[kjksf]

How does that actually work? Do lawyers get names and addresses of potential jurors in advance? How much in advance? Assuming they do, what exactly do you do with that information?

Let's say the juror is "Joe Smith from Alabama". What is the probability that:

1. he has a twitter account

2. he provided his full name in the account

3. Which of the following accounts belong to that particular Joe Smith: https://twitter.com/search?f=users&q=joe%20smith ?

What other "social media" data can you provide? Facebook? (it's mostly private and not available for low-grade stalking). Tinder?

What is your addressable market? How many jury selections there are in US where "millions are on the line"? And if there really are "millions on the line", can't they afford $250/hr jury consultant?

How did you validate your idea? How many attorneys at small companies did you talk to? What is the "incredible value" of attorney knowing twitter posts of a potential juror?

[ratliffchrisb]

They actually get a decent amount of information, the shortest time frame would be a few days, usually a week or more.

A sample of information, just what I remember, I'm not looking at the list.

Name

age

education

limited previous legal experiences

Address

Employer and length of time with employer

members of household with relation and age

Criminal history, down to parking records, doesn't come with the juror info sheet, but is usually easily accessible by attorneys.

Even simple things that can be grabbed from facebook/twitter/anything would be useful. Often the halo effect or a person trying to get out of jury duty cause some degree of deception. Anything that can verify what they said in court is valuable. A jury could consist of as few as 6 people, finding that one of them is biased against you and you can strike them is great. The smallest thing can mean a great deal. Say under their favorite books they list civil disobedience, you could easily strike them from a case where one side may be some sort of conscientious objector.

True, if there are millions on the line the attorney would probably hire a consultant, but in that case I think a consultants job would still be easier with my tool than without it and should result in a sale for me, just from the consultant instead of the attorney.

As far as market, not much like this exists, but it is being asked for. There are roughly 80,000 trials per year in the US, a prosecution and defense for each, so 160,000 opportunities. This also makes it such that there are 800,000 potential jurors per year. Some pricing structures I think are reasonable could result in a revenue of under one billion per year.

I'll be honest I've not talked with many people, > 10, but the reactions I received from those I've talked to has convinced me. I've talked to a few civil and criminal lawyers, both public servants and private firms and the feedback is usually ecstatic. "incredible value" might be my words, but "invaluable" was what one lawyer kept saying. Further validation comes from a rudimentary and necessary building block of this, note taking electronically during jury selection, is immature to the point it almost doesn't exist was something I was approached by attorneys to create. The data mining and giving suggestions just seemed like a natural evolution, which so far has been received well.

I know I won't be able to provide everything on every potential juror, but if I'm consistently striking one I'm showing value. And with a pool of > 200 people I'm sure there's someone that I can dig up dirt on.

[ratliffchrisb]

Some added notes. Attorneys already look up juror's facebooks/twitters/etc if they can. I would just be helping them use that data. I would try to automate as much as possible, but even if I can't there is still plenty of data to look at.

Also, I've not really explored this avenue much, but any information brought up in this investigation or given to attorneys becomes a matter of public record. It seems like there would be a great deal you could do with that, but I'm not really into the personal data selling thing.

[CyberFonic]

The numbers you present do not make sense. 80,000 trials would mean 960,000 jurors selected, which would suggest at least 2M potential jurors. So how how does that mean $1B? In the early days, you would be lucky to get 1%-2% of the trials.

Realistically, you might need to create a MVP with lots of manual processing to test the market. Or, find a VC who will believe your projections.

[ratliffchrisb]

You're right, I left off a zero, 8 million people report for jury duty a year. Each potential juror is often researched by more than 4 attorneys. At $25 per juror researched you end up around a billion dollars. $25 per juror is what many attorneys pay for a criminal record check already, so this is a pricing model they are familiar with and I think if the product provides as much information as I believe it can the value could meet or exceed the value of a criminal check. A criminal record might be more indicative of a bad juror, but so few people have them compared to the number of people with other data sources I think the expected value of information evens out.

And this is just the States, there are other countries that use similar systems for jury selection.

I agree I won't make that until there is a mature product, but the question was addressable market, not expected year 1 revenue.

The mvp I'm working on now allows the sharing of information about jurors. This should allow me to gather data on how jurors vote tat can be marketed while still making profit off the sharing app alone.

[CyberFonic]

Your answers to this and other comments are very good. You give the impression that you have done a lot of research already. If you haven't already come across Steve Blank's work take a look at "The Four Steps to the Epiphany".

Since it is such a huge potential market, it might be a good idea to work on getting VC funding. The only caveat being, avoid "free" anything. Very hard to convert to paying down the track. You could give early users the option of investing and getting a chunk of discounted juror research for their money as well as equity. Since you are already in contact with lawyers you should be able to find some professional advice, etc.

[ratliffchrisb]

I would really like to talk to some VC's, unfortunately I'm based in the Midwest, it might as well be the majove as far as funding goes or so I understand. So I'm trying to get a sizable MVP and traction before spending time talking to people. No one will talk to you unless you already have the product launched with users here. Where I'm at the Ben and Jerry's model almost makes more sense because by the time you can get funding you almost don't need it anymore.

On the flip side, where I'm located the 120k from yc seed money would be a year's runway for me and a cofounder or two. That and there is more talent here than people think, or at least more good devs looking for work than hiring.

If anyone has some contacts or VCs want to get in contact with me take my username at Gmail to talk.

[GaryLivingston]

Hmm. Get some insight about the cities around you...

Request the Startup Ecosystem Report from here:

http://startup-ecosystem.compass.co/ser2015/

Great research. Interesting notes about Chicago in there.