.00 20.00 20.00
rate per year - 240.00 240.00 240.00 240.00 240.00 240.00 240.00 240.00 240.00 240.00
% non-core users engaged @ premium plan I 25% 50% 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% 80% 80%
# of users - - 250 3,000 7,200 37,700 101,500 270,000 486,400 676,000 844,800
rate per month - 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00 15.00
rate per year - 180.00 180.00 180.00 180.00 180.00 180.00 180.00 180.00 180.00 180.00
TOTAL USERS ENGAGED - - 3,120 17,352 90,442 263,146 704,284 1,360,752 2,103,392 2,696,762 3,198,528
Appendix - Financials:
21. 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
+1 312 330 2543 Institutional Video:
https://youtu.be/Z6lfiItIGnE
