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The Pitch

Startup Name *	Atooma
What problem are you solving?	A mobile or smart device manufacturer and a plethora of different players like Brand retailers will need to face a certain number of challenges in order to successfully enter the dimension of the Internet of Things with the goal of turning their product context-aware and reaching higher level customer engagement and retention:- Developing hardware – software integrations This results in expenses on software engineering, design and of course, time.- Building ecosystems Connecting the device to the internet is only step zero among the Internet of Things technology framework.- Creating compelling use cases. To successfully market a product that features IoT functionalities such as connectivity or cross device interactions, a significant amount of data is required.- Be fast, be effective All these milestones should be achieved within an effective go to market strategy, since the whole mobile and smart devices market is moving in the direction of Internet of Things, and this is the right time to evolve businesses implementing IoT to achieve new profitable goals.
What is your solution?	Atooma is a powerful automation engine bringing a solution to manage the enormous amount of events occurring in a fully connected world. On one hand, the Atooma “left brain” act as a task automation layer across connected devices, meanwhile, Atooma “right brain” is able to read user’s pattern of usage for the same devices, and suggest compelling use cases for the end-user. The mission of Atooma is to offer a key technology for device vendors that wants to enter the IoT ecosystem without shifting focus from their products, or having to re-engineer them.
Why is this a great opportunity?	In 2020 connectivity will not be an option. Cisco reports that in 2008 the number of connected devices exceeded the number of people on Earth, while an analysis from Gartner tells us that in 5 years the market is expected to be crowded with 26 billion connected devices, without counting smartphones, tablets, and Pcs. Recent researches based on the current situation in 2014 shows that this number has managed to grow even further, forecasting 50 billion connected devices by 2020. Thanks to this data we can assume that the Internet of Things is designed to evolve from a technology trend to a market standard. Today more than 99 percent of “things” still lays unconnected, and this means there is a tremendous growth potential that will make networked connections more and more valuable, bringing together data from people (human to machine) and smart objects (machine to machine), and providing richer experiences thanks to context-aware ecosystems of devices connected to the cloud.
Target Market	The customers we are addressing to are Brands and Device Manufacturers in the Mobile, Wearable, Automotive, Home Automation and Contextual Advertising verticals. We provide different SDKs to integrate existing products and systems with our IoT platform, enabling them to bring context-awareness to the end user.
How will you make money?	Atooma follows a B2B2C business strategy that see involved consumer apps available on the main platforms (Android, iOS, Tizen) as a way to test the technology, the users interests and showcase to Partners. The open source SDK for developers is free of charge and allow them to add their device’s or apps functionalities to our branded apps as a way to make them growing in terms of features and users. Main revenue streams come from: > Branded integration with Partners that pay set-up fees. > Full power SDK and APIs White label integration with licensing fees for the Automation Engine > APIs white label integration with licensing fees for the Suggestion Engine
Founders Names	Fabrizio Cialdea, Gioia Pistola, Francesca Romano, Andrea Meriggioli
Website	http://www.atooma.com
What type of funding has the company received	Angels

Startup88 Verdict

Lovely looking website however this startup uses so many superlatives in every part of their site that I am not actually sure what they do.

Take the screenshot below. I challenge any of you to tell me what this means in real terms and functionality?

The pitch supplied by the team is equally confusing.

It may be that the technology is amazing, they certainly claim to have a lot of big names on board and they received very positive press in 2012, but recently the only stories I can find are in Italian (the team originates in Rome).

Also I couldn’t find them in the App store but it turns out they haven’t released the iOS version as yet. I found this screenshot in the Google Play store and I think in one image explains more about what their App does than the multiple pages of drivel on their site.

Their Android app looks great, and frankly 5-10 screenshots of the functionality that this provides would probably have been a better way to describe what the company does on their home page than the existing marketing speak.

If customer acquisition is the key objective of this site, then the App should be front and Centre in the hero spot of the home page.

My verdict is that this probably is a cool app and by all accounts from earlier reviewers it is pretty smart, however it has been let down severely by the marketing team who have chosen buzzwords and marketingspeak presumably to impress the user but it has in fact left this reviewer confused and annoyed.

My feedback to the founders is, firstly it appears your marketing team has English as a second language, there are many phrases which don’t sound right, poor grammar and funny short sentences that don’t seem to fit. I would suggest hiring an expert in selling product online to rewrite/structure the site that has proven experience in US and Western markets.

Secondly tell us about your product, stop trying to make it sound like some super big impressive fantastic massive all singing all dancing platform, the App itself sounds extremely cool and useful, none of what you express on website sounds as impressive as actually seeing a screenshot of the app and the functionality you can provide.