SmarterD - Transforming how enterprises make strategic IT decisions

Deal Highlights

• Market leading founders with decades of domain expertise and track record of delivering enterprise class solutions
• Focus on disrupting the hugely profitable management consulting industry in the area of IT strategic planning
  
• First rate paying customers, including Barnes and Noble, and a strong pipeline
• Forecast to be cash flow positive in less than 30 months 
• Channel centric distribution strategy already in place with key partners
• Major partner with over 200 potential customers has already invested $500K

The Problem

Information Technology (IT) is expensive and complicated and there is currently no good product to help large companies make strategic decisions related to IT.

In today's globalized and highly interdependent markets, enterprises are more
reliant than ever on competitive advantage derived from timely, accurate and
actionable business planning data. At the same time, the ever-expanding volume
of such information makes it more difficult to take well-informed and strategic
decisions a timely and effective manner.

In the area of IT strategic planning, enterprises struggle with an ever expanding amount of uncorrelated, siloed information.  They are forced to bring in management consultants to help them gather the necessary data, formulate IT strategy roadmaps, and inform them of what their industry peers are doing to validate their plans.  This approach is very costly and results in shelfware - a report that the enterprise can not execute on and is out of date almost the minute that the consultants walk out the door.

The Solution

SmarterD is creating a technology platform that helps enterprises make IT strategic planning decisions without reliance on consultants.  This platform integrates and correlates a company's internal data, external market data, and artificial intelligence and analytics to make recommendations and guide companies in making smart decisions that best support their business objectives.

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, such as those offered by Oracle and SAP, have provided a technology foundation for business and IT to collaborate and share the same data on the operations side.  SmarterD is bringing similar innovation to IT strategic planning, where it is sorely lacking today.

The Big Picture

The SmarterD platform will create a network effect that will bring substantial benefits to the enterprise.  We are creating an IT Marketplace that brings in relevant information from IT vendors that facilitates purchases and decisions.  It will also allow executives to have visibility into trends and priorities in their industry, answering the question "What is everyone else doing?".   For example, the SmarterD platform will be able to inform the CIO on the top priorities of industry peers with insights such as:

• 60% of similar enterprises in the Retail industry have cybersecurity as their top IT priority for the next year
• The top solutions vendors for cybersecurity are IBM and Cisco
  

In addition to bringing value to the enterprise, SmarterD will be able to offer insights to IT solutions vendors by having a comprehensive understanding of the IT strategies, plans, budgets, assets, and more of our enterprise customers.  This will enable a secondary revenue stream of providing customized market insights to IT vendors, such as:

• Marketing IT is not a top priority for the Financial Services industry for the next year.  Overall budgets for marketing IT are decreasing by 20%.
• For marketing automation solutions, Eloqua is the #1 solutions provider with 25% market share.  Your company is #6 with 5% market share.

Product

Our product, Enterprise IT Edge, is comprised of three primary components - Strategy Edge, Portfolio Edge, and Market Edge.  Portfolio Edge organizes a companies internal data relevant to IT planning - strategies, plans, assets, vendors, and capabilities - to create a digital map of the enterprise.  Market Edge brings in external market data in context that is relevant to the enterprise.  Strategy Edge utilizes advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence to guide decisions and provide recommendations.  It also allows the creation of a strategic roadmap without needing to involve expensive management consultants.  

Customers

 

SmarterD provides its solutions on a subscription basis (SaaS - Software as a Service).  Barnes and Noble, the largest retail bookstore chain in the United States with over 600 locations across 50 states, over 26,000 employees, and $4B+ in revenues is our first paying customer.

We also are in the final stages of a pilot with Ahold Delhaize, one of the world's largest food retail groups, with nearly 2,000 stores, nearly 260,000 employees, and approximately $50B of revenue in the United States.  Their brands include: Food Lion, Stop & Shop, Giant, and Peapod.

Competition

Although we do not know of any companies with a similar product or attempting to provide a similar value to our customers, there are companies that are competitive to aspects of our solution.  The below graphic shows the categories of companies that we believe are our nearest competitors.

This version provides example companies in each of the categories of competitors that we have identified.

This final chart is our analysis of the competitive position of our solution versus each category of competitor.

Business Model

We offer our product on a subscription basis (Software as a Service - SaaS) to our customers.  Typically, subscriptions are annual and paid in-advance.  We expect that our average customer revenue will be approximately $250K annually within 3 years.

Market

Global IT spending was greater than $3 Trillion in 2017.  Our solution is generally applicable to any medium to large enterprise (revenues of $250M+ annually) globally, but we will focus our sales and marketing effort on Retail and Financial Services industry verticals in the near term.  Retail and Financial Services are both among the top 3 fastest growing sectors for IT spend and were evaluated by us to be the best sectors for our solution.

Investors

SmarterD has previously raised $665K in funding on the following terms:

• $165K in convertible notes from the founding team and friends and family.  Terms are similar to those offered here - 20% discount of the next investment round of $1M or greater with a $6M valuation cap.
• $500K in a SAFE for 12.5% of the Company from a reseller and deployment channel partner - Bahwan CyberTek (BCT) - with operations across the US, Middle East, India, and Asia.

Founding Team

Vijay Sundhar - Vijay is the Founder and CEO of SmarterD and the visionary behind the company's mission.  He has over 20 years of experience in IT working with global companies in the US, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East.  He has served in executive leadership of IT at multi-billion dollar Retail enterprises and has reported to a half dozen CIOs.  His experience includes VP of Enterprise Architecture at BJ's Wholesale Club, the third largest big-box retailer in the US behind Costco and Sam's Club, and founding three previous startup technology ventures.  Vijay has a MS from the University of Central Queensland in Australiaand a BE from the Government College of Technology in India, both in Mechanical Engineering.

Ram Nagarajan - Ram is a Co-Founder and heads commercial operations for SmarterD, including sales, partnerships, and customer engagements.  Ram is an entrepreneur and technology executive with over 20 years of experience.  He most recently was responsible for the approximately $100M revenue NOOK devices business at Barnes and Noble and previously ran technology partnerships for Netflix.  He has also co-founded a technology startup that was acquired and been a part of the executive team at others.  Ram has MS and BS degrees from MIT in Electrical Engineering.

Reed Augliere - Reed is a Co-Founder and head of product for SmarterD.  Reed has over 30 years in IT - across hardware, software, and services - and a distinguished record of success in multiple roles across multiple market sectors, including Technology, Retail, Financial Services, Medical/Pharma, Media, Government, and Education.  Most recently, Reed was AVP of Security Architecture at TJX, one of the largest international apparel and home fashions off-price department store chain in the United States whose brands include TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods.  Reed has a PhD from Harvard where he researched social network analysis and technology transformation and has taught at MIT.

Bharat Desai - Bharat is a Co-Founder and head of infrastructure for SmarterD.  Bharat has over 15 years in IT leadership in infrastructure and operations and overseen technology teams of over 30 people and budgets of over $15M.  Most recently, Bharat was Sr. Director of IT at Barnes and Noble, where he led technology teams in the US, China, and Taiwan charged with delivering data center operations, network services, engineering, service desk, infrastructure planning, and disaster recovery service.  Bharat has an Associate of Science Degree in Electronics and a multitude of professional certifications.

Join us in transforming a $250 billion industry!