Populous

Populous is an online platform that matchmakes invoice sellers to invoice buyers hosted on the
blockchain. This enables the invoice buyers to receive interest on their invoice purchase while invoice sellers receive short-term cash flow. The company’s unique selling proposition lies in its ability to provide value to both invoice sellers and buyers with interest rate bidding and XBRL targeted client acquisition respectively.

The company adopts a multi-sided business model where both invoice buyers and sellers contribute to the Populous. While the initial driver of growth is the targeted client acquisition program, organic growth will follow with aggressive marketing and branding campaigns.

The Populous platform is designed to scale, with an estimated 43,000 clients in Year 1 to 297,000 clients in Year 3 as per Figure 8 with an annual turnover of £19.6 million and profit of £5.6 million. With the built-in client targeting mechanism, Populous is expected to break even in the third quarter of Year 1.

This business plan performed a sensitivity analysis on the conversion rate of the XBRL targeted clients of 3%, 6% and 10% as the Worst Case, Base Case and Best Case scenario. The conversion rate is chosen to perform the sensitivity analysis to give the best range of results as this directly impacts both the Profit and Loss Statement and the Balance Sheet. The Worst Case scenario projected a £2.8m net profit in Year 3, while the Best Case scenario observes the platform netting a £14m profit for the same year. All three scenarios put Populous in a net cash position, meaning the company does not require loans to utilize as working capital.

Populous is also seeking to record a gross profit margin of 80%, an EBIT margin of 36%, and a net profit margin of 29% in 2020