executive summary oct2011

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WWW.FAIROBSERVER.COM

Executive Summary For Prospective Investors

October, 2011

The contents of this document represent the confidential and proprietary information of Fair Observer, LLC (the “Company”),

are to be used solely by the recipient for purposes of evaluating a possible investment in the Company, and may not be

disclosed or disseminated without the Company’s prior written consent. Notwithstanding the foregoing, this notice is not

intended to prevent the recipient from evaluating other investment opportunities, including opportunities with competitors.



Business Proposition Business leaders, policy makers, and thought leaders want to make better decisions amidst a deluge of data.

They need exceptional analysis in an accessible form at a time and manner of their choosing, especially in

these times of economic and political uncertainty. Today’s media is deficient because:

1. It has too little analysis and too much event-driven news.

2. The sparse analysis is invariably ethnocentric, and often partisan.

3. The available analysis is typically divorced from context.

Fair Observer is a multimedia, multidisciplinary, multinational journal that provides analysis of issues, events,

and trends of global significance. We will be the improved 21st century version of The Economist - with

exceptional analysis sourced from a network of experts in diverse disciplines from across the globe.

Representative early contributors have included an American economist from Harvard, an Italian investment

banker from London, and a former chief of India’s foreign intelligence agency. For the recent UN vote on

Palestinian statehood, we had Israelis, Palestinians, and others write on the topic, thus giving a more

complete picture than The New York Times, The Economist, or Al Jazeera English. Unlike other organizations

that are dominated by a single worldview, we provide a plurality of perspectives. We integrate these diverse

insights into concise comprehensive analysis: a 360° view of the world.

Traditional media companies are hemorrhaging cash because they incur huge costs in maintaining staff

writers. In contrast, Fair Observer has low overhead costs because we are creating a global network of

contributors by incentivizing experts and prestigious institutions to share their ideas for influence and

promotion. We are creating a platform that will make it easy for experts to publish with us. These experts

are looking to share their ideas; we give them a platform that will make it easy to publish unique content and

promote their work globally.

We will initially monetize our content through advertising and syndication. Later we will earn revenues

through Fair Observer Intelligence, a business division that will tap our global network of experts to answer

client queries on questions such as the geopolitical risk to entering a market or the macroeconomic

expectations for making an investment. Drivers of these revenue streams are:

1. Advertising: page views and premium advertising rates for a high value audience.

2. Syndication: increasing demand from media organizations shrinking their foreign bureaus in an age

of globalization combined with our ability to supply that demand because of growing content.

3. Intelligence: demand from large sophisticated investors and corporations for detailed insights to

make better decisions regarding large scale investments, transactions and projects.

Our content sourcing model is inspired by the profitable contributor-content models of young media

companies like Seeking Alpha and Business Insider. Like these young companies, we rely on contributors.

Unlike these companies or any other existing player, we have cast our net globally and across disciplines. In

doing so, we draw knowledge out of silos and create a global platform for ideas, insights and analysis.

Already, Fair Observer has become a platform of repute and is steadily building momentum. New experts

and institutions are signing up to be contributors on a daily basis: we get ten to fifteen queries about

publication opportunities per day. We have established relationships with young and established experts at

leading universities, think tanks, and business organizations around the world to ensure a regular flow of high

quality content: not only articles but also presentations, photo features, and other multimedia content.



Fair Observer is accelerating the distribution of this content through partnerships and extensive promotion

through social media. The viral effect of contributors and readers sharing published content with their own

networks has led to rapid development of a global audience of sophistication and influence. Additionally we

are creating brand awareness by in-person attendance at prestigious events such as the annual meetings of

the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, Washington Ideas Forum, and Global Social

Business Summit.

Moving forward Fair Observer aims to raise $3.5 million for two years of operations during which we will

expand our team to edit the growing inflow of content, build a robust multimedia platform, develop an

innovative content and expert management system, and build a company that sets the gold standard for

content making sense of the world.

Team Atul Singh, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, completed a triple major in Entrepreneurship, Finance, and

Strategy in his Wharton MBA. He was a corporate lawyer in London and a Radhakrishnan scholar at

Oxford who studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and debated at the Oxford Union. Before

Oxford, Atul led special operations in India in the rugged frontier regions of Kashmir and Nagaland.

Fabian Neuen, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, graduated from the WHU in Germany,

completed an INSEAD MBA and was one of Siemens’ Global Top Talents and one of its youngest

managers in Siemens’ history. He has deep experience in India and China, has lived and worked in all

continents except Australia, and has experience in both consulting and investment banking.

Glenn Carle, Chief of Fair Observer Intelligence, is a former CIA officer who retired as Deputy National

Intelligence Officer. Educated at Harvard, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Grenoble

and the Institut d'Etudes politiques de Paris, he is the author of The Interrogator: An Education and

has been extensively covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe,

the BBC, The Economist and other media outlets.

Stefan Brathwaite, Chief Strategy Officer, has worked as a U.S. presidential campaign and public

affairs adviser and now organizes Fair Observer’s global strategic partnerships. Educated at Brown

and The George Washington Law School, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and the Duke Law

School-University of Geneva Transnational Law Institute, he has worked for Swiss, French and

American international law firms.

Matthew Owens, Product Manager, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Integrated

Product Design Master’s program. He oversees the roadmap and development for the Fair Observer

web portal. Matt has worked with the founding teams of Gratio Capital, Agile Sciences, and Innova

Materials and also in management consulting as an Associate at Stax, Inc. in Boston.

Extended team members include Professor Leonardo Vivas, fellow at the Kennedy School of

Government at Harvard, Felipe Machado in Brazil, a writer, film maker and Director of Digital Media

at one of Brazil’s most prestigious newspapers, and Andrea Berchowitz, a former McKinsey

consultant now pursuing her Master’s at Columbia University.



Achievements Over the past few months, Fair Observer has gained momentum:

Opened two offices - in Washington, DC and Munich.

Added 10 members to our core team and 20 editorial and marketing volunteers around the world.

Published contributions from over 200 contributors originating in over 30 countries.

Established a regular stream of incoming content: 5-10 submissions daily.

Attained traffic to website from more than 140 countries and over 8,000 unique visitors a month.

Formed partnerships with over 30 prestigious organizations worldwide such as

Knowledge@Wharton, Vodafone Foundation Germany, and The United Service Institution of India.

High Level Financials Fair Observer should break even by mid-2014, within ten quarters of funding. Within five years, we project

revenues of approximately $23 million across our three channels: advertising, content syndication, and Fair

Observer Intelligence. In the same period, we project over $10M in EBIT. Details of our financial projections

are available upon request and a summary is provided below.

Projected P & L by Year

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Total Sales

$ - $ 503,882 $ 1,962,213 $ 8,763,674 $ 17,861,979 $ 22,893,371

Total COGS

$ - $ 607,422 $ 1,180,237 $ 3,093,993 $ 4,980,011 $ 6,503,582

Operating Exp.

$ 92,000 $ 1,201,469 $ 1,939,413 $ 2,907,773 $ 3,200,582 $ 3,863,104

Operating Profit

$ (92,000) $ (1,318,686) $ (1,282,546) $ 2,268,947 $ 8,767,546 $ 11,198,726

executive summary oct2011

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