May 26, 2020
Terebinth is a company that produces computer-driven simulations.
Aerospace, microbiology, economic-systems analysis... There are many applications that value effective simulation in billions of dollars. While the domain specialization varies, the methodology for exploiting calculations over mathematical formalisms efficiently, and turning computational results into human-assimilable form remain constant, and this is the core comptency (aspired to) of the company.
The Major Product of Terebinth is Computer Simulation Software Development as a Service, Platform, Framework, Culture, and Knowledge-Base -- this project/product also called Terebinth.
Terebinth is Targeted at Specefic Select Clientele in Industrial, Academic, and Government Settings.
Aerospace in particular is perhaps the most prized target, but across domains as diverse as environmental sciences, urban-planning, health care, and various research laboratories increasingly rely on computational simulation for va
There's a Company called Terebinth, which is the Subject of this Business Plan, as it is the Entity which we plan to Develop. The Purpose-in-life of this entity is development of computer simulation applications, of world-leading quality. The name for this project is Terebinth also. We then therefore Terebinth the company, and eponymously, Terebinth the Project, the Product (as a Service, Framework, Competency-set, Consultancy). Kind of psychedelic, the naming being the same like that.
Peregrine is the Minor Product of Terebinth, but for the initial phase of company growth it is the main focus of all efforts.
Then, aside from the Terebinths, we have Peregrine, which is the product and project which will form the core activity of Terebinth. Peregrine is a computer game with some artistic or literary pretensions, which are mostly irrelevant; however, the core of Peregrine is simulation, and therefore it is Peregrine and its development that allows us to cultivate the expertise and tooling material for Terebinth the project, which again, is simulation writ large, generally applicable, for the business of Terebinth the company, again, is simulation application particularly applied to a specific use-case, domain, problem, etc.
Terebinth the company will sell Terebinth the Product/Service/Consultancy oriented around simulation of various natural and technical complex phenomena. These will be industrial, government, maybe academic settings, under a variety of technical domains.
No small matter, achieving the competency as an enterprise, at scale, in quantity and quality sufficient to undertake high-end projects at speed.
The vehicle for this acquisition and cultivation of talent is Peregrine, an open source flight-simulator game. The full development of Peregrine is expected to take 3-5 years, at which point Terebinth will be in a position to take on simulation projects from clientele given acquisition of relevant domain specialist partners.
Peregrine is not intended to be a revenue-generating product. It will cultivate a specialized market, and more crucially it will draw both technical interest and top talent to the team. There may be some way to leverage the market ultimately, but that's not the goal.
Terebinth the product is the main revenue engine for the Terebinth the company.
Peregrine is the product and project which cultivates the skills in the team, and draws new talent to the team. Underlying Peregrine is the simulation engine, pattern, and framework forming the basis for Terebinth.
Peregrine is open-source. The reasons for this are manifold. It's not about virtue-signaling or charity or anything like that. The work in simulation never ends, so if we can draw public contributions like Linux then that will help us build the system we want. Likewise, if it is open-source it's much easier to hire the very best talent -- typically, great engineers very much appreciate having their contributions visible. What we may lose in revenue we more than make up in market growth. What we may lose in proprietary patterns we more than make up for in public contributions and the quality differential in our hiring prospects. Ultimately, a person perusing Peregrine will not know too much about a particular client's particular customized application of Terebinth. Perusing the code of Peregrine will give a good sense of the basic foundations of Terebinth, but will not be identical, and the application to a particular domain (e.g. simulation of molecular chemistry of some biological agent) will always be fresh, new, customized to that given situation, the hardware available, and other factors of circumstance; we will always be striving to optimize performance on an application leveraging everything available at that moment.
Terebinth is very much closed-source. More than that however, Terebinth is not a static piece of code. It's the aggregated best of all the knowledge we as a company have about simulation, and given domain application approaches. The cream of Peregrine rises to form Terebinth, and the proven best-practices of Terebinth that need not remain privileged can be incorporated into Peregrine. Though I would expect that it will continue to be the case that successful experiments in Peregrine will continue to find their way to Terebinth. This is because of the complex nature of online gaming, one can learn much about network implementation and other things in the process of running distributed online gaming, distributed computation, etc.
Instead of working with timelines, let's work with conditional triggers, and then we can add timeline estimates,
At this point, Peregrine has grown through three major versions and dominates the niche combat flight simulator market as the best, most realistic, etc. Advance features associated with professional usage such as so-called "dynamic campaigns" are so well implemented that Terebinth starts receiving interested calls from prospective clients in such industries as aerospace.
Peregrine has achieved second major version. The engineering team is mature and still growing. Terebinth has scaled well. Still hiring. We have a large user base in Peregrine, have multi-player working, distributed computation working.
Peregrine has achieved first version stable. Is this
Establishing context, logistics, legal framework, budget. I will like to work lightweight, from home-offices. I will likely seek to travel for contact with prospects and a globally distributed team.
My first steps as CEO will be research, composing Peregrine initial product requirements, and talking with engineers. I will be looking to hire a very particular breed, likely difficult to find by normal channels. The financial logistics will likely be contract free-lance in many cases. I'm not just going to hire people who look good on paper. I'm going to have specific things I want implemented, I'm going to attach lucrative bounties to them, and thus I will attract the greatest engineers to their fortune and most exciting project ever.
My guess-timate of our likelihood of success is 69%; that this score is so high is mostly due to how I rate my own idiosyncratic intellectual makeup. I consider myself uniquely suited in holistic analytical sensibilities -- to the captaincy of this simulation problem.
This prospect is appropriate for an investor that wants a high-risk high-payoff bet on technological dominance. I would suggest they reserve ~$50 million to the project for a 3-5 year period, though requisition of that would depend... for example, if I cannot find enough suitable engineers to hire, the project might proceed on a lower metabolic rate, with lower costs, and slower results. The cost of an engineer depends on everything particular about their situation and ours, so it's pointless to try estimating this.
I don't expect to hire conventional office space. We will work from homes and have shared spaces. There will be minimal staff. We may need to hire some lawyers and accountants, but not in-house. My vision is to build an engineering A-Team out of contractors. Real contractors, freelancers. There will be costs associated with flight, travel, hotels, hostels, rental cars, maybe even company cars, like for mobile office situation. There will be some equipment costs, computers and graphics cards. The first year could be under a million or if things go really well with team-growth it could be upwards maybe to $5 million, possibly.
Overall I would suggest budgeting $50 million. Generally not questioning my judgement on spending would be good, but I don't need it all sitting in an account ;), and likely will be happy to talk about budget at least bi-weekly.
If you are a potential investor for this project and would like to know how to get started, just email and call to contact me. I guess the next step would be like meetings and lawyers and accountants and stuff, then I can get started.
wylie at terebinth dot is
I have lots more specific notes on Peregrine ideas in particular, this is just kind of condensed version for prospective investors idea, obviously not polished.