Name: Vezt

Legal Name: Vezt Inc

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Founded: 2016

Founder(s): Steve Stewart, Robert Menendez

Website: https://www.vezt.co/

Social Media Following: 15697 Likes on Facebook, 4819 Followers on Twitter, 25700 Followers on Instagram

INDUSTRY – Music

Size: $9.8Bn (2018); (Source: RIAA)

Introduction

Vezt, a Los Angeles based startup, allows artists, songwriters and other Intellectual Property (IP) holders to monetize their IP via an Initial Song Offering® (ISO) on their digital marketplace. On the marketplace, IP holders can sell a part of the royalty rights to a song for a specific period of time to fans and investors. Vezt leverages Blockchain to track transactions on the platform and ensure transparency.

Current Industry Pain Point

While the performing artist (singer) gets most of the of the coverage and revenue, other artists who participated in the creation of the song such as songwriters, producers, and musicians also get a part of the royalty payments from various sources. This amount is typically a fraction of what the singer makes. The songwriter of a song that had 34 million YouTube views and 38 million Pandora streams made a little over $200 from each source. These artists are left with contracts that are valuable but there is no way to leverage on these contracts and monetize them while the bigger players have access to financial instruments.

Product

For the artist, the process begins with registering and uploading their music onto the platform. This is then verified by Vezt’s rights management team. After being verified, IP holders can begin the ISO process. Artists and songwriters decide the percentage of the royalty income they are putting up for sale, the type of IP, the duration for which it is being sold off (reversion period) and the amount they are selling the share for (raise amount). Fans and investors can then subscribe to it by purchasing the desired portion of the share up for sale. Vezt uses the existing royalty payment infrastructure to track and collect royalty payments. The revenues that accrue via the royalty for that period are then distributed to the fans and investors by Vezt on a pro-rata basis based on their holding. At the end of the reversion period, the royalty rights are then transferred back to the original rights holder. For their service, Vezt takes a 5% fee on the royalties paid out.

Based on feedback from users requesting more information about the songs available, Vezt plans to add features such as Song Performance Analytics to help fans and investors make more informed decisions on their investments.

Origin and Founding Team

Vezt was launched in 2016 by Steve Stewart and Robert Menendez. Steve has a background in music and managed bands such as Stone Temple Pilots. The two co-founders met in 2015 at Robert’s startup called SURKUS when Robert was looking for concert venues. The duo saw a big gap in the music industry where artists could produce and distribute songs relatively easily at minimal cost but couldn’t monetize their work easily to raise resources to create new work. With Robert’s Wall Street finance and Steve’s expertise in the music industry, the duo started thinking about creating a platform that leverages on social media and technology that enables artists to monetize their IP by selling a fraction of the share. Their vision was to allow fans to buy into their favorite songs and partner with the artists at a visceral level.

The co-founders brought on super producer Andreas Carlsson as Chief Strategy Officer. Andreas has sold over 150 million records for artists such as Katy Perry, The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Celine Dion. Aamek Richards, a veteran in the music industry, is on board as the Chief Creative Officer. Vezt’s advisory board includes music industry heavyweights such as Marc Geiger, Polo Molina, and others.

Performance and Trends

After launching its platform in October last year, Vezt issued its first payment to songwriter/producer Chuck Inglish who raised $8,272 on the platform. While many budding performers have taken to the platform, artists that hold rights to songs by universally recognizable stars such as Kanye West, John Legend, Lil Uzi Vert and Rihanna have also come forward to participate.

The Vezt platform can be accessed via an app as well as the browser. While the Vezt App has only over 1000+ downloads from the play store, the platform has had ISOs that have sold out in 20 minutes. Vezt has a rating of 4.3 on the App store with positive reviews.

Vezt has also expanded to South Korea and is growing rapidly. Steve expects to have “upwards of 100,000 new song titles” on the platform soon. In 2017, Vezt raised $1.4M via an ICO. Having initially been valued at $1.2M, an investor believes Vezt has “estimated value of nearly 30x that”. However, its token is trading at 4% of its ICO level.

While the $9.8Bn US music industry music industry is growing and its revenue streams are evolving to be more reliant on subscriptions and streaming, revenues are yet to enter the $11-14B highs that the industry witnessed from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s.

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Name: Timeless Skin Care

Legal Name: Timeless Skin Care, LLC.

Location: Rancho Cucamonga, CA

Founded: January 2009

Founder(s): Alex Pedersen, Veronica Pedersen

Website: www.timelessha.com/

Social Media Following: 19396 Likes on Facebook, 1344 Followers on Twitter, 12800 Followers on Instagram, 714 Followers on Pinterest

App store: 4.9 stars/83 ratings

INDUSTRY – Natural/Organic personal care products

Size: $1.3B (2017) (Source: The Future of Beauty by Nielsen)
Projections: $25.11B by 2025

Introduction

Headquartered in California, Timeless Skin Care is a natural cosmetics company that aims to sell quality and affordable skin care preparations featuring high concentrations of (biologically) active ingredients. This family-owned business regularly manufactures made-to-order batches of natural anti-ageing, anti-wrinkle, scar treatment, and acne skin-care products.

The Products

Timeless Skin Care has a collection of organic formulations ranging from serums and creams to sprays that the company claims has ‘less fillers’ and ‘less chemicals’, while also being paraben-free. It also has a distinctive ‘Pure Line’ that capitalizes on the all-natural moisturizing, soothing and healing properties of organically sourced Hyaluronic Acid, Argan Oil, and Squalane. According to the website, Timeless Skin Care ensures quality control by manufacturing all these skin care preparations on site, without the involvement of any third parties, and in small batches.

Relatively easy on the wallet, their organic serums (1 oz.) and creams (0.5 oz.) are priced between $20.95 and $25.95, while the plant-based Matrixyl 3000 sprays (4 fl oz.) range from $16.95 to $17.95. Also, items from the ‘Pure Line’ range (1 oz.) cost $9.95. To make such natural beauty solutions more cost-effective, for long term use, 4-8 oz. refill bottles($40.95 to $70.95) are available.

Additionally, the company retails limited edition Beauty Boxes ($59.95), featuring a selection of top products such as Hydrating Hyaluronic Acid Eye Cream and Cucumber HA Spray. Customers can even build their own DIY Beauty Box by selecting five Timeless Skin Care favourites from the entire range, for $79.95.

These Timeless Skin Care products are sold on the company’s official website, mobile app and by a few authorized resellers. The brand doesn’t appear to be overly focused on marketing its app, as it has only around 1000 downloads on Google Play to date. A review on the App Store even claims that the iPhone app’s UX is not very smooth.

Most reviewers have talked about how the products have worked wonders on fixing signs of ageing, apart from being wonderfully moisturizing. Yet, a few reviews outlined incidents of the serums spoiling too soon through oxidization, and some even complained of skin breakouts post application.

Origin and Founding Team

Veronica Pedersen’s first tryst with the skin care industry involved watching her immigrant mother work her way up the ranks to become the corporate manager at a renowned Beverly Hills skincare company. Soon after, Veronica’s mother started her own line of natural herbal skin care products, which sold worldwide. But even after being associated with such an inspiring beacon of success in the beauty space, Veronica chose a vastly different career path. By the time she met her future husband, Alex Pedersen, she was already on her way to becoming a registered nurse.  

Eventually, though, the couple saw merit in harnessing Veronica’s expertise in nursing and Alex’s knowledge of chemical formulations to create beauty products that are good for the skin. So, they set up Timeless Skin Care in 2009. And today, the brand has grown to become a favourite across several households, globally.

Performance and Trends

In a bid to make quality skin care accessible to everyone, Timeless Skin Care caters to customers in the USA and beyond. The brand currently ships its products to Europe, the Middle East, Canada, Australia and East Asia.

In 2016, this Better Business Bureau© accredited company brought in revenues of $5Mn. Most of this success can be credited to Timeless Skin Care’s dealing with China, which accounts for 40% of the company’s wholesale business. “If you are able to tap 1 per cent of the Chinese market, you’re in business,” Pedersen said to Technology Review.

To meet this growing demand from the Asian superpower, Timeless Skin Care even moved from a 2,000-square-foot to a 39,000-square-foot warehouse and grew its team to 25 employees.

The post Timeless Skin Care – natural products for natural beauty appeared first on Techweek.

Momni – an organization with a purpose

Momni, a Provo-based startup, is trying to provide good quality daycare to the children of working parents while helping willing caregivers make an additional income. Started in 2017 by a passionate social activist and mother from Utah, Karmel Larson, Momni is a portmanteau of two words – Mom and Omni (Latin for all). Attempting to create a sharing platform for caregiving – a “caresharing” platform, Momni aims to start a revolution which would help play its part in resolving what it calls the global childcare crisis.

Karmel got to know about the global childcare crisis in 2017 and it affected her deeply. With more and more couples joining the workforce, young children are often left alone at home, unattended, with no one to take care of them. This affected her deeply and being a social worker, she came up with the idea of connecting people who were looking for someone to look after their children with others who were willing to provide childcare support.

Karmel, an alumna of Brigham Young University, calls herself the Chief Care-Giver of Momni. She has previously worked for promoting motherhood and family development. A mother of eight, she was Utah Valley Young Mother of the Year 2007 and Mrs Utah United States in 2009. Karmel is also going to launch her book, Mama Grit, soon.

Credit: Momni website

The Childcare Industry – Potential and Challenges

The childcare industry in the US has been growing at a rate of 3.2% over the period 2013 to 2018, generating a revenue of over $53Bn. Major players in this business include in-home care providers, center-based daycare, and pre-primary educational centers. The industry is subject to strong scrutiny from parents and regulatory bodies alike. Safety of the children along with the effectiveness of the program and psychological effects on children are major factors that users look out for when choosing a daycare facility.

The idea behind the Momni network, 250+ strong based on search results on their website, was interestingly elephants. Elephants are known to take care of the young ones of the entire herd, protecting them against predators. The philosophy behind the startup is similar – mothers of the community get together and take care of their young ones. Momni takes this a step further and helps caregivers make some money out of it, thus helping their families with additional incomes.

The concept is not without challenges – one of the major ones being security. Momni addresses the same with background checks, ID verifications, and through network reviews. It allows its caregivers, or hosts, the option to list their own prices. Guests and hosts can then connect over private chat to schedule timings and locations for pick-up and drop. The final stage is payment which Momni helps manage.

Successful Funding and Future Plans

The company managed to close the first round of funding worth $1.8M on December 17, 2018. The lead investors were Tamarak Capital and Revroad. The investors were impressed by the mission of Momni – “making a difference for families worldwide by harnessing technology to both improve the quality and accessibility of childcare in our communities — all while allowing Moms an additional source of income to improve their own lives” in the words of Nate McBride, a partner at Tamarak. This investment allows Momni to aim big and spread into more geographies and simultaneously expand product features.

The investment comes as a big boost to the firm since it competes with many different kinds of players. While the traditional nanny-network still continues to thrive, the major threat is posed by increasing preschools. Big firms like KinderCare and Learning Care are established players in the market and posing a challenge to them can be a big task for Momni as it looks to invest its funding carefully.

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