Deal Abstract

Invest in Nickelytics
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Billboardsin/LeagueSide/Digital Ads for mobility. If you remember the last time you took a taxi, you remember there's a device to pay with credit card that has ads. This company wants to build the marketplace for companies to deploy ads to all rideshare.

Financials (VRB)

|Question|Notes|
|---|---|---|
|1. Fundraising Target? |$1070000|
|2. Fundraised So Far?|$85800|
|3. Pre-Money Valuation?|$6500000|
|4. Previous Year's Annual Revenue |$327838|
|5. Previous Year's Annual Burn |~$373565|

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? ****: Tampa, FL
2. Has at least 2 founders? True: Two
3. Has product in the market? True:
4. 6 months of continuous user growth or 6 months of revenue? True:
5. Notable investors? True: Techstars and Endeavor!
6. Post-funding, will have 18 months of runway? True: Company was profitable?!

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

Question Score Notes
1. Engineering? 3 Good; reminds me of a startup my friend worked at that was trying to do this for billboards, also another friend who is doing this for youth sports leagues
2. Timing? 3 Gotta love marketplaces, data, and also specifically O2O (offline to online)
3. Monopoly? 3 Unsure as I don't work in this market, but that revenue though
4. People? 3 Seem like good founders, they're pivoting from Nickelrides to Nickelytics, learning
5. Distribution? 3 Seems to be doing well selling to B2B clients while also leveraging mobility partners like Lyft
6. Durability? 4 It's an ad network!
7. Secret? 4 Just like there are ad networks in taxis, so rideshare/mobility private companies will eventually subsidize prices even further with ads

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

1. Secret/vision: The vision of private mobility companies wanting to monetize via ads has to be right and not hurt brands, 2. Offline-2-Online: the reason this network doesn't exist yet is obviously because the O2O gap from real ad space on mobility platforms to digital is not easy, so building this network capital efficiently, 3. Demographics: this product is launching when younger executives are coming to market, executives who want classic media to work like digital media

What the Risks Are

1. Defensibility: why wouldn't Lyft/Bird/Uber launch their own ad network? 2. Performance: How much can you track with real world media? It's not like a tracking pixel. That said, maybe more interesting other data. 3. Winner Take All: if this is the Facebook for rideshare mobility, then the speed of growth will have to be somewhat corollary, e.g. the two cofounders have to build a scaleable sales team esp in the beginning.

Bonus Muhan's Notes

Very cool. Should reach out to my friend who used to work for Techstars Mobility. Also

Video is really compelling at 2min and 16min. Talks about the IoT device and such.
Cars Wrapped In Ads Leverage Location Tracking
Nickelytics signs up drivers of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft, wraps their cars in advertising and then tracks who sees the ad.
Chuck Martin
Nickelytics adds an Internet of Things device to the car, which counts nearby Wi-Fi signals and disregards phone MAC addresses belonging to devices other than smartphones and then identifies phones near the vehicle.

"Nickelytics adds an Internet of Things device to the car, which counts nearby Wi-Fi signals and disregards phone MAC addresses belonging to devices other than smartphones and then identifies phones near the vehicle.

It then uses a data aggregator to correlate the unique phone identifiers and sends the data to the customer dashboard for digital retargeting on social media including LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram as well as ads in mobile apps.

“All data remains anonymized through the entire process, with no personal identification,” Justin Christie, director of operations, told me at the company display at Synapse.

Nickelytics also can dispatch vehicles to specific locations, such as a fleet of cars with the same ad to an event for additional driver compensation.

The car ads are running in a dozen campaigns in Florida, Colorado, Maine and Louisiana.

Advertisers include the law firm Kelleher Firm, realtors Re/Max and Point South Group, the credit union 121 Financial, and others including Exiom, The Sheets Team, The Penny Hoarder and Social Security Works.  

Cars wrapped in ads are becoming part of the IoT ecosystem."

Updates

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