2. Elevator Pitch
Umamão is a community of
academics and professionals
creating and organizing the world's knowledge
in the format of questions and answers.
Think Quora + Wikipedia.
umamao.com - respostas maduras
3. Team
Helder Ribeiro, Founder
Computer Engineering dropout from Unicamp, brought leading European local reviews website
Qype to Brazil in 2008, closed fastest international deal with business listings provider
TeleListas (same GMaps uses), creator of and jack of all trades at Umamão.
Arthur Amorim, Co-founder
Top of class in Computer Engineering at Unicamp, MSc in Computer Science at École Polytechnique,
research internship at University of Cambridge.
Gustavo Sacomoto, Co-founder
Top of class in Molecular Sciences at USP, published in international journal as an undergrad.
Developed new techniques for Text Indexing and Information Retrieval during MSc in Computer
Science at IME-USP.
Ricardo Panaggio, Engineer
Top of class in Computer Science at Unesp, MSc in Recommendation Systems at Unicamp,
prolific polyglot programmer, dropped out of PhD to join Umamão.
André Lima, Engineer
Computer Engineer from Unicamp, 7-year experience as Optimization expert at Petrobras & others,
Natural Language Processing enthusiast and True Knower of Algorithms.
umamao.com - respostas maduras
4. The Problem
Google / Bing #fail
People turn
to humans
for help
Head Long Tail
ARTICLES Q&A
* Panoramic/reference * Deep / specific / contextualized
* Supply-oriented: people write * Demand-oriented: questions are
about what they know, specific requests for knowledge
to whoever wants to read it * Triviality drives away experts
Popularity
* Hard to dig deeper "What is X?" is better answered
can't ask question to experts with link to Wikipedia article
who wrote the article about X.
Depth
5. Solution
Common language: Topics!
Every Wikipedia article is a topic you can ask about
(even on Wikipedia itself).
* Article/Q&A duality drives new content:
. As people read an article, new questions come up
. New answers on a topic can be used to
improve/create article about it
umamao.com - respostas maduras
11. Market Size
* Global
303 million Wikimedia unique visitors (comScore, June 2009)
* Brazilian professionals
5.7M with undergraduate degree (Census 2000)
* Brazilian universities
5M undergraduate students enrolled in 2009 (Inep 2009)
umamao.com - respostas maduras
12. Business Model
ADVERTISING
* Text/static targeted ads
(database of interests / skills / education)
* Topic sponsorship
RECRUITING
* CVs backed by proof of knowledge
* Identify talent earlier
(college students)
umamao.com - respostas maduras
13. Competitive Advantage
* World-class tech team
Top-of-classes at USP, Unicamp & Unesp, research experience
in recommendation systems and information retrieval
* First to market in Brazil
* Focus on academics and professionals
* Integration with Wikipedia
helps bootstrap content in new languages
* Community-building partnership with
Wikimedia Foundation coming soon
umamao.com - respostas maduras
14. Competition
* Quora
no integration with reference knowledge sources
* StackExchange
vertical websites, lack of interoperability even among
themselves
* Facebook Questions
English-only, not fully launched, positioning problem
* Yahoo! Answers
Really. Bad. Quality.
umamao.com - respostas maduras
15. Marketing Plan
* Partner with Unicamp and USP
become endorsed teaching tool
* Partner with Wikimedia Foundation
boast Wikipedia & Umamão as educational tools to
universities around the country
* Content Competition
Example: award book gift cards from Livraria Cultura to
month's best contributor
umamao.com - respostas maduras
16. Money / Milestones
RAISED R$200K IN DEC 2010
* Built first production version, functional use with 2k users
* Secured another R$150k in Jan 2011
SEEKING R$ 1M - 1.5M
* Target closing in Sep 2011
PRODUCT ROADMAP / GOALS
* R$750K - 1M: hire 3-4 key engineers, 1 designer,
1 marketing/sales, 2 community support
* R$250 - 500K: marketing/outreach campaigns
* 1M users by the end of the year
umamao.com - respostas maduras
17. Metrics
* First 1k users in 1 year (since beginning as a hobby);
second 1k users in 1 month (Feb 2011);
* First 1k answers in 1 year;
second 1k answers in 1 month (Feb 2011).
New answers New users source: Mixpanel analytics
umamao.com - respostas maduras
18. But there's more...
STRUCTURED, EDITABLE DATA (think Freebase.com, Factual.com):
* Semantic topics
. "Campinas" is of type City and has fields:
geo coordinates, state, area, population, etc.
. Better suggestions: “follow topics / answer questions
about your area”
. Better ad targeting: “show this ad in questions about
cities with more than 100k inhabitants”
. Extra revenue through API access to data
SEMANTIC ANSWERS
* Quiz-like questions integrated with normal Q&A
to gather structured data
umamao.com - respostas maduras
19. Questions?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
* Strategic Plan of the Wikimedia Foundation
(has Brazil as a priority)
* Are Q&A Startups a Threat to Google? | Venture Beat
* Interview with Umamão Founder (in Portuguese)
(amateur video made by Education major as part
of a course project)
Join us now!
umamao.com/pitchdeck
