Case Studies

RemixGalaxy

The Idea

We were the first to hear the idea behind RemixGalaxy. The client, who had previously built and sold his own company, was an avid computer remixer. Over the course of 2 weeks, we bounced around ideas about social networking, online remixing, mobile music apps, music database API’s, corporate partnerships, and brand concepts.

1. Are we focusing our application on the amateur remixer or the professional DJ?
2. What other companies are developing online remixing tools, and how do they monetize their applications?
3. Apple computers come with GarageBand, why isn’t computer remixing more mainstream?

The development

midVentures rapidly developed RemixGalaxy from a few design mockups to a permanent architecture and framework. Each week, our meetings lead to new ideas about the ecommerce, social networking, and flash remixer functionality.

1. Should we develop our own online remixing tool, or should we try to integrate an open-source solution?
2. How can we scale our servers to handle thousands of gigabytes of remixable WAV files?
3. How can new technologies such as Flash Media Server and Adobe Alchemy be integrated in later phases?

Launch

Ideas midVentures and the RemixGalaxy team are still actively planning out some rather innovative launch strategies. We want to combine guerrilla social marketing and blogging with nightlife promotion and web venture partnerships.

1. Where do DJ fans go to hear new remixes- clubs, venues, websites, itunes, or apartment parties?
2. Which markets are most receptive of computer remixing culture- Chicago, NYC, California, or Europe?

Common Grants

The Idea

CommonGrants patent pending common application technology enables nonprofits to submit one application for consideration to multiple foundations. Not only does this process save nonprofits a significant amount of time and money it also pairs nonprofits and foundations together more effectively than has previously been possible. Using CommonGrants patented outcome based technology we can ensure that nonprofits are only applying to foundations who are likely to fund them and can ensure that foundations only receive applications that match the outcomes they are looking to fund.

Problem

The CommonGrants system was built and the staff was extremely dissatisfied with the product that previous developers had built. Midventures was able to address the issues that the old system couldn’t and built a system that exceeded CommonGrants’ staff expectations.

1. How could we leverage web 2.0 technology to enhance the system?
2. Why was the matching process on version 1 so slow? How can we reduce a 30-second matching process down to 2 seconds?
3. How could we improve the users experiences so potential customers with who weren’t comfortable with technology could use the system with ease?

T1Track

The Idea

midVentures met up with a developer who had already programmed a vendor work order management application. Because of our experiences in corporate property management, we imagined launching T1Track as a crowd-sourced vendor selection tool.

1. How to property managers choose their service vendor lists?
2. How to property managers communicate with service vendors during the work order process?

Business Development

Our midVentures partners entered T1Track into the University of Chicago Booth School New Venture Challenge. Once we qualified for the second round, we presented to 2 panels of venture capital and angel investor firms. The process gave us connections to some of Chicago’s largest real estate firms.

1. What competitors and analog businesses have business models closest to T1Track? What is their valuation?
2. To what degree does T1Track have to integrate into other property management software applications?

Beextraordinary

Rapid Development

We entered the Beextraordinary project while the website was already in development. Over the course of 8 months, the concept and the business changed rapidly based on user feedback and business opportunity. Beextraordinary also gave us the opportunity to meet some of Northwestern University’s top entrepreneurs.

1. How closely should our user interface mirror facebook or myspace, in order to create trust and comfort with our userbase?
2. What types of user-submitted challenges will ‘go viral’ and spread organically through social networks?

LandmarkFinder

Idea to Company

LandmarkFinder is a great example of taking an idea all the way from idea to profitability. midVentures’ first iphone app, we built the development team and cleared Apple’s application processes to launch an app that educates users on historic landmarks surrounding them. LandmarkFinder has inspired an array of new map-based iphone projects.

1. How can the landmarkfinder application talk to the website, and help showcase our historic landmark database?
2. Should we develop landmarkfinder for the Blackberry, Palm, or Android?
3. What other companies would like their own custom-branded landmarkfinder?