Reference no: EM132975140

VillageShare (VSII) is a cloud-based online living meeting platform for the purpose of problem solving and knowledge sharing. The idea is to become the "Amazon.com" for the transaction of knowledge and information. There are three types of users on the platform: Facilitators, Participants, and 3rd parties.

Facilitators: Facilitators creates and organize online events. Each event has one or few specific goals, be it solving a specific problem, sharing a specific knowledge point, exchanging thoughts on a topic, or anything alike. Most events are set to be less than 30 minutes, aiming at getting one specific issue/matter/topic addressed without going into lengthy or in-depth discussions that might be practically hard for participants around the world to accommodate. Efficiency and results are what those events are about - to solve problems but not to socialize on the spot (they will be provided channels to socialize outside the events). Anyone can apply to become a facilitator in VS and will have to go through a vetting process, in which a potential facilitator's qualifications, such as facilitating experience, knowledge/expertise in the subject, educational background, language, etc., will be assessed by VS. Facilitators earn their ranks (from low to high, i.e. from "professional" to "expert" to "master") by getting positive reviews. The higher the rank is, the more perks VS provides, such as ability to set a premium price for each user joining his online meetings. "Professional" facilitator is allowed to charge up to US$1 for a session per participant whereas "Expert" can do up to US$1.50 per participant and "Master" can do up to US$2.00 per participant. A facilitator could also invite others to join his meeting as co-hosts or panelists and provide financial incentive at his own arrangement with the co-hosts or panelists.

At this stage, the platform simply uses Zoom to serve for the online live sessions. Facilitator can publish his events on the platform and provide a Zoom link, which is provided by VS through facilitator's account.

Ratings are given by learners based on educator's webinars. Only those who attended an educator's webinar can give rating to that educator. Educators can put a price to his class or offer it for free. VS take 30% commission from the transactions.

Participants: anyone who seeks advice, solution, information or knowledge from the facilitator's session. A participant can be a facilitator or 3rd parties too. Participants attend the live events based on their interest and pay the fee as applicable. They can provide reviews and rating to a facilitator.

Third parties are the businesses or sponsors who are interested in those online events for commercial reasons. A book seller may want to put an ad on the platform. An offline conference meeting may want to attract certain groups of "participants" who showed interest in certain topics. Third party provides another revenue source to VS.

Since a facilitator can reach audience globally, it dramatically reduces the fee for each participant. Suppose a facilitator charges for $300 per hour for a session of 300 people, the cost per participant is only $1. When a "Master" facilitator attracts 10,000 audience in one live session, it can generate up to $20,000 revenue in 30 mins if each learner's attendance fee is priced at a mere $2. This is very attractive to both facilitators and learners.

The platform's website is organized in a way similar to Yellow Pages so that topics in different categories can be easily found. For some reason VS is not willing to provide their website for our reference so you will have to design an index that make most sense for their website.

The company is currently based in San Francisco, CA and serving U.S.-based users only. But they certainly want to expand into the rest of the world. Your team is responsible for creating an executable and profitable global business plan to help the company to realize its ambition in the next 6-12 months.

Question: Any competitors available in the Australian market? Please provide a comparison and contrast for all the major players in the target markets.