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Business Plan

1. Summary

VisionBot is a pick and place robotic machine which is able to create automatically

electronic products by placing surface-mount devices (SMDs) like capacitors, resistor, and

integrated circuits onto printed circuit boards (PCBs). In this way engineers, makers, hackers,

hobbyists and small and medium sized enterprises will be able to turn their prototypes into

industrial products (electronic devices, computers, consumer electronics as well as industrial,

medical, automotive, military and telecommunications equipment - any device that has

integrated circuits or with other words anything that has a chip).

Pick and Place machines are not something new. Like 3D printers, they existed even

30 years ago. But the market is full of professional and high-volume Pick and Place machines

which are sold by big manufacturers. Although these machines are professional with great

volumes for products, they are huge and cost a lot ... up to one hundred thousand dollars.

These high-volume machines are a perfect solution for big IT companies like Apple, Intel,

and many more but not for makers, SMEs, college students, engineers, entrepreneurs and

startups.

Through the company, we want to bring an affordable midsize 3,500 USD Pick and

Place machine which assembly automatically electronic products by placing surface-mount

devices (SMDs) onto circuit boards. Thanks to an advanced software which was built with

Computer Vision, the robot can be used for high speed, high precision placing of broad range

of electronic components that are used in devices, computers, consumer electronics as well as

industrial, medical, automotive, military, telecommunications equipment etc. The software

was designed to be easy to use and compatible with all Electronic Design Automation

software (EDA/ECAD) by importing RS-274X standardized files. The software is

multilingual and it comes with videotutorials.

VisionBot Pick and Place machine will be facilitating millions of electrical engineers and

hobbyists, inventors, makers, European students and entrepreneurs to manufacture gadgets

and internet of things devices in their own house. VisionBot was designed specifically by me

to be mid-size and suited for house or garage.

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2. Initiative

It all started because the founder of the company was not ableto produce his

inventions in larger quantities because he didn`t afford to have the appropriate equipments to

do that. He used to build his own Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs)by himself in small amounts.

So, he came up with the idea to make VisionBot – a pick and place machine that can allow

him to assembly and create as many products as he wants. One VisionBot can make up to 200

full equipped PCBs per day which means more than 6000 PCBs – electronic devices per

month.

Visionbot`s slogan is: "Designed by a maker for makers". VisionBot was built by a

maker for makers in order to help them to make their own manufacture line so they can start

their own business in the electronic domain. The start is always difficult because it involves a

lot of investment while the profit will come only later on so at the beginning you need to take

some risks. VisionBot is about offering good quality at a reasonable price so as to lower the

starting risk. In this way more and more makers will be helped in their start-ups or they

actually be encouraged to start new ones.

A patent about VisionBot was submitted to OSIM – Romanian Patent Office. The

company also intends to submit a patent at WIPO –World Intellectual Property Organization.

3. Company details

VisionBot Pick and Place machine is just the first product of

the company S.C. BIT TECHNOLOGIES RO SRL-D that was

founded by Ionut Alexandru Budisteanu alone on 29th

January 2015.

The company was incorporated in Romania, European Union, and it is based in Ramnicu

Valcea, on Ferdinand Street, No 28, 240156. We intend to develop the company to produce

also other kinds of products including Computer Numerical Control machines (CNC), 3D

Printers, electronic devices and software solutions.

3. Marketing and sales

Product and service:

a) VisionBot is new on the market. Of course, that there are similar kind of machines

that can do what VisionBot does but they are extremely costly and a maker who is not

sure about his prototype will not invest in such machines. Prices for professional Pick

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and Place machines are even higher than 80.000$. In this way a maker or an inventor

will be discouragedto do a great invention that may help the humankind.

Visionbot – key facts

It saves a lot of time for makers when they want to turn their prototype into a product and

it is very affordable for starters and not only.

It is very easy to use: it comes with video tutorials and a wizard and it is translated in

several languages.

It has computer Vision (a great future for avoiding electronic scrap) – this means that it is

also environmental friendly.

VisionBot`s software is compatible with all electronic design automation software

programs because it is importing a common file the Gerber file which is exported by all

electronic ECAD software.

Starting with one VisionBot you can built an entire manufacture line for electronic

devices.

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b) Target markets:

The market targets of the startup are the makers, inventors, computer geeks, electrical

engineers, hackers, hobbyists. It is believedthat there are a few million makers in the world

who are struggling with the same issue to turn their prototypes into products. In order to

enable the market targets to buy VisionBot machinesit is intended to be available for sale

through Kickstarter. One of the most important things for Kickstarter is to have a very

professional and stellar presentation video about the machine.

c) Options to make money.

1. The most profitable way is actually to sell the machine to the makers. The

manufacture cost of the machine can be about $550-750(with shipping

included) and the company is willing to sell it with $3,500.

2. The second option is to allow makers to order their own products to be made

by VisionBot through a web interface. They will send their electronic

schematics and data through the websitewww.visionbot.net. Using VisionBot

the company will do their products and ship them.

3. The third option to make money is actually to manufacture many other

electronic devices using multiple VisionBots: like selling EEGs, surveillance

systems, desk phones, smartwatches, etc..

No one can predict the future. The first release will be on Kickstarter. If the machine will be

sold to 250 makers along with other donations, it is supposed that VisionBot will get at least

1 million USD through a Kickstarter campaign.

d) How profitable is VisionBot?

Let‟s suppose the machine will not make about 6,000 devices per month, but less. If the

machine will be able to place 2,000 electronic components per hour. Most of the electronic

devices (PCB) has 50 components that means VisionBot will be able to make about 40

electronic devices per hour. If the machine will work for 15 hours(15 working hours in one

day) that means 40x15 = 600 electronic devices in one day. Let‟s suppose there are 25

working days in one month. It means VisionBot will make at least 15,000 electronic devices

in one month. If we will be able to sell each electronic devices and have a profit about 3$

then in one monthwe can do a really good profit by just selling the electronic devices for

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45,000$. In one year one can get at least 540,000$ using our machine, VisionBot to

manufacture electronic devices and sell them on the market.

2,000 electronic components / per hour. 40 electronic devices / hour

50 components / device

15 working hours x 40 electronic devices = 600 electronic devices / day

600 electronic devices x 25 working days in a month = 15,000 electronic devices / month

15,000 electronic devices x 12 working months in a year = 180,000 devices/ year

Profit of 3$ each device

3$ x 15,000 electronic devices = 45,000$ per month

3$ x 180,000 electronic devices = 540,000$ per year

a) Marketing mix

Product – New and Innovative – there is no other product similar with VisionBot on the

market (taking into consideration the price and the quality it can deliver).

Price – The first 50 units on Kickstarter will be 2,500$ and the following units will be around

3,500$. A device that does similar things like VisionBot costs around 30.000 Euros. There is

only one low-cost Pick and Place machine available on the market. TM-240A - a Chinese

Pick and Place machine which is VisionBot main competitor. The Chinese did millions with

their product. The biggest issue of TM-240A is that it lacks Computer Vision... that means

TM-240A creates a lot of electronic scrap. Other issues are that it is not fully automatic, it's

hard to operate with the machine, not compatible with all Electronic Design Automation

Software, the machine software interface is mostly in Chinese(Personal experience).

Place – The product will be produced in Romania because in terms of costs and quality the

company thinks Romania has big potential. People are really smart and hardworking and the

labor cost is cheap compared to other countries in the European Union. Also, you can buy

good quality equipment parts directly from producers in Romania at reasonable prices.

VisionBot will be shipped all around the world.

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Table describing the cost to manufacture VisionBots.

No Part name Quantity Price Total

1 Driver stepper motors 4 15$ 60$

2 Linear rail + block 4 32.5$ 130$

3 Stepper Motor NEMA17 4 15$ 60$

4 Aluminum profile 1 20$ 20$

5 Pulley motor 4 5$ 20$

6 Timing belt 6 meter 6m 2$/m 12$

7 Limiter switch 6 1$ 6$

8 Cable chain 2 15$ 30$

9 Cable - 120 m 1 5$ 5$

10 2 webcams 2 25$ 50$

11 Microcontroller PIC18F4550 1 10$ 10$

12 Electronic components 1 20$ 20$

13 2 webcams 2 25$ 50$

14 Solenoid Valves 2 5$ 10$

15 Vacuum pump 1 15$ 15$

16 Steel axis 8 mm – 1 meter 1 10$ 10$

17 Workmanship – 16 hours of man

labor 1 100$ 100$

18 Taxes 1 100$ 100$

17 Total 708$

18 Transport 1 500$ 500$

19 Transport box 1 50$ 50$

Because the machine is quite heavy (about 17 kg), the DHL transportation between Romania

to any other places in the world will be less than 500$. The distribution in the European

Union countries is less than 300$.

Promotion

There will be online and offline promotion:

The online campaign consists into

a) Advertising on different IT&C magazines and websites such as: techcrunch,

mashable, etc… VisionBot start up project already featured on WIRED magazine and on

Financial Times website, Forbes.

b) Crowd founding campaign

VisionBot will gain even more visibility by launching a crowd founding campaign on kick-

starter. The company is not interested in getting money from donations, it is more interested

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in finding customers who want to buy VisionBot from us. In this way VisionBot (amoung

funding) it will be close to its clients and it can attract potential investor, potential

collaborators and of course clients.

c)Online adds

In order to make our product more visible on the internet and to make the makers be aware

about VisionBot productthe company is also planning using different systems of advertising

like Google Adsense, BuySellAds(especially buying tweets), Qadabra and Chitika.After the

the company will launchthe machine on Kickstarter, BIT TECHNOLOGIES RO is

interesting in finding the customers who are willing to buy the machine and use it in

manufacturing their products.

The offline campaign consists

a) National and international competitions

By participating in this type of events, and wining some contests VisionBot will gain

notoriety and people will be aware about its existence. At this type of events you always

receive feedback, so you know exactly in what direction you are moving and also you can

improve more and more over time.

b) Conferences

Ionut Budisteanu the founder of the company is a public figure in Romania, and it is often

invited as a speaker at different tech conferences. Among the topic of the conference Ionut

also started to talk about VisionBot. For example, Ionut talked about VisionBot at WIRED

2014, WPP STREAM 2014, TEDx Cluj, Bucharest Stock Exchange, Global Innovation

Summit from Silicon Valley Februrary ‟15, International Exhibition of Inventions from

Geneva April „15, tomorrow at 11even Ploiesti, next day after tomorrow Ionut have to

present VisionBot to the International InfoMatrix Contest, in October 2015 at International

Exhibitions of Inventions from Bruxelles, - Brussels Innova. Also the company got invited to

exhibit VisionBot at WEB Summit in Dublin but we didn‟t afford to pay the exhibition fee…

etc.. In June 2015 we should have present VisionBot at New York Venture Summit, but the

founder can not attend the summit because he has a very important meeting in Bucharest with

the Romanian Government.

c) International Fairs

This type of promotion can bring you closer to small and medium sized enterprises that are

searching for new machines for their already running business. Even though they are more

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expensive it is a good way to get in touch with the market and see what other competitors are

doing.

Sales – channel distribution

VisionBot will be shipped directly to the client but it will be also sold through

distributors such as companies specialised in selling robots. Because VisionBot is up to date

with the latest technology it can be sold to small and medium sized companies that produce

different devices.

The company will also have VisionBot Service Line through which people can order

PCBs assembling and manufacturing in different quantities. Not all makers want to buy an

entire machine in order to manufacture a very small quantity (eg. 100 units) of their prototype

design. In order to solve this, the machine, VisionBot is all the time connected through the

internet to an online server database to get orders from different makers and electrical

engineers to manufacture for them.

4. Social Purpose

a) Scale your business

Visionbot`s main aim is to help makers and hackers built easier their products. There

are a lot of innovative people who encounter difficulties when implementing their ideas. For

example, Ionut Budisteanu built a “See with tongue” device but he couldn`t produce it in

large quantities because he didn`t have the equipment. Now that he have VisionBot machine,

we can assembly that kind of device in a larger number.

By using VisionBot they will be able to produce more of their products in order to see

the impact. Some of them will incorporate Visionbot in their manufacturing line while some

may start their business with Visionbot. With other words we can say VisionBot can be “a

starter for starters”

b) Learning by doing - “Hackers Days in HackerVille”

The founder of BIT TECHNOLOGIES RO SRL-D is a student himself, would like to

involve students this product. Once a year we will organize “Hackers Day in HackerVille” –

one week event for 31 young innovators who will partner in teams (on the spot) to build a

product byusing VisionBot. For the first year, the program will be addressed only to

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Romanian Student (The Pilot Program), but starting with the second year we will also accept

students from other countries. 21 of the participants (including me) will be students with

computer science background and the other 10 students will come from different areas of

activity with proven creativity in their area of studying. They will team up (we will have a

predefined criteria of making teams) and they will come up with new products made with

VisionBot.

Ionut wants to be part of the participants because by this we will learn others to use

this product and to see how we can improve it to make the life of others easier.

4. Interaction with clients

The company got some emails and interest from more than 20 potential customers. I

attach you some pictures with a few conversations.

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5. Financial Plan

VisionBot is built by scratch by the CEO of the company – young Romanian Inventor

Ionut Alexandru Budisteanu so the intellectual cost it 0.

Though, the manufacturing cost for the first VisionBot is around 1000 $. If more than

50 pieces are built, the cost for one piece can go down up to 600$ (payment for the

technicians included).

Name of products with options Production with VAT (24%) Selling price with VAT

VisionBot 24 feeders 1.000$ 3.500$

VisionBot 48 feeders 1.200$ 4.000$

VisionBot 64 feeders 1.400$ 4.500$

VisionBot 72 feeders 1.600$ 5.000$

VisionBot 96 feeders 2.000$ 6.500$

For the same product there are different variants with possibilities of having more feeders

with the production costs increased only with maximum 20% but the selling price increases to over

6,500$. From the customers point of view the differences between versions are amazing, although

the speed doesn‟t increase,the production possibilities are sky rocking by allowing the customers to

manufacture more complex devices. By this method, customers can earn more.

6. Team

Now there are two person employed in the company - Ionut Alexandru Budisteanu

will be just the CEO and the Marketing & Sales Manager and an accountant. The company

will employ 4 mechanical technicians who will be able to manufacture multiple parts and

assemble them to create VisionBots for delivery.

Within the development of the Business we will hire 2 more engineers and more

mechanical technicians (it depends of the quantity that will be produced) and also a Financial

and Logistic Manager.

7. Funding

The company got a lot of interest from investors both Romanians and internationals.

Until now, we decided to apply to get 25,000 euros from the European Union with the POS

DRU program for entrepreneurs. In July 2015, we will receive the funding and the

obligations from the signed documents are that the company must run for at least 3 years with

at least 2 employees.

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8. Business Development

The potential for Growth is enormous especially because in essence it is a mean to an end

product. Leaving in a digitalized world, people are starting to use more and more devices in

order to save time or to keep them connected to the virtual world.

At the beginning, we will be producing exclusively VisionBot Machines, but with time

we will start to produce more products and it can expand in actually manufacture many other

devices using multiple VisionBots: like selling EEGs, surveillance systems, desk phones,

smartwatches etc. The first device the company wants to produce in large series is See With

Tongue(a device created by the founder of the company, Ionut Budisteanu for blind people

through which they can see images form a computer interface using their tongue)

Of course we will continuously invest in Research and Development and see how

nanotechnology can be implemented in designing PCBs.

9. Biographyof Ionut Alexandru Budisteanu

In 2013, Ionut Budisteanu won $75,000 at Intel International Science and Engineering

Fair in 2013, Phoenix, USA for working to a low-cost self-driving car.

Two years ago he was working to a human computer interface to help

blind people to see with their tongue. Although for this device he

received the IEEE Presidents' scholarship - $40,000 from the world's

largest professional association for the advancement of technology, he

decided to study computer science in Romania. Now, Ionut is involved in

a theoretical computer science research program for 15,000 euros.

TIME magazine nominated Ionut as one of the most influence teens of 2013

When he was sophomore in the high-school he created his own programming

language which was: AILab - Scripting Language for Artificial Intelligence.

MIT Lincoln Laboratory named an asteroid with his name.

Ionut won many gold medals at International Olympiads about Environmental

Engineering.

Ionut has become the Government official Ambassador of the Romanian Tourism and

member of ACM and IEEE. This year he will apply to represent Romania at the General

Assembly of UN

After many talks with the prime minister of Romania and the Minister of Education

he was able to manage the creation of 50 scholarships - 15,000 euros for young Romanian

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college students who are interested in doing a research projects in the fields of science,

technology and engineering.

For more details about Ionut Alexandru Budisteanu check on his blog

http://budisteanu.net/who-is-alexandru/

Links

1. Ionut Alexandru Budisteanu public Wikipedia page in English

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionu%C8%9B_Budi%C8%99teanu

2. www.visionbot.net