StartUp Beat

Company:  rSitez, Inc.

Web Site:  www.rsitez.com

Headquarters:  Sparks, NV

Year Founded:  2007

Founders:  Rohan Hall, Sylvie Hall

Investors:  Private Investors

Employees:  10

By Rohan Hall, Founder and CEO

Web 3.0 - Monetizing Social Networks

Web 3.0 will be about monetizing social networks.  Entrepreneurs will use social networks to create revenue from advertising, membership fees and service fees.  Non-profits and associations will collect donation, association fees, event fees and convention fees online.  And corporations will be able to target products and services to specific audiences while having full control of their brand.  They will not be able to do this with the current large generic social networking sites.  They will need to do this with their own targeted branded site where they have total control of the site, content, and revenue.

I had a discussion about this concept with my wife, who is also my business partner, two years ago.  My wife was an EMEA Manager at Oracle.  I owned an ERP technology consulting firm whose clients included PeopleSoft, Honda, Sierra Pacific Resources and other multinational organizations.  It was clear to us that the benefits of online social networks had not yet reached many corporations, groups and organizations—some of which had offline networks with millions of members.  In addition, I realized that entrepreneurs like myself had not yet figured out how to capitalize on social networking.

Many could not afford or did not have the ‘know how’ to build a complex application like this from scratch.  The unexplored value of social networking is found in its potential to easily attract and monetize existing or new networks, but this value was not available to everyone.

rSitez evolved from this epiphany.  We provide an application where entrepreneurs, corporations, associations, non-profits, and any other group, individual or organization can create an online social network in minutes and monetize this network.  The entire process to create and start monetizing a new social networking site with our application takes less than 30 minutes.  What’s great about this for our clients is that we do practically everything for them.  We create a full-featured Web 2.0 site with blogs, chat, IM, photos, video, personal profile, groups, forums, newsletters, email and a variety of other features; we host the site for them or our enterprise customers can host the site themselves; we provide 7 days/24 hours support for our customers;  we provide regular upgrades and add the latest technology innovations at no additional cost to the product; we provide daily backups and security features; and we provide a variety of monetization features.  We also provide full customization services to clients who want to modify the software to further meet their business needs.

Because no technical skills are needed to create or manage our sites, we believe that our platform will continue to provide opportunities for everyday individuals and groups who would like to benefit from the social networking trend.  Not only are our clients able to turn on monetization features, but they can easily turn these features off as well.   Our customers are given full control of the site, content, members, revenue, and other features.

The results have been extremely successful for both us and our clients.  We continue to grow our customer base and revenue month over month.  We were profitable the 2nd month after launching the business and continue to be profitable today.  We generate revenue from licensing fees, hosting fees, advertising, and consulting fees.  We will also introduce transaction processing fees in the future.  We are privately funded and will be seeking investment to expand our market presence in the near future.

This month is our one year anniversary and we are in the process of releasing Version 3.0 of our product where we will release a variety of new features and additional monetization options for our clients.  We look forward to continued success for both ourselves and our clients in the coming future.

rSitez - www.rsitez.com

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Charlotte, North Carolina-based Miri Systems is the developer and marketer of the MiriPay system.  Its members include software developers and banking experts with decades of experience in custom software and credit card solutions as well as experts in quantitative analysis of complex systems and intellectual property development.

StartUp Beat: What is your primary value proposition for users?

Ludwik Zon: Security.  Users of the Miri Card will have the ability to shop anywhere, anytime confident that their account number information is protected.  Fear is the number one reason cited by U.S. consumers for not making purchases over the Internet or on their mobile phone.  However, credit cards are the global currency and fraud is a global problem.  A secure payment vehicle makes everyone a winner through increased commerce, reduced rates of identity theft and reduced values of the stolen information on the black market while improving customer loyalty.  Clearly, the advantages of a Miri Card for the global economy in burgeoning e-commerce and m-commerce markets are enormous.

StartUp Beat: When was the company founded, and how did the idea come about?

Ludwik Zon: Miri Systems was founded in November 2007, but the idea for the solution began in 1999 when Paul Vasil, our CFO and also an accountant, along with Ron Sandstrom, a software architect and our CTO, conceived the idea of an “intelligent” payment card.  They submitted a U.S. Patent application in 2000 for imbedding intelligent information into a payment number.  The Patent was granted in September 2007.  I joined the company that same year as CEO.

We know that the stakes are high for consumers, banks, card associations and merchants.  In 2007, there was an estimated $3.2 billion USD in online credit card fraud.  I frequently have credit cards that have to be cancelled as a result of fraud.  Consumers are now asked to dig deeper into their pockets to purchase identity theft protection.  Real protection is taking away the power of stolen information, and that’s what the Miri Card does.

StartUp Beat: Can you describe the underlying technology behind your product, and how it works for users?

Ludwik Zon: Miri Systems has designed a unique solution that allows users to make purchases via the Internet, mobile phone or in-store through virtual credit/debit card account numbers.  We are the only company that provides a stand-alone application that can generate a dynamic account number for card purchases anyplace, anytime and does not require Internet access.  This unique and patented solution, the Miri Card, uses an encoder to generate a virtual account number at the point of sale for each purchase.  This encoder resides as an applet on a computer, mobile phone or smart card, and again it does not require Internet access—a key advantage.  The payment card transaction is processed like any other transaction except the virtual account number can only be decoded by the host: the credit card association, the issuing bank or card processor.  Since the actual card number is not used or stored at the point of sale, the customer’s original account information is never compromised, thereby providing a secure payment vehicle.

StartUp Beat: Who do you see as your competition?

Ludwik Zon: There are other companies that provide virtual account numbers.  However, the Miri Card is the only solution that allows virtual account numbers to be created anytime and anywhere, does not require Internet access and does not pass original account details.  It works with both credit and debit cards, supports card present transactions and provides useless account data if stolen.  This is the uniqueness of our solution.  Only the Miri Card provides a secure solution that adapts to evolving consumer purchasing behavior in growing access channels for commerce.

Miri Systems - www.mirisystems.com

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Web Site: www.plandone.com

Headquarters: Petaluma, Calif.

Year Founded: 2006

Founder: A.J. Wacaser

Investors: Privately funded

Employees: 4

By A.J. Wacaser, Founder and CEO

PlanDone is a disruptive project planning tool that is transforming the web-based project collaboration market.  Designed to help companies and their teams complete projects on time, PlanDone is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) social project planning application that utilizes web 2.0 features such as instant messaging and wikis to help distributed teams work together more efficiently and effectively.

After managing a team of software engineers in India and California while reporting to managers in California, Illinois, and Amsterdam, I grew frustrated with missed deadlines and incomplete projects using complex, bulky tools not designed for efficient communication.  I found the use of email, traditional project software and document editors ineffective and I knew there had to be a better way to collaborate.

After many years of research and development, in 2006 I developed what would later be called PlanDone, web-based project collaboration software to help small-to-medium sized businesses manage and complete their projects.

Most project team members have no formal training as professional project managers and are left to use linear, static tools and processes in isolated meeting spaces.  PlanDone prevents commonly experienced problems with managing projects such as accessing the most current document.  These problems are solved by providing a centralized, interactive platform designed to gather and capture critical pieces of information such as files, guidance, goals or ideas within an open, flexible framework.

PlanDone also organizes, prioritizes, schedules and enables better communication in a maintenance-free, hosted application that is easy to use for staff members at every level of the company.  The software was designed to support people in the way they work naturally—not forcing them to change their working style based on the confines of the software features.

Unlike other products, PlanDone has a built-in wiki system for tracking recent changes, a priority ranking system for differentiating task importance, an instant message system that captures chat information directly into the supporting documentation and a projected deadline system for accurately pinpointing end dates with certainty.  PlanDone avoids the back and forth document version confusion by dynamically tracking the most current version in the wiki and providing clear expectations as action steps to team members of their prioritized tasks and due dates.  Teams report higher productivity, more accurate deadline projections, greater ability to get back up to speed, and reduction in miscommunication and confusion over shared roles.

Business Model

IDC forecasts that the small and medium-sized business (SMB) enterprise applications market will grow to $80.3 billion by the end of 2012, representing a 10.6 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 2008-2012 period.  PlanDone fits nicely in this market and offers users a subscription-based model—either month-to-month at $16 per user for up to three users or discounted six and 12 month packages.  PlanDone’s services are best suited for small-to-medium sized business in the following industries: consulting, healthcare and manufacturing, but any industry that wants to cut costs and save time with distributed team planning and task management implementation can benefit from PlanDone’s solution.

Current Needs

We are currently evaluating early stage investment firms that have experience in the web 2.0 field to bring in seasoned management teams.

AJ Wacaser has more than 15 years of experience working in public and private software companies in desktop and web development.  He has managed numerous teams around the globe.

Previously AJ was the Web Development Manager at KnowledgePoint, an HR software company in Petaluma, Calif.  He helped guide development through the dot com boom/bust and helped many small businesses with a suite of pay-per-use, on-demand HR productivity tools such as HRTools.com, JobDescription.com, PerformanceReview.com and PersonnelPolicy.com.  These products are currently owned by Administaff.  When HRTools.com launched in 1999, the site was selected as a Codie Award finalist.

AJ graduated from Augustana College, and earned a M.A. in Environmental Planning from the University of Illinois.

Posted by startupbeat at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)