Automated CFO app for SMBs

Although entrepreneurship and small business ownership have historically been catalysts for economic advancement and wealth creation, specifically for minorities, people of color, and women. The fact is that over 82% of small businesses will fail. One of the primary contributors to small business failure is poor financial management. Based on market research, we’ve found that independent small business owners often lack access to resources to both financial services and technology solutions that meet their unique needs. Additionally, based on the results of a national survey, we found that only 53% of independent business owners said they use any type of financial tracking software, and even less than 30% employ the services of an accountant or CPA. These hurdles often limit small business owners from being able to access outside funding opportunities for business growth and expansion.

Recognizing the relationship between business ownership and economic empowerment, wealth creation, and upward mobility for both business owners and their communities, we have worked to develop a financial application that helps small business owners better understand their financial health and provide additional opportunities to access outside capital and funding.

ONEBIT works by allowing business owners to seamlessly connect their existing point of sale systems to their business banking accounts for more reliable and automated financial reporting. Our software is able to aggregate all the business' financial data across online and offline sales channels and automatically reconciles sales transactions into their accounting ledger and provides customized financial insights for better planning, budgeting, and management decisions.

According to the Small Business Administration, small companies generate 1.5 million jobs a year and account for 64% of new jobs in America. Small businesses also contribute 44% of the U.S. economic activity, so as the number of new businesses grows so does their economic contributions. Our software is specifically designed to help minority owned business owners from under-served backgrounds by providing a more automated financial tracking software that helps them with being able to access outside funding opportunities.

Omar Hernandez is a former business owner himself who brings first-hand experience of owning and managing a small independent business and the pain points of manually tracking finances. Having grown up in the lower-west side of Chicago, I have had the opportunity to help business owners in my community through volunteer work in tax preparation. I have also held free educational workshops and webinars on financial literacy and the importance of data Analytics for business sustainability and growth. I have been able to leverage my time in these initiatives to gain first hand insights from the same people I am trying to help with my solution.

We currently serve 12 beta customers in Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami. Our customers are mostly in the restaurant industry, but we also serve small retail shops, and e-commerce businesses.  On average, we have been able to help reduce their inventory cost as well as other variable costs for many of these businesses by at least 10%, while at the same time improving operating profit margins.

We wish to learn from others and connect with possible partners both inside and beyond the US through Solve's worldwide network. Although, we presently have no networks or exposure outside of the US, we are eager to expand our institutional partnerships with both local and international financial institutions. Additionally, Solve's connections will be crucial for guaranteeing access to a larger pool of technical, financial, and strategic resources given our need for resources to accomplish our growing goals.

By utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, we are able to customize recommendations based on previous sales and expenditure data in an approachable and scalable manner. We offer a tech-driven solution specifically built for managing small businesses' finances. We are also specifically created for low-income, minority and immigrant run enterprises. Other software options, in comparison, have in the past either required a person with a degree in accounting or had an extremely steep learning curve. In addition, we deploy a proprietary technology to automatically reconcile financial data from several siloed third-party platforms into the business accounting ledger for more reliable reporting.

Our five-year goal is to help 48 million small businesses across the United States, United Kingdom, Latin America, and other parts of the world realize their full potential so they can support their operations with better financial management and access to capital for growth. We plan to accomplish this by  increasing our partnerships we have with local banks, financial institutions, and international organizations that connect with small companies in underserved communities 2) distributing resources internationally through online content as well as in-person events & workshops, and 3) putting more emphasis on referrals and word of mouth inititatives.

We measure impact towards our goals by documenting progress and keeping a record of our team's overall objectives and milestones.

We believe in providing financial opportunities to all businesses with a focus on micro, small, and medium-sized businesses, especially those considered vulnerable due to certain socioeconomic characteristics by providing direct access to technology that empowers them to make better decisions for sustained growth.

Our AI platform is a software intended to solve the problem of accurately recording business financial transactions for internal reporting as well as for external stakeholders, such as neighborhood banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions that may be interested in lending money to these businesses. We have built our own processing algorithm and a machine learning engine to both map sales transactions from point of sale systems to the accounting ledger, generate financial reports, and analyze financial data to provide recommendations based on trends and patterns. As our technology continues to improve, we can scale our software to help more businesses across the globe.

Accepting and understanding people from diverse backgrounds is a straightforward way to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into your business practices. As a result, the workplace becomes more welcoming and inclusive, particularly for underrepresented groups. We currently employ people from various backgrounds and cultures and place an emphasis on attracting top female technical talent. As minority owned business, we understand the importance of having diverse team that brings new and innovate ideas to the entire organization. 

Our company operates primarily as a low-cost software as a service model. We offer three tier pricing levels based on the businesses’ number of locations and data sources. Additionally, we generate revenue from our business affiliate program and in-app advertising with key partners.

Our business affiliate program consist of partnering with suppliers, distributors, or other B2B businesses that serve independent small businesses allowing them to advertise their products or services on our platform such as local banks and other financial instituions. When a referred user on our platform clicks on a link from one of our business affiliate partners, we will be rewarded with a small commission payment.

We will also have a very basic lightweight version of our platform under a freemium model and includes advertisements from our business affiliate partners. However, business owners will have the option to opt-out of advertising by paying for a monthly subscription plan.

We plan to grow our business through strategic partnerships with financial institutions. At the moment, we our current unit cost of one basic software instance $15 per unit a month, Taking our lowest priced option as a baseline of $35 per month, this gives us a gross profit of $20 per unit. We have calculated the lifetime value of our customer segment to be $1,680 by multiplying the price of $35 times the frequency in terms of months. For our estimate, we assume the average customer will stay with us for 4 years or 48 months. We also estimate our current marketing and sales activities to cost us around $10,000 per month, which generates over 10,000 visitors to our site. Our marketing cost includes top-of-funnel activities such as online webinars, paid advertising, and social media content at $6,000 a month, while our sales activities such as in-person events costs an average of $4,000 a month. Out of all those activities combined, we expect to collect 1,000 leads, and that 100 of these leads will convert into paying customers. This gives us a customer acquisition cost of $100 per account. We are currently serving over 12 paying customers that generates a little under $5K in MRR. We believe that by allocating more resources to outbound sales and implementing a comprehensive sales strategy, we can significantly boost our revenue over the next five years.

We have had the opportunity to acquire non-dilutive capital through grants, awards, and collegiate competitions. We received over 100K investment through the Google for Startups program over a year ago and a significant portion of the business funding has been provided by the owners themselves. However, we are in the process of seeking outside investment in order to grow and scale our business further.