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Introducing
&
Thank you for making this competition available to entrepreneurs like myself. Using your
enlightening documents, the book, ‘Put Your DREAM To The Test,’ especially the 10 questions,
as well as the website information and articles from Scribd, SCORE, SUCCESS did more than
motivate me to compete. All this information gave me a framework in which to review,
prioritize and reassess my business plan.
Was it a lot of work? Yes. In fact, this process has been, to tell you the truth, brain draining. At
some moments, it was grueling. My business began last year and we have product in the
marketplace. Yet, the process of checking my facts, poring through my files for data and saved
reports, re-reading my research was ‘spirit reviving!’ There were truly wonderful moments when
I thought, “Wow, I have that information.” Also, “Yes, I did research competitors.” And of
course, “I do have a mission statement!”
So, my appreciation to you for helping remind me why I began this journey and what destination
I had planned. Thank you for re-energizing my inspiration. I believe in what I’m doing and the
good service my websites provide. Sometimes, I can get so bogged down in the ‘doing’ that I
forget that it’s all about the dream!
In Mr. Maxwell’s book, he says, “Every journey toward a dream is personal, and as a result, so
is the price that must be paid for it.”
I’m blessed because I paid most of the price for my dream a few years back when I came
through a personal challenge, which gave me the kernel, the seed that has become my
business. This competition has reminded me of the deep, intrinsic beatitude of having a dream.
Marcia Bradley
LinkShelves
Our business is called Aicram, LLC, a privately owned company whose mission
is to develop and market websites that help web users organize and revisit
websites and information they find when ‘searching the web.’ Our products are
simple to use, friendly, websites. Right now we are focused on developing user
and subscriber bases from the Baby Boomer and Gen-X generations.
What makes the Aicram websites stand out is that they always provide a free
service to users, are not frivolous in nature, and provide a very real tool to help
users maximize the value of the web! Taking advantage of free applications from
fun websites such as Facebook, twitter, and Google, we are able to do quick
build-outs that are a support tool for web users. A photo lover who uses
Facebook will find our tools support their use of websites for photographers or for
people who take pictures of friends at parties. A doctor or medical group can use
our websites to create public libraries that offer visual pictures of websites on
topics of interest to patients. A person challenged with cancer or other illness
can easily use our site to create a ‘Today’s Doctor Visit’ shelf in their online web
library. That same person can carry that library shelf with them into their doctor’s
office to discuss articles they have found.
It’s an amazing company offering real life tools that make using the web easier,
more effective and fun! We have no bricks and mortar. No offices or equipment.
The owner, Marcia Bradley, takes no salary and all work is outsourced to a great
team of young at heart designers and developers who believe in Marcia’s
mission. With costs kept to a minimum, we will be able to build websites, carry
on with those sites that truly work and grow, and discard what does not.
We have a business model included in this plan and we are asking for your
confidence and support. Please consider awarding us the Dream Test
Competition $10,000.00. Marcia Bradley has invested the funds to develop
Aicram’s first two websites. However, your $10,000.00 is needed to market and
grow our user and subscriber base. It will help pay for resources to aid our
Search Engine Optimization and our PR campaign.
a. Our company, Aicram, is based on the concept that an ashram is a place where
a wise person, such as a guru, resides and people go there to glean wisdom.
We, in turn, have coined the word, “aicram,” a place where many people can
reside on the web and save, share and grow knowledge.
b. The business of Aicram is to create websites also known as web services that
offer users the means to organize and use the information of the web. The web
is an incredible and awe-inspiring tool. However, look up a topic on google.com.
For example, I just looked up ‘breast cancer’ and there were 38,700,000 results.
Then you find a helpful link. A few days later you want to find it again. But you
can’t find it! We solve this type of dilemma with tools that make it easy to find
websites again. Aicram provides websites that are simple tools to help users
harness what they find on the web and hold onto it for their own advantage.
i. MISSION STATEMENT:
We help you use what you discover on the web.
Find info. Create knowledge. Use it. Again and Again.
ii. PERSONAL VISION:
1. Many, many people can identify Eric Schmidt with Google, Mark
Zuckerberg of Facebook, or Chad, Steve and Jawed who started
YouTube, as well as Brad, Chris, Josh and Tom of MySpace.
Most of their faces have been on Newsweek or Time. All their
companies are searchable on Wikipedia.com. But try to find
ThirdAge.com founded by Sharon Whiteley. Not there. There are
other up and coming women-founded companies that are
emerging and you can find them getting more news time. Look at
Flickr and Blurb and Meebo. But we haven’t yet had a really big
take off by a female led team. (I sit with hope.)
2. A business executive recently commented to me that his 12-year
old daughter says things like, “I didn’t do so well on the math test.
But girls aren’t good at math.” He and I both were completely
perplexed as to why this kind of belief can still be perpetuated. I
have a vision that the work Aicram does can help me help girls go
into math and engineering and science.
iii. Company Goals & Objectives
1. Goals
a. Aicram will engender, for its website subscribers, more
lasting and more user-friendly and user-efficient ‘after
effects’ and benefits from the information they find on the
web.
b. Aicram websites always provide a service that fulfills a
need for the user; they are fun but not frivolous. An
Aicram website is similar to a personal orienteer leader;
our sites offer a way to hold onto, untangle and organize
that which we find to be valuable when we search the web.
c. Aicram websites will always offer simple web solutions that
do not require downloading or storage space on a user’s
PC or Mac hard drive. Every action a user takes on our
sites offers spam protection to the user (and to us). Our
server space is the platform for our services providing
subscribers with 7/24 access to their saved information
from any computer anywhere in the world.
d. Ensuring that Aicram websites are free to our subscribers
is a part of the platform of our company. We believe that
using the web as a tool increases the viability of all global
citizens to learn and grow and that access to organizing
information should be a free tool (just as sidewalks and
trails and most highways are free to users). All that we
require is a brief profile and that a user agree to our Terms
of Service, Privacy Policy, and Copyright Policy.
e. User feedback will guide our work. Aicram websites will
initially incubate with small populations of users and then
seek out feedback from subscribers to continually upgrade
and improve our offerings.
f. Modeled on the same ‘incubator process’ we use to build
an deliver websites, Aicram the company will be an
‘incubator business’ employing and growing a new
business paradigm. This business model will employ
and/or contract with engineers, developers, coders,
designers and marketers to build a “websites that serve”
brain trust. This brain trust will embrace a very quick
1)Time to Product, 2)Time to Market, 3)Time to Client
process. (See Business Philosophy for more.)
2. Objectives
a. Each Aicram website is projected to grow its subscriber
base 20-fold per year during its first 5 years in the
marketplace.
b. Revenues for each Aicram website will be achieved
through a multi-tiered approach that includes ad sales,
sales of trending data, sponsorships and corporate
partners.
c. We will use inexpensive SEO (Search Engine
Optimization) campaigns, blogs, articles and email blasts
to incrementally grow each subscriber base.
d. As the number of Aicram website developments grow,
those that offer the greater service to our global community
will rise to the top and lesser value products will organically
be processed out. The websites that grow revenues will
have greater opportunity for continued growth.
i. Revenue Targets
1. Year 1
a. Most of the year we are in the Time
to product and Time to Market
phases of development.
b. Anticipated revenues $20,000.00
2. Year 2
a. Time to Client is at full pace. Much
of our efforts focused on marketing
to the user.
b. Anticipated revenues $100,000.00
3. Year 3
a. Continuous cycle of brain trust
design and development. New
website services debut at regular
pace.
b. Anticipated revenues $250,000.00
ii. Customer Satisfaction
1. Growth in the subscriber base of each
Aircram website will be the first test of our
foundational offerings. Building the
subscriber base of each of our websites is
key to our viability.
2. A continuous cycle of website
improvements, as well as new website
offerings, will allow for the frequent use of a
site by each user. This frequent usage will
be the next step in developing sustainability.
3. As the number of websites we offer grows,
we will build up the Aicram brand.
Customers will begin to identify Aicram
products and will have the assurance of
knowing the quality our websites offer.
a. This family of users will be able to
seek out Aircram products knowing
they will find websites that meet their
service requirements at their skill set
level. This is similar to a Ford Motor
Company loyal customer who buys
Ford, Lincoln, Mercury or Volvo
knowing they are staying within the
Ford family.
iv. Who is our customer?
1. The foundational subscribers (users) are Generation X and Baby
Boomers. As our product portfolio grows, we can focus more
broadly on varying segments of the marketplace.
v. Our Industry - The Internet
1. Building web applications and creating new website services is no
longer the BIG challenge. Facebook and Google are prime
examples of organizations that challenge users to not only use
their services but to build new applications using their platform
and applications. This is a whole new paradigm! I hesitate to
even call it a business paradigm because it’s more like a sea
change. Here are some indicators to consider.
a. The Obama political campaign; won by shrewd
maximization of the internet and its capabilities
b. Twitter born in a ‘reinventing’ brainstorming session at
Odeo, Inc, a podcasting company that was going out of
business. One of the brainstorming teams was sitting
around eating tacos and came up with twitter. Twitter now
offers its applications free for developers like me to use to
build new programs. We are using their application for our
site www.visualtweets.com and you will see the following
Facebook visual on the bottom of our website when it
launches:
c.
a. Economics
1. The market size is growing daily as web users grow in numbers.
Our goal is to engage ½ of 1% of these 2 populations as
subscribers (users) to Aicram website services over the next 5
years. That equates to 5M subscribers (users).
a. Estimated 70M Boomers (.05% = 3.5M anticipated
subscribers)
b. Estimated 50M Gen X-ers (.05% = 2.5M anticipated
subscribers)
2. Revenues for Aicram websites will be achieved through:
a. banner ads
b. click through ads
c. sponsorship sales
d. corporate partnerships
e. Each Aicram website represents a product that can be
duplicated and sold to a brand for their own use with their
clients. For example, LinkShelves.com can be duplicated
by our team and branded as SheratonShelves.com
offering specific libraries of information to guests in each
Sheraton location. Also, embedded shelves called, for
example, BorderShelves, can be located on our website or
developed separately for a company such as Borders.
b. Competition
1. Our competitive landscape is growing daily. Moving to the world
of Web2.0 means bringing together the organics of shared
platforms, applications, joint ventures, and next level partnerships.
It also means that as more and more information explodes onto
the web, users will increasingly look for ways to use, organize,
and simplify the information they find on the web. Our competitors
for LinkShelves include:
a. http://delicious.com/
b. http://www.speedymarks.com/
c. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5396
d. http://www.feedly.com/
e. http://www.butterflyproject.nl/
2. At the time that LinkShelves was conceived only delicious.com
was prominent. Our advantage is ease of use for Boomers and
Gen X-ers who do not want to download, use RSS or threads.
3. Sites are challenged after using development dollars to build and
not having monies needed to market themselves.
4. Our challenge is the funding we need to tweak LinkShelves to
make it more simple – like kindergarten for making a Visual Web
Library that you can use forever.
5. We will also need to look in the near future to partnering or
merging with one of the above mentioned competitors or a similar
offering to build up a greater subscriber (user) base.
6. Our BIG strength will be the launch of visualtweets.com. Due to
the recent success of twitter we need a quick launch to maximize
the value of this opportunity. We do not currently have a
competitor to our visualtweets product.
c. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Viral Marketing
i. Launch micro sites to direct traffic to our websites
ii. Manage targeted campaigns with tools like Google Adwords, click
through ads, banner ads
iii. Publish blogs to create public interest campaigns that direct readers to
use our web services
iv. Contracted SEO specialist to work on a targeted web campaign
employing above mentioned tactics
v. See LinkShelves marketing plan Addendum A
d. Development Budget 2009
i. Costs for development & upkeep for LinkShelves and visualtweets
1. April – Aug: 2000.00 per month
2. Sept – Dec: 1000.00 per month
3. Server costs, help desk, customer service, website operational
oversight - 500.00 per month
e. Promotional Budget
i. Anticipated costs for contractor to implement SEO campaign
1. Startup fee: 3000.00
2. Monthly contract fee: 1000.00
f. Pricing
i. Pricing is dependent on building an audience so that we can reach out for
corporate sponsors, partnerships and advertising
g. Proposed Location – no office space required
Addendum A
In 2005, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the time I found that all the information
available to me on the web was both a blessing and an overwhelming burden to manage.
Imagine going through a mastectomy, chemo, radiation, many side effects, and also trying to
research and organize all the possible treatment information one can find on the web. I recall
conversations with doctors where I would mention something I’d read on the web and they
would almost cast whatever I’d said aside with questions like, “Where’d you read that?” They
meant no harm. But in their mega busy healthcare mode of operation, they have little time for
discourse. Sometimes I would bring in sheaths of paper print outs of my web findings only to
have a nurse whisk the papers into a file and I’d have no way to know if they were ever looked
at again. I made a commitment to myself at that time, that when I survived cancer, and I knew I
would, that I would create a tool that would help people organize and USE what they find on the
web.
I have a video entitled, Marcia’s Story, where I share this journey and how building these
websites has given me the meaning I need to know my vision and purpose for both now and the
future. You can see it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nqscaHABJw