For-Profit Regulation

The Europeans’ latest insufferable maneuver, GDPR, forced 10s of 1000s of tech companies to scramble toward “compliance” in mere weeks.

at Fomo we published a 20 page DPA and modified our T&C to stay in the clear.

some media companies, advertising platforms, and social networks even shut down European access completely.

the winners? lawyers.

and me.

when life gives you lemons

i acquire companies through 3 investment vehicles:

1. Fomo (competitor add-ons, UGC content)
2. mkay holdings (ecommerce apps)
3. Fork Equity (small businesses, SaaS)

real estate agents claim the best deals fit one of the Three D’s:

divorce, debt, or death.

the same goes for startups, but today i’ll add a 4th: Regulation.

my old boss says businesses buy things to make money, save money, or stay out of jail. for these reasons my partners at Fork decided to turn the GDPR situation into a profit center.

we acquired a cookie consent plugin.

introducing Cookie Assistant

founded awhile back by a Slovenian developer, who also runs a successful SEO company, i discovered Cookie Assistant in April 2018.

after exchanging a few emails we acquired the tool, which organically gets 3-5 freemium signups per day.

redesign

here’s how it looked when we bought it:

and here’s an early glimpse of our progress:

marketing

i know nothing about the law or this tool’s competitors.

time for a SWOT analysis.

key learnings:

• Cookie Assistant should target ops folks at US-based companies w/ 20%+ pageviews in EU
• Cookie Assistant onboarding should begin with the theme editor, possibly on a logged out page
• Cookie assistant should have an annual plan

priorities:

1. Design (90% done)
2. Geotargeting (0% done)
3. Pricing (in progress)
4. Compliance controls (0% done)

roadmap

with these insights, a Trello board was born.

what’s next

businesses are either “build and sell” or “hold forever” opportunities.

for us, Cookie Assistant will be a forever-hold. passive income is more interesting than re-selling it to a bigger company or another micro PE firm.

in the coming months we’ll improve the stats, theme builder, and post-consent options, to give both businesses and their website visitors more control over compliance and privacy.

cheers to regulation, and cheers to profiting from it.