Project Partners Meteor: Cities as a Platform and Cashless Societies

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Hi,

I’ve been developing with Meteor for the past 3 years. I am on the React + Redux side and I dare to say that I have a decent control over most areas of development with Meteor be it mobile (PWA or Cordova) or web or desktop.

I am looking for a constant partner/s or two or three … in Europe or for Europe. I live and operate in Dubai but my business intentions are for Europe ( Dubai offers me a nice tax-free fiscal residency ).

Besides some of my other projects, I am interested to build/work in a small team of talented developers in the area of Cities as a Platform having at the core a digital wallet build on VISA technologies. I have most of the details of the project, the strategy not really in the form of a business canvas but getting there. I would say that at least 10-15% of the code on web and mobile is done. I act as a designer as well and I am familiar with the VISA APIs and also got access to information via the regional VISA office in Dubai. Beacons will be used for prototyping like transportation payment, queueing management and ticketing etc. That is also covered by some prototypes I have.

The situation in Europe today is calling for projects that I’ve been waiting to do for at least 2 years. I own a commercial entity in Romania able to operate such platforms legally and this is the country where I want to start, test and deploy first and then expand in Europe. Romania is a small market and it is good and safe for a start.

Please read the following article if interested and I hope there is someone out there interested to join in a fair share system and with a minimum commitment of an average of 3 hours / day (based on interest, I can be fully dedicated to this). This is not an open source not financed and no salaries are being paid. This is for entrepreneurs who are interested to build and own businesses.

I hope that I didn’t break any rules of this forum by calling on this venture and I really hope someone out there will be interested at least as much as I am.

Enjoy your projects!

Paul - 00971 55 6036403

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Deploy what? What are you trying to build? A centralized billing platform for the whole city? Does VISA manage that? A kind of Apple Pay? I understand “City as a Platform” as the idea of making data move available–about traffic, rent, bicycle theft, etc. But not sure if see what you are trying to do yet.

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I agree not complety understand the post/message beside the EU has enough payment platforms so there has be some type of busisness scope

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Hi @maxhodges and @ericl,

thank you for your interest.
I could talk about it for half a day. Let me give you this and I hope that it gives a better idea. Dubai Now
This app is made by the government for the government services. However, in a similar frame of mind, I am thinking of government + private with accent on private.

https://paytm.com/ is a very successful business in India. It started as a basic e-wallet.

When I say VISA, I mean we build our own financial tools using VISA APIs. The interest is to commission as many services as possible regardless of the source of payment. Integrations with Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and possibly the new LG Pay are welcomed indeed.

Some of the features:

  • have access to technologies that make my life easy in a city (parking, transportation, ticketing, even office attendance with checkin via fingerprint at location or beacon range. This is a technology that we provide and allow companies to hook into. They only need a user to have the app installed and we pass private/impersonal data to the back-office of the company.
  • know what and when to pay, anticipate costs and do it “click to pay” (e.g utilities)
  • as per the new European privacy regulations, integrate with bank APIs for personal banking from 3rd party app(like this app)
  • provide a family shared document management system, shopping tools, micro-finance management (Meteor-files is super fit for this and resolves the cross-OS problem (icloud not talking to google drive)
  • offer an infrastructure for invoicing and fiscalization for small and medium companies.
  • offer an infrastructure for 3rd parties to add “modules” for other activities like medical, insurance, blood donation, donations, etc Anything related to living in a city. (e.g. 24/7 doctors on call)
  • integrate with online stores as a payment option (like gateway or secured payment (like the Mastercard Masterpass))
  • Own booking platform for ticketing and activity bookings. If we control the payment and locations it is relatively easy to build around it and create valuable service that cater to things like: “I am a family with two kids. I want to know what I can do with them between 3 and 6 daily, what activities they can attend, what is the optimum transportation mix, pay and book in advance to secure activity slots.”

I think “centralized billing platform” is part of what it is beside services provider.

Dynamic imports is a huge opportunity for us. We can now think big or huge as far as the branding is concerned since the mobile apps are pulling “modules” as users get subscribed to them. We are not stack with the “1-feature app” anymore. You’re not concerned anymore with mobile app bloating, you can easily allow 3rd parties to write into your mobile platform and host their javascript components (if they match the required standards). Think of it like Wordpress, someone hosts in my mobile platform a car insurance comparator with purchase. The user has a CC saved with my wallet and just clicks to acquire the best insurance. I commission the transaction. I am not an insurance broker.

One important feature that I am planning to work towards is virtual bills with the big retailers and eliminate the thermal paper… 2025 :)…

Well… so much more.

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so much more

You are 15% done with all that? :wink:

You’d need legions of developers and other business professionals to do all that. You need to scale back. This level of activity isn’t conducive to a startup business. Just a single item on your list could keep a team busy for hundreds of days. Pick just one business idea and start there. Think in terms of a beachhead market: what niche is being underserved by major players? Is there a market? Can you reach that market? Can you build something that delivers value? Is it repeatable? Can you capture enough of the value you create to sustain operations and make it worth your time?

Take: “family shared document management system”

What innovation can you bring to this industry that other players (Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, etc) have missed out on? What is your marketing plan? What makes your innovation so compelling that you can take the market away from the others?

Your innovation needs to be several times better than the competition. Plenty of solar panel companies have gone bankrupt because they were only 11% or 13% more efficient than other solutions. Often the winner of an industry doesn’t go to the superior product but to the superior marketing team.

There are plenty of opportunities in the world, but the devil is in the details. Focus on specific business ideas instead of going after the entire landscape of opportunity.

Finding Fertile Ground might help. It’s the best book I know for learning how to evaluate business opportunities.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/finding-fertile-ground-identifying-extraordinary-opportunities-for-new-ventures/

Also see Zero to One and Understanding Michael Porter

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Some retailers are already allowing customers to receive their receipt by email. Apple does this in their stores. A mobile screen repair shop I went to did this too. I think it would be hard to capture any of the value you create here. There are no real barriers to enter this market. True there would be some value in industry standards but what’s the business model? Create a NPO consortium which produces a working draft and charge membership fees to retailers so they have a voice in the process? Many may adopt their own standards for various reasons (just look at web browser, HDMI and 3G “standards”)

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An individual shops with Apple once … in a year or 6 months… This is not the point. The idea is to get the large itemized bill and not a PDF invoice or a line item in your bank account. I was saying above that there is a lot more to talk about… I’ll give you an example. If I “see” that you are buying a lot of meat, I can send you a notification on that to advise on a more balanced diet. If your warranty for a TV purchased 3 years back expires, I send you a notification on that just so you know about it. I basically enable you to give me information. I know many think mobile apps in terms of 0.99USD in the store but this is different.

The big money is coming from market data, targeted promotions (like FB), commissioning of micro-transactions. It fits the toothpick business model - an item used a million times that cost almost nothing. So, if I have the users to generate 1 million transactions and I make 1cent (or less) per transaction, I make a lot of money. For a million transactions I don’t need 1 million people but I need a nice portfolio of services and a free app. I expect 1 user to have at least 10 transactions a month just out of the immediate necessities.

Since you asked about the DMS, there is no competition with anyone on that. It is about management of documents and not storage. I organize them for you, I give you tags so you can easily find them, I give you reminders, I keep them linked wits transactions or purchases (e.g. a transaction in the ewallet is linked with a warranty certificate in the DMS).

Max, I never said it was easy or simple. The code is actually secondary in this type of business. If you are able to write it, you are able to keep up to 100% of control and ownership of the business. What I wrote above was the top view, where things may go and I wanted to show to potential for growth. This is more like a 3 years plan not a summer project.

Referring to your previous post, the fertile ground is a continent without CC commissions. It is a Europe monopolized by American tech and a general sentiment that favors European tech businesses hosted and operated on the continent.

Thanks a lot for your reading recommendations. They sound interesting and will definitely have a look.

Max, I understand where all your questions are coming from. What I have in mind has no competition other than people doing things on a paper. I am focused on workflows rather than directly selling something. Think of it like building a brand which expands its scope continuously. Money is coming from micro transactions, technology fees, market data statistics add-ons.

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I’m not saying your ideas are not good, I still just think you need to scale back and focus on a beachhead. The beachhead strategy is about focusing your resources on one key area, usually a smaller market segment or product category, and winning that market first, even dominating that market, before moving into larger markets. If you think that’s telling people they should eat less meat, then make that your beachhead strategy. If you think it’s doc management for families, then do that.

But you’ve shared a long list of projects for which a startup simply lacks the resources to develop. Maybe you should create an incubator to share resources among multiple startups, become a VC and raise funds from wealthy corporations and individuals to develop these ideas, then spin-off the successful ones. But either way, before anything can happen you’ll need to shortlist your ideas, prioritize and focus on the details of specific innovations before anything can be realized.

One cent on a million = 10K–not really a lot of money.

yeah, we call that “fun with spreadsheets” or “The China Syndrome”:

"Rather than create a new market, the thinking goes, one could choose a huge existing market, get a fraction of the market share, and reap the rewards. After all, if you could get even a tenth of a percent of the toothbrush market in China (population 1.4 billion), wouldn’t you make a lot of money? The logic would go something like this: “The Internet says China has over 1.3 billion people. If they all have teeth, the market size is 1.3 billion customers. I’ll build a toothbrush for the Chinese market, and maybe we’ll get 0.1 percent market share in the first year. If each person buys three toothbrushes a year, we could sell 3.9 million toothbrushes per year, and if we sell them for $1 each, we have $3.9 million in sales the first year, with lots of room to grow.

I call such a high-level market analysis “fun with spreadsheets,” because you have not demonstrated in a compelling manner why people would buy your product (or use your service) or why your market share would increase over time. You also have not validated any of your assumptions by learning directly from customers. After all, if entrepreneurship were this easy, wouldn’t everyone sell toothbrushes to China? Big companies with lots of resources can afford to work hard to gain incremental market share, but entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of such resources. Don’t get ensnared by “The China Syndrome.” Take your resources and apply them to a narrow, carefully defined new market that you can dominate."

paraphrased from the excellent “Disciplined Entrepreneurship”

It is a Europe monopolized by American tech and a general sentiment that favors European tech businesses hosted and operated on the continent.

ha, I wouldn’t be so sure. The people making such statements are probably addicted to their iPhones, wearing T-shirt and blue jeans, and using Twitter and Facebook to jot down their “cultural” statements on Intel-based PCs, while using Google to dig up supporting figures on the internet :wink:

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“The people making such statements are probably addicted to their iPhones, wearing T-shirt and blue jeans, and using Twitter and Facebook to jot down their “cultural” statements on Intel-based PCs, while using Google to dig up supporting figures on the internet :wink:”

Those people are governing Europe, addicted or not…

Anyway I take it you are not interested in this adventure and I can tell that we live with different paradigms.

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I just think you’re painting with too broad a brush. Focus on the first leg of your adventure. God is in the details!

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@paulishca Sorry I didn’t read the article after it said:

“Fascism had its roots in far left socialism and populism.”

Author may one day claim that Donald Trump were actually leftist, too. Just saying,.

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I guess he might, I really can’t comment on that.

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actually, there is some evidence to that argument!

“Originally being a fascist meant you were a right-wing socialist, and the problem is that we’ve incorporated these European understandings of things and then just dropped the socialist. In the American context fascists get called right-wingers even though there is almost no prominent fascist leader – starting with Mussolini and Hitler – who if you actually went about and looked at their economic programs, or to a certain extent their social program, where you wouldn’t locate most if not all of those ideas on the ideological left in the American context.”

-from an interview with Jonah Goldberg on Salon.

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At least for Germany, I’d say: they don’t. The first thing Germans are wondering about is why something new wont work. Then they wait until American companies make it work, and afterwards complain that it wasn’t made in Germany.

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Fascists using widespread contemporary sentiments (say nationalism, socialism, or xenophobia) is one thing, Fascism having its roots in far left socialism is another.

The latter is just pure demagogy because it talks about the concept of fascism, which has always had to do with control, power dominance, territorial exploitation and so on; and it has always been far left socialist and anarchist movements that stood against it. The Nazi party was even called “National Socialism”, but to say that Nazism/Fascism has its roots in far left Socialism would render intentionally manipulative argument, and yet historically wrong.

The former, which is what Jonah Goldberg talks about, is just the way the fascists operate: Using every opportunity to feed into their orchestration of power. Like Trump and many European leaders now using xenophobia to get on to power.

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I’ve come to feel fascism is basically the use of violence for political ends. So even
"Anti-fascism" organizations (Antifa), ironically, become guilty of fascism once they resort to violence to achieve their political goals.

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Can we please stop this discussion as it veers dangerously into the territory of whataboutism?

This is also not a forum for political discussions.

One final word though, simply because the previous argument was way too simplistic:

There’s a qualitative difference between fighting for or against something. And also what the fight is about.

Just to demonstrate how overly simplistic the argument was: Abraham Lincol was a fascist because he used violence for a political end.

Sounds stupid? That’s because it is.

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“Can we please stop this discussion . . .” continues the conversation :roll_eyes: calls others stupid…

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Yes, that’s about the level of argument I expected. I said that your argument is stupid.

Methinks thou dost protest too much.

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This topic has clearly gone off course. Let’s all work together to keep the correct conversations in the correct places.