Venture Concept No. 2 - Juntos

Juntos: Venture Concept No. 2

Overview

Juntos, meaning “together” in Spanish, is an online marketplace that connects people who are looking to make similar major purchases, allowing them to buy things together. Unlike Amazon or eBay, Juntos will help buyers find, contact, and communicate with other buyers before they make a joint purchase. Unlike timeshare markets, Juntos will allow for the shared purchase of any major item. Examples of such items include: boats, season tickets, condos, recreational vehicles, and bulk goods. Buyers will then be matched with a reliable legal service that will, if necessary, quickly work out a contract granting joint ownership of the purchased item.

Problem

When someone desires a product or property that is out of their price rage, unless that person personally knows someone who is interested in making a similar purchase, they will either have to stretch themselves financially to pay full price, or simply go without it. Each year untold billions of dollars in major purchases are not made because the buyer cannot bear the cost alone. This loss of economic transactions is referred to as un-captured potential. Un-captured potential hurts sellers as products go unsold, and hurts buyers as they miss out on products they want or need. If only like-minded buyers could easily find each other and work together, the potential transactions could take place.

Innovation

Juntos provides an easy-to-use online marketplace in which buyers can browse product and property listings, search for and connect with potential buying partners, find contract lawyers, and split the cost of products. Sellers can use the platform to list products, selling more than they would otherwise, and reducing un-captured potential. Juntos first screens marketplace participants, and then securely processes the transaction between any number of buyers and the seller, protecting both parties from fraudulent transactions.

Opportunity

Global e-commerce sales topped $1 trillion in 2012, a growth of nearly 16% over the previous year. Timeshares, boats, recreational vehicles, and season tickets are a few of the items commonly bought jointly. The timeshare industry reached $10 billion in sales in 2011. The recreational boating industry reached $83 billion. Recreational vehicles sales topped $42 billion in 2012 and are growing by over 15% per year. The season ticket sales in sports, music, and drama are a combined $50 billion industry. There is great opportunity to direct much of the transactions in these industries to Juntos as each industry has only a few scattered, ineffective online sales sites, none of which cater to joint purchases. Beyond capturing large market share of the transactions already taking place, Juntos facilitates transactions that would otherwise not occur, through its buyer-connecting platform.

Competitive Advantages

·     Connecting buyers: Any buyer can use the Juntos website to quickly find buyers in their area who are considering the same purchase, allowing them to communicate beforehand to ensure that the joint ownership will go smoothly.

·     Joint payment: No other online marketplace is focused on or even allows shared payment. Doing so is a shift from the norm and opens up vast new sales potential.

·     Marketplace consolidation: Anything that can be bought jointly is found in one easy-to-navigate marketplace. Buyers and sellers are also able to add or request any item to be added to the marketplace. 

Business Model

Junto receives revenue from each payment transaction it processes. Products or properties will be listed online by a merchant or individual seller. As the primary benefit of the platform is to buyers, they pay between 3% and 5% of each transaction to Juntos, depending on the dollar value of the transaction and the number of buyers involved. Each transaction is subject to a minimum transaction fee of $10.00 per buyer. As merchants can list products on their own sites, no fee will be charged for listing products. However, for timeshares and other real estate, a 5% commission will be charged to the property seller. Revenues will also be brought in through partnerships with law firms. Juntos will partner with contract law firms, sending every transaction of a specific type to that law firm, where the details of the new joint ownership will be quickly agreed upon.  

Financials

Transactions and revenue will increase dramatically in the second full year of operation as Juntos expands its model, allowing for any product in existence to be bought jointly and licenses out its group payment systems. Fixed Costs increase as new employees are hired. Variable Costs increase as marketing efforts are increased and more server capacity is added.

	2015	2016	2017	2018
Transactions	25,000	150,000	750,000	1,500,000
Revenue	500,000	3,000,000	20,000,000	40,000,000
Fixed Costs (Salaries, Overhead)	500,000	750,000	1,500,000	3,000,000
Variable Costs (Marketing, Servers)	100,000	300,000	1,000,000	2,000,000

Exit Strategy

The ultimate goal for Juntos is to be acquired by one of the established e-commerce giants such as ebay, Amazon, or Alibaba, that is looking to move into the joint purchasing market. Such an acquisition would not be allowed until Juntos has established itself as a bustling e-commerce marketplace, therefore providing highly favorable outcomes for any investors. 

The Feedback I received was extremely positive. Many students had concerns about the sharing of things like cars and boats, so that is why Juntos is now primarily focusing on real estate/condo markets. I am also altering some of the legal contractual concept that will be crucial to Juntos.