In order to get into the billion dollar club, we would need to get a huge commercial deal with a huge player like amazon or google for communications, and maybe partnership with IBM for surveillance, imho.
I also think that there should, at least initially, be a large event anti-terrorism/ disaster relief solutions arm. Ie, Mandela's memorial, large marathons, sporting events, Olympics, F1 racing, concerts, any disaster with comms disruption. Charge 30-100k per event for a comprehensive aerial surveillance or comms solutions contract.
Why? I feel that it is hard to convince people to BUY something for just one event. Usually there is an event budget for spending at that particular time, and not necessarily a long term cap-ex budget due to the nature of disasters and huge sporting events. By offering a service solution (essentially a rental with a service component), this gets over the purchase scepticism bump, would produce a smooth ramp of continuing cash flow rather than a one time sale, and also offer natural and immediate marketing and visibility. I mean what's better free marketing than a paid gig to fly a blimp over a highly visible or telecast event? Perhaps that is why we need a name that rolls off the tongue and then place that on all components of the blimp to create branding. Rather than earn $60k once off on a $100k sale, why not make $20-50k on a more regular basis with return customers?
In fact, there may be a potential reason why most army contractors sell the need for a solutions personel component - in order to get that constant basal cash-flow. A sale is just a once off pay day, and who knows what tomorrow brings. A rental and service solution grows and provides steady and forecastable income streams. Imo, even for the military/ government sales, wsgi needs to find a way to add that consistent cash flow component. If not a service component, then a "razor blade" sale component. Envelopes that require replacement every year? Whatever...
All I am trying to say is that the more I think about it, there seems to be a difficultly wrapping my mind on how many small (even 10-20 units at a time) sales contracts would allow that basic and long term stability of cash flow neccessary to run and grow the company to the next level. This is especially when wsgi only has a few (currently one, albiet different entities within the one) huge customers rather than a huge base of customers.
This will be also be the challenge that investors will have in trying to figure out what that hopefully continuingly increasing base number is. Firstly, the actual market size has not been established or proven yet, even though as Indy mentions, 3000 platoons could mean an upper limit of a billion bucks. Secondly, if orders comes in bits and trickles of 2 to 30, there is no long term security that there will be more, and on how consistent a basis? There needs to be a leap of faith required currently, where that should really be minimized as much as possible. Even for wsgi's own internal planning. I would really try my darnest to get a huge contract in small payable bits, rather than just small contracts with just a verbal promise to order more!!
Just some musings as wsgi grows and moves forward. I hope that Glenn pursues ways to grow a solutions based long term growth and consistent income strategy with our customers rather than just small one time sales. Am sure he and his team are really smart people but as we grow and go forward, I personally would like to see a solutions based monthly service or yearly replacement component strategy play out somehow.
AI
