Working On: Expresso

Problem Specification: In the Philippines, the decade long question "Is the Philippines ready for ecommerce?" Is a lengthy conversation. Websites like Sulit have kept the possibility open. Recently Multiply and GroupOn have received a high acceptance rate in the Philippines. Sites like Cash Cash Pinoy followed suit and has publically reported profitable margins in their first year. Despite all the recent advancements that have been made in the last 2 years, it's still difficult to search for specific product/s and buy with only a few clicks. We also found that the drop ship model and delivery at these early stage is still a rigged surface.

Solution: We are currently building a massive catalog of product focused on direct sales, order completion and consumer centric. We take our solution in strides, requiring both a technology push and offline working with distributors and shippers to establish a standard in consumer order completion. Closing in on 3 weeks of development and months of establishing partnerships and offline models, we plan to release a closed ALPHA February 2012. We hope what we come up with will open doors for better service in future e-commerce businesses.

Case Study: Kolibo

Website: kolibo.com Launched: July 2011 Status: Closed Beta

Problem Specification: Most of our experience stems from client and agency related work. Project management today is now a collaborative effort. Products like Base Camp, JIRA, Open Air were created to facilitate these collaborations. Though meant to be a time saver for project managers, in actuality we found ourselves spending more hours of our day updating these trackers, rather than actually developing the project. Either way we still start our day checking emails and getting organized through our inbox.

Solution: We approached this problem instead of creating another website for managing projects, but thought about extending the concept of emails. When you log into Kolibo you are given your email inbox. From there you can convert your email to tasks, meetings, notes and/or a time log. Providing 3 tracking systems starting with emails, we found that we spend more time actually developing.

Results: Kolibo in its first month instantly had 100 projects started. Down a 3 month span our growth increased by 250% and current have about 500 active projects. We use Kolibo here in our office to keep track of our time.

Projections: We plan to close down our BETA in the later half of 2012 having all the analytics we need and after some amount of revisions and new features, launch Kolibo main stream in 4 weeks time. We project revenues ~$3M if of course, properly marketed.

Case Study: Gimmick

Website: gimmick.ph Launched: November 2011 Status: Live

Problem Specification: In Manila, there are many great places to eat and to be entertained. There is not a place where anyone can socially report their findings to help others better decide on where to go. Public user generated ratings and reviews on places and events carry a higher value than staff ratings and reviews because there's no way to tell if their rating are skewed. This is a proven model developed by Yelp!

Solution: We wanted to create a website where ratings and reviews on establishments were based on public user integrety. We validate a user through Facebook. Users can add places, events, rate and write reviews freely. Following the Four Square model, we also turned discovering Manila, into an interactive social experience. Offline we follow Yelp's marketing campaigns to assist in awareness, convergence and socialite dominance.

Results: In 2 months Gimmick has received over 30,000 page views, ranking in the top search results for anything regarding places and events in Manila. We created partnerships with 4 cable television networks.

Projections: We currently launched a "For Business" and working an initial goal of 1000 sales for our first year. We project revenues ~$750K in the second year.