Executive Summary
The Unmet Market Need:
Today, there is no centralized marketplace that connects individuals /event planners and venues in real-time. Finding and booking a venue is a referral based manual process. Many under-utilized venues are in need to generate additional revenues. On the other hand, growth in social media is leading to demand to meet up in the real world.
Why isn't there a 1-stop shop today?
The complex scheduling, pricing schemes for different venues makes real time on-line transactions difficult. Many vairables make it hard to treat venues as standardized commodities.
The Opportunity:
Annual spending for events is sized at $500 billion globally; Based on a bottom up marketing study, event venue market for 8 major US states including California estimated to be in excess of $7 billion annually.
Our Solution:
Froomz provides the first fully integrated, real-time, cloud-based booking platform for venues and individuals/event planners. Our survey concluded that Froomz will address over 90% of the major headaches that venue owners and managers are facing today. Froomz will fundmentally transform the way consumers find and book venues and enable online interest groups to rapidly find space and meet up.
Our Vision:
Froomz is THE marketplace for venues, creating/enabling a new market for underutilized space
Our Team:
Passionate, experienced and ready
Current Status:
Customer beta; Web design and end to end infrastructure complete;
Early customers and go-to-market partners ready to launch
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What We Do
For Users:
Simply put, Froomz helps you find rooms. Just tell us What, Where and When, and we provide you with a list of venues that fit your needs. From meetings and meet-ups to fundraisers and milestone celebrations, project and rehearsal spaces for art, music or photography sessions, Froomz enables you to search, sort and compare venues based on availability, price, location and amenities.
Book instantly using your credit card and share your confirmed reservations with colleagues, family and friends. Best of all, it's free to sign up!
For Venues:
Froomz offers venues a two-fold solution: a robust listing in our online venue marketplace at Froomz.com to help boost your rental revenue, coupled with a powerful web-based venue management system that automates, organizes, and tracks room reservations, customer relationships and transaction history, saving you time and money.
Our dynamic patent-pending system enables you to maintain full control of your venue - from flexible pricing packages to listing visibility and exposure, as well as reservation requests and online booking options. Pick and choose the Froomz features most relevant for your business.
The Froomz beta site is now live! Check us out online at Froomz.com
Froomz Team
YAN HEIM - Co-Founder/CEO
Yan keeps the Froomz engine running. As co-founder and CEO she is engaged in all corners of the business to ensure that the Froomz vision is achieved. Yan believes what sets Froomz apart is our social mission to connect people to space and to support our local and online communities.
Yan has extensive experience in engineering, financial planning and contract negotiation in international telecommunication industry. She was the co-founder and general manager of Beijing MITEC Technology INC., a technology importer and systems integrator.
In the space between sleep and work, Yan enjoys crafting mad-scientist fusion cuisine from recipes she's picked up on her world travels. She balances her brainiac activities with banging out brash Rachmaninoff chords on her piano, or doing kick-ball changes to Samba beats on the ballroom dance floor. Yan on LinkedIn
MIKE CODY - Co-Founder/CTO
Mike is our resident miracle worker. As co-founder and technical brains behind Froomz, he brings with him over 15 years of industry experience and expertise. Most recently, he was software architecture/team leadership in the financial sector, where he was responsible for a variety of applications including customer facing websites, high-volume internal applications, and providing expertise to a range of teams.He currently directs the product architecture, operations, development, research and design of Froomz.com.
When Mike isn't giving "more power!" to Starship Froomz's warp engines, he explores "strange new worlds" through hiking, light mountaineering, rock climbing, and piloting fast cars around race tracks. Unswerving determination and a quest for challenge underlie his penchant for grueling triathlons and arduous adventure runs. His video gaming ineptitude, despite a childhood of practice, remains a mystery, however.
CHRISTINA DUNHAM - VP | Busines Development
Christina is responsible for building and maintaining Froomz’ relationships with venues and partners. With over two decades developing acquisition & customer loyalty programs, delivering sales training, and managing large-scale events and multi-million projects for start-ups and Fortune 500 companies such as AT&T, Wells Fargo, OmniSky, Earthlink Wireless, SalesForce.com, Google, and Cisco, she brings unparalleled enthusiasm for the event and party planning space.
Her left brain strategic/analytical side is balanced by her right brain creative side, which she expresses through writing, performing, and martial arts. She’s often found behind the scenes volunteering to work on massive festivals and fundraisers around the Bay Area. When she’s not party-hopping for Froomz, you can catch her at local happy hour hotspots, tearing up dance floors at SF clubs, or belting out pop-rock tunes as lead singer for a local band at Bay Area casinos and clubs like the Hard Rock. Christina on LinkedIn
PIAT ORENDAIN - Business Development Consultant
Piat is our pavement-pounder and biz dev diva, an intrepid proselytizer of the Froomz gospel. With a decade-long track record in sales and business development, she has garnered awards such as Rookie of the Year and National Sales Achievement in the luxury design industry, where – in addition to her sales stints – she produced and managed events for companies like Fabricut, Kravet, and Mosaic Enterprises, including fashion shows, food & wine mixers and product launches.
While her drive and energy fuel her biz dev machine, it is Piat’s love for all things creative that feed her artistic soul. A designer and artist at the core, she enjoys painting and concocting culinary delights for friends and family, as well as fashioning fun outfits to dance the night away at over-the-top theme parties. Piat on LinkedIn
MATTHEW SINGER – Hospitality Marketing Specialist
With 30+ years in the hospitality industry, Matthew brings a unique perspective as an industry insider, veteran event planner and marketing strategist. From owning a high-end catering business to running the catering departments of the California Culinary Academy and Chartwells at SF State University (a division of Compass Group), he has intimate knowledge of the operational and logistical complexities of managing venues and organizing events. He completed his MBA at Golden Gate University while working full-time at the Culinary Academy. He served as Co-Chair of the San Francisco Private Dining Venues Organization, an exclusive collection of private dining and event spaces, from 2001-2004.
Apart from experimenting with exotic spices in his San Francisco kitchen, Matthew enjoys quiet time practicing yoga, doting on his two dogs, devouring volumes of books, or volunteering at Under One Roof.
Matthew on LinkedIn
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Our Advisors
RICK SANTOS
Rick has been a friend and advisor to the Froomz management team since August 2010. He is currently the Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Validity, a Silicon Valley based biometric sensor and technology company with more than twenty years of business and financial management experience, including previous CFO and/or senior financial management positions at Intel, Exar Corporation and other silicon valley companies. As CFO of VxTel, Rick was instrumental in raising over $80 million in private equity funding and helped to negotiate and complete the acquisition of VxTel by Intel Corporation for $550 million. With direct involvement in over $1 billion in private equity placements and M&A transactions, Rick brings a wide variety of real-world experience to the Froomz strategy room. Rick on LinkedIn
GLEN STEVICK
Glen has been an advisor and founder of several startups and consulting firms, with over 25 years leading real estate, engineering, and technology companies, including Environmental Capital Group where he assists in evaluating new startup technologies for investment; iPig, a pipeline and structural health management company where he was co-founder and post-buyout advisor; and 4D Imaging, Inc., a structural health management company that develops wireless instrumentation modules for buildings, bridges, pipelines and other critical structures. Currently, Glen serves as the President of Berkeley Engineering And Research, Inc. (BEAR), a consulting firm located in Berkeley, CA, which was recently involved in the design of energy dissipation dampers for the Golden Gate Bridge. As past President of the Berkeley Property Owners Association (BPOA), he was instrumental in the passage of vacancy decontrol for residential properties in California. Glen on LinkedIn
JAMES LIM
James has over a twenty year track record in the hospitality industry, serving as a hotel executive/general manager for luxury and full-service properties around the Bay Area such as the Palace Hotel, Sheraton Four Points, Maxwell Hotel, and Hotel Rex in San Francisco, along with Hotel Durant in Berkeley. His current role is as Regional Managing Director for Joie de Vivre Hospitality, California’s largest boutique hotel company, which includes in its portfolio 30 boutique hotels, 20 restaurants, and five resorts & spas. James also serves as advisor to the Union Square Association, Berkeley City College Hospitality Management Program, Philippine International Aid, and Golden Gate University’s Hotel, Restaurant & Tourism Management Program. In the past, he served as Chairperson for the Berkeley Convention & Visitor’s Bureau and Advisory Board Member for the San Francisco Academy of Travel and Tourism. James on LinkedIn
TRACEY RICE
Tracey has been developing sales, marketing and community relations programs for the hospitality industry since 1993, from directing campaigns targeting conventions, corporate event & meeting planners, wedding planners, destination managers and tour operators, to launching and expanding private dining divisions for established restaurants around the Bay Area. With a background in advertising, her creativity and imagination as Special Events Manager have resulted in six figure increases in banquets and group dining sales for venues like Moose, Masa's, Bacar, Jardiniere, and Joe DiMaggio's. Currently the Special Events Manager at Alexander’s Steakhouse SF, Tracey is also one of the founding members of the San Francisco Private Dining Venues Group, an exclusive collection of 40 of San Francisco’s premier private dining and event spaces.
MICHAEL MCALLEN
For the last 15 years, Michael has been producing events, meetings, concerts and conventions for companies like Oracle, Genentech, Cisco, Williams Sonoma, HP, Yahoo!, PepsiCo, PG&E and Hilton Hotels. In 2004, after working with event industry giants like InVision Communications, Bill Graham, and Jack Morton, Michael and his wife established their own full-service production shop, Grass Shack Events and Media. With offices in San Francisco, New York and Hawaii, Grass Shack manages pre-production creative, audiovisual support, staging and set design, along with video production and live streaming requirements for events. As Co-Founder of EventCamp, he brings together a community of event professionals to share best practices and champions leveraging social media and technology to create enhanced event experiences. Michael also produces/hosts MeetingsPodcast.com, "the meeting planners' source for what’s new and exciting in the meetings and events industry."
Yan Heim
Christina Dunham
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