¿Un sueño? No. Miles de sueños hacen que Famosa llegue allá donde exista la imaginación. Medio siglo después de su fundación, Famosa sigue siendo hoy la primera compañía española fabricante de juguetes. Desde entonces, lidera los mercados de España y Portugal, cuenta con filiales en Francia, Alemania, Italia, Puerto Rico y Reino Unido, y está presente en más de 50 países.

Bizak es una compañía juguetera que se fundó en 1946. Comenzó como una empresa mayorista de comercialización del juguete en el norte de España. Hoy en día es una de las empresas líderes del sector. En 2003, debido a su constante crecimiento y a su continua oferta dentro del mundo del “Entretenimiento” lanzó Bizak Puericultura, dirigida al mundo del Bebé, y Bizak Music, dirigida al Target Infantil y Adulto.

En 1971, un grupo de profesionales del diseño gráfico creó el proyecto Diset. En 1974, el grupo holandés M&R De Monchy compró la compañía. En 1986, Diset introduce en España el juego Trivial Pursuit. Y es ya en 1993 cuando nace Party & Co, convirtiéndose en el juego de mesa español más vendido en el mundo.

]]> http://tomokeefe.com/2008/12/12/bizak-auction/ Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:30:49 +0000 BostonTweet http://tomokeefe.com/2008/12/12/bizak-auction/

Bizak is currently up for auction on SitePoint. Any interested parties can bid directly on the site or contact me (617-947-8071 or email) for additional information.

Auction URL:  http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/auctions/53150

At TOKiBiz we develop the foundation for online applications to mature into successful internet startups. We start with an idea, create the model, build the brand, and then launch the application. Once the initial development is complete, and the application has developed its foundation, we then look for a buyer who can take that startup to the next level.

Bizak has been online now for 6 months, has developed that foundation, has received a tremendous amount of interest and is now ready for a buyer who can expand its reach. Both Bizak and infoMedMD were built with the ability to quickly & affordable scale operations with total costs being under $500/year.

We are now opening up discussions with interested parties and if you too are interested in acquiring Bizak please contact Tom O’Keefe at 617-947-8071 or tom[at]tokibiz[dot]net.

Below is a chart of the current (October 2008) average benchmarks for websites who contribute to Bizak. Numbers are averages for Visitors, Revenues, Revenues per Visitor (RPV), Costs, Earnings, Earnings per Visitor (RPV) and Valuation. Bizak is categorized into industry, website type and revenue source. The chart below lists the averages for website type and revenue source.   

Bizak is one of the finalists in this month’s Under the Radar startup showdown sponsored by Dealmaker Media and hosted by VenCorps. Like Mashable’s Startup Showdown this too comes with a $50,000 investment. VenCorps is an online community that provides human powered capital for internet startups.

The Presentation Video

Digg, the user driven social content website, just last week secured $29 million in funding that values the company at $175 million.  As high as Digg’s valuation may sound they’re actually in line, or in many cases much lower, than some of the other well known internet valuations.  For example, in June LinkedIn was valued at $1 Billion and Twitter’s recent round of funding pegged them at $60 million even though they have zero revenues.  However, both are a mere fraction of Facebook’s outrageous $15 Billion valuation that resulted from Microsoft’s $240 million investment in the company.

In an attempt to place more realistic and comparative valuations on internet startups Bizak was launched to aggregate this data according to industry, business type and revenue source.  The following figures are the average valuations for internet startups who rely on the following revenue sources:  

 Over the last few months there has been a handful of startups launched that focus on business valuations.  All of them have a different focus with the common bond being the attempt to quantity both businesses and business ideas.  I run Bizak, which focuses on internet startups and computing benchmarks according to industry, type and revenue source for comparative analysis.  YouNoodle, which is based in San Francisco and launched over the summer, mixes business networking with a startup predictor application.  The latest business valuation service to launch is BizEquity, which focuses on offline, small business valuations with a reported database of 10 million business valuations.  BizEquity is based in San Diego and is founded by Tom Taulli and funded by Advanta Ventures.

I recently was able to talk to Tom Taulli about his services and one feature that I find very useful is BizEquity’s Custom Valuation application.  This advanced business calculator allows small business owners (more offline than on – restauranteurs, shop owners, retail, etc.) to calculate a detailed valuation of their business.  You can then elect to submit these calculations to BizEquity’s database.  I like the service that Tom offers and feel that we (Bizak & BizEquity) focus on two distinct markets (online & offline, respectively) that could potentially benefit from the integration of both of our data sets.  As I mentioned last week Bizak just launched their XML data feed which enables databases like BizEquity’s to integrate our internet benchmarks and startup profiles with their current data.

Additionally we discussed in detail some of the services that Bizak offers and Tom graciously included that interview in one of his BloggingStocks posts titled, “What are Startups Worth?”  The topics covered are:  

To register please visit: https://www.bizak.com/investors/register

This evening, actually 2am this morning, we at Bizak are starting to role out the investor side of our database. This means investors and corporations can finally view and compare startups within our database.  Different from the startup side, investors can actually see specific data, web analytics and financial data for all startups who elect to have their information published.  

Right now, as of 2am Tuesday morning, investors can subscribe to our XML feed and view and compare benchmarks to startups.  All of the investor applications will be completed by Wednesday afternoon.  The features that still need to be added are the profiles (contact information, bio, links, etc.) for startups and the ability to view and sort the top ten projects according to each sort.  A sort consists of Industry, Business Type and Revenue Source.  For example, you can view the top ten startups who are in the Internet industry, operate a business network and have a subscription model.  

As for the XML feeds this allows investors, venture capital firms and corporations to integrate our data into their platform for both internal use and database access for clients.  Examples of the data included in the XML schemas can be seen below.  Both of the XML files are being modified a bit more and contact phone and URL will be integrated into the startup schemas. Each subscriber has their own unique URL which returns data in XML format using the below schemas.

To register please visit: https://www.bizak.com/investors/register

For additional information about the investor side of Bizak please view the video below the XML data.

Startups & Projects

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<projectlist>

<project>

<startup>Startup Company Name (text)</startup>

<startupcontact>Startup Contact Name (text)</startupcontact>

<projectname>Project Name (text)</projectname>

<industry>Industry (text)</industry>

<websitetype>Website (text)</websitetype>

<revenuesource>Revenue (text)</revenuesource>

<visitors>Visitors (number)</visitors>

<revenue>Revenue (number)</revenue>

<rpv>Revenue per Visitor (number)</rpv>

<costs>Costs (number)</costs>

<cpv>Costs per Visitor (number)</cpv>

<earnings>Earnings (number)</earnings>

<epv>Earnings per Visitor (number)</epv>

<estimate>Bizak Estimate (number)</estimate>

</project>

</projectlist>

Benchmarks

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<benchmarks>

<benchmark>

<industry>Industry (text)</industry>

<websitetype>Website (text)</websitetype>

<revenuesource>Revenue (text)</revenuesource>

<visitors>Visitors (number)</visitors>

<revenue>Revenue (number)</revenue>

<rpv>Revenue per Visitor (number)</rpv>

<costs>Costs (number)</costs>

<cpv>Costs per Visitor (number)</cpv>

<earnings>Earnings (number)</earnings>

<epv>Earnings per Visitor (number)</epv>

<estimate>Bizak Estimate (number)</estimate>

</benchmark>

</benchmarks>

 

 

Bizak, a startup valuation network, presentation video.

Slide 7 from the Bizak presentation discussing our market and the need to make an apples to apples comparison of internet startups.

For the high quality version please click here

Here is another slide from Vencorp’s Mashable Startup Showdown.  This video is a bit longer at 2:49 and this time around I’m discussing (in detail) Bizak’s current revenue model.  The discussion also talks about our plans to syndicate our data via XML (available soon for $4,000/month) and the integration of professional consulting services for both startups and investors.

For the high quality version of this video please click here.

Below is a Vencorps forum post in response to a question asked about the ability of Bizak to value startups.  - Tom

Startups and public companies are indeed very different animals but revenues are revenues. Bizak valuation is based purely on revenues – not speculation. So if a startup makes $1 million/year and a public company makes the same then our calculations will value the two exactly the same, ceteris paribus. Of course public companies are more established and therefore usually have higher revenues and valuations. Our calculations also take into consideration the value of each visitor – we call it earnings per visitor (EPV). For example, if a gossip site receives 1 million visitors, but only has an EPV of $0.01, and a corporate consulting firm has 1,000 visitors with an EPV of $10 then both sites have the same traffic value ($10,000). This is then added (like a bonus) into the Bizak Estimate. In my opinion if you don’t know anything about your visitors then there is very little value in them – one major problem that Facebook is having.

Facebook was valued at $15 Billion mainly because Microsoft didn’t want Google to get its foot in their door. Back in June, I wrote an article about Facebook’s revenues (Facebook Revenues) which used the Bizak calculator to come up with a valuation of $1.3B for Facebook. This estimate was based on Facebook’s 2008 expected revenues of $350 million. If you input the $15 Billion valuation into the calculator then Facebook needs $313 million/month in revenues to justify that $15B valuation. Since Facebook is having a lot of trouble monetizing I don’t see that happening this decade. I also don’t see Facebook going public anytime soon since the markets will laugh at that $15 billion and value them more in line with revenues.

As for Twitter this was one of my favorite examples that I previously wrote about (Twitter Costs). Since Twitter has no revenue model and huge server costs my calculations actually valued them at a negative $600,000. The negative valuation is a result of that visitor value (EPV) that I referred to in the first paragraph. Of course there is a lot of value in Twitter that must be considered (and has been) by venture capitalists but since Bizak is based purely on revenues we gave it a negative valuation.

In sum Bizak doesn’t predict what the future value of a startup might be, but either does the stock market for public companies. Just like stock prices and market capitalization, the Bizak valuation will increase for startups who increase their revenues. In actuality the stock market probably places more hype and speculation into their valuations then we at Bizak do.

Tom O’Keefe is very excited to announce that Bizak is one of the finalists in Mashable’s Startup Showdown.

The Mashable Startup Showdown is supported by VenCorps, a Spencer Trask “community for discovering, funding and growing startup companies.”  With the Mashable Startup Showdown 9 finalists advance for a chance to win a $50,000 investment from Spencer Trask and 50,000 points to be used within the VenCorps community.

We at Bizak are very excited for this opportunity and recognition.

I recently spent some time on YouNoodle to test their Startup Predictor.   YouNoodle’s Startup Predictor estimates what your startup will be worth in 3 years – Bizak estimates (based on revenues) what your startup is worth right now.  From the YouNoodle questions it appears that they calculate your startup’s valuation based on the probability of success and the previous success of similar startups and entrepreneurs. For example, I have 13 years of online experience so my guess would be that I have a higher valuation or probability of success than someone with only 1 year of experience?

My initial interest in YouNoodle was because my startup, Bizak, calculates valuation based on revenues and in essence could be seen as a competitor.  However, this information could be very interesting and possible useful for Bizak – especially on the consulting side. In addition to the Bizak Benchmarks it could also be beneficial to offer startups this probability of success data. For example an entrepreneur looking to start a business network can use Bizak to determine the average valuation of startups in his industry is $100,000. They can then use YouNoodle’s probability of success data to determine that for entrepreneurs with over 5 years of experience the average valuation jumps to $500,000. That would be a very interesting combination of data! This combination would be very beneficial to investors in the form of direct data, research papers and consulting services. With this information we can decrease investors’ investment risk by providing them with both an estimate of future valuation and which type of entrepreneurs have a higher probability of success.

Bizak’s idea is rooted in the financial analysis and EPS of public companies. What I’m trying to do is create an average performance metric for startups according to their industry, business type (wiki, blog, etc.) and revenue source (Adsense, consulting, etc.) and any and all combination of the three. Bizak computes (and creates benchmarks) for visitors, revenues, revenues per visitor (RPV), costs, CPV, earnings, EPV and valuation. This will allow startups to view their performance to their industry, other industries and possible more importantly the ability to research what industries, types and revenues are good business models.

Leveraging our tools with and/or partnering with investment firms?  A partnership includes the integration of our data/benchmarks with the investment firm (via XML feed) in return increasing everyone’s exposure to internet startups.

Bizak announced last week that it will be launching its investor side (phase 3 of 3) during the first week of September 2008.  This will allow investors to view startups seeking funding, compare their performance to competitors, and analyze the Bizak benchmarks.  

In addition to the online access we’re also offering investors the ability to stream our data directly to their database via an XML data feed.  This gives investors the ability to have a live feed of the most current benchmarks and the latest startups to join Bizak.  The private and unique XML feed can be integrated into your existing database, built into your desktop or simply added to your RSS reader – XML can be fully customized for your needs.     

For sales information please contact Tom O’Keefe via Bizak.

One of the most important (but likely most overlooked) decisions when starting a startup is your exit strategy. Like it or not you’re going to get tired of working 8 days a week and there will come a day (especially if you’re a one man operation) when you’ll want to walk away.  After years of hard work you’re not going to just turn off the power switch, no way!!  Either you’ll want to hand over the reigns to a trusted associate or better yet you would like to get bought out.  Whichever one it is you should probably start thinking about it before you get burnt out.

Not until I grew tired of running Research Connect did I realize how important an exit strategy was – before that day I never thought about it.  Research Connect was a one man operation (aka Me) and unfortunately when I grew tired of the company I still needed to find someone to buy it – that was the hard (and exhausting) part. Exhausting because it took me approximately sixteen months to find a buyer for the company. Sixteen months after I had already became burnt out.  

So it’s best to have an exit strategy on day 1, even if you never think you’ll need it.  If you have investors then you better make sure your exit plan matches theirs, because they certainly have an exit plan for you.

Phase 3 of Bizak is set to launch soon.  Phase 2 consisted of the industry benchmarks (see video) and phase 3 opens up Bizak to investors who want to invest in internet startups.  In addition to the average benchmarks (that startups can view) investors will be able to view and compare the analytics for specific startups.  With Bizak, investors can now evaluate the earnings and valuation of startups in comparison to their competitors and industry leaders.  

Before we launch the investor side of Bizak we’re evaluating a few ideas that will benefit both investors and startups.  One of those is partnering with a large corporation, VC or investment firm who will have exclusive access to Bizak and the stream of web startups.  At this moment we’re discussing this exclusivity and invite any investment or venture capital firm to contact us (617-947-8071, email) if interested.

Here’s a VERY ROUGH video of Bizak’s benchmarks.  The video is bad but the benchmarks are good!

In addition to creating our own startups (Bizak) we at TOKiBiz also work with entrepreneurs to help them create a profitable internet business.  TOKiBiz helps entrepreneurs create ideas into business.  This includes developing the business model, the revenue model, building the application, creating a design, building a brand and designing the logo.  

Then when all of these steps are completed we’re ready to launch the application. Unlike most firms, TOKiBiz then helps the entrepreneur run their internet company. This can be anything from just an advisory role to being the people running the show – as is the case with infoMedMD.  With infoMedMD we helped the founder create the idea into a brand, then a website and then into a business.

With our recent launches we at TOKiBiz are looking to expand our services to other entrepreneurs, continue development of in house applications and offer new services such as internet & video marketing.  Right now we at TOKiBiz are looking for investors to help us help entrepreneurs, in return giving you an equity stake in every project that we work on.  An equity stake in not just one company, but all of the great ideas coming out of Boston and the country.  

If you’re interested in investing in TOKiBiz, Inc. please email Tom (via Bizak email form) or call Tom O’Keefe at 617-947-8071.  Tom O’Keefe and TOKiBiz, Inc. are located in Boston, Massachusetts.

According to Silicon Valley Insider there is yet another valuation of Facebook and this time it’s just above $6 billion.  With this latest transaction a couple of hedge funds purchased about a tenth of common stock from two or more employees at a valuation roughly around $6 billion.  

As the article states the correct valuation of Facebook will not be known until it goes public and the market can determine the price.  In my opinion this will likely be less than the $15 billion valuation that Microsoft placed on it and more likely in line with the $3 billion valuation that Techcrunch recently quoted.  

Back in June I computed Facebook’s revenue valuation at just under $1.4 billion using the Bizak Calculator.  If Facebook goes public the initial hype will value the company higher than their revenue valuation.  Over time revenues, not hype, will ultimately decide Facebook’s worth.

Last evening, in addition to infoMedMD, we at TOKiBiz also launched the industry benchmarks for Bizak.com. 

If you’re already registered with Bizak just login and you’ll see a nice new navigation bar for you.  If you haven’t registered with Bizak you can do see via the website worth page.

For additional information and definitions about the benchmarks please click on the image below.  For a full size screenshot please see full size screenshot.

Benchmarks

Rick Breslin of the Drive Thru Internet Marketing Podcast recently interviewed Tom O’Keefe about the benefits of Bizak for both startups and investors. Topics in the video podcast include:

• What is Bizak?
• Website Worth and Industry Data Comparison
• Startups Can Register for Free
• Investors Can Find Prospective Online Ventures
• The Bizak Calculator – Earnings per Visitor (EPV)

To date Barack Obama has raised a whopping $296 million for his presidential campaign. Much of Obama’s fundraising success is due in large part to a fantastic website, a dominate internet presence and the viral marketing efforts of his supporters via blogs, links, content and of course YouTube.

For John McCain his fundraising efforts are 143% lower than Obama’s at $122 million. McCain’s web presence comes in a distant second (comared to Obama) in every category.

Below are a number of web analytics which compare the candidates’ online saturation. When it comes to web analytics Barack Obama crushes John McCain in every category.

Google Results (Winner: Barack Obama)

When performing a search for Barack Obama on Google you’ll find 54,900,000 pages that at least mention the presidential candidate. The same search for John McCain brings up 37,600,000 pages. Impressive for Barack since he was relatively unknown before 2004 whereas John McCain has been a senator since 1987 and ran for president in 2000

YouTube Videos (Winner: Barack Obama)

This election is the first presidential election of the YouTube generation and to date there are 130,000 videos about (or talk about/mention) Barack Obama whereas just 39,400 YouTube videos focus on John McCain. Of course there is no way to tell if these videos are for or against a particular candidate but one thing is certain and that is more people are talking, writing, blogging, and recording Barack Obama.

Site Lookup – Google (Winner: Barack Obama)

A site lookup determines the number of pages indexed for a particular website on a search engine such as Google. Doing a site lookup (on Google) for BarackObama.com we see that Barack has 889,000 pages indexed. Compare that to JohnMcCain.com and we see that Obama has far more online content – McCain has 30,400 pages. Generally speaking the more pages a website has the more search traffic that website will receive. If optimized (called SEO) then more pages means more opportunities to be found online. If internet visitors are going to your site then you can craft your message exactly the way you want – not the way your competitor wants it.

BarackObama.com is a terrific website built in Web 2.0 fashion with social networking tools embedded into it. As we know BarackObama.com has raised a significant amount of money from small donations via the website. My guess is that the 889,000 pages indexed and the Web 2.0 features of BarackObama.com have a lot to do with Barack’s financial success.

InLinks – Yahoo (Winner: Barack Obama)

Inlinks (or inbound links) are the number of outside links pointing to your website. Inlinks are very important in determining a website’s search engine placement and therefore search traffic. Google’s original algorithium relied heavily on the quality of inbound links and based on this created the PageRank. PageRank (which had more pull a few years ago) measures the quality of a website in the range of 0 to 10. Both BarackObama.com and JohnMcCain.com have a PageRank of 7.

In the case of Barack Obama and John McCain you can infer the popularity of a particular candidate by the number of websites linking to it – in essence it can be seen as a recommendation. With that BarackObama.com has 60,801 links pointing to it and JohnMcCain.com has 21,905.

Both stats are from Yahoo which is more reliable than Google in determining inlinks.

Google Blog Search (Winner: Barack Obama)

Blogs have become a tremendous political force. Both candidates maintain a blog (Obama, McCain) but more importantly millions of Americans have a blog and now a voice. Bloggers have more influence than ever and some are arguable as influential as The Washington Post and The New York Times. With every election a new form of media has emerged forcing a candidate to adapt. In 2004 blogs showed their influence for the first time and this year video is a the new major player – now we have video and blogs!

So, one more way to measure the online success of a potential candidate is the number of blog posts about a particular candidate. In essence it measures what people are talking about, what people are thinking about and who they’re voting for. Once again Barack Obama has a commanding online presence over John McCain with 7,367,910 posts about him and only 4,242,637 blog posts about John McCain.

Keyword Searches (Winner: Barack Obama)

According to Wordtracker, the keyword “Barack Obama” is searched for 7,682 times per day. “John McCain” sees 4,392 daily searches. This means when people go to Google (and search for a candidate) they are searching for Barack Obama 75% more than John McCain. These numbers only include both candidates’ full name – there are hundreds of variations that people are also searching for. For instance, if you do a search for just the candidates last name then Obama is searched for 9,643 times/day and McCain 1,122 times per day.

People Count (Winner: Barack Obama)

According to Compete.com, BarackObama.com received 1,568,981 visitors in May 2008 compared to JohnMcCain.com which received 424,214 visitors. Both candidates (Barack 3 million and McCain 1 million) saw a huge spike in traffic in February 2008 thanks to Super Tuesday.

BarackObama.com

This data goes back to January, but I couldn’t write a piece about website earnings without computing the business valuation of a website’s earnings. In January Barack Obama raised $32 million, of which $28 million came from online donations. According to Techcrunch, over 250,000 individuals made donations of which 90% of those were under $100.

According to the Compete.com graph (above) BarackObama.com received around 3 million visitors in January 2008. Like I value a websites’ worth on this blog and on Bizak.com, I will attempt to do the same with BarackObama.com. Entering these numbers into the Bizak Business Valuation Calculator (and assuming no costs) you get a whopping $9.33 earnings per visitor (EPV). This means on average Barack Obama earns $9.33 for every person who visits his website. Internet powerhouses like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, & Myspace wish they had a $9.33 EPV. If BarackObama.com was an internet site making $30 million/month then they would have a valuation of $1.344 Billion!!

Summary

When it comes to internet marketing Barack Obama is far ahead of John McCain. Unfortunately, I can’t compare The Political Web for Bush vs. Kerry in 2004 so it remains to be seen if a dominate web presence converts into the presidency. What we do know is George Bush had only 35 electoral votes and 3,012,166 popular votes more than John Kerry in 2004. Both candidates had roughly the same amount of funds – at this time in 2004 John Kerry had accumulated $186.2 million. At the time this was 5x more than any previous democrat had raised. That was of course before Barack Obama who so far (with 4 full months remaining) has raised $296 million compared to John McCain’s $122 million. This equates to a 143% difference in funds. In 2004 George Bush had only 13% ($41 million) more dollars than Kerry, but only captured 2% more of the popular vote.

Facebook recently overtook the number one worldwide visitors title from Myspace but Rupert Murdoch & News Corp. are probably not concerned. In July 2005 News Corp. purchased Myspace for $580 million. This year Myspace is expected to generate 2008 revenues of $800 million. In comparison Facebook revenues for 2008 are expected to be $350 million.

Without costs that $800 million for Facebook equates to a $3.2 billion dollar valuation (source: Bizak’s business valuation) for Myspace. It turns out that Rupert made another very smart investment.

If you use the same costs figures for Myspace that I used for Facebook (approximately $26 million/year or $2,166,666.00/month) then we can get a better comparison.

Revenues: Myspace $800 Million, Facebook $350 Million

Earnings per Visitor: Myspace $1.08, Facebook $0.84*

*Facebook’s EPV is based on 32 million visitors. Change Facebook’s visitors to equal Myspace (60 million) and their EPV drops to $0.45

Valuation: Myspace $3.174 Billion, Facebook $1.374 Billion

Winner: Myspace & Rupert Murdoch

Visually Myspace is still very sloppy but they’re getting better – just in time for Rupert to sell Myspace for a huge profit.  Maybe experience does help when running a company??!!