Gigbag: The Year in Review
Well, it's been an amazing time for us at 'Team Gigbag', with both good time and some tough ones also. Luckily, the good ones have vastly outnumbered the tougher, and it's especially because of the people that comprise the Team, both core & extended. (btw, I use Jake & Elwood, as they seem to represent much of the attitude of our little company; hopefully their respective estates won't be too annoyed at my occasional liberty..)
This last year has seen much progress with the company, but the site construction has stalled a bit, but only for a short time, hopefully. My Partner Mike convinced me that my original approach was too limited and that the only way to launch Gigbag.com was to, "do it right and do it BIG!" rather than the phased implementation that I had originally envisioned. We definitely need to have the broad functionality of 'our little site' in-place and available, otherwise it has no real appeal to the broad populace and therefore will not be successful. Further, the passing of time continually increases the chance that another company/group will release their own version of gigbag, rendering our efforts worthless. We have to act now and do so aggressively, thus the complete re-calibration of our design implementation.
but enough of the dry stuff...
A Global Revolution and an Enterprise of Equal Scale in the Making
One of the principal elements of Gigbag that will really improve the 'footprint' both around the country. an worldwide, is our network of musicians that we have developed this last year and will continue to do so in the coming ones also. In my travels I have had the good fortune to meet many, many people that work within the live music industry and were interested in participating as representatives for our site. This ever-growing network will serve as boots-on-the-ground in their respective areas of the world and conduct an informational campaign with both venues and bands, showing them how Gigbag works and providing basic-level customer service as required. Once a toe-hold has been achieved in several cities around the nation and we have a solid functionality in-place, then come s Phase II - Spiderwebbing!
Spiderwebbing is the term we coined that describes the effect that takes place once the popularity of the site begins to increase: the venues & bands that use Gigbag will, in turn, have some/all of their business counterparts (for bands it's venues and for venues, it's bands) also sign-up and use Gigbag's functionality, this will translate into a massive growth in these markets, as the fans & patrons of both also learn about the site from not us, but the BANDS & VENUES - they do the advertising for us... and what follows is a slow but steady revolution that transforms the live music industry as we know it.
Now all we need is the Moolah
With the change in our strategy comes the need to raise a substantial amount of capital to put into the programming costs. I had spent several thousand myself on our first programming venture, which did accomplish a great deal in the User Interface design and especially, definition of functionality. We began the whole process having a decent idea about what we wanted the site to do, however, after playing the "what if..." game for six months solid with my programmer, we realized that we had much more that would be required of the 'ol Gigbag, if we were to really make a difference in the industry and improve the situation substantially, as we had originally set-out to do.
Gigbag evolved into a functionality that was both complicated but also powerful in scope. The team in Phoenix re-designed the entire User Interface (UI) in a week and what arose was a completely new look & feel. It made sense, was elegant, and further, was compact design that could be used along the broad scope of the functions Gigbag had to offer. We had our designer do a mock-up and got it ready for primetime (all platforms), he sent it to us and I found out that everyone else was "underwhelmed" - shit...! haha Really, what the problem seemed to be was that the look was not as professional-level as was expected by those who are better versed in design than I. In our next effort, this will be overhauled and if required, given a complete makeover/facelift/boobjob/whatever... lol
So, in our search for investors, the obvious first question is always, "let's see your business plan" I hadn't even thought about that the whole last year, but realized the moment that I was asked, that I should have done that even before designing the UI - shit...! lol
No, seriously, for those unfamiliar with it, a good Business Plan serves as the foundation for any major business operation and is often the difference between success and failure in the business world. Further, it becomes the roadmap for how to run your business and steers one's decisions in a clear and transparent manner, leaving only the details of each decision's implementation & execution the only remaining work to be done. The better your plan, the easier it is to operate your business!
For our company to even begin to solicit serious money from serious investors, we needed a business plan, and that has been the focus over the last, and next, several weeks. My target for completion is the end of the year, at the latest; obviously, the sooner it is completed, the sooner we can submit it to investment groups, and (hopefully) the sooner we go into development of Gigbag.
Marketing Plans, Revenue Projections and Mission Statements - Oh My!
And so, the effort continues to define in a reasonable manner what Gigbag will look like as a business and what real expectations are in order when looking at our capital requirements vs. revenue, etc.
What we have found is breathtaking: in the first year of operation, we were already profitable well-before the end of it, and by the second year, depending on budget allocation, had made substantial repayment of the initial investment made. In our projected fiscal budget, it would be relatively easy to at least double any investor's money within a three to four-year timeframe, which would put it at least a 25% per year return on their initial investment.
However, if what I believe is true regarding our revenue calculations, we may be able to greatly improve that ROI (return on investment) even more. This next few weeks' findings will steer that offer significantly. Gigbag will be both a good thing for the live music industry and a profitable thing for those who decide to invest in it.
(or at Least the Search for One)
One thing that I've been working on for the last month was Gigbag's 'Elevator Pitch'. While surfing the various angel investor sites, (groups of investors that focus on particular areas, industries, etc for their investment), on site asked you to upload your elevator pitch, which is meant as a 1-2 minute presentation that one may give to a busy investment representative while they are in between meetings.
A brilliant concept, in my opinion and something that I'll try out here in my little blog to all of you, my friends & foes alike! lol Here goes:
" Do you enjoy music? Do you like to watch bands play?
Yes, terrific!
Wouldn't it be great if, no matter where you were in the world, if you wanted to see a live music show either that moment or several months from now, in your home town, the other side of the state, or travelling on vacation anywhere in the world, there was one place that you could go to find it and it would always be easy, accurate, and especially, it was always free...?!
Would you use it? Of course you would, along with, what we believe is, anyone else who has Internet access and loves music, which is a large part of the industrialized world. That's what we are building at Gigbag.com: an international database of all live music events that is both customizable to your musical preferences and is updated in real-time, unlike any other website on the planet.
And as I said before, always free!
With the proliferation of the Internet and its users increasing geometrically each year, we are designing a website that will use this valuable content to provide marketers targeted access to a highly-desirable and affluent global population that is broad in its demographic range. This is the business model for Gigbag.com and it will become a major force in Internet advertising.
We know that anyone who wishes to become involved in Gigbag will have the opportunity to both help transform the world by increasing the amount of music in it, and at the same time profiting nicely from it. Those who do so will be very glad they did."
Feel free to contact me directly at fstraub@gigbag to provide any feedback, it would be greatly appreciated.
Also, if you're interested in becoming part of Team Gigbag and investing in our company, you can also contact me the same way; I would love to tell you more about the company and where we are headed.
fs
