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Mercaldo told us,
"We not only have immediate goals,
we have a long term game plan and an exit
strategy. The latter involves selling our
national/international network of pure
City.com brands, along with highly developed
quality generic brands, to a major media
company. A company that desires the footprint
of quality traffic we bring to the table,
along with the highly desirous loyalty that
pure City.com brands possess." Mercaldo
added, "Think about a City.com for a
moment - so much history and branding has already
been done; combined |
|
with the pride of
living in a City, and the name recognition
- simply add the .com and you have a brand
that has a huge head start over any other
competing site."
Mercaldo
said his original exit strategy was to target
traditional major media operators - the
Hearsts, Gannetts and Rupert Murdoch’s of
the world, however in recent years that has changed. "In the past four years we've
seen the birth of so many “new media”
corporations that one of these newly formed
entities may ultimately become our
partner/owner," Mercaldo said, noting
"Many of them are well financed and
staffed with experienced and successful
executives from other major industries,
allowing them to take full advantage of the
way the world operates and gets its news.
Daily papers will soon be gone, and I
am very impressed with the many visionaries
that are entering the “new media” and
digital space."
Mercaldo
added "I also believe our endeavor is a
major milestone and tipping point for
the geo domain industry. If we can establish
and succeed at our game plan, values will be validated,
solidified, and even greatly enhanced by the
cash flow. This is an important project that
must succeed."
|
Toward that
end Mercaldo and his partners are
entering a third round of funding (one
they expect to be the final round) and
they are doing it in a thoroughly modern
way, having engaged business crowd
funding firm Fundable.com
to help CitiesPlanet reach its goal of
raising $500,000 in exchange for 25%
equity in the company (Mercaldo said
$150,000 of that has |
|
|
already
been committed). Fundable has helped
businesses raise over $100,000,000
in the past 12-18 months and they have a
database of 22,000 accredited
investors who look at their deals.
You can go to https://www.fundable.com/CitiesPlanet
to see the CitiesPlanet profile and
Business Plan (in order to view the
entire Business Plan, you must first
register as an accredited investor, a
process that typically takes just a
couple of minutes). |
Mercaldo
said, "The crowd funding world is
growing up and Fundable’s sweet spot is
companies that have been around for a couple
years, have clients, traction and revenue, and
have a worth between $2 million to $10
million. The minimum investment is $20,000,
so this is not your typical $25 Kickstarter
deal, but it is Kickstarter on steroids,
with and money in exchange for actual
equity."
|
|
Mercaldo
believes CitiesPlanet is one of the
better deals on Fundable, pointing out
that Tallwave appraised the company at
$3.1 million last year. Mercaldo
said, "We are making this offering
available at a valuation of $2
million in order to close it out as
quickly as possible so we can proceed
and execute our game plan. These funds
will allow us to finish and launch our
new City.com platform, convert all
existing sites, launch a generic
platform for the many sites waiting to
utilize CitiesPlanet, and hire the
proper marketing team." |
Mercaldo
himself is all in. "It has taken
four years and well over a million dollars to
get this far and I have personally not drawn a
penny in compensation. We also have well over
$600,000 of our own funds in the project.
I am confidant that between all of the
Fundable.com investors, combined with my inner
circle, we will get this done and we look
forward to making the CitiesPlanet network
one of the most profitable, relevant, highly
trafficked, and successful aggregation of geo
domain and high quality generics in the world" |
