Oscar Brings Seniors & Juniors Closer Together

One of the best things about being an angel investor is that I get to see really interesting projects led by talented, dedicated people who put their heart into their work.

Entrepreneurs must be more than passionate about their ideas, however.  They must be practical.  They must understand when to raise capital and when not to raise capital, when to develop and when to launch, where when and how to advertise, when to grow and when to consolidate the gains. It's very rare indeed to meet one of those exceptional people.

Recently I met Tomas Posker.  Born in the former Czechoslovakia, Tomas is an entrepreneur who established his first business at the age of 16. Starting from scratch, Tomas built his first business Poski.com into to a company with 20 employees and such customers as Henkel, Whirlpool.

Tomas went on to co-found Ki-Wi Digital, a company developing its own digital signage software and designing its displays and interactive kiosks for retailers, advertisers, real estate agencies, municipalities and government.

When you meet Tomas one of the first things you realise is that he is remarkably humble.  He is soft spoken and exudes a quiet, but firm confidence.  He is a person you can immediately feel comfortable being around.

Tomas worked in California, America's technology state.  Like a good and caring grandson, he wanted to keep in touch with his grandmother living in the Czech Republic.  Like many of his peers, he didn't want the internet and computer technology to be a barrier to communication between he and his grandparent.

As Tomas explained to me, grandma frequently needed help understanding with computer and tablet functionalities. Very often Tomas provided help via telephone.  Then one day Tomas looked at his telephone bill and decided there must be a better way.  And thus, project Oscar was hatched.

Put simply, Oscar provides a simple yet permanent interface for seniors that enable them to maintain even continuous contact with their younger family members. 

The system works with all the commonly used communication capabilities: text, video, voice, pictures, reminders. This allows seniors continuous contact with their family members. The younger generation can help to remotely control a senior’s app, thus avoiding a senior’s frustration with technology.

The senior's end is installed on a pc, laptop, mobile phone or tablet and contains a user friendly interface that drives the functionalities.  In most cases a tablet is the preferred device.

The junior's end is installed on a table, pc or mobile phone.  In contrast to the senior end, the junior's end is full or tools that enable the junior to access the senior's device and use a series of tools to provide whatever technical assistance the senior might need.

The Oscar application thus provides the mechanism for trouble-free, internet driven communication between generations.  Functionalities include:

• Communication tools via e-mail, text, voice and video
• Live-view screen sharing to provide help in case the senior gets stuck or needs a problem solved
• Classical internet browsing and embedded access to content such as  weather, news, sports and games
• Reminders so senior and junior can track medications, doctor visits and other scheduled events

Over the past two years Tomas developed and enhanced the application and the user experience.  He built a user base of about 1,500 around the world, mainly by word of mouth.

I asked Tomas why he hasn't done more advertising to move the business faster.  He explained to me that he felt the system improvements in functionality and user experience before he could feel comfortable marketing the service on any scale.  Tomas prefers to have fewer customers who are satisfied than more customers who potentially would be unhappy.

As any right thinking angel investor would do I asked Tomas about his monetisation model.  He told me that he's not so concerned at the moment with pricing.  His first aim is to deliver a good user experience and to learn just what his customers want.  Over time he'll develop value added features that users can pay for, most likley with a monthly subscription.

I asked him about advertising and marketing.  I found his answer remarkable.  He said he wants to experiment gradually to learn which forms of communication are effective.  Tomas believes ultimately the best form of advertising will be word of mouth, personal recommendation and the development of marketing partnerships that can give Oscarsenior visibility to the key audiences - seniors and their adult children.
Tomas pretty much got me hooked on his concept and his product, so naturally, I opened the discussion about early stage investment and here's where the conversation got even more interesting.

Tomas told me that right now he is focused on finishing the iOS version of the product and releasing a new version of Oscarsenior with enhanced features and user experience.  Then, he wants to invest a relatively small amount of money in advertising and marketing to grow the user base and understand their technical needs better.

Tomas believes that while what he as done in thus far is a good start, more needs to be done to develop the business with his own resources before he brings in outside capital.  He thinks the time for outside capital is getting closer, but he is comfortable for now to wait, work and develop.

I think many entrepreneurs can take a lesson from Tomas.  Too often I see startups eager to raise capital before they have really a  developed product with some proven demand.  The result is usually not good.  They struggle to raise capital.  What capital they get they inevitably spend unproductively. The generate sup-par returns for their investors and themselves.

Tomas earns much of my respect for his patience and his focus on product development.  He sees the benefits that this will bring in the long run.  When he raises outside capital he will have a much easier time than most early stage companies, because he'll have proven demand and a marketing strategy grounded with practical experience.

Tomas will presented Oscarsenior at the European Angel & P2P Summit. It's a presentation I think all the investors found refreshing.

10 ReasonsWhy We Invested in Venzeo

I often write about criteria angel investors should consider when making an investment.  Recently the Symfonie Angel Fund invested in one of the few companies that fit our criteria - Venzeo.  Time will tell if we were right or wrong with Venzeo and there is much hard work ahead in order for us to make this investment succeed.  I hope my post is helpful to all the other angel investors out there who are considering their next investment. 

1. The product fills a market need.  Any business that uses photos for documentation or evidence can save time and money by using Venzeo.

2. Similar businesses are successful in other markets.  Look at the US.  Fotoin (www.fotoin.com) and pdvconnect.com have emerged and are growing rapidly.

3. It's not all plug 'n play. Venzeo's service is easy to use.  The application downloads easily into many mobile phones.  But once business start to use the service and they realize the benefits, they come back to Venzeo, ask for more devices and ask for customisation to their specific systems and procedures. Customers that integrate a solution into their business are customers that are in for the long haul.

4. Wayra - Venzeo received an investment early on from Wayra, the tech incubator affiliated with Telefonica. Venzeo and Telefonice both come out ahead.  Venzeo developed a relationship with local units of Telefonica to distribute Venzeo service to Telefonica customers.  This partnership has already begun winning customers.

5. Proven demand - Vezneo is winning customers.  The typical customer starts with trial use period.  Once they start to use the service and realise the benefits, they quickly add users to the installation base.  Today's small subscriber becomes tomorrow's key customer.

6. Scaleable  - Adding more users means adding more servers, not building factories or leasing more real estate.  Sales can be outsourced and franchised to re-sellers who are already close to the end customer. When local subidiaries of large international companies share best practices with each other, Venzeo wins additional business.

7. Hard to displace once embedded -  Venzeo's service is not particularly expensive.  Once a customer starts using the service and likes the service, there's no great incentive to switch to another supplier.  If anything, changing suppliers can be painful.  This is why first movers like Dropbox, Facebook and LinkedIn are so successful. Customers like to stay with something that works.

8. Highly fragmented industry - There are only a handful of companies like Venzeo operating and there are hundreds of thousands of companies that can become customers of firms such as Venzeo. Fragmented industries mean there is ample opportunity for new firms like Venzeo to compete and succeed.

9. Not easy to replicate - Developing the application takes  time money and effort.  Venzeo had a small, but dedicated, team of developers working full time for more than a year before it could launch a version of its service.  By learning from customers Venzeo develops value added solutions that enhance it's marketability.

10. The modest investment we make can have a large positive impact on the company.  Venzeo's core solution is developed, tested, proven and operations.   What's needed now is build out of sales and marketing, coupled with value added improvements. The marginal dollar invested today goes quickly to the bottom line, so the company is well positioned to become self sustaining.

Find out more about Venzeo at www.symvest.com/prereg/venzeo. Feel free to contact me directly at  msonenshine@symfoniecapital.com if you have questions or comments.