Deal Abstract

B2B tech company that wants to increase reader retention by giving engagement widgets/pop quizzes at the end of an article. Has impressive revenue on a very large valuation.

Financials (VRB)

|Question|Notes|
|---|---|---|
|1. Fundraising Target? |$1070000|
|2. Fundraised So Far?|$248416|
|3. Pre-Money Valuation?|$45000000|
|4. Previous Year's Annual Revenue |$2463869|
|5. Previous Year's Annual Burn |~$512570|

Source

The 6 Calacanis Characteristics ("Sow Passion, Not easy mediocrity", or S2 P6 N18)

Criteria	Yes/No
1. A startup that is based in SV?	True: Redwood City, CA
2. Has at least 2 founders?	****: Two
3. Has product in the market?	True:
4. 6 months of continuous user growth or 6 months of revenue?	****: Rev dropped from 2.9m in 2018 to 2.4m in 2019.
5. Notable investors?	****: No one I recognize
6. Post-funding, will have 18 months of runway?	****: They need to close ~$750k to have 18 months runway, at present will not have enough money.

The 7 Thiel Questions (Every Time Man Profits, Don't Dismiss Serendipity)

Question	Score	Notes
1. Engineering?	2	This is just embedding polls and interactive content in blogs, not seeing the innovative technology
2. Timing?	1	Not sure why now is time to launch these tools, if anything, premium content is finding a moment
3. Monopoly?	1	Have never heard of this company in my digital advertising experience
4. People?	2	Seems fine
5. Distribution?	1	Sell to large publications
6. Durability?	2	If they can build something users actually interact with, then defensible
7. Secret?	1	The answer to solve the ad infested web is to have a quiz/interactive content on websites that essentially checks users for comprehension (like a quiz,) then sell ad space around that.

What has to go right for the startup to return money on investment:

1. Expand beachhead of user interest in product to other features; 2. Show that the quizzes and such drive more outcomes for ads; 3. Land more B2B partnerships

What the Risks Are

1. This future has more radical plans for the Internet than just a better ad widget; 2. Mainstream readers will never get to the point of doing homework after reading; 3. Product development for users to continually engage with this type of widget is challenging.

Bonus Muhan's Notes

Impressive progress.

Updates

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