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Bundle

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Location-driven mobile app for local news.

157%
 - 
Funded 15 Jul 2015
£60,000 target
£94,640 from 58 investors
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Business overview

Location Southampton, United Kingdom
Social media
Website www.hellobundle.com
Sectors Content & Information Digital B2C
Company number 09294690
Incorporation date 4 Nov 2014
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Investment summary

Type Equity
Valuation (pre-money) £606.7K
Equity offered 13.49%
Tax relief

SEIS

Idea

Introduction

Bundle is a mobile app for local news readers. At the core of the app is a location-driven news feed which discovers news articles for users based on their current location.

The decline of many traditional news organisations has led to local news becoming more and more fragmented which in turn has made local news difficult for people to discover.

Bundle intends to solve this fragmentation for news readers by aggregating local news from a variety of sources into one easily accessible news feed - by doing this with a mobile app we aim to provide users with a real-time, location-driven experience. Bundle doesn't just create a singular news feed experience, users could also save locations, akin to a weather app, making it easy to discover and consume news from places that matter to them.

Intended impact

Bundle wants to change the way people discover local news, making it faster and more accessible.

When users launch the app and grant permission Bundle will know their location and with this understanding source the latest news articles that are geographically relevant to them in real-time.

This means people will no longer have to search or switch between the variety of websites that cover local news stories, but can instead, engage with a personalised news feed based on their current or saved location.

Users could make selections to receive a more personalised news feed and over time Bundle would passively learn what users like to read extending the relevancy even further; so not only will provide the answers for “what is happening nearby” it seeks to find “what matters to me nearby”.

We believe that Bundle will be the go to service for local news, so when people think of news nearby, they will think of Bundle.

Substantial accomplishments to date

We have brought together a super team who have bootstrapped the business to date.

Despite the obvious limitations of bootstrapping we have gone deep in to the design and user experience of the app. Anna Youngs has worked closely with Kelvin to achieve a high level of design which has now been handed over to Bernardo Santana, an iOS developer who has just joined the team.

We have also achieved a number of technical feats including:

* a back-end service to manage users, ready to scale
* designed and implemented the underlying databases for news aggregation for the cities that Bundle will launch in
* developed a news discovery algorithm to find significance in articles beyond x and y coordinates

Future hires have been identified to provide us with the opportunity to accelerate development and target an app store launch in September of this year.

Monetisation strategy

Every aspect of news is being disrupted by mobile; the way it is made, the way it is distributed and the way its consumed. However, the traditional relationships still apply - we believe there will always be news, there will always be news readers and there will always be advertisers with a desire to reach those news readers.

Bundle plans to become the go-to mobile app and platform for local news, and in doing so will be perfectly placed to capitalise on the increasing flow of advertising spend allocated to mobile.

Revenue would be generated through advertising placements within Bundle’s news feed - an environment that is designed to be conducive for native mobile ads.

The segment of mobile advertising that Bundle is positioned for is classified as native-social (visual and textual brand messaging merged into organic feed-based interfaces of mobile social apps) by BIA-Kelsey who predict that this segment will grow from $3.3 billion in 2014 to $9.9 billion in 2018, in the US alone. A recent IAB / PwC study accounted for over a £1 billion spent in 2014 across both mobile ads on social media and content / native ads in the UK.

Bundle is designed to easily integrate with Facebook’s mobile advertising offering (or any other third-party mobile advertising platform) to yield advertising revenue quickly. However, it is our ambition to develop proprietary ad formats that are aligned to our purpose - those which feel native to the news consumption experience on Bundle.

By retaining control of our advertising formats Bundle could be crafted into an excellent local news discovery experience for users and at the same time become a compelling environment for advertisers to reach our users.

Use of proceeds

The investment would facilitate the growth of our team, enabling us to release Bundle to the app store in September of this year. To reach this milestone we plan to add software engineers to our team; Bernardo Santana has just started with us and right now is focused on the iOS app development. Beyond this we have engineers lined up to further develop our news discovery processes and algorithms, this work would ensure the quality and relevance of the news that Bundle would deliver to users news feeds.

Market

Target market

With news readers, news publishers and advertisers we target a multi-sided market and long term success would come from creating value for all concerned but first and foremost that value needs to be evident for our news readers.

In terms of news readers we estimate there are around 8 million people in the UK who have a requirement for a local news aggregation service.

We believe that evidence on a local level supports the existence of these news consumers with local publishers such as Cambridge News and Daily Echo (Southampton) having 11,500 and 28,000 Facebook followers respectively.

These people are conditioned to the slick mobile app experiences of Facebook and Twitter, and whilst these are proxies for news, neither are location-driven news feeds operating solely for local news discovery.

Characteristics of target market

What we have seen is that its not possible for Facebook and Twitter to serve broad social media habits whilst meeting the potential needs of local news consumers. Mobile apps have succeeded by serving specific needs; for example Instagram for image sharing, and Whatsapp for messaging. Bundle could succeed in the same fashion, by doing one thing - local news - really well.

With a critical mass of users, Bundle becomes a valuable proposition for advertisers who will want to target our users in a local context, and over the next few years we expect more and more advertisers to shift their ad spend to native ad placements on mobile - placements which are conducive to Bundle’s News Feed

Today we find mobile’s share of ad spend significantly lagging behind time spent on the devices but by 2018, mobile will account for 70.4% of all digital ad spending in the UK.

This growth is not only fueled by the increasing amount of time people now spend on mobiles but also the downfall of the banner ad. Banner ad performance has declined rapidly with digital advertisers losing performance causing digital publishers to lose revenue. Native advertising has emerged to address this problem with a more relevant experience for the user.

Marketing strategy

Bundle plans to initially launch to a limited market, the cities of Cambridge and Oxford. This local focus is an important part of our strategy as our service needs to acquire a concentration of users to gain from network effects that user interactions (for example commenting on articles) would create on the platform.

When Bundle is available in the app store we plan to get in front of as many prospective users as we can with activity that doesn’t necessarily scale but could be a catalyst for word-of-mouth. This would involve hitting the streets of Cambridge and Oxford; both cities offer many interesting physical spaces that can be utilised for experiential marketing, such as the Universities, High Streets and Parks.

This strategy could help us achieve the following:
* Create a memorable experience for our first users so that they have a greater investment in Bundle
* Earn app installs through word-of-mouth
* Establish credibility in our launch cities
* Form relationships with local organisations and media commentators for wider and longer lasting PR coverage

Competition strategy

Bundle’s technology is designed to go deeper to find local news articles from wherever they come from, this is before our news discovery algorithms marry the context of articles sourced with a user’s location.

This technical focus on location has the potential to make Bundle stand out from incumbents. An example of this being the BBC News App, which despite having a significant revamp in January of this year, is still not a true location-driven experience, i.e, your news feed remains the same regardless of your current location.

As far as we know there is currently no location-driven mobile app service in the UK to access local news.

The competitive landscape is broadly made up of mobile apps that can be categorised as news aggregation or social content discovery.

We found that local news isn’t being addressed by either category. This is because the news aggregating services don’t provide for location-driven experiences and social content discovery services deal with user generated content rather than news articles.

A focus entirely on mobile is needed to solve the problem from discovery through to consumption and this is why Bundle could become a major platform for local news.

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Investing involves risks, including loss of capital, illiquidity, lack of dividends and dilution, and should be done only as part of a diversified portfolio. Please read the Risk Warnings before investing. Investments should only be made by investors who understand these risks. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and is subject to change in future.

This campaign for Bundle has been approved by Seedrs Limited (trading as Republic Europe) ("Republic Europe", "us" or "we"), as of 16 April 2015 as a financial promotion. Republic Europe is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority with firm reference number 550317. In approving this campaign, Republic Europe has concluded that the information, taken as a whole, is "fair, clear and not misleading." This means that for factual statements we have reviewed evidence of their accuracy, and that for aspirational statements we believe they are phrased appropriately in light of their speculative nature. You should note that in the case of factual statements, the evidence we review is provided by the business, and we do not audit it, which means that we may not be able to identify forged or altered evidence. You should further note that in the case of aspirational statements, the nature of the type of businesses presented on the Republic Europe platform is such that they are likely to have high ambitions, and we may approve statements that convey those ambitions even where we do not believe, or we do not have a view on whether it is likely, that they will be fully realised. The pre-money valuation and investment sought in the campaign are those set by the business: they are not reviewed or established by us, and the valuation is not an independent view of what the business is worth. Given the nature and type of businesses presented on the Republic Europe platform, it is possible that the business has very little cash remaining prior to receiving this investment, and the investment sought may be necessary for the business's on-going existence.

Republic Europe does not make investment recommendations to you. No communications from Republic Europe, through this website or any other medium, should be construed as an investment recommendation. Further, nothing on this website shall be considered an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security to any person in any jurisdiction to whom or in which such offer, solicitation or sale is unlawful. Republic Europe does not provide legal, financial or tax advice of any kind. If you have any questions with respect to legal, financial or tax matters relevant to your interactions with Republic Europe, you should consult a professional adviser.

Tax Relief (SEIS)

This business is eligible for SEIS relief - providing qualifying investors with income tax relief of 50% of their investment and certain other tax reliefs. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and is subject to change in future. Click to learn more.

Tax Relief (EIS)

This business is eligible for EIS relief - providing qualifying investors with income tax relief of 30% of their investment and certain other tax reliefs. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and is subject to change in future. Click to learn more.

Valuation (pre-money)

Valuation rounded from £606,667

This is the fully-diluted pre-money valuation of the business (i.e. before the new investment comes in and including issued options and other equity interests). In contrast, the post-money valuation is based on inclusion of the new investment in the value.

It is calculated as the pre-money valuation plus the amount of new investment. e.g. If Company A is ascribed a pre-money valuation of £1,200,000 by prospective investors investing £300,000, its post-money valuation is £1,500,000.

The investee business is responsible for setting its own valuation, it has not been prescribed by Seedrs.

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Equity Offered

The equity offered is the percentage of the company’s shares being issued in return for the amount of investment raised.

When the amount raised is less than 100%, the equity offered is based on the target raise. Once the company has raised over 100% it is based on the total raised.

In some scenarios, entrepreneurs may accept additional direct investment after closing their Seedrs campaign. Provided this is within 6 months of the closing and on the same terms, we do not typically offer pre-emption rights on that extra investment (where you have the opportunity to invest again to maintain your percentage shareholding).

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