WeGather

Idea

Introduction.

WeGather is a global online platform where experts and enthusiasts can lead discussions on topics that matter to their community, and earn an income for providing that expertise and content.

In a world where social media users are bombarded with an overwhelming amount of low-quality content online, from clickbait articles to overly sensational stories to fake news, it’s a race to the bottom. We believe this trend is perpetuated by the free-with-advertising revenue model where users pay for content consumption with their attention.

To turn this dismal trend on its head, WeGather works towards bringing content delivery and the features for fan-funding together in one service where the quality of content and reputation of the content creators are paramount. Netflix has shown how people will pay for quality content. Patreon has shown an audience will voluntarily support creators they love.

On WeGather, validated discussion leaders can earn through tips and donations from their followers/audience and by hosting pay-to-access discussions. Discussion leaders are brought together in Communities (e.g. Fitness, Business, Relationships, etc), so it’s easy for users to find experts in that field and all their discussions in one place.

Intended impact.

Quality content exists online but it gets buried under a sea of popular but poor quality content, and it is fragmented all over the internet, making it highly time-consuming to find content that really matters to users.

WeGather is building a platform that allows users to easily find in one place only high-quality discussions from all the top experts and enthusiasts on all the topics that interest them.

On WeGather, as discussion leaders earn directly from their supporters, we’re creating an environment where quality of content and reputation of the creators beat popularity.

Substantial accomplishments to date.

Over 2.5 years of tech development and optimisation, WeGather has accumulated over 100K registered users internationally. We have over 50K installs on Android alone. On both our IOS and Android apps, our average ratings are over 4.4. We also built a web platform that’s visited by hundreds of thousands of unique visitors monthly.

Brett Dawson, the former CEO of Dimension Data, a company, which he took from $2bn to $8bn revenue, and into a presence of over 50 countries, has taken an approx. 10% investment stake in the company and the Chairman role.

We have attracted a broad range of top discussion leaders to our platform, such as South African Constitutional Court judge Dennis Davis, top Indian Entrepreneur Dev Gadvhi to Olympic athlete James Howell, etc.

We were featured, through a collaboration with Euro Sports Media, on the main LED Billboards at Twickenham for 100M along each sideline, on 6 Dec 2018 for the Rugby game of Oxford vs Cambridge. This match historically has had a viewership of over 3.5 Million people. We will be featured at over 10 other high-profile sporting events this year. We will also be running 540 media spots on Radio to an audience of 250,000 as part of this collaboration.

We have established partnerships with a broad range of organisations internationally - Symmetra, a Diversity and Inclusion consultancy, to Blue-chips, the University of Johannesburg, to charities and not-for profits, Biblicaltraining.org, etc.

We have released our monetisation features with users being able to pay to support their favourite discussion leaders, and begun to generate initial revenue.

We have built a unique Rank distance Algorithm, based on the DNA mapping science, which took 18 months of R&D.

We passed the competitive expression of interest phase for Commercialisation Australia, which grants $350k in matched funds, once our full application is approved by the committee.

Monetisation strategy.

With an established technology in place and support from a strong user base and a wide range of industry experts as our discussion leaders, the next phase for WeGather is monetisation. We have mapped out three key routes of monetisation, that will be taken in varying stages.

As a start, we have begun monetising via the transaction fees we charge users and organisations earning via WeGather. In general, users and organisations can earn through receiving tips/donations for their free discussions or charging an amount of their choice for pay-to-access discussions, subscription communities or private consultations.

We charge a fee of 5% per transaction, which is a comparable rate charged by Patreon.

For example if an expert has 3,000 followers access her premium paid discussion costing USD$5, then WeGather earns USD$750.

Initially, there will be no fee for discussion leaders, as we want it to be frictionless to attract the best people from each field. Once the platform gathers traction to the point where it’s competitive to be a discussion leader in each community, and the discussion leaders are earning an income regularly, we will be charging discussion leaders a small subscription fee for maintaining their discussion leader accounts to host and earn from discussions.

We expect to charge USD$50p/m per discussion leader.

Additionally, we will also be charging organisations a monthly fee to run a public community on our platform, in order to grow their audience.

Depending on the size of the organisation we intend to charge $50-$999.

Our productivity tool, WeGather@work, will be charging organisations a recurring monthly subscription fee USD$9-$999, based on the size of the organisation. This tool is for internal company use.

Use of proceeds.

The past 2.5 years have been focused on developing the technology, and optimising it to a level that attracted over 100K users, over 50K app installs and a broad range of top discussion leaders from constitutional judges to Olympic athletes.

While this process will continue, and 29% of proceeds will be spent on further development in the upcoming phase, the current priority (64% of the funds) will be allocated to marketing activities supporting user acquisition and scaling.

5% of funds will be spent on servers and software subscriptions.
2% of costs will be spent on administrative costs.

This round is a bridging round, to give us the runway to achieve the metrics in terms of user numbers and revenue that venture capital (VC) firms have indicated, from our discussions with them, would make them interested in investing in Series A.

We have been in conversations with some of the largest consumer VC firms in the world such as Greylock, and have an indication of the levels of traction they want to see before becoming interested in investing at Series A level.

We believe this bridging round will provide sufficient runway and traction to achieve those metrics.

Gather Online is an Australian company and therefore shares will be issued in Australian Dollars, at a GBP:AUD$ exchange rate of 1.803 and at a share price of A$0.40.