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www.chacha.com



About ChaCha
ChaCha is the ultimate fusion of computer technology & human intelligence. Live human guides are available to provide additional assistance. - The human brain.
ChaCha's goal is to provide a better search experience by combining results that are hand-picked by our knowledgeable human guides with the best computer-generated search results. In those cases where you can't find what you need with our instant results, ChaCha will connect you with a live human guide who will find the information for you through an instant messaging-style search session.
Scott Jones and Brad Bostic, two dynamic entrepreneurs who were not satisfied with millions of irrelevant search results provided by first generation search engines, believed a better experience could be created by tapping into human intelligence. Since starting ChaCha, they have been hard at work with the ChaCha team to create:
A smart search engine that "learns" by tapping into human intelligence so its results are always improving
A place to find exactly what you're looking for instantly
Help from people who are knowledgeable about the very thing you are looking for when instant results don't have the answer
Remember, ChaCha is all about making the web more accessible, by giving you the most relevant results you need. And with ChaCha, you get great results instantly and you have the option to search with a Guide who can help find your result. So come join our experiment and have some fun!
The Founders
Scott Jones, CEO & Co-Founder
For more than two decades, Scott has created companies that have produced over a dozen award-winning industry firsts. He revolutionized the modern workplace in the mid-1980s, when at only 25 years old, after forming his first company, Boston Technology, he invented the voicemail system that is now used by nearly all telephone companies around the globe.
He also created Escient which later transformed into Gracenote which is one of the first companies to develop music recognition technology. Another venture Scott founded is IndyRobotics, LLC creating one of the world's premier self driving vehicles, Indiana's Robotic Vehicle (IRV).
Brad Bostic, President & Co-Founder
Brad is responsible for refining the Company's strategy, developing its business and operating plans, and guiding the team to execute on its key business objectives. In 1997, Brad founded Bostech Corporation as a custom software development and consulting company.
In 2001, Brad transformed Bostech into an enterprise integration software provider through a strategic acquisition of technology installed in more than 2,000 companies around the globe. Bostech's ChainBuilder technology has since become one of the most widely embedded integration platforms in the retail, healthcare, and energy markets, and continues its technology advances into the standards-based Service Oriented Architecture space with ChainBuilder ESB. He also founded NearMed, a provider of physician services and technology to healthcare providers via telemedicine. Brad graduated from Indiana University.
Why the name ChaCha?
People often ask how we picked the name. The answer is that it has a dual meaning. First, "Cha" means "search" in Chinese. Second, the ChaCha is a popular, fast-paced dance.
Therefore, we are named ChaCha because we are the only search engine that allows people seeking information to instantly connect online with live ChaCha Guides that lead them (much as they would in the dance) to the most relevant results on the Internet.
ChaCha - A new way to search
ChaCha Search gives you the BEST computer-generated search results on the Web instantly.
But that's not all. To make its results different and better, ChaCha includes results that have been hand-picked by our human Guides. Computers keep getting smarter, but they don't have brains - ChaCha's human Guides bring the Internet's best results to you instantly.
And if you still don't get the results you need with our instant search, unlike any other search engine on the planet, ChaCha will instantly connect you with a live ChaCha Guide (Search With Guide) who can help you. How's that for VIP service? And it's still free!
ChaCha Guides
By searching with a Guide your query is sent to a real person who is skilled at finding information on the Internet and knowledgeable on the subject at hand so that you get the few exact results you want, not the millions of results you don't.
ChaCha only provides quality, human approved results.
The more you use ChaCha, the smarter and faster ChaCha becomes! Because ChaCha saves, rates, and updates all the answers that are hand-picked by our Guides. ChaCha's intelligent Guide application learns from every search so our Guides know where to look to find information for you quickly.

when would you come?..

This blog is solely for the purpose to give you an idea about the funding of agloco: Pssh dont forgot to click on the link right here to sign up www.agloco.com/r/BBBT3211

This analysis is centered around the amount of personal value an AGLOCO user could get, with a special focus on a user who is actively referring new users to AGLOCO. Material used included the AGLOCO website (membership agreement, privacy policy, FAQs and general information pages). management interviews, critical blog postings concerning AGLOCO, internet advertising and commerce data, valuations of other Internet communities and the business model economics of Google, Yahoo, MySpace, You Tube, etc.
Conclusions:
The valuation conclusions are based on AGLOCO reaching two million users in a two year time span:
A user who has no referrals should receive ownership in AGLOCO worth on average about $150. (plus monthly cash distributions)
The average value of an AGLOCO user’s referral network should be $30 each in ownership shares plus the referrer’s share of monthly cash distribution.
The average AGLOCO direct referral should be worth in excess of $3,000 each (see example below for details)
The analysis also shows a range of monthly cash distributions of between $5 and $15 a month per user.
The AGLOCO business model looks theoretically sound – (assuming they get to a decent size quickly - at least 500,000 users within nine months to a year)


The cost of recruiting new users to AGLOCO can vary. For many users it is simply sending an email to friends or contacts – or talking to them directly. For others it is blog postings or website notices and for some users paid ads on search engines. The privacy and anti-spam policies of AGLOCO and the track record on these issues of Ray Everett-Church (AGLOCO’s Chief Privacy Officer) makes the risk of getting spam, pop ups and other trash as a user a non issue.In general, given the low level of work needed to recruit new users to AGLOCO and the zero cost in terms of money, the cost/benefit ratio of recruiting new users to AGLOCO seems to be highly favorable. Because there is no limit as to the number of referrals a user can recruit, the upper end on this opportunity could be high (which means it can be worth putting in the effort to promote actively). This analysis was done two weeks after AGLOCO launched and there have been user postings noting referral networks of 4,000 and 5,000 already. At $30 value each this would be $120,000 to $150,000 so far, which means AGLOCO could make some serious recruiting users a high return on their efforts.
Referral Example:
A user recruits ten people (10 direct referrals) –
If on average, each direct referral recruits 3 new users (some will recruit many and some none, but the average is 3 for each level of your network) -- Value of 10 referrals $300
The user would have 30 indirect users one person removed. – Value of 30 referrals $900
The user would have 90 indirect users two people removed -- Value of 90 referrals $2,700
The user would have 270 indirect users three people removed -- Value of 270 referrals $8,100
The user would have 810 indirect users four people removed -- Value of 810 referrals $24,300
Total referrals the user would have in the network would be 1,210.


At an average value of $30 for each referral the total value would be $36,300
It should be noted that the AGLOCO referral system achieves two tasks:
AGLOCO saves all the costs of marketing its services to potential new users. This is sometimes a major cost many Internet companies face. Other network companies like MySpace, Skype and YouTube also achieve this goal of users telling users, but in those cases users do not benefit in the value created by the growth of the user base.
Users who help build the AGLOCO network are financially rewarded for doing so. Because most the value of network oriented companies is based on the size of the network, it isAGLOCO’s stated goal that the people building the network share in the value they help create.
Detailed Analysis:
Business model:
Three major aspects of the business were analyzed; the people who drive it, the revenues and the expenses.
People
Management ability - – for a start up AGLOCO seems to be pretty good as it has combined experience with raw talent:
The raw talent – is in the form of current Stanford MBAs. AGLOCO is a revenue driven business model – passion and aggressiveness are good attributes to have for part of the team. The average age of a Stanford MBA graduate is 28 years old – these are not just passionate and aggressive, they come with a few years of experience behind them as well.
The experience – AGLOCO has some – it may need more. Jorgensen was CEO of AllAdvantage, Ray Everett-Church was the Chief Privacy Officer there and Sam Flax was the Chief Architect for technology at AllAdvantage. AllAdvantage grew to over 10 million users and over $30 million in first year revenues. A good fit for on point experience.
Management reliability - The reality of the internet is such that every new entity should be investigated from this perspective. Below, is why AGLOCO should not raise any Internet scam worries:
There are over 50 people listed on the about page of AGLOCO.
The ‘development team’ has eight Stanford MBA students – not the type of people who would risk their pedigrees and reputations.
The ‘development’ team includes two veterans Ray Everett-Church and Jim Jorgensen – both of who are well known enough to have Wikipedia bios.
The ‘contributors’ include a couple of easy to spot people like; Gil Penchina, CEO of Wikia, Zaw Thet, CEO of 4info and Valerie Williamson a VP the Open Source group OSTG plus a sprinkling of major firm law partners and venture capitalists – not scam types.
Press interviews – some of the founders have been interviewed by major bloggers (VentureBeat, John Chow, GigaOM, and Red Herring). AGLOCO’s management is out front and visible.
Revenue sources– this is the core of the business model. Some revenue sources are very dependant on the size of the user base. Here are the major ones:
Search revenue – AGLOCO can become a significant source of search volume. Google gets 40% of its ad traffic from third parties (the biggest one being AOL whom Google pays an average of $0.10 per search). The average Internet user searches over 35 times a month. AGLOCO should be able to capture virtually all search revenue and its users are more likely to be active Internet types (given that the active users are the early adopters who will be the first to find AGLOCO’s proposition appealing ) – When AGLOCO is of sufficient market size, its search revenue should grow to between $30 and $50+ per user per year
Advertising – the AGLOCO toolbar software is stated to contain a thirty second targeted text ad:
The targeting is further defined as being related to the current site a user is on or based on past user behavior or demographic information. AGLOCO also has very granular location information with city and postal code for users. AGLOCO should be able to take advantage of Google, MSN or Yahoo’s ad engines immediately (AdSense, adCenter and ‘Panama’) and during the next two years add a local ad overlay.
AGLOCO’s available monthly ad inventory should be somewhere between 600 and 1,800 ads a month per user (1 ad per 30 seconds, 120 ads per hour and 600 ads per month given 5 hours or 1800 ads given the more likely scenario of 15 hours surfing per month). With 100% of these ads being available for ‘keyword’ targeting as it now exists. This is substantially more inventory than leaders Yahoo or AOL have and this will definitely increase the attractiveness of the AGLOCO user community for advertisers.
It is difficult to estimate what ad revenue per user will be two years from now. It should start low and grow substantially over time. A quick starting place for analysis might be a $10 to $25 run rate in this period and much higher later. Targeted keyword CPC rates vary dramatically with Google and Yahoo both averaging over $0.50 per click in search (non-search ads are substantially lower, but do not have AGLOCO multiple targeting.)
Commissions - Sales commissions (and affiliate fees) should be a substantial source of revenue for AGLOCO. Almost every online merchant pays them. Link Share and Commission Junction each have thousands of companies in affiliate programs. Sales commission varies from quite low 2% on some airline tickets to nearly 50% on some financial transactions, and is generally in the 10% to 15% range.. Spending per active Internet adult users (one on line in excess of five hours a month) is estimated at more than $2,000 a year – twice as much as the $1,000 overall online spending average.) . For valuation at the end of year two, an estimate between $50 to $150 per user in commissions was used
Distribution – The distribution of products and services may become the largest source of AGLOCO revenue. This revenue source is different than the sales commissions since AGLOCO states it would be a direct distribution source (or a direct signup source). There are four basic areas of distribution:
AGLOCO can distribute to its members products and services ranging from new credit cards to home loans and to computers or software. Credit card and loan revenue can vary from $50 to $500. Online software distribution should be a normal AGLOCO activity (for example backup software should earn at least AGLOCO $1 a month.)
Upgrades on paid-for or free software – This includes payments from companies like Adobe which will pay for each time a user upgrades free program like Flash or upgrades of paid for software like Norton anti-virus.
Referral fees of online communities – This includes payments for new active users. Examples include: eBay ($22), Skype (a % of anything spent), eFax ($10 -$50) –there are at least one hundred of these
Offline large buying group – AGLOCO can act as a large buying group. (Example; referral fees on car sales are anywhere from $200 to over $1000. Using a $400 average and a one-in-ten to one-in-twenty annual user participation rate (5% to 10%), then cars alone will be a $20 to $40 per year source of revenue for the entire user base. Similar but smaller sources exist in other products.
An annualized distribution revenue amount of $100 a year per user by the end of AGLOCO’s second year should be a reasonable estimate.
Total Revenue – With the above detailed analysis, the total revenue would be estimated to be between $200 and $300 per user – (annual revenue run rate at the end of year two). Below is a chart showing potential revenue growth per user by category over a two year period.

Expenses – operating costs seem to be dominated by:
Servers and bandwidth – since most of the communications with users are coming from search company servers and ad network servers it would seem should be a relatively small amount.
Sales and business development – passionate MBAs etc –while expensive people, this should still be a low cost as a percentage of total revenue
Customer services – lots of users, lots of questions – AGLOCO has started by using teams in India, China and the Philippines. Most communication is email so language should not be a significant problem
Technology - should be much simpler than a Yahoo or Google as AGLOCO is not building much (a toolbar is a known and simple technology platform.)
General and administrative costs need to include processing user payments (PayPal and others make this cheaper) and the management company fee of 10%
A reasonable estimate two years out (assuming 2 to 3 million AGLOCO users) would be a 20% to 30% cost structure - as a % of gross revenue
Valuation:
To make this a bit stable and understandable, the time for valuation chosen was the end of year two for AGLOCO (approximately December 2008) and with AGLOCO having two million or more active users at that time. Also the projected revenue was reduce from the $200 to $300 per user range to $100 (again to be conservative.)
Given market comparisons,; a growing community of two million users with revenue above $100 per user and heading toward $200, $300 or $400 per user and a profit margin of 70% prior to cash distributions to users should have a sizeable value, anywhere from $200 to $1,000 per user (depends on the rate of growth of users, rate of growth of per user revenues. With very little per user revenue Facebook valuation was near the $200 amount this summer. MySpace had very little revenue and was losing money when sold and YouTube was similar.


With a 15% to 20% net profit margin (after cash distributions to users), annual profits of $15 to $40 per user would justify a value of at least $300 per user.
AGLOCO is in the advertising and sale/distribution business – somewhat similar gross profits of Yahoo and Google. Yahoo and Google both have valuations exceeding 35 times earnings. A 35 times profit per user would value AGLOCO at $350 to$1,400 per user. Yahoo has a value of 6 times revenue and Google has a value of 16 times revenue. Even at the lower estimate of $100 of annualized revenue per user at the end of the second year, the corresponding value of AGLOCO would be $600 per user