FetchMe is everyone’s personal concierge. You can order anything (legal) via SMS and they’ll take care of the order for you. FetchME are aiming to emulate the widely successful Magic in the US which recently raised $12m.
FetchMe is everyone’s personal concierge.
You can order anything (legal) via SMS and we’ll take care of the order for you.
Once you’re happy with the order, we’ll send you a link to pay on your phone. All payments are handled by stripe which is extremely easy and secure.
OPPORTUNITY
A company in the US recently launched called Magic.
It has received a lot of press and has been named the hottest startup in America.
It’s a service that needs to be localised in each country and we’re striving to be the first ones to develop it in the UK.
We are striving to become the UK market leader and subsequently an attractive acquisition target for a company looking to expand overseas such as Magic. A similar situation occured in the UK with Airbnb, Groupon and countless others.
If they don’t buy the business, we aim to have a huge head start on them with a team in place and a concept that could be the future of commerce as we know it.
We’ve just reached the logical extreme of the ‘Uber for X’ economy
PROBLEM
You’re on your way home from work and you need flowers for your mother’s birthday, you need to do grocery shopping and there’s a summer holiday to Thailand that you need to book. Which app do you use for all of that? Where are the log in details? Too many apps, too many websites, too little time.
SOLUTION
Imagine being able to write that request as an SMS and have someone take care of it all for you. FetchMe is everyone’s personal concierge.
HOW IT GROWS
Just like other on-demand services like Uber & Handy. We plan to offer credits to make people feel comfortable trying the service for the first time. People will be able to share these credits with friends. The funding will enable us to figure out our ROI based on the Lifetime Value of a customer. Once we know what this return is, we’ll be able to use this to raise significantly more capital. We’ve already had inbound expressions of interest from VCs.
DEFENSIBLE
By making sure we maintain our leadership position in the U.K., we will have more leverage with suppliers which in turn ensures our customers get a better deal from us than any new competitors.
TRACTION
FetchMe only launched a week ago and has already had interviews and articles with BBC, Lifehacker, Protein Magazine and The Next Web. We believe we’re currently the UK market leader and we plan to use this seed funding in order to maintain this lead.
Look at all our Tweets!
WHAT THE SEED MONEY WILL BE USED FOR
It will be used to scale the team further and do initial testing on our credit model to see what our ROI is. If we prove that we have a positive ROI, we then have a much stronger case to raise significantly more capital.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Establish mindshare in the UK market by capitalising on the first mover advantage as much as possible. This will mean focusing on press and leveraging the story and novelty of this service.
Build out a very high quality management team that have the capability to scale the business.
Once we start to establish mindshare in the UK, we need to build a more sustainable growth strategy.
This will be done through a credit system that can be shared with friends. We need to break down the barriers to purchase and giving people credit to spend is the best way to do that.
We understand it’s been proven with all on-demand services such as Uber and Handy. We need to establish what our ROI is with these credits based on the average lifetime value of a customer over a 6 month period so that we know how to scale this growth mechanic when we have more capital.
We will invest further in Twilio development which will allow us to build out a more automated messaging service. This will make the technology more reliable, fast and scalable.
Start to build relationships with our suppliers so that they pay us instead of the customer paying us. This will make the market size for our service significantly larger with very little excuses for using apps and websites instead of FetchMe.
MARKET SIZE
Online retail sales in the UK are predicted to be worth £52 billion this year. This is a 16% increase on 2014 when the total stood at £45 billion.
In order to use the service, customers must have a smartphone. In the UK, smartphone penetration is currently at 81% and is predicted to reach 90% by 2017.
We believe the market size is significantly larger than this as we cater to many different markets including taxi services, cleaners, childcare and so much more.
INDUSTRY TRENDS
Mobile instant messengers have proven to be an extremely popular way to communicate with friends. We think the next step is for people to use these platforms for shopping and ordering services.
There isn’t a simpler or faster way to order goods or services than a simple text message. Once people become more familiar with this method of shopping, we think it could be a huge opportunity.
We believe this is the future of commerce.
As people move to wearables such as the Apple Watch, the simplicity of this product will only become more important. There is no need to download apps, or even type anything. People can simply open iMessages on their watch and send a voice message making it even simpler than ordering on their phone. We think this is a huge opportunity for FetchMe going forward.
THREATS
Our biggest threat so far is maintaining the leadership position in the UK. We plan to combat this by raising capital to build on our marketing efforts and establish mindshare in London. If we build enough of a leadership position, we should then have leverage over our suppliers which will enable us to offer products and services at a significantly lower price than any new entrants. The further ahead we get, the harder it will be for new competitors.
STRENGTHS
We believe we currently have the first mover advantage in the UK
We’ve already started to establish a relationship with suppliers who have been receptive to the idea of giving us preferential treatment and commission.
We’re based in London giving us the opportunity to establish strong local mindshare with both customers, suppliers and press.
COMPETITORS
Our closest competitor so far is Magic. They’re based in the US so they’re not an immediate threat to us in the UK. We plan to build a significant head start on them before they plan to enter this market so that they will either be forced to buy us or they will have an uphill battle competing with us.
MAGIC DETAILS
FETCHME DETAILS
DEAN FANKHAUSER, CHAIRMAN
Previously worked at Yahoo, Havas (Strategy / Biz dev). Founder and Chairman, Nuji. Dean Fankhauser is a seasoned entrepreneur having built technology businesses from scratch to high growth and profitability. Dean is responsible for technology and business development.
Some awards:
ROWAN HAND, CEO
Reed College, Dartmouth College, Founder, Your GMAT Coach. Rowan has built Your GMAT coach from scratch and has over 9 years of experience helping his clients get into excellent business programs, including LBS, Harvard, INSEAD, Wharton, and others. Rowan is responsible for day-to-day operations and scaling the sales team.
The Future Team
FetchMe’s initial funding will be used to hire A-class talent, building a team that will take us to completion as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Simple. FetchMe plans to be bought by Magic, its largest US competitor. As the largest competitor to Magic in the UK market, FetchMe aims to provide a solid infrastructure package that can be bought as soon as Magic decides to expand to international markets.
We believe FetchMe has the potential to grow quickly and become an independent company with the ability to IPO; however, our short-term priority is a quick exit.
We are looking for investors who can align with this strategy and help us to realise it.
Every investment will receive a £10 credit to use the service. The minimum investment is £10 to receive this reward.
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Please visit the HMRC website for further information on SEIS tax relief
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