BarCampBank "lang=en": ProjectScreening

Project Screening

Content of the Presentation

Projects-Screening presentation
- in PDF format at http://barcampbank.flexrun.com/p2pventure/Projects-Screening.pdf

Discussion

20 January 2007

Frederic, you know, I hadn't even thought about the fact that people can just download a pdf and go through that during flashmeeting-type presentation. So, pdf should probably be enough, along with the two versions of presentation we have linked here (.ppt and .odp).

19 January 2007

Sorry to be intermittently absent. I came down with the Noro Virus, if you can believe that! :O

Anyway, I went ahead and voted for Jan 31, 2007. I am assuming that you are going to give this presentation in the flash meeting, since I have contributed very little to it.

Although, I would be happy to help with anything we need to do to complete it and get it ready to present. I am going to go through the files right now, and see if there is anythign substantial that I can add to it. -- SamRose

Sam, you tell me what makes you feel comfortable. We can organize a Skype beforehand to rehearse a little on how we could present or if you feel like preparing a verbal counterpoint after the series of slides. Again, just tell me what works for you.

I have booked the flashmeeting slot. We're quite ready to go. Just to know if we want to give some publicity to the event and try to attract some new comers. Cheers. -- FredericBaud

I don't really have a counterpoint to the presentation. I agree with what is in it. It will probably work more smoothly if one person gives the presentation, and I think it should be you.

I've updated some edits at http://s4560.gridserver.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/download/ProjectScreening.odp, mostly just correct some small typo and grammer. And added at the "Client gate" slide that sometimes pinko marketing for P2P venture can start as far back as the idea gate, because the project is beign developed in the open, and community enthusiasm may start spreading about it very early, in some cases.

I also added "Sweat Equity" to the stakeholder gate. I think that in certain projects, it could be acceptable for people to invest "sweat equity" work or non-monetary resource contributions (like server space, or coding labor etc) to a project, and to grant that "sweat equity" investory shares, if it is plausible with teh overall model.

Feel free to incorporate those changes, or not, as you wish. I actually think the leangth of the presentation is good, personally. Once you feel it is complete, I can help you upload it to a Slide bliki, if you want. -- SamRose

Thanks Sam. I'll work a little more on the slides and post them back on the links above. I don't know if that is better to provide a PDF or import on SlideBliki (never seen a presentation on it). Maybe other can step-in and tell what work best for them. -- FredericBaud

17 January 2007

Sam, do you have an idea of your availability for the BarCamp:BarCampBankFlashMeeting5. Can you vote on Doodle? When we have a fixed date, I'll be able to send a mail to the MailingList and we could all do some Pinko awareness around the event. -- FredericBaud

14 January 2007

Sam, I reworked from my orginal PowerPoint because I could not figure out how to write in the missing cells of the tables on each "gate" slide in the OpenOffice format. I hope this is not too much trouble for you.

I rephrased peer invest in P2P Venture because of the new P2PVenture workgroup that we just launched. I put some of the ideas that we exposed the other day with JeanChristopheCapelli to JeanMichelBillaut (a french internet guru) and MiguelMembrado (a french enterpreneur) on developing new business models in the open and looking then for P2P financing. Discussing the different gates for P2P Venture might help us fix some ideas that we want to develop on P2PVenture. -- FredericBaud

I think this is fantastic, Frederic. I really like the idea of creating P2PVenture, and also tying our general presentation about ProjectScreening to it. I think that it might actually be possible for us to develop the tools for P2PVenture and ProjectScreening for P2PVenture within the code of ProWiki itself. This is something that we can discuss in P2PVenture workspace, I suppose.

Anyway, I like the latest version. I think in the Client Gate, that the P2PVenture ProjectScreening model will could have incentives for stakeholders to help craft the marketing message. Plus, in some models, the stake holders could very well also be the end users or customers of the product or services that the venture is ultimately creating. Anyway, I think you have covered that with Pinko Marketing.

Please let me know what you need me to do to help complete this presentation, and I'll get to work on it. -- SamRose

Please, feel free to modify the presentation and/or add new slides. I'll try to work on BarCamp:BarCampBankFlashMeeting5 soon so we have our flashmeeting before the end of this month.

I look forward to see what you think we can do with ProWiki within the P2PVenture space. I haven't spent enough time to really investigate WikiCalc , but I think we will need a tool like this when we will start working collaboratively on financial models. Again, feel free to add any material or links you like to P2PVenture. -- FredericBaud

13 January 2007

Frederic, upon review of the slides, everything that you are detailing in each of the gates for "BarCampBank " is pretty much the same thing that I am thinking of for "PeerInvest", or what you previously had labelled as the "Solari" model.

So, I'd liek to suggest that for each of the gates, we can just delete "PeerInvest", and narrow it down to a comparison of "startup", and "BarCampBank ", if that is ok with you?

This will serve us better in the long run, too, when we use this presentation to explain to people what we are trying to build. Not many people know what "PeerInvest", or "Solari" is, so we can take those out of this picture.

So, now the question is, what else would we like to include, if anything? Do we want to elaborate on each gate more (and thus insert these elaboration slides between each gate)?

12 January 2007

Issue that I am having manipulating slides in OpenOffice is that because you created inin PowerPoint and then converted from .ppt to .odp in OpenOffice, I cannot add text to areas that you've left blank for me to add text to. And, I cannot use the same fonts that you are using. :/

Will see what I can do. Not sure I can do much of anything except re-create slides that I want to edit...

Here's what I could change so far. Made some small edits to existing text, refined defintion. Changed Solari model to PeerInvest model:

http://s4560.gridserver.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/download/ProjectScreening.odp

If I can ever figure out a way to directly edit the slides, I'll do so. Otherwise, I'll post the text that I was hoping to add here, along with where I intended to put it. -- SamRose

06 January 2007

(Frederic, just so you know, I was able to use the Open Office version no problem, I am working on slides now and will report back here ASAP)-- SamRose

29 December 2006

Frederic, I am looking at it now, and will try and put some thought into it overnight, and give some feedback tomorrow. Also, as a note to what i wrote before, we can keep this mostly as a traditional overview, and we don't have to veer off into some of the directions that I talk about in this presentation, if that is what you intended? or, of course, we can also discuss some new possible directions like I was talking about below. I wasn't sure if this is what you wanted to do or not, and I'll leave it up to you on what you'd like to include in this one. -- SamRose

Sam, feel free to change the current outline or start a completely new one. This is just a first proposal to get the ball rolling. I did not intentionally discarded specific directions, I just threw a train of thoughts that I could assemble. Please let me know if I should post the slides in a workable format. Slides are currently under powerpoint, I could probably easily transform it into an Open Office format. If you prefer any other format, just let me know and tell me if you know tools I could use to make the conversion. -- FredericBaud

Frederic, I would say that your train of thought is a really good core. I'd like to use it as it is, for sure. I would say that we should complete this presentation using the framework that you've put out. Then, when we have a traditional ProjectScreening process presentation layed out, we'll be able to present this first as a "traditional" process. Then, we can use the langauge that we've established to introduce new ideas, like some of the ideas I've talked about here. For instance, we can say that we replace a traditional stage/gate with a community of people who play a part in the decision making process, etc.

But, I think we should definitely use what you have so far, and create a good overview of a traditional ProjectScreening process first. And then we can use the language from that as a frame of reference to touch on, or talk about emerging new ideas. Let's try making the slides in Open Office first, and see how that works. Then, we can create an actual presentation that can be displayed on a projector (if ever needed). And, we can also export from Open Office to images that can be uploaded to SlideBliki . Ok with you? --SamRose

Hi Sam, I converted the ppt to Open Office. You can find the result at the url above. You can also find the original powerpoint in case there is a problem with the odp file. We can start from there. -- FredericBaud

28 December 2006

Sam, I've added a couple of slides to the presentation and updated the PDF file above.

I have tried to illustrate the different gates in the context of a startup with VC funding and also taking BarCampBank as an example showing that gates can apply to projects interested in building communities. I have added a line for the "Solari Model" and left it blank to let you see how things could be mapped.

We have to see how we can share the slides and start working interactively on their content. Let me know what would work for you. -- FredericBaud

26 December 2006

Sam, I've just layed a couple of thoughts on a presentation. I'm planning to continue with slides illustrating the differents "gates" a project must go through as defined in the first few slides. Tell-me how these slides resonnate to you and we can move to SlideBliki to work interactively. -- FredericBaud

Frederic, I think what you have so far is fantastic. I like the basic foundation you've created. I think they are very good for a classic venture capitalist ProjectScreening overview. I think that we should definitely give the overview that you have in this presentation so far, exactly as you have it.

Would you also like to include new/emerging ProjectScreening models (which basically use a foundation of stage/gates, but may have different players, different motivations, priorities, decision making methods, etc.)? -- SamRose

18 December 2006

Sam, thanks for transfering content here. I've started to write a couple of slides, but nothing really useful yet. I don't think I'll be able to do anything meaningful for the rest of this week. I'm planning to spend more time next week when I'm on Christmas vacation for the week. I could then produce a PDF and post it somewhere, or transfer the content on a SlideBliki . -- FredericBaud

No problem Frederic. Just getting some stuff moved around today. I suspect we will get some more done after the Christmas holiday. -- SamRose

before 18 December

Hi Sam,

Just throwing a couple of questions for the presentation

1) what format will we eventually use for the slides? I have powerpoint, but I understood that you don't. I could probably easily install open office on my laptop. What are you using?

2) what kind of projects do we want to talk about: developping a product, creating a company, developping a community like BarCampBank . My view is that all these projects have a lot in common, and that screening is necessary in the different aspects, but the wording might be different at first to avoid misunderstanding.

3) if we take the track of speaking of projects that could lead to for profit companies (which is actually my first understanding when I usually use the word project) we could take the approach of the entrepreneur (screening meaning, when should I stop this project) or from an investor (screening meaning, whare are the minimum criterias that should be met to enter my scope?).

Let's start iterating.

Cheers,

-- FredericBaud

Frederic:

1) I am currently using open Office, and don't have any microsoft office products (I use a mac). We could try it out with you using powerpoint and me using open Office, as I have gotten it to work in the past. Or, you can download open office if you'd like. I also have an alternate proposal: We could use SlideBliki, and create our slides in any program that we choose individually, and then upload them to a SlideBliki that I can create for BarCampBank use. What do you think about that? Then, during Flashmeetings, we could simply direct everyone to this SlideBliki and walk them through the presentation.

2 & 3) You make some good distinctions,a nd I think that we should focus on for-profit investment screening.

The reason being that not-profit investment is generally donation, or an investment of time, and not-for-profit genrally "screens" projects either through a decision making body, like a board, or through community discussion and deliberation, in the case of projects like open source software development. (sometimes both, as in Wikimedia foundation).

We could mention these differences in our presentation, however, just for informational and context purposes.

The interest that I have in BarCampBankProjectScreening is primarily in a for-profit investing context. specifically in relation to the proposal that I put up at BarCampBankDiscussion

Based on The Solari Model

As we discussed in BarCampBankFlashMeeting1 with Ori, we could create a version of the Solari model. We could modify the Solari model to create a BarCampBank DoTankInvestmentNetwork? model. One difference from Solari is that, our group could be based on a network of people, and not based on a location. We can help groups with Solari-concept services likeConsumerAggregation support, Small business incubation, “back office” and Pinko marketing support, as well as support in BarCampBank concepts like implementing open business models, helping other groups in creating effective knowledge commons via wiki, and WikiNet concepts, and other social software tools, information visualization, trust and value metrics, Pinko marketing, and more.

I propose that we create a structure where we define all who are currently listed as BarCampBank members become DoTankInvestmentNetwork? “A” shareholders. This means that they have a vote when our DoTankInvestmentNetwork? articles say that a vote is needed for decision making. Yet, at the same time, we try to DevolvePower in our network so that most decision making is done through ConsensusGroup when possible. When voting is needed, we can look at models like BeyondYes. Also, this governance discussion is of course open to everyone else’s input. If they leave, they sell their “A” share back to the group based on nominal value.

So, we can then create “B” shares that are based on equity pools that we collectively create and manage. (We can always change the what we name the shares, this is to demonstrate the concept). These “B” shares could be issued used to raise money when we have helped to build something up to the point that we believe it is ready to be funded. We would build it up by:

Attracting people who have ideas with potential (demonstrative example: ProWiki).
combining our talents to help them accelerate research of the existing opportunities, market conditions and potential markets, open business model opportunities.
Use this research to help them implement ways for them to put into place the infrastructure needed, with as little overhead/upfront cost as possible. And attract and seek out communities of users/customers, and to foster an open value network around their activities and connections.

We would do this research and building up of infrastructure in open and transparent ways whenever possible. We can then serve as a more transparent venture captalist/angel investor, to help the start-up group avoid these 10 reasons to usually shy away from venture capital, by first helping them build up their enteprise/idea, then acting as an intermediary to help them fund the idea once we help them prove that it can work and generate revenue on it’s own. We issue “B” shares on behalf of the start up, and we seek investment in proven ideas. Then we pay ourselves for the work we have put into this based on a percentage of the “B” shares sold. Each person from our network who has contributed work on ech project can opt to receive a predetermined payment amount, or payment in the form of “B” shares that they can sell later.

This is a very rough draft of a model. Let’s have some dialogue with everyone involved who is interested in this idea, and see what grows out of that.''

The above idea actually does incorporate some of the project screening ideas from not-for-profit open source software development projects, where people mostly invest time/ "sweat equity". I guess this falls under the heading "helping to find and grow for-profit companies and projects". I agree we should keep the subjects seperate to avoid confusion.

Basically, it proposing that a group, like ours, could potentially open up, and make transparent some of the screening, and later development processes of some projects that we would potentially seek investment on behalf of, or that we would contribute "sweat equity" to.

Under this scenario, I propose that at least some of the fundamental properties of a potential project would be:

Initial Screening

**Outstanding Ideas**- Detecting and determining outstanding ideas is as much art form as science, IMO (perhaps more art form than science?)

**Committment to Ethics By Potential Project Participants** This seems important, IMO, and we can expand upon it if you agree. Ethics like transparency, ethical/pinko/open marketing, sustainable design, fairness, quality, responsibility, etc. Otherwise, we just become another part of what we are attempting to innovate our way out of with BarCampBank .

**potential markets** although detecting and determining outstanding ideas is arguably largely an art form, there are some frameworks for looking at disruptive technologies and ideas, and judging their impact, and potential markets. These include frameworks like Clayton M. Christensen's Seeing What's Next (will outline here later).

Deeper Analysis

**Deep Collaborative Analysis** If we do an initial check of ideas, ethics, and potential markets, then we should spend time with deeper collaborative analysis of the project.

This can include:

**Futures Workshops** (impact analysis, scenario building, backcasting, Causal Layered Analysis, Psycho social review/impact)

**Collective Intelligence deliberation** of group, or groups (see: http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2006/12/03/wisdom_of_crowd....html for difference between collective Intelligence and Wisdom Of Crowds). Deliberating groups can be given incentive/reward based on group, not individual, performance, for instance. This helps create conditions where individuals are more likely to reveal their hidden knowledge profiles because their incentive is tied to the group (see: Cass Sunstein's Infotopia). Groups need not compete against each other to create these conditions. But individual incentive is best tied to group. So, the group collaboratively deliberates about project. And the outcome of that deliberation is used in the final decision making process.

**Wisdom of crowds individual incentive** Here, both Prediction markets, and The Delphi Method can allow people to exercise independent decision making without group pressures. And incentive can be based on individual performance.

This is a rough framework. I'll come back and elaborate more once you have a chance to give your opinion. Pleae feel free to refactor, add, or totally change direction if you would prefer to cover something else for BarCampBankProjectScreening. This is what I have in mind. Although, I am open to covering something different, of course, if you prefer. --SamRose

Hi Sam, I'm fine with working on SlideBliki.

I can see a lot of convergence with what I had in mind. The difference may be that I had a rather generic framework in my, that could subsequently be applied to the Solari model or standard VC screening.

As a quick example to give more content to what I mean, I could relate

**Outstanding Ideas**- to **technologies**

**Committment to Ethics By Potential Project Participants** to **assembling a team**

**potential markets** - exact matching, I'm very much in line with a lot of ideas presented by Clayton Christensen

This could continue with standard strategic questions like defensible position, core strategic assets,..

Maybe we could start throwing bullet points on SlideBliki. We may double/triple some slides when we want to keep different tracks of ideas in perspective (e.g. Solari stages, VC stages, generic stages) and use this Wiki to exchange broader discussions on the different slides.

-- FredericBaud

Frederic, ok, I think it can make sense for us to start out with something more generic. Maybe you can flesh out what you have in mind here. Although, I can tell you that the way that standard VC screening works cannot really be applied to the types of for-profit cooperative, and Solari-based models that I am talking about.

None the less, I agree with you that it can be useful for us to start out talking about the generic and basic concepts of VC Project Screening, before we get into ideas about changing them. So, I'll export a lot of what I have here to some other wiki page soon. And, in the mean time, if you'd like, we can start laying out a generic overview. I like the umbrella subjects of "Technologies", "assembling a team", "potential markets", "defensible position", "core strategic assets". What else would you liek to include? -- SamRose

So, I'm going to summarize what we have so far:

Technologies: Including the core ideas of the project
Assembling a team: Which can include looking at reputation, committment to ethics, etc
Potential markets:

Clayton M Christensen gives a general overview of users of disruptive technology with the following framework in his book “Seeing What’s Next”:

Current non-users (sometimes called “new market” consumers): These are people who previously did not use this type of product or tool at all, because it required too much expertise. Once the product or tool becomes simple enough for them to use, they become the “new market” for it. They will be totally new to this type of technology, but the technological innovation allows them to do something that only experts or Pro-Amateurs were able to do previously.
“Overshot” users/customers: these people are current users of this type of product/technology/tool who find existing products or services too complicated, and too expensive. They are already looking for the existing technology in question, but they are seeking it at a lower price, and higher ease of use, more reliability. These people people are still trying to do the simpler things/functions of that the technology or tool accomplishes most of the time, while the improvements and innovations of the type of product or service they are using has actually passed them by. What they want to get done remains consistent, while the products/tools they use tend to be improving at a fast rate.
“Undershot” customers: These are current users who actually want more features and more complexity and functionality, and are willing to pay more, also sometimes known as “lead” users, CommunityWiki users, pro-ametuer user (see Von Hippel’s “Democratizing Innovation” for a description of this user).

Defensible Position
Core Strategic Assets

Once we decide which basic generic topics we want to cover, we can then use them to as the basic skeleton of the presentation, and flesh out with examples. Then, we can plug this into a template that I have for creating presentations, if you want, which allows us to create a kind of "story board" for the presentation, and we can decide what kind of visuals we want after we nail down the text content of the presentation.