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Bruno Arcuri
UCL PG 2015/2016 - MRes in Energy Demand Studies
Contact Email:
Bruno.arcuri.14@ucl.ac.uk / contact@greenrecord.co.uk
Other Team Members:
BUSINESS PLAN
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
2. PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY
2.1. ORGANISATIONS NEED TO RAISE AWARENESS OF SUSTAINABILITY
2.2. ORGANISATIONS NEED TO INNOVATE AND FIND TOP-NOTCH TALENTS
2.3. STUDENTS NEED EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES MORE THAN JUST GRADES
3. OUR SOLUTION
4. VALIDATION
4.1. ORGANISATIONS
4.2. END-USERS (UNIVERSITY STUDENTS)
5. MARKET SIZE
6. COMPETITORS AND GREEN RECORD S USP
6.1. COMPETITORS
6.2. GREEN RECORDS USP (UNIQUE SELLING POINT)
7. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
7.1. PHASE 1
7.2. PHASE 2
8. BUSINESS MODEL
8.1. MINDSUMO PRICING STRATEGY
8.2. OUR PRICING STRATEGY
9. MARKETING & SALES
9.1. CLIENT
9.2. END-USERS
9.3. SPECIAL EVENTS
10. TEAM
11. FINANCIALS
11.1. 2016 CASH FLOW
11.2. SALES AND REVENUE FORECAST
11.3. P&L
12. FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES AND PRODUCTS
12.1. SECONDARY SCHOOLS
12.2. GREEN MARKETPLACE
12.3. ONLINE SURVEYS
APPENDIX A - 2016 CASH FLOW
1
3
4
4
4
4
5
7
7
8
9
10
10
11
11
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
13
14
14
15
15
15
16
16
16
16
17
18
1. Executive summary
Reducing carbon emissions, whilst still growing is a great challenge businesses face in the
21st century, especially with the rising costs of doing business as usual. Organisations
need solutions to the challenges they will face as they align themselves with a greener
economy, and this is where Green Records support comes in.
Green Record harnesses creativity to build a more sustainable world, using open
innovation to offer organisations the means to share their problems, ideas and products
with our think tank: a pool of highly skilled and engaged students. We cultivate the
exchange of ideas between students and organisations through online competitions, in
order to solve environmental and societal challenges. The online competition allow
organisations to generate innovative ideas, recruit top-notch talents and market
environmentally friendly products, while rewarding students with cash prizes and work
experience. Have a look at how organisations create an online competition for students at:
www.greenrecord.co.uk/create-your-challenge.
Our team is experienced, has multidisciplinary skills and, is focused on fast and lean
execution and learning. We built a fully functional web platform (www.greenrecord.co.uk)
with limited time (full-time UCL, LSE and Imperial Masters students!) and money (less
than 60 investment so far!). We have already hosted 3 challenges, which resulted in
more than 8,500 webpage sessions and have 4 challenges running in May/June - one is
fully funded by UCL Grand Challenges (674) and another one by Ubeeqo. Green Record
expects to generate 68,000 in revenue - considering 20 paid challenges with an average
price of 3,400 and reach to 12,000 students, by the end of 2016.
We were one of the 8 startups selected to be part of the Kickstart London 2015/16
entrepreneurship programme, which gave us the opportunity to meet lots of mentors and
pitch our idea to them, expanding our network within Londons startup scene. The mentors
we have been in touch with include Andrew Webber (CEO at Microsoft Ventures UK),
James Byrne (Director at Sustainable Bridges), Phillip Bruner (CEO at Enian.co), Andrew
Atter (CEO at Pivomo.com), Robert Lowe (Director at UCL Energy Institute), and many
others.
Green Record invites the reader to have a look at our detailed business plan and short but
successful history, considering what we have achieved so far with such time and money
constraints, and what we plan and want to achieve with The Hatcherys support.
-The Green Record Team
2. Problem/Opportunity
2.1. Organisations need to raise awareness of sustainability
Reducing carbon emissions, whilst still growing is a great challenge businesses face in the
21st century, especially with the rising costs of doing business as usual, forcing
organisations to change not only the way they operate but also the way they interact with
customers. There has been increased restriction and regulation on companies from
governments to curb carbon emissions and engage in less environmentally damaging
activities. The UK, for example, set the most ambitious target of all developed nations:
80% reduction in carbon emission levels by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. On the other
hand, consumers are aware of the importance of sustainability and the environmental
footprint that companies have, therefore, being sustainable is also a matter of keeping up
with competitors. A 2011 survey of nearly 3,000 global executives by MIT Sloan
Management Review found that about two-thirds of respondents believed sustainability
was necessary for being competitive in todays market.
2.2. Organisations need to innovate and find top-notch talents
The traditional process of innovation in organisations is through investing in R&D
departments, which are costly, slow and limited to few people. Many organisations,
depending on the size, dont have internal know-how to come up with out-of-the-box ideas
for their strategies and operations, or to speed up the process of solving problems the
R&D department may have. When it comes to recruiting young talents, HR departments
need to maintain a close relationship with universities or rely on third parties recruitment
agencies. The demand for top-notch young talents with not only technical skills, but also
entrepreneurial and creative behaviour, is the challenge for these HR departments.
2.3. Students need extracurricular activities more than just grades
The distance between academic researchers and organisations is large despite plenty
demand for innovation and talents recruitment. Research from the National Centre for
Universities & Business (2015) reveals that 14% of researchers are currently engaged in
commercial activities, which represents a drop of 8% since the previous study in 2008/9. A
new report published at IngentaConnect shows that nearly 80 percent of companies are
regularly engaged with external partners in their innovation work. To link with this demand,
there are many students involved with societal, sustainability and environmental studies
lacking employment, work experience opportunities and exposure to real world challenges.
Undergraduates and Masters students lack the experience of contributing to real problems
and opportunities of work, while PhD students often feel they need support to find the
practical use of their thesis, thus struggling to find industrial mentorships and partnerships.
3. Our Solution
Organisations need solutions to the challenges they will face as they align themselves with
a greener economy, changing the way they innovate, operate, interact with other
organisations and customers, and recruit talents. This is where Green Records support
comes in.
Green Record harnesses creativity to build a more sustainable world, using open
innovation to offer organisations the means to share their problems, ideas and products
with our think tank: a pool of highly skilled and engaged students. We cultivate the
exchange of ideas between students and organisations through online competitions, in
order to solve environmental and societal challenges. The online competition allow
organisations to generate innovative ideas, recruit top-notch talents and market
environmentally friendly products, while rewarding students with cash prizes and work
experience. Have a look at how organisations create an online competition for students at:
www.greenrecord.co.uk/create-your-challenge.
For more details on online competitions standard timelines, rewards, prices and
conditions, please have a look at our Standard Commercial Proposal, part of this
business plan Appendix A.
Green Record aims to:
I.
Bring about sustainability innovation to organisations at a low price, fast speed, and
with creativity. Organisations will need this out-of-the-box thinking to solve problems,
while connecting with the students audience.
II. We want to make students more connected, engaged and provide them with more
opportunities to contribute with the green economy.
Students are an important source of knowledge, creativity, talent and engagement to solve
environmental and societal challenges. Tapping into the student's potential will only be
possible if we can provide compensation for their contribution. Therefore, Green Record
aims to reward students contributions with a variety of prizes. Cash is one option,
however, organisations can provide students with unique experiences, which are more
beneficial in the long term. Therefore, prizes will be negotiated with organisations and can
range from participation in the prototyping of the solution chosen (micro-internship), a visit
to the organisation's HQ, or a mentorship with the top executives/leaders from the
organisation. This will allow students to gain great work experience and provide
organisations with potential future employee.
Figures 3 and 4 represent our current.upcoming and past challenges, respectively.
4. Validation
We have been validating our hypotheses directly with our MVP, contacting companies and
students to understand their needs and willingness to use our solution.
4.1. Organisations
Green Record has already hosted 3 challenges, which resulted in more than 8,500
webpage sessions and have 4 challenges running in May/June - one is fully funded by
UCL Grand Challenges (674) and another one by Ubeeqo. We ran an experiment in 3
weeks in which we contacted UK companies in three sectors: Energy, Transportation and
Machinery. We contacted 55 managers/directors, using free Linkedin and e-mail. From
these, 6 were interested in meeting with Green Record. A commercial proposal and a
challenge preview were sent to all 6 companies after the meetings, according to their
needs.
We talked to Ebico, First-Utility, Good Energy, Ubeeqo, Drive Now and Enian to host
challenges designed according to their needs. These companies were interested in
innovating, recruiting and marketing with Green Record and have been in contact to set up
challenges in our platform. Figure 6 summarises what we have heard from organisations.
To have an idea, please have a look at these challenges:
www.greenrecord.co.uk/enian
www.greenrecord.co.uk/ubeeqo
www.greenrecord.co.uk/first-utility
www.greenrecord.co.uk/good-energy
www.greenrecord.co.uk/drivenowuk
www.greenrecord.co.uk/ebico-fighting-fuel-poverty
http://educacao.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,harvard-e-mit-selecionam-brasileirospara-conferencia,10000017186
http://noticias.r7.com/educacao/harvard-e-mit-selecionam-brasileiros-paraconferencia-19022016
http://educacao.uol.com.br/noticias/agencia-estado/2016/02/19/harvard-e-mitselecionam-brasileiros-para-conferencia.htm
Secondly, we have carried out student surveys at King's College London, UCL, LSE and
Imperial with undergraduate, master's and PhD students. We have found different
preferences for each group, confirming our hypotheses that cash prizes are good but work
experiences are even more attractive.
In a meeting with First Utilitys CTO and two product managers, Green Record brought two
PhD students from the UCL Energy Institute specialised in smart energy tariffs. From this
meeting, we saw that companies want to keep a close relationship with PhD students, to
learn from their research and propose partnerships. On the other hand, PhD students
would value challenges that offer work experience and partnership opportunities.
5. Market size
Based on the experiments we have been running, we identified three markets in which our
solution can deliver value: Open Innovation, Digital Marketing and Recruitment.
Although we are based in the UK, we were born a global company: Our second challenge
was made for an organisation in the US with focus on Brazil. As a matter of pragmatism
and as we are based in the UK, we are focused on developing a market within the EU,
considered the UK and Germany markets within the next 5 years.
6.1. Competitors
MindSumo
MindSumo is the U.S. company which works similarly to our business model. They also
aim to attract students to provide open innovation for organisations. Currently, they have
approximately 300 active clients and charge approximately $8,000 per challenge. Their
approximate students (end-users) are between 50k-100k and pay around $150 to the
winners of challenges. They only operate in the U.S. and have been expanding their
operations with other products instead of making it global. Their other services include job
recruitment, marketing campaigns in universities and also freelance services. From around
6 seed investors in 2013, they gathered $1m in funding.
They aim to tackle every kind of problem any organisation might have, which is different
from our niche market to tackle only environmental and societal problems. Although this
can be a bigger market, it may be the reason why students are not so interested in solving
their challenges. As mentioned before, we have found that students are more willing to
partake in extracurricular activities, such as building their CV or engaging in societal
problems, than just receive cash prizes. In addition, a small amount of money like $150,
may not be compelling enough to engage in the problems. As we have realised, students
value experiences more than money.
Sqore and StudentCompetitions
Part of our competitive advantage is also expressed in the possibility of offering other
products through Green Record, which are outlined in the 12. Future opportunities and
products section.
7. Product Development
7.1. Phase 1
We started this project only 7 months ago, and have spent 60 in total to make the
business functional;
We estimate capacity to host at least 20 challenges in the next six months with current
infrastructure;
7.2. Phase 2
To be developed;
We will need 320 freelance hours (32h for designers and 288h for developers) with
an average pay of 20 per hour for developers and 20 per hour for designers.
Therefore, The new web application will also incur monthly charges of around 80
per month (includes expenses for the infrastructure) to maintain the platform.
* This estimate is based on the service proposal offered by Spartalabs.com.br, to develop the
application in Brazil. Spartalabs developers have been working with our CEO since 2014.
8. Business Model
We charge organisations per online challenge and our pricing strategy was developed
based on our main competitor: MindSumo.
8.1. MindSumo pricing strategy
MindSumos price per challenge is $8,000 (5,700) considering $1,000 (700) in prizes for
students. It considers special prices for packages of challenges, as shown in Figure 11.
reputation. Our first proposals were sent with an average price of 1,500-2,500 per
challenge, considering 500-1,000 in prizes;
For the second half of 2016, considering case studies and more experience running
challenges, our average price will be 4,000 per challenge;
9.1. Client
The experiment we ran in 3 weeks shows that our conversion rate, from Acquisition (first
contact) to Retention (meeting/commercial proposal), was around 10%. However, we
believe this rate will increase the more we understand about potential clients and niches,
and expand our network and case studies portfolio. In terms of revenue, we are still
dealing with companies and the need to register Green Record as a business in the UK to
receive payments is crucial to generate revenue.
The responsiveness of our customer acquisition approach has been positive and we aim
to continue using our network, and free sources such as LinkedIn, cold e-mails/calls and
participation in events. The sales strategy in terms of targeted market, is to keep
contacting medium and large corporations in the UK energy and transportation sectors. In
general, R&D, HR and marketing managers and directors will be the target. However, we
plan to use paid tools such as LinkedIn sales and ZoomInfo Pro to improve our reach and
increase traction.
9.2. End-users
We have been using free marketing tools in our strategy such as blogging, Twitter,
Facebook and mailing. However we understand that the viral referral among students is
the most important aspect to be considered in our strategy, and it will depend on the
rewards offered by our challenges, as well as the branding strength of our clients. In the
Brazil Conference challenge, the Harvard and MIT branding was essential to guarantee
the success of the marketing campaign.
Considering that our team is formed by UCL, LSE and Imperial students, our reach within
these universities is maximised. Part of our strategy is to develop partnerships with
10.
Team
Bruno Arcuri has been working in automation and controls engineering within the energy
sector for the past four years. By the end of his undergraduate studies, he assessed the
use of advanced control techniques applied to wind turbines in Brazil. He moved to Rio de
Janeiro in 2012 to work as an electrical automation engineer at PETROBRAS COMPERJ.
In 2013 he joined STEAG Energy Services to work as an Instrumentation & Controls
Engineer at one of the largest gas power plants in Latin America (UTE Parnaba). In 2014,
Bruno founded, developed and launched a startup in less than 6 months, while still
working full time. Mapptip is a mobile e-commerce app that uses reverse auction to match
buyers and sellers, and was awarded a prize at the Innovative Ideas Contest offered by
FAPESB in December 2014, when it reached 900 users. He is Green Records CEO and
undertakes a MRes in Energy Demand Studies at UCL with a Chevening Scholarship.
Julio Viana graduated in Economics in 2010. From 2009 to 2011 he worked in a
consultancy, leading projects which provided 9.3m in funding to 26 SMEs in Brazil. In this
role, he secured the largest client the company had ever had in 2010, an investment of
1.7m. After being accepted into a competitive graduate programme in 2011 (6,000
candidates and 21 vacancies), he started to work at Anglo American. There, he built a
financial model for one of the largest investments in Brazil with a CAPEX of $1.5 billion.
His high level of commitment has led him to two successful promotions in less than three
years. He was promoted in 2014 to Specialist of Investments for Anglo American in Brazil,
leading the process of Capital Allocation and Valuation. He is Green Records CFO and
undertakes a MSc in International Political Economy at LSE with a Chevening Scholarship.
Ambuj Agrawal graduated in Computer Science and Electronics from the University of
Bristol in 2015. During his final year, he researched the LLVM compiler and extended the
LLVM backend to support user defined instructions for MIPS processor. He was awarded
the highest marks in the university for this research project and is also the top of his
university course. He received scholarships such as Barry Thomas Scholarship for
Computer Science and Dean's International Intern Scholarship during his undergraduate
studies, as well as the Bristol Outstanding Award for his outstanding demonstration of
professional and life skills. He also won the first prize at London breathe respiratory
hackathon for building a COPD simulator and the Imperial College London GAP (Global
Action on Poverty) challenge for developing a solution for the conventional problem of
cloth collection and distribution. He is Green Records CTO and undertakes a MSc in
Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management at Imperial College London. He is also the
President at Imperial College Entrepreneurship Club.
11.
Financials
The financial model is considering expenses with people (partners) only from September
onwards, when the partners are expected to work full-time on Green Record, and that our
product is ready to generate revenue. Therefore, no funding is being considered in this
financial projection.
11.1.
Considering 20 paid challenges for the year of 2016, the revenue forecast is 68,000
(average price of 3,400). For the years of 2017-2020, considering 6,000 per challenge,
please check Table 1.
Table 1 - 5 years sales and revenue forecast
Unit
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Innovation
Challenge
30
96
162
240
Marketing
Challenge
48
150
330
480
Recruitment
Challenge
90
270
540
900
Organisations*
unit
10
84
258
516
810
Students
unit
12,277
38,760
66,213
97,156
125,707
000
68
1,008
3,096
6,192
9,720
Sales
Users
Revenue
11.3.
P&L
12.
Green Record understands that there are other products to be explored and validated
using the same infrastructure used to deliver the Online Challenges product. However,
validation is needed before guaranteeing that the products listed below are part of our
business model.
12.1.
Secondary schools
Considering secondary schools, the challenge can be used as tool to engage students in
learning about environmental and societal challenges as part of their education, while also
offering prizes and work experience for them. The clients would be secondary schools
interested in using this innovative approach to engage students, and end users would be
pre-university students (15-17 years old).
This product is under validation and Green Record is running a challenge until June for the
UCL Academy and the UCL Intercultural Interaction Grand Challenge. Please check the
challenge at: www.greenrecord.co.uk/UCL-academy-intercultural-interactions.
.
12.2.
Green Marketplace
By creating a marketplace inside the platform in partnership with organisations that offer
green services and products, students can spend cash prizes inside the platform, before
cashing out. The cash prizes would be used by students to buy the products with a better
deal, for example: Buying train tickets, fairtrade products, vouchers, subscriptions for apps,
etc. Students would also have the option to donate to green NGOs or invest in early stage
startups designed to offer green services.
12.3.
Online surveys
Organisations can carry niche specific surveys for students inside the platform. The
organisations pay to run the survey, and students are rewarded to answer. This is product
offered by Survemonkey.co.uk.
Jan-16
Feb-16
Mar-16
Apr-16
May-16
Jun-16
Jul-16
Aug-16
Sep-16
Oct-16
Nov-16
Dec-16
Total
unit
20
Price
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
2,000
4,000
4,000
4,000
4,000
4,000
4,000
3,400
Total Revenue
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
8,000
8,000
8,000
12,000
12,000
68,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-1,000
-2,000
-3,000
-2,000
-2,000
-2,000
-2,000
-3,000
-3,000
-20,000
CEO
-1,500
-1,500
-1,500
-1,500
-6,000
CFO
-1,500
-1,500
-1,500
-1,500
-6,000
CTO
-1,500
-1,500
-1,500
-1,500
-6,000
-4,500
-4,500
-4,500
-4,500
-18,000
-344
-344
-344
-344
-1,377
-10
-10
-10
-10
-10
-10
-10
-10
-10
-10
-10
-10
-40
Formstack.com
-40
-40
-40
-40
-40
-40
-40
-40
-40
-160
Accounting fees
-100
-100
-100
-100
-400
Email accounts
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-3
-12
Mailchimp
-50
-50
-50
-50
-200
Linkedin Pro
-88
-88
-88
-88
-352
-200
-200
-200
-200
-800
Facebook / Google Ad
-250
-250
-250
-250
-1,000
Sales travel
-200
-200
-200
-200
-800
Cash Flow
-13
-26
-39
908
2,855
5,802
11,749
17,696
17,911
18,126
21,340
24,555
24,859
Assumptions
Revenue
Online Challenge
Cost of Sales
Prizes
Total Cost of Sales
Expenses
People
G&A
Squarespace.com