BlueSnap Elance Scholarship Program Application
Complete and return by May 11 to entrepreneur@bluesnap.com
See Frequently Asked Questions for further details.
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Your answers to the following ten questions will be used to qualify you for consideration in the program. They also make a good grounding for developing your ideas into a marketable venture. A few notes before you get started answering the questions:
- Make your responses brief but with enough detail to explain your business. Submit your responses as a WORD, or PDF document no more than 2 pages long.
- Remember, the BlueSnap program is open only to those with digital goods business propositions – no physical goods. Digital goods include digital goods including audio and video content, software, casual games and subscription access to publications and services.
- Responses must be returned by email to entrepreneur@bluesnap.com.
- Closing date is May 11, 2012. We will acknowledge receipt of your completed form.
Questions: Please give brief, concise answers to the following:
1. Value Proposition: What do you sell?
2. Validation: Have you validated your business with customers? Why do customers buy or would consider buying what you sell? Are they buying?
3. Positioning: What is the positioning of your offering? What customer segments are you after? Who are the competitors? How do you compete? Differentiate?
4. Monetization: Free is NOT a business model. How do you monetize? What is the business model? What is the pricing model?
5. TAM: How big is your market opportunity? This determines your financing and go-to-market strategy in a significant way. Please note that we look for bottom-up TAM analysis.
6. Bootstrapping: Have you done enough bootstrapping before approaching investors? Is your company fundable, or is it one that needs to be bootstrapped all the way (which is okay with us too)?
7. Financing: Over 99% of the entrepreneurs who go out to raise money get rejected. Are you bootstrapping? Are you planning to raise money? Have you raised any money so far? From whom? How much? What are your capital requirements to build this business?
8. Customer Acquisition: What is your customer acquisition strategy, cost, conversion rate, channels, channel costs? How many paying customers do you have right now? How much traffic? How many free users? Any other information on traction / validation metrics?
9. Team: Who is on the team, and what functions do they cover? Don’t worry, we believe in lean, capital-efficient startups, and hence, small teams. Freelance resources are perfectly acceptable to get things done. Our partner eLance is specifically focused on helping you get things done efficiently.
10. Stage: What stage are you at now? Concept? Minimum Viable Product? Free Users? Paying Users? Revenue? Profitability?
11. Anything else that is interesting about your venture that you think we should know?
