Catalyze Ventures

[Artavazd Hakobyan]

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the long silence. Work is hectic here, and I am preparing for a month-long trip to Europe, Africa and Asia. I totally agree with Sarah's point that she raised in one of the emails about incorporating in Delaware. Probably, we should go ahead with this idea, and ask the HLS folks to help us as much as they can to sett up the firm. I strongly believe that for a firm of our size and scope, place of incorporation is secondary to our main goal of being able to operate.

I have to updates. First is that I will have to change my visa by end of October. I will have to switch from my F1 student visa to G4 international organizations visa. I have been resisting this since I have moved to DC, but this is the only way for me to do my job for the WB. If I don't do it, I will not be able to travel, and my job includes a lot of travel. The downside is that I won't be able to work for a private business. If we are going to operate, we may have to think about sponsoring green card for me. But that's going to be somewhat in the future.

Second update is that I have been thinking of models of quick cash flow for our small enterprise. I have been considering various options, and thinking how we can turn our main disadvantage - being in different parts of the world - to a competitive advantage for the firm. And then, some combination of news gave me this idea.

So, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine are negotiating with EU a free-trade agreement, which among others will result in strong interest by European companies to sell and produce food in these countries. Armenia is still undecided whether it will go ahead with this treaty, but the other three will be signing it in November. At the same time, all three countries are considered as frontier economies by financial investors, and their sovereign bonds have high demand. Armenia issued its first sovereign backed bonds last week, which was a success. Now, hedge funds and other investors are looking at these countries with opportunistic eyes.

So, the idea is to start a website, where we can put articles on the food industry of these countries on a regular basis, analyzing various aspects that relate to investment risk. I am talking about 3-4 page analyzes, around 2-3 per week. Parallel to this, we will promote the website, in google as food industry, political/economic risk analyses source for these countries. If we are able to generate traffic to such a website, we would basically position ourselves as the only firm that does this type of work, and would be able to generate sub-contracts and full-fledged contracts from potentially a large number of interested clients. This somewhat is similar to our "Option 1" which we put on hold, but I see very very lucrative market, and great potential to earn cash. All we need to do is to do what we have been doing past two years. Spend a week to write a 4-page paper, and publish it on the website. We don't even have to have a sophisticated website design. Think of the craiglist. Just useful information.

Please let me know what you think, and let's waste no time if you think it is doable.

Cheers,

Art

[Michael Reading]

Hi team,

Art, thank you for the update and I hope you enjoy the big trip this upcoming month!

A couple quick response:

Re. incorporation - I am still interested in hearing what HLS has to say regarding whether the Delaware option would make sense for smaller companies or would be a waste of money.

Re. legal status - Sorry to hear about your trouble Art; I hope this isn't too much of a headache on your end. Sarah, when you did research on different business structures, was there anything about LLCs v. S-Corps in regards to sponsoring green cards? I also wonder if a firm would need to be of a certain size to sponsor green cards?I would have to believe so, otherwise it seems like anyone could start their own LLC as a means of securing a green card. 

Re. Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine business opportunities - This sounds really intriguing  I'm still unclear of the business model. Would this essentially be a series of articles behind a paywall, and the firm would make money by selling subscriptions? Or is the idea to have the articles serve as marketing, given away freely, but in pursuit of attracting sub-contracts or contracts with investment firms?

Thanks,

Michael

--
Michael L. Reading
Master of International Business - The Fletcher School | Tufts University

Climate CoLab Fellow -  Center for Collective Intelligence | MIT

+1.612.860.3099 | Twitter | LinkedIn

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[Artavazd Hakobyan]

Hi Michael,

so here is my response to the three issues. 

1. I am basically indifferent as to where to incorporate. I don't believe this is an important issue. Frankly, I think continuous discussions about this are waste of time. Just pick a state. 

2. If catalyze ventures wants me to work with it and be a partner, then it should sponsor the green card. Otherwise, I can't work. I will be changing my visa one way or another  by end of October. So it's up to you guys if you want to work with me.

3. By having focused on the form rather than on the substance, we have missed discussions on our business models. There are currently opportunities and we may not be able to capture them, if we only talk about the form.

Cheers,

Art

[Sarah Clark]

Hi Team,

Adding in my two cents:

1. Incorporation: Art, I'm also feeling anxious to incorporate ASAP, but I would like to hear HLS's advice regarding the state to ensure that we aren't spending significantly more money than we need to by incorporating in Delaware. Within Lauren working with us on this now I think the process will go rather quickly, and then we can work with them to guide our incorporation as well.

2. We will of course figure out a way to sponsor your green card! No worries there.

3. I'm very open to your idea regarding the Eastern European analyses, and I agree it would be rather straightforward and quick to roll it out. I need you to take the lead on this project however, specifically, identifying clearly what you see as the major news sources, topics, etc. With your lead, I'm happy to help build a website (wordpress is a nice free site), write up brief analyses, etc. My only concern is generating traffic to the site: Do you know specific resources - in terms of individuals or organizations - through or to whom we can promote our information?  

Thanks all!

Sarah

[Michael Reading]

Hi team,

Thanks for your responses Art and Sarah. Art, I sense frustration on your part, which I completely understand. Sorry for any misunderstanding; here are a few points I'm still seeking to understand:

1. Incorporation - I also feel it will be really helpful to hear from HLS on their recommendations for the reasons Sarah mentioned.

2. Sponsorship - oh yeah, to clarify, my concern wasn't whether Catalyze Ventures would want to sponsor you (of course! :)), but if there were restrictions in doing so - ie. does a company need to be of a certain kind or size to sponsor its owners for green cards? Is there a lengthy process with USCIS that's involved? etc.

3. Eastern Europe - I'm definitely interested; I was simply confused with how the process resulted in revenue.

Hope you're both doing well and I'm happy to talk further over Hangout or email if you'd like.

Thanks,

Michael

--
Michael L. Reading
Master of International Business - The Fletcher School | Tufts University

Climate CoLab Fellow -  Center for Collective Intelligence | MIT

+1.612.860.3099 | Twitter | LinkedIn

--

[Artavazd Hakobyan]

Hi All,

OK, sorry for my overreaction and a showing a bit of frustration. I am just very eager to do some work!

So, with regards to writing reports for a website. It is not going to be a direct revenue stream. In fact, it will be completely free. Even more, we have to invest a little bit to promote the website. But I am not talking about thousands of dollars. I am talking about $200-300.

The idea is to pick an investment risk, and write about it analyzing Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine food supply chain related markets. Ideally one article a week per person. That's 12 articles per month! For instance,  one of us can choose a risk topic on Monday, prepare the report by Friday, have it reviewed by the other two, and publish next Monday.The topics can be chosen by monitoring news - WSJ, FT, NYT, Local English language media, other sources. The report will have a specific format. For example, it may have a beginning paragraph outlining the risk. Our analyses, and conclusions. The latter is the most important section, where we discuss how we view things are going to change or unfold. We can use 2-3 pages, maximum 4 to cover the topic. Also, we can collect and analyse regulatory updates from Eastern Europe, and publish a digest or a summary with our analyses. For this we may charge some money, I think.

The catch! We can try to setup an email registration on the website. So, when people visit to read they register to get updates, and at times get the publications as soon as they are released. Believe it or not, there are hundreds of people interested in such a service. I met a guy the other day, who makes a living only by sending digests of news reports and regulatory updates to food industry professionals (check out www.fien.com). However, our main catch is to direct traffic from risk consulting firms or other firms asking us to do custom reports for them. That's where we will be making the money.

Options. The proposal to focus on Eastern Europe is not cast in stone. We can focus on any country we want. For instance, we can aim big and focus on BRICS, or on Mexico, Kazakhstan and Turkey... or any combination.

I'd love to hear your views about this. 

Cheers,

Art

[Sarah Clark]

Hi Team,

Very interesting and I'm looking forward to getting started! A few reflections:

• I love your idea about collecting emails
• I think a more reasonable goal is to publish 1 article a week (4 articles per month), with the option to publish additional "special releases". We can then rotate our writing responsibilities. I really think this amount of content is sufficient for our audience, but what are your thoughts?
  
• I think we should focus on Eastern Europe to begin, and then can expand our regional focus over time. There can be sections of the website devoted to different regions in the future for example.
  
• In terms of creating the website, I think that it should have a more general title and URL, such as "www.agrisk.com" or "www.agrifoodriskanalysis.com" etc. with the subtitle, "A Catalyze Ventures platform" or "A Catalyze Ventures product", etc. In this way we're demonstrating the link to Catalyze Ventures, but promoting this as a separate product so as not to confuse it with our Catalyze Ventures website and services. 
  
• I think we should set up a news stream on the website as well, a place where we can add interesting and relevant articles as they arise each day.
  
• We need to develop a very clear description of our risk analysis services so that folks who visit the site can easily access and understand what additionally we can provide to them for a fee.
• We can begin writing now while the website is developed and then when it is launched there will already be content.

Who is going to be our website developer?

Lastly, I don't want this project to distract us too much from developing the Catalyze Ventures website and content (I would like to build a CV website ASAP that simply lists our services, bios, the quinoa case study, and a regularly updated food-safety related news stream). Perhaps a way to handle this balance would be for Art to take the lead on developing the risk analysis site, while I lead the CV website development. Thoughts?

Cheers!

Sarah

[Artavazd Hakobyan]

Sarah, these ideas sound great to me. I am totally on board, and agree to take the lead on agrisk thing. I agree with all your proposals,and think starting with 1 report per week is a great start. I just checked, agrifoodriskanalysis.com is available and will buy it tonight. At the same time, I will start building the website, and then send you guys a proposal for report format.

[Sarah Clark]

Hi Art,

Yippeee!! I can't believe agrifoodriskanalysis.com exists, that's awesome! Or maybe just www.agrifoodrisk.com? It's a bit simpler.

What website development tool will you be using? I agree that the website can and should be simple, but I think it's very important that it looks sleek too. Appearance really is important and we need to demonstrate trustworthiness, perhaps by using grays and dark greens. This is an absolutely dreadful website: www.fien.com Some examples of simple websites that my friends have built pretty quickly include: http://www.chalkandink.com and http://www.journeymanrestaurant.com …I'll try to think of others for our reference, websites with less photos for example.

Until we talk more soon,

Sarah

[Michael Reading]

Hi guys,

This all looks good to me.

An update on my end: I'm still waiting to hear back from EDF, although they let me know yesterday that they are reaching out to my references. My strong hunch is that I wouldn't be able to pursue outside contracting, but I don't know for certain yet. Sadly, that would mean I'd need to bow out of moving forward with Catalyze Ventures. 

I'm sorry for the back and forth on your behalf as well. The interview process has stretched on far longer than I had expected, but it does look like things might finally come to a resolution soon, within the next week or so.

-Michael

--
Michael L. Reading
Master of International Business - The Fletcher School | Tufts University

Climate CoLab Fellow -  Center for Collective Intelligence | MIT

+1.612.860.3099 | Twitter | LinkedIn

--

[Sarah Clark]

Hi Michael,

Thanks so much for your note. I know it's been a tricky process for you, and I super appreciate you keeping us in the loop as you've been sorting all this through. I'm of course incredibly thrilled for you about this EDF opportunity, and it's such great news that they're at the references stage! :D You're in the home stretch!

I'm totally comfortable moving forward with Harvard TLC and keeping your name on that retainer agreement until you have 100% clarity that you'd like to back out of CV. I'm hearing from you that it's looking very likely, but we've been riding it out this far so I don't feel compelled to have you disconnect completely yet. Unless of course you really would prefer to do so! Of course that's totally fine as well, if you aren't feeling engaged or interested in our development process I mean. Just let us know.

Warmly,

Sarah

[Michael Reading]

Hi guys,

Thanks so much for your understanding and encouragement. I feel good about this process as well since it definitely is not certain with EDF yet and since there everything with Catalyze is still very exploratory at this point, I feel ok about things. I will definitely keep you posted! :). 

-Michael

--
Michael L. Reading
Master of International Business - The Fletcher School | Tufts University

Climate CoLab Fellow -  Center for Collective Intelligence | MIT

+1.612.860.3099 | Twitter | LinkedIn

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