Subject: Snowflake Update
From: "Neil Callahan" <[email-masked]>
To: "'Chris Heinz'" <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>, "'Eric Schwerin'" <[email-masked]>, "'Hunter Biden'" <[email-masked]>, "'Marc X. LoPresti'" <[email-masked]>, "'Rob Mitchell'" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:56:18 -0400

Hi guys,

I just wanted to give you all and update on where we stand on Snowflake
after a fairly eventful week.

a.       Bottom line:

- We are not embarking on any product development at this time.  We have
everything we need and it will be improved incrementally over time (I.e.,
additional languages).  Some our initial assumptions about capital approach
are intact.

- The recommendation is that we should do any live trading at this time-
just synthetic trading.  The information they can produce is very far away
from being useful to us and a startup/novice trader, but should be to an
established player who will be using our information as one ingredient to
their decision making process.  Also the concern is that if we have a trade
on, we'll look at it / worry about it each day (as we should) where the core
effort now is to engage the market and learn from it while we generate cash.
We should have a chat about this and discuss what we think here as a group.

- We will start with a reporting product/offering: 

A 3 step "product/report":  a 12-16 week engagement where we will charge all
costs (labor, etc.) plus a margin.  My gut is 250-350k a pop (maybe 500k)

Step 1:  country report - full on elite mapping: 4-6 weeks (English speaking
countries 1st is preferred:  Australia, Canada, US, UK, other Europeans,
maybe India)

Step 2:  Identify 5 - 6 most pressing political issues: 2-3 weeks (i.e.,
Australia's are:  carbon tax, national broadband network and a resource rent
tax)

Step 3:  try and answer any specific question or questions the client wants:
2 - 6 weeks.

We will have Steps 1-3 (us coming up with #3) for Australia in the next 4-6
weeks.

b.      Our initial Target Segments:

Tier 1:  Proprietary Investors, Hedge Funds, SWFs

Tier 2:  Corporations, Re-Insurance

c.    Target Topics where we can be helpful:

Tier 1:  currencies and commodities

Tier 2:  industry's that lobby the most / are regulated the most
(unregulated - low lobbying industries are not questions where we will be
helpful) - so banking, telecom, energy, pharma, healthcare, transportation,
defense.

d.      Vide:

Vide will be a data center at first.  We won't need a standalone Vide data
center and computers / until we sign our 1st paying client.  A Vide data
center will take 6-10 weeks or set up and cost 300k+ to do.  (That is a Vide
cost, not a RSPA cost).  Vide employees will be housed in Virginia
initially, so they won't have a need for Vide only office space in the 6
months +.

e.      Next Steps:

1.        Work to close the term sheet

a.       Chris and Marc - any update here from Thad?  If not, can you follow
up with him on Monday?

2.       Initial Product/Report Development

a.       Curt and Michael will start the process to produce report for
Australia

b.      Likely a 4 week process

3.       Marketing Materials

a.       Reserve website and set up RSA emails

b.      Develop basic website

c.       Develop basic marketing presentation

4.       Pipeline development

a.       Start targeting SWFs, Prop Investors and Hedge Funds for initial
conversations

b.      Start setting up full pitch meetings for November

5.       Market Research

a.       Continue to find competitive reports and other product to assess
and learn from

6.       Office Space

a.       Curt did seem to indicate the need to work out of RSA Office space
as we start to engage clients and do some business development meeting - so
we will need to determine when we would like to take the back space at 1010
W and set that up at RSA.  This would also give CDH and others a permanent
desk to work from in the DC office.

7.       Financial Model Develop

a.       Develop cost+ pricing model for initial product design in tandem
with the development of the Australia report

8.       Communication and Collaboration

a.       Going forward we are going to start to work in smaller teams of 2-3
folks for specifics tasks.

b.      We also are going to keep the information flow on the Vide side to
be managed by Curt and I will continue to update RSP until we get to some
sort of RSA formation.

c.       Please do not send out group wide emails at this point (Vide and
RSP) until we have more clarity around formation

d.      We will be setting up a collaboration tools to manage all of the RSA
documents (a Confluence site), etc

Let me know if you have any questions.

Also attached are some competitive sample reports from your reviews.

Have a great weekend.

Best,

Neil

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------

Neil Callahan

Rosemont Seneca

401 Greenwich Street, Suite 400 | New York NY 10013 | 212-933-9965 |
212-796-4037

1010 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 705 | Washington DC 20007 | 202-333-1880

917-945-9516 (mobile) 

866-749-8879  (fax)