Hi, here are my thoughts about decibel.LIVE proposal:
1. Intro – business model
I would like to open by showing how the business model of Decibel.live is not a business and the whole idea would be a bad PR for the DAO as it is an automated fining system (automated punishment). I think this point is most important to understand and it also does not involve any technical details.
I want to relate to this particular sentence in proposal example: “ Acme Company agrees to deposit a certain proportion of ether(or dB’s) which are held in escrow.
If there is a complaint to the council about the exceeded noise then the noise survey is performed. The price of that survey has to be paid by the site developer/ owner of industrial site (power plant/transformer substation/scrap yard etc). If there is no complaint then there is no survey = no costs. Anyone who has to do it, hates to do it and try to avoid it by any means. What is proposed in decibel.LIVE is that a real estate developer / industrial site owner have to pay beforehand a deposit in case there might be a noise complaint. In result he has to freeze his assets that could have been invested in other development just because there is a possibility that at any point in time he could be fined – which may never happen – but still his assets are frozen as deposit for a possible fine. If you can find me one developer that is willing to do so I will buy you a beer, seriously. So it’s an automated fining system.
Additionally the business model is not scalable – I’ll elaborate on that in further paragraph.
A little bit about the proposed phases of the project:
Phase 1 – prototype as a proof of concept for $ 50 000 – it’s just a prototype including couple of data points not a finished product – probably just basic functionality that is not even stated in the proposal.
Phase 2 – it enhances proximity algorithms? How do you intend to do it? Can you force GPS devices to be more accurate? How do you want to enhance it with software only? No mention of any improvements in any other areas of the project. So phase 2 focus just on proximity algorithms that are not top priority in the project.
Phase 3 – marketing $10000 every 3 months ! And that will be mainly focused on online activity and converting leads through website.
Phase 3 is completely wrong. You can’t advertise this kind of product online. The way acoustic market works is not through online presence. It is through:
a) noise conferences around the globe with industry specialists gathering and presenting scientific papers.e.g.:
http://www.internoise2016.org/
http://iiav.org/icsv22/
https://noisecon16.inceusa.org/
Baltic-Nordic Acoustic Meeting, - https://euracoustics.org/eaa-societies/partner-societies/nordic-acoustics-association/bnam-2016
b) trade shows:
http://www.infocommshow.org/welcome
c) presenting papers at monthly meetings of such bodies like Institute of Acoustics(UK)
http://www.ioa.org.uk/
People who meet there are technical specialists from probably all of the companies that build noise monitoring equipment you have mentioned in the proposal plus academics plus noise consultants.
If you want to reach to them you have to be there and present the product.Be aware that they are experts and they will catch any flaws that are in the project quite quickly. So you need someone with deep technical knowledge of the product to answer those questions and convince this hermetic (I know from experience) society that they should use your new product.
You do not have this kind of person.
To go to conferences and trade shows you need more money for travel, accommodation etc. – it’s not taken into account of the proposal.
Additionaly you need connections with companies that distribute noise monitoring equipment – like ACSoft or Cambpell Associates – this is UK market.
In this way you can reach current noise consultants – which is one of your objectives.
Press releases – press release might be done in e.g. Acoustic Bulletin published by IOA – but it is small market so you have to know all the acoustic organizations around the globe to approach.
In example on page 4 there is information possibility to use drones in the future to perform noise measurements. Impossible – drones are extremely noisy and not fit for this purpose. They will measure their own noise of engines and passing air.
2.Technical side of the project.
a) The object of proposal is a website and app for mobile devices.
It’s not even specified what operating systems (iOS, Android Windows Phone ? ) All of them, one of them ?
b) I still stand by my belief that you can’t use smartphones for this measurements. You want developers to kindly accept paying fines based on unreliable measurements. You have said that it can be used when the noise is exceeded by around 10-15 dB. What if the noise is exceeded by a 1 dB. Then you can’t rely on your solution. I would like to say that it’s usually the case in real life. The levels are very rarely exceeded by 20 dB. More or less couple of dB. This limits the usage and therefore nobody will use it. Additionally if I were a developer accused of exceeding noise levels I’d want to have a proper measurement done because every dB costs fortune. You can’t have uncertainty because it will cost money. I wouldn’t pay a penny without proper noise survey done by a professional.
In terms of taking outdoor measurements with phones. Outdoor measurements are affected by wind. Wind blowing in microphone diaphragm shows highly overestimated values. You have to use windshields.You can’t put a windshield on a phone microphone. Additionally any measurements that are done with the wind exceeding ( from what I can recall) 7 m/s are invalid. You can’t measure the wind speed with phone and send this data to blockchain.
As for recording sound files. These kind of sound files need to be send to a server and stored and analyzed by a person. You can’t store a sound file in the blockchain. So you need specialist that analyses recording + server with storage – the whole concept of decentralized app is now dead.
Additional thing is that a person who writes app needs to be an audio expert and software developer in order to know what data they want to measure and how Additionally there are different standards for different countries (EU is fairly consistent, but Scandinavia or the US have different standards therefore they use different periods of noise measurements. All this must be a common knowledge to a software developer.
In noise monitoring the periods of measurements are hours or sometimes days. People cannot do it on their own with mobile phone. I can’t imagine anyone standing in winter for 6h just for the fun of taking noise measurements. That’s why there are special measuring stations with batteries that can last weeks. But their intention is to acquire data to analyze – not penalize anyone straightaway with a fine.
3. Scalability.
Knowing that we cannot rely on readings from smartphones I don’t see how this project can be scaled and applied to mass market. The noise monitoring market is not that big and it’s perspective of growing is also questionable.
4. Finances:
You ask me what is my ‘feeling’ about the size of the market? My feeling might be $50m or $250m but it’s still my feeling not fact based on a market research. I am not a noise consultant and I do not lead a noise consultancy so I haven’t done the market research, but as you want to start this kind of company and you put proposal for the DAO to consider you should have checked the market properly.
There are no hard facts about how were those assumptions made ( $100m market). It seems like a gut feeling – which is just ridiculous to present a proposal to investors without a proper market research. Unfortunately I wouldn’t trust those assumptions as from what I can tell no acoustic consultant/ expert or even a person remotely connected to noise monitoring field was involved in creating this proposal.
Phase 3 clearly shows lack of knowledge of acoustic market – if this money was spent in a proposed way it would not bring customers/ revenue.
“Decibel.LIVE will be most affordable noise monitoring solution in the market. “ My question is how much will be the cost to the end customer? Who will pay for the constant readings? Customers? Why would they want to pay $30 every day ?
What about the costs of app maintenance ? Any support for the customers, helpdesk etc.?
Unfortunately what is clear is the expected cost for the DAO to pay for specification services and coordination of project. I would expect technical data and complete solid financial breakdown of the project to be included in the proposal prior to DAO investment and not in specification document after we have spent money and paid for that.
What are the costs of coordinating project – what’s your role in this? How would you asses that for example a person is suitable to be a software developer for this project? If by any chance DAO investors should vote for a sub-contractor why would we pay you for this service if we would do it on our own? I do not see the value in spending $2500 for coordination by not an expert in the field.
5. Summary
a) The business model is wrong
b) There is lack of technical knowledge and acoustic expertize ( which results in wrong conclusions of what’s possible)
c) There is no knowledge of the market and the mechanisms that governs it ( potential customers or ways of promoting the project) .
d) There are missed things like software maintenance
e) There is no phase where with the cost of end product to develop – only proof of concept !
f) There problem with scalability and mass market adoption.
g) The system is partially centralized due to server storage of files with sound recordings.
h) That’s a bad PR project !
Additionally the most important fact is that this project is basically an automated fining system (automated punishment). This is bad for PR of the DAO to start with such project!
Think about Elon Musk who started TESLA. Tesla is a product people desire – decibel.LIVE on the other hand product everyone would despise and would like to avoid.
So it’s a niche project that will most definitely fail because of wrong assumptions that promotes automated punishment and cannot be adopted by a mass market and it’s partially centralized and needs constant attention of data analysts.
6. My constructive advice
I will not vote to invest in this company but what you can do if your intentions are honest and you want to start such company you should pitch professional noise monitoring equipment manufacturers (the one that were mentioned at the end of proposal) in order to sell them or license the software so they can use it - if you can develop such software. If you can convince them to use your software for automation of paying fines during proper noise measurement surveys with professional gear that’s great and you have business that’s small but for a 3 person company probably enough. And more important you need acoustic expert in your company (and I am not volunteering).
I wish you luck!
The DAO