Monday, February 4, 2008

The Pitch

Lemonade looking to squeeze out some VC cash

Lemonade Inc

Headquarters: South Norwalk, Conn

Employees: 3 full time, 15 contract

Founded: 2007

Web: www.lemonade.com

E-mail: info@lemonade.com

Phone: 203-286-0475

The Pitch: Lemonade is seeking $3 million to $5 million in equity investment

Pitching the technology

Lemonade is offering a "Lemonade Stand" application aimed at allowing an opportunity to make money from product promotions, recommendations and sales. The application functions like a widget and is aimed at blogs, social network profiles and personal websites. The widget can be easily set up at Lemonade's site, then placed on the user's personal page. Lemonade's proprietary social-commerce server enables the company to receive data feeds from sales, cost-per-acquisition offers, cost-per-click ads, and cost-per-thousand online advertising offers. The Lemonade social commerce server also has the ability to add auction-based revenue streams, similar to eBay Inc., officials say.

Pitching the people

Who are the company's founders? Thomas Zawacki, formerly of Modem Media Inc.

Who is on the management team? Thomas Zawacki, CEO; Timothy Smith, chief strategy officer; and Patrick Moore, CTO.

Have executives been involved in a cashout prior to this venture? Lemonade's management team worked from 1992-2007 for Modem Media, which had an IPO in 2000.

Who is on the board of advisers? G.M. O'Connell, co-founder of Modem Media; Doug Ahlers, co-founder of Modem Media.

Pitching the business

What partnerships, collaborations or affiliations are already in place? Lemonade said it has partnerships with companies including AT&T Inc., Apple Inc., Netflix Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Toshiba Corp., Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., Hotwire Inc., Facebook Inc., MySpace.com, AOL LLC, Yahoo Inc., and WebMD Health Corp.

Federal or state grants, contracts or awards received: In December 2007, Time.com ranked Lemonade.com No. 1 on its list of Top 10 Websites of 2007.

What's the market size being pursued? Lemonade said retail e-commerce will top $150 billion in 2007, and online advertising is expected to hit $20 billion, making the total marketplace for Lemonade about

$170 billion, officials claim.

Who are the likely competitors, direct or indirect? Zlio.com, Friend2Friend Inc. and MyPickList.com are direct competitors, according to Lemonade. Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc., Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are indirect competitors.

Is the company profitable? No.