Summary
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Summary
The TurboCASH project is the World's leading Open Source Accounting product for Small businesses. As of writing (November 2005) we have 30 000 registered users and we have had 150 000 downloads of the software. We are however still a long way behind the commercial products in terms of market penetration.
The aim of The Good Things Partnership is to take ownership of the TurboCASH project and to inject the necessary funding for marketing and development with the aim of increasing the user base from 25 000 to 1 Million users. An accounting software company that has so many users is conservatively worth $ 100 Million Dollars, either as a going concern, as a partner for a Commercial party or for sale to a strategic partner.
The Good Things Partnership aims to raise sufficient funding to achieve this growth and for its partners to gain this benefit of ownership, either in resale or exploitation of the opportunities.
The Good Things Partnership is valued on the number of users who have registered TurboCASH. This is currently valued at $ 100 per registered user. As the number of users rise the total value of the Partnership rises and the value of the individual users rises. If the number of users rises faster than the shares that are allocated to partners, the venture is successful.
The first round of financing consists of an offer to sell one third of the Partnership to one or many partners for a price of $ 1 Million. This would leave the current partners with 20 000 shares and the new partners (investors with 10 000).
The Accounting Market
TurboCASH sits squarely, just above the entry level accounting package market. There are 20 Million users worldwide in the narrow sense of this market. Microsoft is all around us. Below are the non accounting package solutions like Spreadsheets and Personal finance programs.
http://www.turbocash.co.za/philip/GoodThings/smarket1.jpg
We compete against some of the most vicious people in the Software business. Quickbooks is the leading product (5 Million users) including Quicken. Sage is the largest company (7 Million Users), with many different brands including SAGE, Peachtree, KHK, Ciel, Pastel, Simply Accounting. In the US, Quickbooks is dominant, in most other countries SAGE is dominant.
TurboCASH is the leading Open Source product. (30 000 users). Our biggest market is South Africa, our fastest growing market is Holland, our most exciting market is the US.
TurboCASH is comfortable with 1 to 5 users and works in distributed environments. When you try to push the package "down" Instead of extending down, you actually lose the top end. Every move to "easier" makes users believe that TurboCASH is not suited to small networks or business networks. The access control required for a larger system is not easy. When you compromise this to make a package easier, you can make it less capable. Similarly if you try to move the package "upwards" the entry level users perceive the package as "too difficult " to use. It is not likely that a first time user will simply install a multi user system and have users firing transactions across a network. Go there and we are sure to lose the bottom end users. Our strategy is to stay inside the same current segment, but expand into the competitors market share by increasing the quality of the product. This is done by making TurboCASH "talk" to more and more systems.: Banks, freight companies, office supplies, travel, search engines....
We remain a simple functional General Ledger program. Complexity is added by Plugins. However we are a program that has an Open Architecture. Our unique sales proposition, (USP) is:
"While other accounting packages merely count the profit you make in another business, TurboCASH does that, and is a revenue generator itself. From the moment you install your free copy (and save yourself $ 1000) you are already making money. We will connect you to the wider business community"
By plugging into TurboCASH, you plug into the whole Open Source community and a wide range of web opportunities. While not exclusively, we do target the connected DSL user. We believe the the 5 year future for Small Businesses is a small network, web services, Windows XP and DSL.
We see no reason why following the above strategy will not gain us a minimum of 10% of this market (1.2 Million users).
The TurboCASH Project
http://www.turbocash.co.za/philip/GoodThings/tcashproject.png
I am always amused by the question, “How do you make money out of an Open Source product?”. Everyone involved with TurboCASH is in it for the money. This is not Bible Software or Education Software for underprivaleged children, this is Bookkeeping! Think of it like a Sardine Run. Everyone that is involved, is involved for their own benefit. Sardines get protection by the number of fish, dolphins and predators feed off them and Trawlers catch the predator fish. Everyone benefits and follows the run.
The unusual fact about an Open Source project is that it is self sustaining. Very few of them fail. They don't go insolvent as they have no debts and they can always pay their expenses, because they don't have any. True, some of them don't get off the ground and it is really expensive to launch a good one, but once they are up they are up. The project itself pulls the sustaining resources
Users - come there simply because the software is free and is better than other entry level products. The Open nature of the software means they can add to it or move freely whenever they want. They are not limited financially if they want to expand use of the software, they merely copy it.
Developers – can earn revenue either by making custom sub projects or by writing plugins which they sell to the users. It is a myth that developers in Open Source projects work for free. Development is driven in the direction of the customers willing to pay for it.
Consultants – make money installing packages for users that have difficulty doing so themselves. TurboCASH creates opportunities for consulting on Operating systems and networks.
Agents – develop the TurboCASH brand in territories and make revenue from CD sales, manual sales, consultant introductions
Accountants – sell auditing and financial services around TurboCASH.
Sub Projects – TurboCASH Accounting is our core project, but developers can easily add their own sub projects.
Translation – Into other languages, other teminology (USA, Medical etc)
Integration - Linking to banks, freight companies, other software packages etc.
Extension - Adding new features and plugins, like manufacturing, specialized invoicing, rental, CRM, etc.
Localization – handling local tax rules etc.
Owners – These are the members of the Good Things Partnership. They have different aims to those of the project participants. The owners benefit from increased user numbers
Media Partners - Web Sites, Magazines, TV channels help us to promote and build the TurboCASH brand. I anticipate that many Owners will come from Media partners.
The GNU GPL
http://www.turbocash.co.za/GNUGPL.html
The GNU General Public “Copyleft” licence is an innovative licence, published by Richard Stallman in 1990, without which the Internet as we know it today would surely not have existed. In particular it has led to the proliferation of hundreds of thousands of distributed mail servers and web servers that run off Open Source software.
Most software licences are constructed to protect the vendors of Tollgate software. “You can't change it, you can't copy it, you only rent it, etc etc”. The GNU GPL starts out with the aim to protect the user of the software. In particular it gives the user the right in perpetuity to freely use the software.
The most immediate benefit to a user is a free download or the ability to copy it from a friend without any payment. But the real benefit of the software comes not from “free” as in free beer but from free as in freedom. Because the software is freely available in source and therefore usually subscribes to Open Systems, it is subject to peer review. It is easier for the development community to make contributions to the software and for bugs to be fixed. This rapid rate of feedback development, sometimes several releases per week, makes for better products. The Open Source brand therefore acts as a symbol of quality.
Developers love the GPL. We will only use non GPL products as a last resort. We know the advantages that GPL brings us, open system, rapid development, no licences, no hidden surprises. This is the same for all GPL developers. By using components from a GPL project, we are able to extent out technology and offer them feedback on their products. These relationships are called “Upstreaming” and “downstreaming”. This is what we mean when we say that Open Source brings you access to thousands of programmers.
The benefit for a channel partner is that all the needs for complex agreements that dominate other software products disappear. Because there is always a throwback to the GPL, it makes territory agreements, sales targets, exclusivity agreements superfluous. This develops an enormous trust between project participants very quickly. There are no hidden agenda or “innovative marketing plans”. Even this documents is a public document. The result is a rapid deployment of the technology. We expect the majority of partners to come from our users and project members.
