Chat applications represent some of the fastest growing digital properties in the world - messaging apps are the platform of the future. Snap, which is a company not making any money yet, is now worth more than Delta, Target, CBS, Activision Blizzard, eBay, General Mills, Marriott and 378 of the companies in the S&P 500. With the rise of messaging apps and bots, the way we use social media throughout the world to share and interact is fundamentally changing. Social media is transitioning from one-to-many communication towards one-to-one communication. Most social activity in 2017 and beyond will no longer occur in public, it will instead continue to transition to private groups and messaging apps. This represents a significant shift in social media from the timelines and news feeds typified by Facebook and Twitter to one-to-one messaging beginning to dominate social media. In 2015 messaging apps surpassed social networks in terms of monthly actives users and the gap continues to widen.

US Patent # 14726318 (Pending and Awaiting Review, Submitted May 29th, 2015)

“System and Method for Multi-Lingual Networking and Communications”

Patent Summary: Sending a message in one language to multiple recipients simultaneously, each of which would receive the message instantly in their own language. Replies in turn would also automatically and instantly be translated to all other recipient’s individual languages.

The patent additionally details global filtering capabilities allowing a user to search all other members of the network worldwide based on age, gender, relationship status, career, education, language, location, political views, religion, hobbies and interests.

GlobeChat is most closely aligned with chat messaging applications WhatsApp (USA $41B Valuation), WeChat (China $83B Valuation) and LINE (Korea $9B Valuation). The explosive growth and expansion of these competitors is fueling and propelling the growth of the messaging marketplace as a whole and we are simply riding the wave. We celebrate the success and growth of our competitors as we know a competitor today could very well be our acquiring company tomorrow. We are new and there is still plenty of space for us to individually grow within our own unique niche before we start stepping on any toes, so our immediate focus is dedicated to our own success.

According to Blake Cahill, Global Head of Digital Marketing & Media at Royal Philips: "...In 2015, mobile phone messaging apps were used by 1.4B consumers and eMarketer predicts that, by 2018, the number of chat app users worldwide will reach 2B, representing 80% of smartphone users worldwide. In a nutshell, it’s only a matter of time before everyone and their granny, in practically every country on the planet, are using IM... The future of commerce and customer service could well be a hybrid of IM as it steadily becomes our primary way to interact with companies, buy things, provide service and build loyalty. As the big players (and the many smaller innovators) continue to expand and develop the platforms’ potential, it’s safe to say we’re only at the beginning of what looks to be a long and interesting road."

What makes GlobeChat different from WhatsApp, WeChat, Line and all the other larger chat messaging platforms is that we are the first to truly connect the dots globally between countries and cultures as opposed to isolated social pods. Our patent pending multi-lingual simultaneous chat translation feature and our innovative global filtering capability make us highly unique. And now, we simply need to grow.

SnapChat's Founder Evan Spiegel now has a higher net worth than Richard Branson and twice that of Oprah Winfrey. Plain and simple... the upside in chat messaging is massive. Imagine having the opportunity to have invested early in Facebook or Snapchat. There will always be risks associated with investing in startups. That being said, how often do you have an opportunity to invest in companies with this amount of potential prior to an IPO?

Travel is my passion. I love meeting new people, learning about foreign cultures, visiting historical sites and seeing the world through the eyes of other people. When traveling, it was extremely frustrating to not have the ability to simply meet locals and communicate. And, for those I did meet while traveling, keeping in contact when returning home to the United States was virtually impossible. I wanted to create a platform that simply allowed the ability to easily communicate with anyone in the world.

I got started designing the platform back in 2011. I diagrammed on paper what the network might look like to and how it would function. My first question was, “How do I make this as easy for the user as possible, where they won’t have to think about anything other than simply sending their message?”

Since I had spent 15 years working at a Fortune 500 telecommunications company, I didn’t have experience with startups, so I started a search for programmers and developers to bring the idea to reality. It was definitely a learning process along the way, and the company had to reset a couple times before it finally grew roots. On August 1, 2014, I received a message on LinkedIn from Neal Gupta, the Founder of KiwiTech, “Kevin, it would be good to connect with you on LinkedIn. Your company looks innovative. I am part of an entrepreneurial team that sold our first company for $144 million in 2012. We are now actively investing in and partnering with technology startups. Neal“. Two weeks and a several phone conversations later I flew to San Francisco to meet their CFO, CTO and EVP for lunch at Delancey Street Restaurant. The meeting went extremely well and the partnership has continued to flourish and grow over the years.

The leaders in the language translation space are Google and Bing and we currently utilize the Bing Translate API and layer on top our multilingual simultaneous translation software. The translations are much better between some languages while with others syntax, slang and cultural differences make communication understandable even if the wording is not always in perfect order. Google is working on near human ability to translate through machine learning and the translation accuracy continues to evolve and improve. As these services improve, we will also improve, but for now we are as accurate as we can possibly be at this point in time.

Two advantages for GlobeChat: First, we are primarily a short messaging service and the accuracy of short messages by default is substantially higher than messages sent in full sentences or paragraph format; Second, we have incorporated auto-spell check for all 41 languages we support to ensure words are spelled correctly and translate properly.

It's not what we understand that they don't. They're in the right space, we're in the right space. The market is wide open and growing for all, both big and small. What we've done is taken the best elements of what they do, combined them together, then added a mapping feature and a patent pending multilingual simultaneous translation engine. We've also included in our intellectual property the ability to search people anywhere on the planet based on thousands of specific filters. Our users have the ability to literally say for example, "I want to search every single female in the world between 28 and 44, who speaks Spanish, likes to travel, enjoys wine, classical music, romantic comedies, yoga and works as a nurse.” When you hit enter, our app filter searches everyone on the planet that fits within that description, with all results showing on a grid or map of the world. The searches can be very general or very specific and provides the ability to search and connect globally based on commonalities.

In the past, there has been a negative impression towards a company for choosing to go down the crowdfunding path. The perception was that you only crowdfund if have been unsuccessful in going down other more traditional paths with Angels and VCs to obtain funding. It was the same impression people had initially of online dating. People were embarrassed to admit going on dating sites as it would raise a red flag and alert people that they had been unsuccessful in meeting actual people in the real world. Once people realized the convenience, effectiveness and time saving factors involved with online dating it became culturally acceptable. Why spend four hours on a date with a single person only to realize you have nothing in common when you can spend the same four hours looking at hundreds of profiles to pre-screen for potentially perfect matches. Crowdfunding is now turning the same corner as it allows a company a much wider reach to obtain funding, while at the same time expanding the visibility for a company. Instead of meeting with a small handful of Angels and VCs in a week, a company now has the ability to be viewed by thousands of potential investors in that same time period. Crowdfunding is a very powerful tool for companies that want to spend less time meeting Angels and VCs and more time dedicated to growth and success of the business.