Prepared By: MARY CALDERON, CHARLIE RUSSEL, AARON DIGENOVA, SAMANTA ROSAS, ROSE WALSH | FEBRUARY 2016

Heroes on the Go GOPRO RENTAL AND EDITING SERVICE

MCCLOSKEY BUSINESS PLAN

Executive Summary Heroes on the Go™ is the practical and accessible solution for sports fanatics everywhere who are frustrated by an inability to adequately and uniquely capture their experience. The company rents high-quality GoPro cameras to sports fans throughout the game weekend and provides the option for consumers to buy an editing service. By conducting a soft launch of the services in South Bend this past football season, the company was able to prove the concept by making sales and establishing a relationship with Fighting Irish Digital Media, who would send us their highlight footage for each football game. We used this professional footage to help sell Heroes on the Go’s editing service, thereby expanding the service to be a truly unique product for sports fanatics looking to remember not only their experience in the stands and at the tailgates, but also the big plays and outcome of the game. When a customer buys the editing service, the product delivered the next day is a DVD (or USB, depending on customer preference) of a 5 minute, professionally-cut video with both the highlights of the games and the personal experiences, along with a full reel of raw footage the customer took during the weekend and/or game day.

We are confident in the scalability of the business through the combination of this and next season’s profits and seed funding. We plan to launch a franchise model that will provide the reach necessary to make Heroes on the Go a memorable brand in audience sports photography. The company will prioritize the development of relationships and partnerships with universities and professional sports franchises in order to provide their spectators with the unique opportunity to record and share their experiences though Heroes on the Go’s rapid rental and editing model.

Company Overview

Heroes on the Go is a team of five extremely capable senior business students who have spent much of their time in the student section and at tailgates throughout their college careers. Sparked by an idea in an entrepreneurship class, the project team decided to take their homework to the real world, building a website with full ecommerce capability, building a small inventory of GoPros, conducting hundreds of interviews, frequenting student meetings to pitch the product, closing deals at tailgates, building video prototypes, and contacting Fighting Irish Digital Media to set up a partnership to differentiate the product. The founding team is pictured below, and includes (left-to-right) Mary Calderon (Management/Entrepreneurship/Spanish), Rose Walsh (Management/Entrepreneurship/Political Science), Charlie Russell (Finance/Entrepreneurship), Samantha Rosas (IT Management/Entrepreneurship) and Aaron DiGenova (Finance/Entrepreneurship).

The team works well as a cohesive unit and divides roles into the categories of: tech/video editing, web/social media outreach, finance and budgeting, sales, customer support, and university/organizational outreach and partnerships. The team does not plan to hire more students in the upcoming football season, but does hope to expand the brand by appointing campus representatives to further brand recognition.

Mary Calderon (Director of Operations) has a knack for detail and has established herself as a strong administrative presence. Samantha Rosas (CTO) is the leader of the video editing and technology arms, constantly innovative with the online sales platform and web design. Charlie Russell (CEO) guides the team’s direction and is the mind behind the original idea. Rose Walsh (President) takes her work to the field to prove and improve the product suite and consistently deliver impressive sales. Aaron DiGenova (CFO) brings a strong analytical talent and leads the company’s financial operations and direction. Beyond working well together professionally, the team brings diverse perspectives to new markets and is constantly looking for ways to improve their product and impact the community.

Initial Offering

Heroes on the Go’s central business operation is the rental of GoPro cameras at big-ticket sporting events, and provides an upsell in the form of a professional editing service for camera renters. Customers are given the option to rent for 24 hours (game days), rent for the game weekend (Thursday to Monday), buy a personalized professionally-edited video, or to buy a GoPro camera with the inclusion of the professional editing service. The full suite of offerings and names of the packages is included in the print advertisement below.

Because of Heroes on the Go’s nature as a lean startup, the company had an inventory of GoPros in a variety of models, but lacked the availability of the latest model for every interested customer. The team had one top-of-the-line model (Hero 6) and 6 other Hero 4’s, including one in-package from a prize the company won in a business competition. The company’s website has a fully-functional ecommerce platform, but because of the youth of the organization, customers preferred to buy in-person, where they could interact with the cameras, receive a demo on how they’re used, and watch the edited videos of other customers. The Heroes on the Go team would set-up a table outside of the Eck Visitors center on Thursday and Friday afternoons in hopes of selling out in those two days. If cameras are left over after those days of sales, the team plans to distribute the remaining cameras throughout tailgates until they are also sold out. This grassroots and mobile model allows for impulse buys, and the team’s status as a student-run company helps to validate trust from alumni and visitors frequenting the Eck Center throughout the football season. During the beta testing phase, the company also sold on-campus by talking to students at Hall Councils, club meetings, pitch competitions, and to just about anyone else who would listen. The marketing was aided by a strong social media presence and outstanding reviews from past customers.

The team made a critical move in establishing a relationship with Fighting Irish Digital Media (FIDM), so that the editing service would be differentiated from other online services that do not have access to the professional footage from the field. This relationship provides Heroes on the Go with a unique position in the video editing market and will be critical for the sales of the editing service.

The team’s experience as Notre Dame students also helps the company distinguish itself from competitors, as the company lives and studies with the largest pool of potential customers. The team’s composition of current students (and shortly, alumni) also facilitates sales of the product, given that Notre Dame football fans are naturally more trusting of those from within the Notre Dame ‘family.’

Heroes on the Go’s initial product and service offering was successful because of the relentless effort of the team to spread the word about the service and make sales. The price points were well-researched throughout the Go to Market class, from which the product was originally born, and the idea has become both substantiated and proven through a long process of adjusting and pivoting. While the company still entertains the idea of diversifying the product offering (using different camera models, franchising to other universities, using the mobile model to target the presence of conferences and concerts in Chicago), the organic growth of the business has provided sufficient reason to keep the model tight and focused on its current offering at Notre Dame, at least for the upcoming season.

Market Opportunity Analysis

Overall, Heroes on the Go’s target market focuses on older millennials who are avid sports fans. Our Total Available Market (TAM) is the millennial generation. This generation, which includes those aged 20 to 37 years old, make up 24.5% of the US population1. This percentage is based on US Census Bureau population projections, and by 2020, 24.5% of the US population will provide 81,804,520 possible customers in the market. Additionally, roughly two thirds of Americans follow sports, and while football, baseball, basketball, and hockey are thought of as the “big four” American sports, Mintel data show that college football has a larger following than nearly all professional sports evaluated. 35% of sports fans follow college football and 50% follow professional football2. This explains our focus on college sports - namely football and basketball. This niche also happens to be very familiar to our team, as we have been a part of it for the past four years. In the more distant future, we do hope to market to a larger customer base in professional football. The percentage of millennials that have a strong interest in sports make up our Served Available Market (SAM). We will also target older millennials based on income, especially considering that this is a significant factor in determining the amount of disposable income available. Median household income among older millennials is $51,381. This target market will prove more than sufficient, since millennials are projected to grow 2.7% by 2019. They are also projected to account for 30% of retail sales in the US3.

Technology has impacted sports by changing the way fans follow their favorite teams. This has also subsequently led to the precedence of digital marketing. Modern fans expect to be targeted online and increasingly expect leagues to offer a seamless

1 http://academic.mintel.com.proxy.library.nd.edu/insight_zones/15/ 2 http://academic.mintel.com.proxy.library.nd.edu/display/716818/ 3 http://academic.mintel.com.proxy.library.nd.edu/display/695044/#figure1

experience across various devices and platforms4. Heroes on the Go can undoubtedly provide the seamless experience that millennials are looking for. We believe that we can create a differentiated offering that allows experienced GoPro users to edit their own raw footage at a lower rate. For the casual fan, we will offer a premium offering that requires no effort by the user other than filming. For example, we believe that the “Heisman Package” may be appealing to alumni who have not used a GoPro previously but love the product. With this package, Heroes on the Go would be a certified reseller of GoPros and the customer would be permitted to keep the GoPro Hero 4 at the end of the weekend. We would then capture the additional margin on the resale of the product.

The barriers to entry for Heroes on the Go include the existing competition and the permits required to bring our service to campuses and other professional sporting events. Though our all-inclusive service is new to an otherwise largely untapped market, there are some competitors who offer parts of our services. XCut can edit your raw footage from 2 hours down to 2 minutes for $69.99 and Borrowlenses rents the equipment out to you (which takes 3-5 days for shipping). However, both of these services still require the customer to contemplate the purchase and wait for their products. Heroes on The Go is taking all the guesswork out and making it easy for users to both capture high quality pictures and videos and have them delivered in a quick and easy way for immediate upload to favorite social networks.

Business Model Rationale

An average football weekend at Notre Dame sees between 50,000 to 125,000 aficionados which translates to possible customers. Our target market is coming to us! Heroes on the Go will acquire customers through kiosks which are strategically placed at high traffic areas around campus. All transactions will be done electronically and we will ask customers or anyone interested to join our mailing list.

Maintaining a close relationship with our customers is key. We will have monthly newsletters which will increase in frequency up to weekly depending on the proximity of on campus events. Our services are ideal for football weekends but we also see a huge potential with other on campus events like Junior Parents Weekend, Senior Week, reunions, donor visits with personalized messages, the possibilities are endless. Besides newsletters we want to create a personalized feel to Heroes on the Go so we will send handwritten thank you letters with the final product, surveys of satisfaction, and even birthday congratulations because we want every customer to feel appreciated as they should be.

Heroes on the Go is a product that some may see as a trend but we recognize the potential in a new way sharing memories. We are capturing once in a lifetime moments and we want our customers to share their experiences so social media platforms will also help reach new customers. Since the finished video will be ideal for posing on social media, we will have our website and Facebook page at the end of all edited clips so every view can be a new potential customer.

4 http://academic.mintel.com.proxy.library.nd.edu/display/716818/

We will have 2 main distribution channels: our website and kiosks. Our website

will serve to advertise and inform our potential customers of the services we render.

Here anyone can find detailed information as to what Heroes on the Go does and can

even rent out their GoPro and our editing services. At the end of all videos we will link

our website to create traffic. Through paid social media advertisement we will also

entice our market. Advertising on the web through Facebook cost $5.00 for 260-650

sponsored views to your target audience. As our rendered product can be shared

through social media, this will also create free advertisement from our customers to their

circle of friends. Our kiosks will be mobile with a low overhead cost. The kiosks will be

manned by 2-3 workers near the most circulated areas like outside the stadium gates

and the guest welcome areas. Through these two channels we will be able to reach

audiences online through a premeditated purchase and those impulse buyers through

our kiosks.

Partnering with Notre Dame is the first step and we have already done so with the Media group granting us rights to use their professional footage. We still need to assess our costs for kiosks and present this to the University. We believe in partnering with the University, we are allowing people who have never set foot on campus to experience a weekend here through someone else's eyes. Through this partnership, we will be the only ones in this market granting us this competitive advantage. Exclusivity will raise barriers to entry for other competitors who enter later. Our services add value to the image this University has by enticing others to take part in a weekend experience here. Heroes on the Go further emphasizes former Irish coach Lou Holtz quote, “If you’ve been there, no explanation is necessary. If you haven’t, none is adequate”.

In trying to determine what revenue strategy to use, we first needed to define the process that would be used to acquire the first customer, then the next ten. We also needed to do further research to determine the length and behavior of the sales cycle for similar ventures. We found that a significant burden would fall on the marketing department. In order for our business to capture its first customers, we would need to get our name out there. This would require an upfront cost to build a marketing campaign via social media, PR, Ads, and blogging. After coming to this conclusion, we decided that we would build the business slowly, regardless of how successful that product is. This is because the sales cycle for startup companies like our own often has a steep, but brief, increase in sales, generally as a result of hidden obstacles. After that brief climb in sales, they decrease significantly and stabilize until the business has reached an equilibrium point between costs and revenue. What we at Heroes on the Go came to realize is that the cost of customer acquisition, otherwise known as the cost to initially bring in the customer, needs to be roughly ⅓ of the customer’s lifetime value to the firm. We believe that by pricing our product fairly, and offering premium bundles in addition to the economy packages, we will be able to make steady revenue through a basic rental and editing fee structure. We hope to also engage asset sales as a revenue stream once we have established ourselves but as previously mentioned we do not want to grow too quickly. Ultimately, our conservative pricing framework and basic revenue strategy previously described, in combination with our marketing strategy and emphasis on slow, will allow us to build a strong customer base in just a few months.

While an exact market size is difficult to determine, we believe that we can estimate it based on a typical Notre Dame Football weekend. With a stadium that seats roughly 70,000 fans we believe that approximately 10,000 fans each weekend would be a part of our beachhead segment. Of those fans we believe that we can successfully reach 100 of them on a given weekend to rent a GoPro for game day. Over the course of an entire football season this translates to about $40,000 in revenue before costs are taken into account. With more than one hundred and twenty division one football programs it becomes clear that the market opportunity is enormous. This analysis also does not take into account potential partnerships with the NFL, NBA or college basketball. While this is encouraging it is also important to remember that this opportunity being captured requires a coherent strategy, proper pricing, consumer demand and strategic partnerships for exclusive footage.

Go-To-Market Strategy and Goals

As previously discussed, the Heroes on the Go value proposition is to help young sports enthusiasts who want to commemorate their experiences but do not want to go through the hassle of purchasing a GoPro and editing the footage themselves. Under the As-Is proposition, consumers use their own cameras or iPhones to capture memorable moments at sporting events, but very rarely do they have the time or patience to record videos of the tailgates or games. Oftentimes, “Kodak” moments from the game or the pregame festivities fail to be captured and the opportunity is lost forever. With our new model, the only real effort required of the customer is renting the GoPro and wearing it while they walk around campus, visit their favorite bars or spend the day tailgating. The spontaneous moments that may have been missed before are captured all without the disruption of breaking for a picture. Most importantly, the user has a high quality video shipped to their door or emailed to them electronically within a few days of the game. This video includes exclusive footage obtained by Heroes on the Go that will make their video shine in a way it never could otherwise. The final product is a video that can be kept forever and shared with friends. Our GoPro Rental and Editing Service provides both the equipment and the specialty video editing to these individuals at an affordable cost.

Initially, we looked into dividing our target market into four categories: teens, young adults, adults, and baby boomers. The reason for the distinction is that each segment has varied interest in cameras and services and different pains and levels of disposable income. We then looked at the activities of each segment and determined that the younger demographic prefers outings and vacations, while the older demographic is more family-oriented. Finally, we focused in on all the potential events that our target consumers would most likely take pictures at, and from that research we established the beachhead strategy represented below.

After several pivots, we concluded that young sports enthusiasts would have the

most disposable income, the most impulse purchases, and the most skill and familiarity with GoPros. For this reason, our beachhead strategy will be to target the young sport enthusiast segment. After proving that the model is successful, we will expand later into other segments such as concerts, shows, weddings and reunions.

The revenues for Heroes on the Go will primarily derive from the GoPro video camera rental and editing fees. We have run our first beta test and are expecting slow growth for the first few years as the brand is developed, but our goal is to prove the concept during the 2016 Notre Dame football season and to subsequently move on to basketball. By 2017, we expect to move beyond Notre Dame to UNC and Duke and to switch back and forth between campuses depending on who has the bigger game at a given time. To gain brand recognition, we will continue to leverage word of mouth, social media posts of new videos, and blogging on our website.

Feasibility: Metrics That Matter

We at Heroes on the Go plan to gather revenue using the following three methods: Venmo, Square, and Cash transactions. We believe that these methods of accepting payment are the most efficient ways to gather income because they are both secure and immediate. Cash is the most desirable method of gathering revenue because the payment is instantaneous and because there is no risk of having the transaction refuted after the fact. Once the sale is made and the contract signed, the deal is final and non-refundable. Similarly, once a consumer’s Venmo account is

activated and linked to his or her bank account, it is a quick, simple, and secure process to transfer funds from the consumer’s account to ours. Again, this method ensures that the funds are received

instantaneously and without risk of later dispute. Our final method, Square, is a credit card reader for the iPhone. This method would likely be the most popular and,

like the previous two methods, would allow us to immediately charge the consumer. We considered allowing consumers to write checks as an alternative to using these three methods,

but, ultimately, we decided against this policy because we believe there is too much risk

involved. It is both difficult and costly to track down customers that provide bad checks and eliminating the option to write checks altogether negates all the associated problems.

Based on our conservative projections, we expect to see sales of around

$440/game, assuming we have 6 GoPro cameras. Our initial fixed costs will be $125/camera, for the basic GoPro Hero, and our variable costs will be $20/month, for our website domain. Moreover, because our leverage creation activities will consist primarily of word of mouth, PR, social media, and blogging, we also project $0 in additional advertising costs. Next football season, we plan to invest a total of $750 (upfront) for the GoPro cameras and $90 (cumulative over 3.5 months) for the website domain, resulting in a season cost total of $840. Our total sales for the season, however, would be $2,640, resulting in an end-of-season profit of $1,800. Assuming this model is a success, we plan to acquire more cameras for future games.

This model has already been tested in a beta round and has been proven

successful preliminarily. The company email and website are fully functional and the rental agreement has been finalized to ensure the company against damages due to

negligence. As we adjust for the future, we will further leverage our website, social media accounts, and emails to follow up with past customers and to send out videos. We will also work to continue our relationship with FIDM. See the most recent video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5tzU7AkyBY&feature=youtu.be.

Appendix: Financials, Pro Forma and Key Facts

Pro Forma Income Statement

Year 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Schools Served 5 14 21 27 32 35

Total Revenue $ 168,000

$ 470,400

$ 712,320

$ 905,856

$ 1,060,685

$ 1,184,548

Cost of Customer Videos

$ 73,500

$ 205,800

$ 311,640

$ 396,312

$ 464,050

$ 518,240

Gross Profit $ 94,500

$ 264,600

$ 400,680

$ 509,544

$ 596,635

$ 666,308

Purchase of Cameras $ 25,000

$ 45,000

$ 56,000

$ 84,800

$ 107,840

$ 126,272

$ -

Purchase of Kiosks $ 5,000 $ 9,000

$ 7,200

$ 5,760

$ 4,608

$ 3,686

$ -

Marketing Expense $ 5,000 $ 33,600

$ 94,080

$ 142,464

$ 181,171

$ 212,137

$ 236,910

Operating Profit $ (35,000) $ 6,900

$ 107,320

$ 167,656

$ 215,925

$ 254,540

$ 429,399

Earnings Before Taxes $ (35,000)

$ 6,900

$ 107,320

$ 167,656

$ 215,925

$ 254,540

$ 429,399

Present Value of Net Income $ (35,000)

$ 4,313

$ 55,896

$ 72,767

$ 81,493

$ 83,537

$ 122,542

NPV First Six Years $ 385,548

Terminal Value $ 823,762 % of Total Value that is Terminal 68%

Total NPV of Project $ 1,209,310

Key Assumptions

Revenue Per Customer $ 80

Games Per Season 6

Kiosk Cost $ 1,000

Cost to Make Video $ 35

Marketing Reinvestment 20%

Initial Costs

Initial Investment for Cameras $ 25,000

Initial Data Acquisition Costs $ -

Initial Marketing Costs/SEO $ 5,000

Revenue Model

Annual School Retention Rate 80%

Perpetual Rate of Growth 6%

Opportunity Costs of Capital

Opportunity Cost of Capital (early) 20%

Opportunity Cost of Capital (middle) 15%

Opportunity Cost of Capital (perpetual) 12%

Other Variables

Average Revenue Per Customer $ 80

Annual Algorithm Maintenance Fee $ -

Annual Legal and Other Fees $ -

Marketing Costs (as % of Revenue) 20%

Variable Costs Per Existing Customer $ 35

Average Tax Rate 25%

Customer Acquisition

Size of Market (per school) 70,000

% Interested in a GoPro 5%

% Captured by Heroes on the Go 2%