Couch Tycoon - CouchTycoon Review

I stumbled upon Couch Tycoon today or I should say CouchTycoon …

The idea behind this venture investment / game-environment website is intriguing.
The idea of making some money sitting on my sofa or getting some tycoons and shareholders interested in my project ideas is promising!

Firstly… This is not one of those hype-it-up reviews with an affiliate link at the bottom.

That being said, lets dig in and see whats under the couch!

What is Couch Tycoon?

CouchTycoon is a ‘Friends n Family’ style Venture Network.
Users can invest in start-ups, objects, projects and companies for as low as $4 and then trade these shares with other users.

What this means for developers is… If you have a project idea or brand new start-up you can get financed and valued right from the very beginning.

What this could mean for investors is… You could be a shareholder in the next big viral web 2.0 company for as little as 4 bucks. In reality you will probably be a shareholder in a little micro-business on the other side of the planet.

How do I try Couch Tycoon?

CouchTycoon is not a game download as it may sound, it’s is currently built over drupal (according to the page source) and you can enter via couchtycoon.net or couchtycoon.com

Signing up is simple enough and at the time of writing this review, CouchTycoon is still a very new project itself and still in Beta so your preferred user-name will be easily snapped up!

Whats your first impression?

When I heard about this idea I actually got quite excited. I am a big fan of online games with real cash economies like Entropia Universe and I play these games in a similar way as an investor might play the shares market, with profit in mind.

I am also someone who keeps an eye on the up and coming start-ups while keeping my other eye firmly focused on my own projects. I could see myself investing and offering up projects for investment.

Couch Tycoon obviously brought up impressions I have of PC games like Casino Tycoon and attitudes I have towards sitting in a comfortable piece of lounge room furniture like my favorite sofa.

When I arrived at www.CouchTycoon.net I thought I was being greeted with a simple 1 2 3 getting started style interface, you know the ones.

The first thing that erk’d me was the “You own” on the top nav bar which actually just showed me one company that the Couch Tycoon community owns. I was expected this to be my portfolio link, or at least a list of small projects I could invest in.

Second thing… “You are the start up investor”… Am I??? If I am clicking a button I want to read the action that I want..
- I want to submit a project
- I want to deposit
- I want to invest
- I want to trade
…but these are just personal erk’s so I’ll try and use ‘YOU’ for my questioning in this post to get over it!

Actually the front page consists mainly of one big ’start’ graphic that leads to sign-up. The language below and around this could use some pruning and simplifying and navigation needs to be clear, simple and consistent.

How does CouchTycoon work?

Well first thing I get presented with is a mini Monopoly board with room for 12 properties only 2 of these are occupied…

1. PotBag
2. Containance Corp
3. Fondfund

The corners and non-property positions on the board are marked with navigation graphics or buttons…

• Start - This is HOME or the Game Board page
• Exchange - Obviously this will take me to the trading room
• Help - Going to have to read this… later
• Bank - Do I get $200 every time I pass go?
• Polls - User opinions maybe? .. on what, I am not sure yet!
• Jail - ???
• Cash Cow Paddock - ???
• Vole Hole - ???

Well I was doing ok until the end there and the icons didn’t do there job in communicating to me so lets do some “dive right in clicking” and leave the Help Page till last… This is how most of us learn a new thing right?

• Start - This is HOME or the Game Board page
• Exchange - Trading Room
  Here I can trade ‘Asset Slips’ with other ’slip-owners’.
  I am guessing this is shares and there are only 3 available, all for Fondfund.
  The lowest price is 58??? (CouchTycoon currency probably)
  
• Help - Click on a question to Expand or Collapse the brief answers.
  I’ll come back here later after I have poked around.
• Bank - Simple enough, 1st option is ‘Cash Out’, 2nd is Deposit.
  This is all powered by PayPal and your deposits are converted into a virtual currency.
  1 Dollar = 12 Couch Chips (CC)
• Polls - 4 questions and 67 votes so far.
• Jail - I must have a ‘get out of jail free’ card, brings me back to the Game Board
• Cash Cow Paddock - I am a little confused here… It looks like the place where I can invest in capital raising projects. There is one project here ‘PotBag’ with 2651 ‘asset slips’ available at 50 CC each. All projects listed in the ‘cash cow paddock’ must sell out by the deadline or all investors get there money back, however the deadlines are not displayed here and the listed project is not click-able.
• Vole Hole - This room looks the same as ‘cash cow paddock’ just a different project listed?

How do you invest?

Clicking on the ‘How To Invest‘ button I find that I really need to click on one of the 3 projects available to understand this.

The only link back to the Game Board is broken so back button and lets now look at 1 of the 3 visible projects:

Fonfund has a nice green UP arrow next to it.
Looks like the original fund raising ‘asset slips’ were sold and the project shares are now tradeable.
“The Fonfund installs and operates its first fon.com hotspot and earns money from “Alien” - users”
..that mean anything to you? Looks like I am headed for the project blog for more info.

The CouchTycoon blog is powered by blogger with the Blogspot nav header still present. For user confidence I personally think its important to have one consistent branding throughout and removing the blogger / blogspot header with its logo is a simple hack.

Ok so Fonfund Ltd is purchasing a wifi hotspot setup from fon.com and installing it in a location with high traffic potential. Nearby users (Aliens) can then purchase access for 3 €/$.

Initial shares where all sold out in two days of listing and only 3 are being traded in the exchange. I did notice that ~80% of these shares were bought buy the project entrepreneur himself and read some hype elsewhere that it sold out in two days of listing. So I am guessing this is a project to help showcase what CouchTycoon can do, this alone re-installs faith in this particular projects success.

So being the compulsive spender that I am, lets head to the exchange and snap up some shares.

Once again I have some trouble getting back from the blog to the game board due to bad links.

How do you by shares?

1. Bank - I’ll need about $5 for one share and $10 for the 2 reasonably priced ones.
2. Paypal Deposit - I deposit $20 because I like the look of Bluehorseshoe’s other project and he is the founder of CouchTycoon as well. Minimum deposit is 120cc or $10.
3. Add $1.13 in Pay pal tax and Fees.
4. Switch the Paypal language from Deutschland to Australien so that everything comes up in Aussie slang for my upside down brain
5. $24.94 AUD later and I now have 240 CouchChips a far cry from 21,850 cc ($1,820 ) that have been spent on Asset Slips during the ICO phases of 3 projects. Do you get the feeling that I am already hooked?

6. Back to the exchange and I buy 1 Fonfund Asset Slip for 55 cc and another for 58 cc remembering that these are being sold from an initial purchase of 50 cc (so someone has just made $1 USD profit and I have just raised the share value)
7. Now I go off to the Vole Hole room to buy shares in the Countainance project (Buying 3 x P&R Cargo Containers for a rental investment). I’ll have to wait till the 1st Jan 2008 at the latest to find out if this project gets off the ground!

8. Resell - For this I click on the “My Asset Slips” button and simply list the 2 Fonfund shares back on the exchange for +10 Couch Credits.

9. I start thinking about a Micro-Business I could list.

10. Can I buy shares in CouchTycoon?
    

Do you really get a share in a real company?

You get virtual shares with the same rights as real shares.

Here is how it works from a real life perspective.

• An entrepreneur pitches a project.
• Users discuss the project.
• CouchTycoon approves the project.
• CouchTycoon lists the project for initial investment.
• If all initial shares are sold in the allotted time CouchTycoon Ltd starts a daughter company and strikes the deal to buy real shares from the real company of the entrepreneur who proposed the project.
• This daughter company holds all the real shares for the fictional shares holders on CouchTycoon.net
• CouchTycoon investors buy virtual shares, trade, vote and cash out for either a loss or profit.
  

What this means in a court room is that you do not have any shares in any company. CouchTycoon is the legal owner of the shares and your playing a game based on the performance of those shares.

Think of it as if as owning shares but they are in someone else’s name, you now need to trust that someone and rely on them to put your shareholder votes forward in their name.

If you sell your virtual shares you can cash out in real money and that trust passes to the new owner.

This places all the trust in one company (CouchTycoon) with daughter companies that have struck deals with the projects initial creator. CouchTycoon are then letting you play with its shares virtually.

CouchTycoon offers you virtual rights equivalent to a real shareholders rights. For every share you get one vote, dividends on profits and the ability to trade your shares.

So once again, from a legal point of view you are playing a game!

Did you understand couchtycoons.net’s unique terminology?

I had to hit the Help pages for some of these, but here is quick heads up:

• Asset Slip = Virtual Share
• Couch Chips = Virtual Currency (12cc = $1usd)
• Mr Idle = The fictional avatar behind CouchTycoon, featured in the logo (logo was created as part of a logosauce.com competition by GraphiteDesign’s - Matthew Coates).
• BlueHorseShoe - This is the avatar of co-founder and CouchTycoon’s CTO, Hans penz
  
• Project = Startup, Venture, Company, Product or Deal - (requiring funding)
• Project Space = Apparently the name of the blog where you describe your project but I don’t find any reference to a ‘Project Space’ anywhere else in Couch Tycoon as they seem to take on there own unique names once created.
• Issuing Couch = Issuing Bank. These are the hosts of each project and the aspect of CouchTycoon that handles your project and de-lists it when Google makes an offer to buy it for 2 Million Dollars. :p
• Vole Hole = This is one of the Issuing Banks that manages all the affairs between an entrepreneur and CouchTycoon.net. Currently handling the shares for Containance.
• Cash Cow Paddock = Another issuing bank, this one handles the shares for PotBag (a professional gambling investment project).
• ICO = IPO (Initial Public Offering). In CouchTycoon this is the first listing of shares at a fixed non-tradeable price.
• Going To Beef Island - A reference to another game “Going to Jerusalem”. At CouchTycoon.net this is used to describe the process of Submitting A Project.

What Obligations does a CouchTycoon Entrepreneur have?

An entrepreneur behind a successfully listed project will be required to:

Publish a yearly shareholder report.

Propose shareholder voting about the listing or de-listing of his project on CouchTycoon.

Propose shareholder voting about the use of the project´s net income for the year.

…and you can expect to see more here eventually.

How does CouchTycoon.net earn its money?

CouchTycoon gets %5 of the total amount raised during a projects successful ICO.
An Issuing Couch also gets %5, these Issuing banks will eventually be run by specialist in each sector.

Are there any successful projects yet?

Fonfund
CouchTycoon’s co-founder has a project that successfully went through the ICO stage and sold all its shares.
That raised $387.50 USD and those same shares are now valued at a total of $449.50
About $70 USD of this came from the players or tycoons.
This project is now being setup and the investors will soon get to decide what to do with any profits.
A good example of how to set up a micro business!

PotBag
Still in the ICO stage, this project has raised $1,425 of its required $12,500 to send a Professional poker player to the EPT Bahamas and share any prize money.
If all the remaining shares are not sold by the 30th Nov 2007 (one week left) all investments will be returned.
This looks like the first User project to make it to the ICO stage and could also be the first to fail!
Well no-one will loose out here, and it shows that CouchTycoon is a good way to see if your ideas can fly.

Containance
Early stages for this one and its look it could be quite profitable over time.
Buying 3 shipping containers from a company that turns around and rents them out for you at a fixed rate over 5 years.

So what do you think of CouchTycoon?

CouchTycoon is a mixed bag of drupal, jstools, blogger, Box.net, Spock, JS-kit and individual project websites. This is a great showcase of what can be done with very little development expense it just needs some tidying up to make it all look unified monster.

The concept behind CouchTycoon is brilliant, they make investing fun and could make it very easy for an entrepreneur to get funding for anything from a small one time $1,000 profit to a Million Dollar Company.

CouchTycoon is still in Beta and at the time of writing this has only 350+ members so any problems I have with is actually feedback which I am sure is already communicated to the team at PIPELINE ventures GmbH.

When this graduates from Beta I think CouchTycoon will have the potential to spread virally a lot of this will depend on the success of the initial startups being offered.

It’s definitely worth a look… My user name is ‘JD’ - send me a message when you get settled.

Problems?

• Interface, language, typesetting could all use a overhaul with more clarity and simplicity in mind.
• Many of the links out from the main interface open on the same page. This means a lot of back peddling to get back to the main game board from the blogger.
• Links from the Blogger to the ‘hotassetslips’ subdomains gave me server 500 errors.
• Found the link to submit content to a forum but could not find the forum. A forum is really what is needed at this stage of the beta testing!
• The process of creating a new project is a little unclear. The User Interface wants me to create content via an in-site form which sends it as a post to the “Going to beef Island” blog page. The FAQ wants me to create a blogger and email admin.
• FAQ could use a fresh update.
• When I go to the “Going To Beef Island” page there is nothing Prominent to tell me where I am.
• The references used in the unique terminology are all over the place and confusing.
• While the Email / Blog style of pitching an idea makes it easy and accessible it lakes any real depth and does nothing to install confidence and security in the investor.
• Things are just a little small and incestuous at the moment…. I will keep an eye on this!
• Security as I have my real money being held in trust.

Final Thoughts?

This has the potential to becoming one of the next Hottest Startups.
Things are just a little small and incestuous at the moment…. I will keep an eye on this but expect it will move slowly for a while yet, until some real success stories hit the news!

Check it out HERE

Tags: CouchTycoon-CouchTycoon.net-CouchTycoon.com-CouchTycoon-Games