Personal Digital Brain
Elevator
Speech
Never forget a name or face again! We all forget names and faces. “Namesia” can be embarrassing in business
and in social situations. Our Personal
Digital Brain (PDB) will recognize people for you, show you their names and
give you important information about them.
With the PDB you will recognize everyone, learn their names, and always
be reminded who they are - all without anybody else knowing. This device would include the functionality
of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), and much more.
Initial
Concept
Imagine that you are an employee of Coca-Cola. Their CEO walks by you in the hall and
greets you by name! Imagine that you
are in the supermarket and you bump into the salesman that sold you a car eight
years ago. He recognizes you, he
remembers your name, and he remembers the car he sold you! Imagine that you are recently appointed head
of a large department. You
automatically know the name of every person working for you and have their
employee records memorized! Imagine
opening your front door to let in the new babysitter your wife hired and
instantly knowing every detail of the babysitter’s criminal record!
The PDB will consist of a Walkman-sized computer and
a pair of glasses with a built in display and camera. The glasses will appear to be normal eyeglasses and can be fitted
with corrective lenses. When you look
at someone, the PDB will recognize the face and discretely display the person’s
name and information on the glasses.
Technical
Feasibility
All the required hardware components already exist and can simply be purchased and assembled. MicroOptical Corp. makes the glasses and there are several companies that produce very small, portable computers that will be suitable.
The software will require additional development but
a large portion can be constructed using off the shelf products. Visionics produces face recognition
software, which is the critical software component of the PDB. Visionics is very open to a partnership. For
the first generation product, the face recognition software will be integrated
with an existing contact management package.
More development will be required for later product stages.
Target Market
Initially our initial lead user will be
casinos. The PDB will be ideal for
spotting cheaters and will also help employees spot and recognize VIPs. We hope to have a product ready for them
within 3 months. After we have made a few
initial sales to casinos and have perfected the PDB further we will shift our
focus to sales people and anyone else who does a large amount of
networking. These markets will be
targeted initially because they are less sensitive to price. The PDB will appeal to clients who
understand the value of maintaining close relationships with their customers,
suppliers and others.
Product Stages
The first generation PDB will be designed primarily
for casinos. This version will
recognize VIPs, known troublemakers, authorized personnel and people with criminal
records. At this product stage
adding new client information will be a separate function. This generation of the PDB will allow the
user to record segments of conversations and play them back later so that
valuable information can be entered into the PDB. This product will be constructed primarily from off-the-shelf
components. Once all the bugs have been
worked out we will shift our market focus to sales people.
The second generation PDB will also focus on sales
people and anyone else who meets a large number of new people and can afford
the still hefty price tag. This
generation will automatically learn new faces and names using voice recognition
technology instead of recording segments of conversations. There is the
possibility that we can go straight to the third generation product if voice
recognition technology is as advanced as some documentation is indicating, but
additional testing will be required to determine this.
Future
The number of features that can be added to the PDB
and wearable computers in general is endless.
Some examples are applications in law enforcement, automated background
searches, incorporation of voice based lie detections software, the
incorporation of a personal planner, web browsing, live stock prices, an mp3
player, email, and the list goes on.
The potential for growth is enormous.
Team
We have a team with excellent technical skills. We also have a large support net of people
with experience in business management and sales. The purpose of this endeavor is to build a product to help people
running a business. The ultimate test
of the product will be the success of this endeavor.
Competitors
IBM has announced that they plan to
release a product such as this in the second quarter of 2002 and has had plans
for such a products since 1999. Their
reason for not releasing such a product yet is that they wish to wait for the
cost to drop before release. We believe
that IBM has underestimated the potential market as a security tool in casinos
and as a networking tool in the business community. We feel confident that we can develop and release our product
long before the 2nd quarter of 2002 and then exploit our first mover advantage. We would do this by developing an Operating
System (OS) designed for wearable computers that other applications could be
built on top of. Once enough
applications are built relying on this OS it would become a standard that all
future wearable computers would use. As
more competitors enter the market, our focus will shift to the development and
sale of this OS and away from reselling hardware.
Our secondary competitors are other
companies that specialize in memory aid devices such as PDAs. This includes companies such as 3Com, and
Hewlet Packard. Competition could also
come from other companies developing hardware for the wearable computing
industry such as Sony and Xybernaut.
Sales
and Distribution
Initially, sales will be made by
directly approaching casinos. At the
end of the first year and during the second year sales will primarily be made
through networking events, directly approaching potential customers. The second generation product will be sold
through a web site, computer stores, optical stores, and telecom stores. We hope to sell the second generation
product internationally
Market
Size
We anticipate selling between 10 and 20
units to large casinos in the first year, focusing on Las Vegas and Atlantic
City. We hope to sell an additional 200
units to casinos and Ontario businesses in the second year. In the 3rd year we will focus on businesses
in Canada and the US. In our 4th year
we hope to expand to European and Japanese markets. By the 5th year we hope to have taken a significant percentage of
the PDA market which was 5.4 million units in 1999. There are currently 20 million PDAs in the world and growing
fast.
Cost
and Pricing
Each generation of the PDB will involve
some radical cost and price changes.
The first generation of the PDB will cost approximately $6000 US so will
be sold at more than twice cost $12000-$15000 US including technical
support. The cost for parts of the
second generation PDB will, hopefully, drop to around $1500 US and down to as
little as $500 US within five years.
This future model would be sold to customers at approximately $5000
US. Software sales and upgrades will
yield additional revenues. We
anticipate that as competitors enter the market we will become a software
company selling not only our applications but also our OS customized for use
with wearable computers.
Financial Plan
Month 1:
We will have two people working full time and two
people working part time. Our first
task will be to develop a Linux based Operating System (OS) with a user
interface designed for use on a wearable computer. This serves two purposes:
a Windows 95 interface will not be adequate for a wearable computer
because its use will be very different; strategically speaking this is
important because as competitors enter the market they will have package their
products with our OS. In order to
develop this OS we will spend $2000 to purchase the display hardware that will
be used with the PDB and spend another $500 on hardware to develop a mouse that
could be used from inside a pocket without looking strange.
Month 2:
We will obtain face recognition software ($10 000)
and use it to develop an automated contact management application. We will also spend an additional $5000 on
hardware to produce a sales prototype for the PDB. During this month we will also contact customers that may be
interested in purchasing our wireless pocket mouse and hopefully make a few
sales. These customers would primarily
be researchers at MIT working on wearable computing projects. We hope to sell a dozen of these at
approximately $150 profit per unit. The
purpose of this is primarily to test the wearable computing industry. If we sell more than a few of the wireless
pocket mice it would indicate a large amount of competition for the PDB.
Month 3:
In month 3 we will start trying to sell the PDB to
large casinos by directly contacting them.
We hope to make one sale this month of 3 to 5 units giving us a profit
of $15 000 to $25 000 CDN. We also hope
to find and develop more software that can be added to this system such as
voice based lie detection software, stock tickers, PDA functionality, internet
access, cell phone, etc.
Month 4, 5, and 6:
We hope to sell three to five more units
each month, which will provide us with $15000 to $25000 profit. We will also continue refining and
developing applications for the PDB.
Month 7:
By month 7 we hope to have the PDB refined enough to
be usable by the general public. We
hope to start selling it by wearing the PDB to networking events and letting
people try it out. We hope to sell one
unit this way in month 7 and make an additional sale of 3 to 5 units to
casinos. This month we will shift our
development focus to bringing down the cost of each unit.
Month 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12:
At this point we hope to have the cost of each PDB
down to $4000 CDN. We hope to sell 3
units each month through networking events and another 3 to 5 units to
casinos. Our development focus will now
switch to the second generation PDB.
Beginning month 8 all four of us will be working full time.
Year 2, 1st half:
We will rent an office. For this first half of the year, we hope to
be able to sell sixty units to casinos for $300 000 profit. We will hire a computer technician in order
to help with the testing of the product, troubleshooting for customers, as well
as being ready to visit customer sites in case of severe problems. We will issue press releases in order to
help advertise our product. We hope to
sell another fifty units through networking which will provide a profit of $250
000. We will work on bringing down the
price. We will advertise that we are
selling our software separately and that we are also open to selling different
hardware. We will also get other
software developers to start producing applications for our platform. We will begin finding retail outlets to
start reselling the PDB.
Year 2, 2nd half:
We will hire another technician and a
personal assistant to help us organize our schedules and office better. We will try to sell eighty units to casinos
for a profit of $400 000 and one hundred units through retail outlets for a
total profit of $500 000. We will
continue working on generation 2 and hopefully have a complete prototype ready
and tested by the end of the year. We
will begin to do research into the costs of advertising on television, in
magazines, newspapers, on the internet, and on the radio in. We hope to persuade our hardware
manufacturers to help in advertising costs.
Year 3:
In the third year we will shift our
market focus away from casinos and onto our heavy hitters. At this point we hope to make most of our
sales through retail outlets. At this
point we anticipate competitors entering the market but these competitors will
be reselling our Operating System.
Year 5:
By year 5 we hope PDB systems, even if
they are not ours, will take over a large percentage of the PDA market – all
carrying our Operating System. There
are currently 20 million PDAs in the world and the number is growing fast.
If you have any questions or comments
please do not hesitate to contact us by phone at (613) 688-2300 ext. 5260 or by
email at rchahal@chat.carleton.ca.
Robin Chahal, 4th year Computer Systems
Engineering
Tom Moore, 4th year Aerospace Engineering
Income Statement
|
Month |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
|
Net Sales |
$0.00 |
$2,400.00 |
$45,000.00 |
$45,000.00 |
|
Less:Cost of
Goods Sold |
$0.00 |
$600.00 |
$30,000.00 |
$30,000.00 |
|
Gross Margin
on Sales |
$0.00 |
$1,800.00 |
$15,000.00 |
$15,000.00 |
|
Less:Operating
Expenses |
$10,000.00 |
$20,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
|
Net Income |
-$10,000.00 |
-$18,200.00 |
$5,000.00 |
$5,000.00 |
|
Total
Overall Net Income |
-$10,000.00 |
-$28,200.00 |
-$23,200.00 |
-$18,200.00 |
|
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
Jan |
|
$45,000.00 |
$45,000.00 |
$60,000.00 |
$54,000.00 |
$54,000.00 |
|
$30,000.00 |
$30,000.00 |
$40,000.00 |
$24,000.00 |
$24,000.00 |
|
$15,000.00 |
$15,000.00 |
$20,000.00 |
$30,000.00 |
$30,000.00 |
|
$10,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
|
$5,000.00 |
$5,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
$20,000.00 |
$20,000.00 |
|
-$13,200.00 |
-$8,200.00 |
$1,800.00 |
$21,800.00 |
$41,800.00 |
|
Feb |
Mar |
Apr |
Year 2, 1st Half |
Year 2, 2nd Half |
|
$54,000.00 |
$54,000.00 |
$54,000.00 |
$990,000.00 |
$1,620,000.00 |
|
$24,000.00 |
$24,000.00 |
$24,000.00 |
$440,000.00 |
$720,000.00 |
|
$30,000.00 |
$30,000.00 |
$30,000.00 |
$550,000.00 |
$900,000.00 |
|
$10,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
$10,000.00 |
$120,000.00 |
$200,000.00 |
|
$20,000.00 |
$20,000.00 |
$20,000.00 |
$430,000.00 |
$700,000.00 |
|
$61,800.00 |
$81,800.00 |
$101,800.00 |
$531,800.00 |
$1,231,800.00 |
|
Year 3 |
Year 4 |
Year 5 |
|
$4,500,000.00 |
$6,000,000.00 |
$100,000,000.00 |
|
$2,000,000.00 |
$2,000,000.00 |
$5,000,000.00 |
|
$2,500,000.00 |
$4,000,000.00 |
$95,000,000.00 |
|
$500,000.00 |
$1,000,000.00 |
$2,000,000.00 |
|
$2,000,000.00 |
$3,000,000.00 |
$93,000,000.00 |
|
$3,231,800.00 |
$6,231,800.00 |
$99,231,800.00 |