Venture Lab FREeM: OEP Final Report - partnerships and risk

EM Simulation software and computing infrastructure is beyond the budget of most engineers who need it. FREeM changes the way design automation works.

FREeM lets you…

GET AWAY FROM THE SIMULATOR AND BACK TO DESIGNING...

FREeM simulation

An Introduction to FREeM and our Business ModelFIRST

Residual Risk and its Reduction SECOND

FREeM : Affordable E.M. Simulation Tool for Enterprise

Re-Cap of the Problem

Explosive growth in the wireless device market (see report 1).

Every device has an antenna – but antenna design isExpensive!

A significant factor is the cost of design tools (seeReport 1).

Another aspect is the cost of infrastructure ownership and obselesence.

To date there are several work arounds employed that are terribly inefficient, inaccurate and expensive (see OAP).

What is FREeM ?

FREeM is a licence on the fly antenna simulator package

FREeM runs all simulation on the cloud : no hardware expense

FREeM simplifies the antenna design process

FREeM can seemlessly talk to your other CAD packages

FREeM simplifies the antenna design process

FREeM is powerful, yet affordable: no punitive multi-core cost

How Does it Work ?

Customer runs a client application that connects to acloud based solver.

Partnerships ?

Value Chain analysisrevealed 2 potential types of channel partner which satisfy the criterion of mutually beneficial (revenue generating).

Three of the first type to be used have been contacted and have shown interest...

Also generate value for each other but only through FREeM!

Partnerships ?

This technique is protectable IP.(hence no disclose here – sorry!)

FREeM enables a technologically unique means of adding value for both channel type providers

Partnerships & Alliances

What our channel partner brings to us?● New customers● Technical expertise● Use of their Sales Channels

What can we offer to a partner? ● Money (Commision)● Better customer satifaction.● Affiliate system.● New customers (less so to begin with).● Strong synergy.

Variable Costs

Use of the cloud gives rise to a recurring overhead for each user depenedent upon computing resource.

D a t a T r a n s f e r $ 1 5

C o m p u t e $ 1 1 5 . 2

S t o r a g e $ 1 5 . 6 2 5

X f e r F e e s $ 0 . 6

Fixed Costs

We identified the price a typical user was willing to pay (during OAP surveys).

We surveyed to find the typical use case(report 2 of OEP).

We understand our recurring expenses support cost and cost of customer aquisition.

We have estimated our fixed costs (office space, salaries, insurance etc)

Interviews with Channel Partners Suggest the following projected Y1 income:

Estimated incomes for early adopters: - France: 50 customers- UK: 30 customers- US: 20 customers

Total 100 customers

The Tight Vertical

Restricting to Western Europe in Y1 Only

Break Even

Y1 Y2 Y3

80 Customers = Break Even

40 Customers, existing contacts etc

>120 Customers

Assume we meet half of projections...

?

An Introduction to FREeM and our Business ModelFIRST

Residual Risk and its Reduction SECOND

FREeM : Affordable E.M. Simulation Tool for Enterprise

Residual Risk

- Proof of concept - own funds- Basic demo – own funds

Investment needed to fund Y1- Early adopters, further code & product

maintenance and customer support investments needed (e.g., grant support, Angel Investors).

Funding & Market Risk

Market Risk

Y1 Y2 Y3

Break Even

Early Adopters will get us to break even

- Similar business model applied by competitors

- Unique selling point of the product is copied/engineered around by competitors

- Technical support do not meet requirement of customers

Residual Commercial Risk

- Algorithms failure (low risk for the first release of the product)

- Finite-difference time-domain FDTD method failure (high risk in the future product releases)

- Expert system for antenna design- New GUI, that discourage users to learn it.

Technological Risk

Team Risk

Areas of expertise from team:● Antenna design● Software design● High speed / low level computing● RF Industry knowledge

Areas lacking expertise from team:●Sales and marketing●International business acumen

Channel partners will help reduce this !