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Gold/Mining/Energy : Net Shepherd Inc. (WEB) on ASE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Barry K who wrote (336)	8/17/1999 11:15:00 AM
From: Crazy Canuck	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1252

All, The following is an excerpt from our notes taken during our recent Due Diligence meetings held between Denise D, Barry K and myself with Net Shepherd. We have posted these notes in an attempt to explain what we see as the potential for this company. There is a story to be told, and we believe that these notes will help this effort. Crazy Canuk _____________________ "Virtual Communities" / Community Management ú The Internet Explorers Society will be offering their researchers a true sense of community, or belonging. The Internet Explorers Society is really a distributed 'Task Force', which can be called upon for various projects. ú From their perspective, their community management tools are "bare bones" right now. They want to ensure that the "bells and whistles" are in place so they can offer their researchers a more robust experience. ú The keys to their success will be: - Ability to manage their community - Scalability of their technology - data collection, filtering and categorization process - quality controls they have in place ú The community technology model currently has a patent application in place in Canada and the US. NSI has applied for a patent on their system. It involves the way the technology is being used to collect and categorize information - not the technology itself. It is titled "Method And System For Distributing A Work Process Over An Information Network" and submitted to the US Patent & Trademark Office on 22 April 1999. The patent covered 42 separate claims of uniqueness. The Patent Application number is 09/298,055. ú There currently are two managers of their community. One in Vancouver, and one in Toronto. Their goal is to have community managers in a wide variety of key areas to ensure that the community remains vibrant. ú They currently have 1,500 active researchers in their community, and they expect to have that number increase to a factor of 10 by year-end. The membership in the community has been capped at its current level, and remains so until NSI feels that the tools are ready. Ron Warris says that he wants to enhance it further before they open it up. They pointed out MediaLab (www.medialab.nl) and ODIGO (www.odigo.com) as examples of the "look and feel" and technology NSI wants to achieve with their virtual community, while also adding the ability for their community members to converse. NSI plans to expand their community involvement will be through Viral Marketing. ú NSI's cost of maintaining this community is minimal. Their only real cost is associated with the provision of free e-mail, community management support and compensation of the tasks the community members have undertaken. ú NSI is finding that their community members are a highly productive group of people. They feel that the bulk of their current membership will be with them over the long term. ú Quality Control is an essential component of their community management business model. Checks for quality include: - Ratings Speed - Anti-Spam, QCI - Blank Values - Diametrically-opposed (DIAMET) - Bias Detection (such as if somebody had an axe to grind) - Researchers never see the same URL twice ú To ensure that the information that their researchers are pulling off is correct, NSI will seed their URL database with numerous accuracy checks and dummy sites. ú They will be opening offices in Pasadena, CA (same city as ideaLab!), and are planning the opening of an office in 'Silicon Alley' on the East Coast for its business intelligence company. ú The company is planning to set up a holding company in the US. This holding company will license NSI's technology and services. It will also create two new companies, which will be equity plays before they are taken to IPO. The first will be Answers.com.