SmartMemo

SmartMemo is a business tool aimed to create a centralised platform where small to medium sized businesses can store knowledge and information in a document type called a SmartMemo (or Memo for short).

The idea behind SmartMemo is to create an evolving document which changes over time as information around a given topic changes, thereby changing what is static knowledge and information, into evolving wisdom. The definition of wisdom in our world is applied knowledge.

This SmartMemo is then stored on a cloud platform which will enable users to share the memo with individuals, other teams or groups of people, or all the users of the platform in a manner similar to Google Circles. This creates a shareable SmartMemo which will change over time as users add to the document by the various methods which the platform will provide.

The SmartMemo document is an integration of many media types, highlighting that in today's digital age, different people store knowledge in different ways, AND different people like to consume knowledge in different modalities.

Some of the ideas of what makes a SmartMemo smart include

• The ability to add and tag videos and images to a SmartMemo
• The ability to add audio and record audio direct to a SmartMemo
• The ability to auto transcribe audio/video and link the transcription with the associated SmartMemo
• Threaded discussion module to allow email conversation around topics to be collated and chronologically displayed against a memo, showing knowledge evolution.
• A checklist against each SmartMemo to allow readers of the memo to assign tasks to be done on the memo in order to improve, amend, add or evolve the memo content.
• The ability to record webcam direct onto the memo as a way of adding additional video content
• The ability to access and add content to a memo via mobile devices with a native application.
• Ability to drag and drop URL shortcuts into a SmartMemo and make the URL contents immediately available just for attaching to the memo, or even adding as text and amending to compliment the memo topic.
• The ability to tag GPS location onto each component of a memo

These are just some of the ideas.

Here are a range of problems which small companies often experience that SmartMemo is aiming to address:

• Internal company knowledge is often hard to find and poorly organised
• Information and knowledge often becomes stale over time as documents become forgotten or reworked by people without sufficient change tracking.
• Knowledge is becoming more and more scattered across different mediums which leads to time wastage in searching for information. Some of these mediums are:
  • email - often people send/receive emails which contain knowledge that is often documented or stored for future reference.
  • audio - sound files, digital recordings or dictations are become more popular as a way of storing meetings or other spoken information.
  • video - video is another rising medium which people are using for both screen captures, presentations and sharing of information and knowledge, as well as for virtual meetings.
  • www - a typical behaviour for users is to create URL shortcuts on a computer desktop, or folder, with a view to reading the URL information at a later date. Which may then lead to some internal knowledge being changed or evolved. Web research is often supplementing internal company knowledge these days.
  • documents - whether that is doc, pdf, xls, ppt or any other file format
• Predominantly, knowledge documents are still shared through email attachments which creates multiple copies of the original document. These may then be amended and reside on multiple machines, which might subsequently be re-shared via email. It would be more useful to evolve the same piece of knowledge in one place with the ability to add new content in various forms of media.

I believe that with the right input and ideas into SmartMemo, a new way of storing and evolving wisdom can be created as a cloud tool that will deliver immense value to its end users.

The decision to use the word memo as the document name was chosen from research on word usage using the Google Ngrams tool which charts the usage of language over time. Ngrams shows that the word memo peaked in usage in the early 1990s and since the mid 1990s, it has been in rapid decline.

Recent generations of new workers in the workforce have never experienced the office definition of a memo since email has replaced what a traditional memo used to do.

This presents SmartMemo with an opportunity to "re-brand" the memo into a new online document type that means an evolving document of knowledge.

In order to develop this platform, a substantial investment is required in order to create a viable platform that offers immediate value to the end user. The platform must be fully operational with most of the advanced tools available in order to compete online with other platforms which might offer similar services.

Currently there are no direct examples of platforms which offer the tools that SmartMemo will. The closest example of a platform which has similar capabilities would be EverNote which is currently valued at $1bn.

With the seed investment, we would take the development of this platform to the next stage. The platform is currently in phase 1 development and it is nearing completion. Phase 1 is primarily development of infrastructure and platform backbone. The seed investment will be used to take the development to the next level where the platform can be tested in beta with users.

Upon successful testing, the objective will be to increase beta user base to 10,000 within 6 months of launching beta and then seek Series A investment.

The initial idea was borne from my own company's problems, some of which have been mentioned already. We built a basic internal prototype system that we used and found it extremely useful. We then built a second prototype with more features and started to use this externally for other projects.

As the idea itself evolved, we decided to outsource the development of a new prototype beta system to be built from scratch using the powerful Ruby on Rails programming language.

To date, we have nearly completed a basic system after 5 months of development with a small team of 2 programmers. This demo prototype contains about 5% of the features that a fully developed platform would have.
 The SmartMemo platform is an amalgamation of cloud technology, intranet systems and social sharing philosophies into one unique business tool that can help companies to turn scattered knowledge into evolving documents.

I am currently seeking seed funding to take the development of this platform to the next level. If you are interested in speaking to me about this, please get in touch today.