Flamingo Customer Experience first thoughts, page-9

Thanks GT,

TraderGT covered most of the juicy content. Heres some stuff I may add to it from my own digging.

Starting with MANAGEMENT:

1. Founder/CEO: Catrion Wallace

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drcatrionawallace
So she will be a keynote speaker at SugarCon (large Customer Relation Conference) in June 13th and 16th in SanFran, this will be great publicity for Flamingo and might bring in some pro investors/clients.
"Traditional ways of engaging customers through digital channels have not worked well, especially for the customer. We are now at a time where disruptive models of customer experience are emerging and businesses will need to transform their approaches," said Dr. Catriona Wallace. "I look forward to a lively week at SugarCon, where we'll gather to discuss the best practices and best tools to take advantage of disruptive technologies affecting the customer experience."

1. CTO: Joe Waller

All I have to add:
“Played a key role in growing the company from a UK technology startup into the world's largest internet betting exchange.
Ran the product and platform teams that built and scaled the exchange to annual revenues of over $700 million, matching over 30,000 trades a minute. (more than all of Europe's stock exchanges combined).”

This may mean he has a feel for the markets, always good to have someone on board that understands how the market works and what triggers price movements.

1. Board Chair Member : Cathie Ried

http://cathiereid.com/
https://au.linkedin.com/in/cathiereid

Director of Brisbane lions, interesting haha.

“Cathie was inducted into the Australian Businesswomen’s Hall of Fame in 2015, named one of the Top 100 Women of Influence by the Australian Financial Review in 2013, won a National Telstra Business Women’s Award in 2011, and recognised by Monash University with a Distinguished Alumni Award for Professional Achievement in 2012.
She has always been a tech geek at heart, and a keen early adopter of technology. This saw her invited to be part of the original Google Glass Explorer program”
“She is one of Virgin Galactic’s Future Astronauts”

She has a huge media reach out and connections (http://cathiereid.com/media): More publicity and customers for Flamingo

1. Board Member: Paul Hunyor

Another big player
https://au.linkedin.com/in/paulhunyor

Harvard business school grad.
Previous Board Directorships: Rebel Sport Group Pty Ltd, Onebigswitch.com, Maxsparrow.com
Board director of rebel sports, that’s something special right there.

Also part of co-founder of Onebigswitch which also co-founded by Kevin Rudd. Later on Murdoch bought 20% of Onebigswitch for $5.8million.
So how did Paul Hunyor come together with Kevin rudd?
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rudds-man-in-choice-move-on-banks/story-e6freuy9-1226105183220
Basically Lachlan Harris (former advisor for Kevin rudd) met up with Paul Hunyor (went to same highschool together) to start one big switch and they got Kevin on board to take on the banks to lower interest rates on mortgages.

I suspect in the process Paul Hunyor managed to create some networks within the banks and that’s how he managed to land NAB as a client.
And with NAB as a client I wonder if he can land a few more of the big 4banks.
So paul seems to be a big player in landing larger clients having dealt with Kevin Rudd, Murdoch, banks and other big players

Now about the COMPANY itself:

If you visit the STT often few of us posters including myself have been banging on Fintech movement. We all know for a fact it’s huge in the U.S and have been saying so for weeks, and hoping the money flow begins here in Aus.

But these sentences from Flamingo has summed it up:

“the startup has been able to achieve more in the US in less than a month than what it has been able to achieve in Australia in the past nine.”
“We would love to have been able to scale the business out of Australia, but the appetite for the corporates to be really innovative and work with the startup community is much better in the US than it is here,”
“It’s about speed and it’s about scale. I went to Silicon Valley in August this year[2014] and they said don’t burn your cash in Australia – you should burn it here where you’ve got a 10-times better chance than you do trying to scale it out of Australia”

So regardless if the moneyflow into fintech ever reaches Australia it wont matter as there key operations are in U.S

So as I alluded to earlier with Paul having banking connections this confirms what they are aiming for : The startup will be focusing on the health and finance sectors in the United States – in particular, the insurance and banking industries.
Dr. Wallace states - at the moment we have five significant clients in the pipeline … and we should be running experiments in these US firms in January[2015].
“I would encourage all Australian entrepreneurs to think global from day one and to know you can be global possibly much faster than what you think.”

http://www.startupsmart.com.au/prof...startup-flamingo-spreads-its-wings-in-the-us/


So whats the FUTURE like:
“We are in advanced discussions with five US-based corporates in the insurance, health insurance, banking and arts sectors. All five businesses are looking for technology to help them have more meaningful conversations with their customers and to be able to personalise experiences for individuals. This capability is provided through Flamingo’s product suite called CustomerCreate.” – Dr. Wallace
So we have had huge beta testing success in Australia with our clients here. And they’ve backed themselves and decided to go straight to the majors. Note that this was all in the start of 2015. So they’ve been in advanced discussion for 1.5years now.
This means 3 options possible:
1. Pessimistic - They didn’t land the clients in U.S
2. Optimistic - The clients have been landed and they will go list on ASX before finalizing deals.
3. Realistic – Clients in U.S were happy with the product and did a year of Beta testing and are in late stages of completing deals.

CAPITAL RAISE:
Given the last raise was in mid 2014 of $2.1m I’m assuming they’ve lasted 2years burning less than $2m (not sure about this?)
But that’s an alright cash burn considering the office in NY itself would be at least $500k a year rent.

They also are currently doing a $5-10m raise planned for Feb this year. So its either already completed or have had a delay. Guess we will find out the mystery behind this soon. This would probably be the only suspicion I cant point out behind this company.

CONCLUSION:
Pros:
- Insane dream team management with connections to huge players everywhere
- Clients waiting in the pipeline
- Targetting large players in U.S where moneyflow into the sector is very good
- Unique technology with an X-Factor
- Backed by NAB
- Beta testing success in Australia

Cons:
- Suspension till June 1 buzzkill, but could create FOMO at the same time
- the $5-10m raise did they get that or did it fail and that’s why they are listing on ASX?
- Advanced discussions for 1.5years how did that end up?

Overall a very great acquisition I tried dig up everything I could and really not much to criticize besides what happened the last 1.5years and where are they getting their money from?
Regardless we will find more closer to relist and must say we've landed a great tech