Shoot

Idea

Introduction

Shoot is a SaaS platform which provides the ultimate one-stop garden planning toolkit for garden designers.

We empower designers across the world with the right tools, at the right time, all in one place. Shoot’s Ultimate planning toolkit is loved by designers, as it brings together all they need in one convenient solution.

This is how we describe our product offer to a garden designer:

We are here because of the passion and commitment of our community. We crowdfund to grow together, collaborate and make a contribution to the wider good that everyone can benefit from.

We work hard to bring our customers credible information and the support they need. For every workflow, time, space, soil and green-fingered dream on the planet, our expert, helpful team powers them to it.

We are leaders in innovation. We constantly challenge the norm, find new answers, and disrupt the status quo.

We are on a mission to make garden visions a reality.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Increasing CLTV: Founded 2004 as business to consumer (B2C) software as a service (SaaS) company, we pivoted to focus on business to business (B2B) in March 2023, and have since seen an increase in customer lifetime value from £895 to £1,505 (Dec '22 - Dec '23).

Profitability: We acheived £266K in turnover and £102K net profit last year 2022-2023 and £255K turnover and £88K net profit in the previous year 2021-2022*.

Our USP / IP: Unique, robust and comprehensive 33,000+ relational plant database.

Competitive advantage and barriers to entry: With over 10 years of product development and finding market fit, we believe it would be a difficult and lengthy endeavour for any competitor to better our respected, well-structured and robust plant database. In addition, to compete in any meaningful way, competitors would need to scale their customers’ usage of their plant database. Most powerfully, our customers have strong, self-generated incentives to stick with us, having already invested their valuable time in creating over 200K gardens, with over 1.2 million plants added to them.

Registered Trademarks: Shoot®, ShootMatch® and ShootChecker®.

*Based on unaudited management accounts.

Delighted customers:

Press coverage:

Awards:

Partnerships: We are in talks to establish a partnership in principle with CadSoft Solutions to bundle-sell Shoot with our new innovative planting planner which we will look to develop with funding from this investment round.

Acquisition conversations: We have had several inbound approaches from brokers and potential buyers about the sale of the company.

Monetisation strategy

We generate revenue by selling subscriptions which are charged annually in advance based on the number of garden projects.

The entry price for 1 garden is £300 + VAT per year.

As subscribers increase the number of gardens, the price goes up, but with a volume discount. For example, 20 gardens is £600 + VAT per year.

This scale discount encourages garden designers to increase their annual subscription value as their business grows using our tools, and they take on more clients.

Our average subscriber value is £431 + VAT per annum.

Use of proceeds

The largest percentage of our investment funding will be spent on technology development, accounting for 40% of the funds raised.

We intend to build a 3D planting planner plug-in to SketchUp. We have a prototype built and 3 development quotes. We believe there will be high demand for this development as it will save garden designers time (e.g. 1 day a week) and also allow them to visualise their planting designs in 3D.

Staff costs will account for 29% of the funds raised. We will be hiring new full-time staff to support our international growth, including:

- Mid-level and junior marketers
- Partnerships manager
- Customer support roles (UK & Global)
- Product manager

Other investment costs will be spread across these areas:

Direct marketing costs 3%
Reseller costs 4%
Admin and Cost of Sales 17%
Working Capital 7%