Just saw this – could be interesting – seems it is akin to Xero but without the high profile backers and founders. Also this as posted on this forum.

The plot thickens?????

The only thing of substance I could see in the offer doc is the that founders suddenly become very rich. My main take home points from prospectus are:

1. Prospective 2008 revenue from customers of $550k does not look compelling. This eqautes to straight line growth over year from zero to 1833 customers each paying $50 per month. This seems a little light for software that is set to take over the world.

2. Operating expenses forecast to be $5.4m.

3. Total shares outstanding will be 55m so this company is valued by the offerers at time of IPO of $55m.

4. $300k of the cash raised will be used to lend to the directors at 4%, so they can buy shares.

5. No forecasts or projections to support valuation.

My take on the service as an SME owner [ie I am their target market]

1. Accounting software is a highly competitive busines dominated by large incumbents, switching costs are high in terms of time. You would need to see a large benefit to switch, its worse than switching banks.

2. SME’s who don’t already use accounting software usually have good reasons for this. Being available on the internet is not a good reason.

3. Simple to use means only useful for simple things.

4. No fixed asset register

5. No payroll

6. No inventory

7. Each county has its own standards and requirements so its not quite as easy as alluded to in the prospectus, to transfer accounting software from country to country.

Unanswered questions

1. Is Hamish getting paid good appearance money.

2. Did Chris know his comments would be headlined in the prospectus?

3. Who was the ad agency who wrote the prospectus?
My overall take on the IPO

1. I find it difficult to see where their customer base will come from

2. $600 per year seems expensive for what most of us SME’s can do on a simple spreadsheet… and with internet banking

3. Most of the writing is in the special language of advertising and marketing people that sounds like it is saying something but it isn’t really.

4. I think you will get a better risk adjusted return betting on the Africans to take out the RWC with the TAB at $6.00.

5. Makes my BIO shares look attractive.

6. If you have a compelling offer you dont need ad people to write your prospectus or to refer to other successful companies/people to try and get a pseudo halo effect.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

3 Comments
  • 1Place looks like it is part owned / and/or operated by Zintel which is a public coy with last reported revenue of $40m owned and controlled by Nick Gordon see
    http://www.zintel.co.nz/aboutus/news.cfm

    I find it unusual that 1Place don’t advertise this connection- although it may be a separate company with call centre and billing provided by Zintel (which is what they do – mostly.)

    The biggest single factor slowing the adoption of SAAS for accounting services is trust and security of data. In my view 1place need to come clean and
    1. Tell us who they are
    2. What the relationship with Zintel is
    3. Why we should trust them with essential, mission critical service.

  • A challenge there for 1place – let’s see if they front up with info

    Ex the companies office website – shareholders are….
    Number of Shares 150,000
    Shareholder(s) FALLOON, Bevan
    Number of Shares 150,000
    Shareholder(s) BING, Martin

  • In reply to Jason, I’m a shareholder of 1place and I can tell you we have nothing to do with Zintel (who are they??). Myself and Martin are the founders. I wish we had a backer that big!

    Something about us: The business serves micro & small business. These entities usually have very little in IT systems and no expertise or cash lying around to spend on it. What we do is take care of accounting & the usual infrastructure required for a very nice price.

    For myself as an example, I use hosted Google email. I don’t want to buy a server, Microsoft Exchange server etc etc. What a waste of money when I can do it for free! The same rule applies to business admin. Why spend $5-900 on an accounting system that is hard to use – plus deal with backups etc when you can do what you need to for $10-50 a month? Plus get the benefit of no hardware upgrades, easy to add staff users, and functions for my customers that usually requires a few thousand to setup (more on that later!)

    Just some thoughts. What you do you think?

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