DISCUSSION SYSTEMS
MIT lK Business Plan Competition
Submitted November 22, 2004

Based on the phenomenal success of wiki technology (e.g. www.wikipedia.org), the company is creating an enterprise software  platform that enables users to collaboratively create "living" web pages. The product will realize the true potential of the Internet to serve relevant, up-to-date and authoritative content by motivating and managing web content contributions including questions, challenges, edits and other improvements.

Business Concept What, precisely, is the product or service that you are trying to sell? What problem does your product or service solve? What types of people or companies suffer from this problem? What is the technology behind your product? Is your business model different from the industry standard?
    The problem with the web is that it still difficult to find good quality information because the information 1) is scattered over many sites, 2) is partial and lacking mechanisms for correction by 3rd parties, and 3) does not motivate professionals to systematically expose their knowledge in a way that encourages its deconstruction and commoditization.
    General Solution: Build on the Wikipedia approach of encouraging global participation in the development of articles on virtually any topic. Improve the processes for quality control and managing conflicts. Integrate a system for banking credits so that authors are motivated by the expectation of royalty income to create valuable works or release highly valued information (e.g. whistleblowers on SEC filings).
    Enterprise Problem: Enterprises don't know what they know. Most of the knowledge is trapped in the minds and the hard disks of individual employees and not available to the larger enterprise.
    Enterprise Solution: Our solution will enable employees to create "living" content on their specialty area in collaboration with other experts in the enterprise around the world. The system will be able to track the knowledge created through consumption patterns and ratings from peers and knowledge consumers.
    Creator Benefit: The creator will prefer our method to email and other methods of information distribution because it will be contributed into domain specific document that is most authoritative and persistent. He will be able to see continuous, quantitative feedback on the valuation of his contributions. In most settings this will translate directly into political capital and monetary rewards.
    Enterprise Benefit: The enterprise will "know what it knows" and will end up knowing much more since the experts will be collaborating virtually. In addition, the enterprise will be able align compensation with the value created by each employee.

Sales and Marketing How big is the market? How many customers? Who, specifically, will you sell to? Why will they buy? How do you position your product? How do you divide up your target niche and execute? How do you make money? What is the possible total revenue?
    The market is any company that creates intellectual property. We have a tentative agreement to provide our software to the Wikimedia Foundation to upgrade the functionality of the world's first and only open contribution encyclopedia. We believe that select consulting companies, investment banks, pharmaceutical research organizations, and government intelligence agencies would be early adopters also. These organizations spend hundred of billions to collaboratively construct documents. By using our model of wiki's along with our unique processes and accounting system, they will be able to much more accurately link valuable knowledge creation with compensation. This will strongly improve productivity and profitability.  Competition will in turn drive widespread adoption of our products and processes.   

Competitive Advantage Who is your competition? How long have they been in business? What are their revenue and growth projections? What alternative products or services already exist in the marketplace? Why are your idea and team better than the competition? What stops other people from copying you?
    The most significant competitor we see in the space is SocialText, a startup with less than $1m in revenues. Their system is also based on enhancing wiki’s for the enterprises but their focus is on enhancing security rather than functionality. Our system will naturally have security but it will also be inspired by McHenry, with twenty years of experience in computer supported collaborative work.
    Our system will offer much substantive improvement in the form of specialized processes for managing contention and quality as well as a unique system of credits for contribution that enterprises can tie to bonuses. To help assure our success, we will be filing patents and also internally adopting our processes to maximize productivity.

Financial Plan Explain in more detail the assumptions used for revenue and expense projections. When does cash flow become positive? How much money are you planning to raise? When? What will you use it for? Where will you source the capital?
    Our financial model shows revenue projected from 3 sources: enterprise licenses at $500,000 each with 8% maintenance and hosting at $100/seat/yr. Sales, marketing and engineering is estimated within normal ranges for software engineering companies.  Cash flow to become positive within two years. Expect to raise $6 million in one round by October, 2005.  Cost for first 11 months, principally for engineering and sales, to be covered by convertible loans to staff, principals and sale to Wikipedia Foundation.

Management Team Include a brief bio of each team member and the role that s/he will play in the venture.
      CEO: Bruce McHenry - Founder of Discussion Systems, a 21 year old start-up with prior attempts also in communication and collaboration software, he will also be the lead architect of the product user interface. McHenry is a graduate of courses 6, 15 and 4. His bio and resume can be found at www.discussIT.org.
    COO: Christopher Allen, a 30 year industry veteran is expected to join the team on 11/18. Christopher has excellent technical references (author of the SSL security protocol used in web browsers) and team management skills. His web site is LifeWithAlacrity.
    CFO, Jordan Brysk: President and CEO of Ascendant Strategies Group, Inc., a business strategy consultancy he founded in 1994. Services include management consulting, investor relations, executive presentations.  His clients included Synopsys, Wind River, Farallon Capital Management, Robertson Stephens and San Francisco Unified School District. Previously he was director of investor relations and director, corporate strategy at Cadence Design Systems Inc.
    VP, Sales: Brian Halligan - Currently in the Sloan Fellows program. He spent the last four years as Vice President of Sales for Groove Networks, a peer-to-peer collaboration software company founded by Ray Ozzie. Prior to Groove, he worked for Parametric Technology Corporation for 10 years in various senior level roles.