In continuation to the post by Alok, I have posted a very initial Venture pitch for MirrorZen, a Natural Language based Search Engine. Here is the presentation:
MirrorZen had been self-funded to come to a proof-of-concept stage. And subsequently we were looking at raising some Angel Investment for MirrorZen to be able to continue further. The proof-of-concept was far from what the final MirrorZen is supposed to be, and we needed more people and better Infrastructure to be able to take MirrorZen to a public Alpha.
We had decided from our past experience that trying to meet VCs would serve no purpose and we focused on trying to meet possible angel investors who would understand our technology-intensive venture. We did a small demo as what still runs on our servers and decided to go ahead with showing the demo and a brief presentation.
In the presentation we tried to focus briefly on MirrorZen, the possibilities and why we think Natural Language based Search could still work. Infact an ask.com which works.
But, we had committed many mistakes:
1. Didn’t plan the demo well enough in advance. MirrorZen gives better results for certain keywords and bad for certain others. For a demo which ran for 30 minutes we needed to cover up our demoing skills better. There is a difference when you are demoing one-to-one/two and one-to-many. So getting down to the nitty-grity of your demo is very important and you need to show the best points of your system and try to hide the worst.
2. The presentation was quite technical and nobody bothers about how much effort you have put in coding the parsers and how many lines of code have you written. This is the cardinal sin, techies commit. Technology is important but if you are a technology player in the internet space, you should be able to commodotize the Technology.
3. The presentation emphasized on the possibilities of MirrorZen with respect to User Experience and the Financial Projections. We were simply unable to come up with a proper Financial Model and still are. Helps if you could get a much clearer Financial Model. And we could have asked somebody important to sum up the User Experience of MirrorZen.
4. No competitive Analysis as rightly pointed out by Alok: But how do we do a competitive analysis with a Google Search or a Yahoo Search. We are still looking for answers here.
5. There are many more mistakes that we had made and I would request all readers to try and suggest improvements.
While still looking for investment, we have gone ahead and realized that for young entrepreneurs like us, it is of utmost importance to get some “real technology” going or have substantial traction to get others involved. We have also got some great genuine feedback, with somebody also saying, “Guys like you are the future of India”.
-Animesh
Co-founder, MirrorZen Software
- Venture Pitches and Missing Detailing: A Case Study - November 10, 2006
Hi,
Google was not the first Search Engine which came… many were already there in the market… its basicaly what you address is important and how….
You may and need not have first mover advantage… but how you take it to customer & bring them to you is important…
Every investor is interested in knowing the revenue part of the business than technology….
I think focus on business & Financial model is very important…
Dont get disheartend… keep going with courage you will win….
best of luck
Deepak, I cover some pitfalls in speech and briefly in the presentation but have not detailed it. There are some pitfalls definitely as compared to generic information retrieval like with queries such as code snippets, etc.
Krish, you have some nice questions for sure, but in our case when we say NLP we mean NLP plays a major role than with other Web Search Engines. Branding….We are looking at getting some User testimonails and expert testimonials but we have to get the system ready for regular users before that. We are long way off from the Best pitch we could do and am currently in the learning mode.
Sanjoy, you have hit the mail on its head by asking the right question. We don’t plan to dislodge the major Search Engines from where they stand and might not be able to, but we some other plans which are outlined somewhat in the presentation as well.
Nishant, ambitions are the same be it Ranchi, Bangalore or Palo Alto. Yes, GYM is doing horizontal Search and there is space for Vertical Search. But as the saying goes, “Web Search is about 5% solved”. And true it is. I feel there is still space for taking this 5% to larger level. And I feel that innovation has to be in bettering the results, the user experience, user gratification since I feel that the scalability of the information retrieval has been solved well by Google, and you need to be upto GYM in terms to the information retrieval system.
Krish, I would again say that there is space in improving consumer Web Search in various ways. And personally I am the least interested in doing ONLY Enterprise Search/Vertical Search. The way our technology could be Best used is to work on top of a true Information Retrieval System with relevance as benchmarked by Google.
-Animesh
Thanks everyone for some thoughtful and insightful comment. I have been travelling and couldn’t reply earlier.
Thanks Alok,
Thanks for your feedback. The points you raised are quite genuine but I feel that eventhough NLP is old hat, it has great potential if executed subtly and focusing on making things easier. I think instead of trying to position MirrorZen as a NLP based Search Engine, we could have tried to brand MirrorZen differently.
1. When you ask about the Team, background of people involved and involvement of experts, etc. To be honest, I think we have failed on this front. We have dreamt big, but not thought BIG. The execution has been poor. But again this have been due to lack of sufficient funds, networks, identity of the founding team members, to pull in the right talent. Something which a Riya has been able to do well. I feel the need to execute a business proposition on a larger scale is very important.
2. When we focus on India SEM we definitely are limiting our business but again it is a question of the fear of standing upto the might of a Google or a Yahoo. Creating a technology equal or better than Google is difficult if not impossible but executing that as Google has is almost impossible – this is the eternal fear which keeps us from flying hard.
3. But if we are able to conquer ourselves, then the scope of MirrorZen becomes immense. This would work fantastic with Knowledge Bases, Document Collections, as a plugin on Blog Pages, News Sites, etc. But the need to position MirrorZen as a Web Search Engine is because it definiltely provides better chances of user gratification than any other search engine.
Thanks, Also focusing on the road ahead does have it advantages. For example with another $500K we could get a couple of experts on our Team, some more team members, better infrastructure, put a proper management in place, and iron out execution issues to the point that a public launch is possible covering substantial portions of the web.
We are definitely open to feedback which lets us improve. I know its a tough journey ahead, but it becomes easier when people point out mistakes during your journey and not at the end of the road.
-Animesh,
MirrorZen Software
That’s the global consensus on NLP now. Focus on enterprise search or specialized vertical search markets. Your unique technology will be more appreciated and valued by those customers. If you are really stuck on doing consumer search then you try to specialize in News Search, People Search, Medical Search, or some other vertical where NLP power can be an advantage.
But your effort is well appreciated.