A3 – ReciPROcity

Review - ReciPROcity seems like an interesting venture concept. I appreciated the good amount of detail on the content of the business. There was substantial information on the product in which they are going to launch. However, I felt that the pitch was a little light on how this venture is going to be different from its competitors. Also, the deep explanation of the revenue stream is well done but I would like to have seen more information on expansion and growth for the company.

REVIEW: ReciPROcity is definitely a venture that I would confidently invest in. The elevator pitch does an excellent job of identifying several pain points about the lack of expertise in pedagogy and online teaching among faculty as well as the inefficiency and high cost of online course development. You backed up your pain points sing various sources and went on to explain how ReciPROcity is a solution. This is definitely got my attention and motivated me to click on the link and read more. The wix page for the venture has an excellent layout and easy to navigate. You provided thorough detail into what the venture does and how it goes about doing it, as well as developed a strong team. I really liked your blurb on the team page where you listed not only your profession and years of experience but the various stakeholders you have worked with in the past. Good call on teaming up with a tech officer and project manager as programming and project management are skills that are needed for this venture in addition to your educational consulting. All 3 of you look great in the photos, dressed sharply and appearing confident. The price and cost break down was very straightforward which is important for an investor. The only recommendations I would make is to slow down the pace of your elevator pitch, it was difficult for me to follow along because the slide would change while I am in the middle of reading a sentence. On your wix page the orange font on the mountain under News and Publications was also difficult for me to read. Another thing I would have liked to see was identifying your competition and how the venture measures up against it. Other than that, I think overall the pitch was excellent and something I would be confident in investing in ! well done !

REVIEW: I find myself highly motivated to invest in your venture, ReciPROcity, for a number of reasons. Beginning with your elevator pitch, it presented a lot of information in a short period of time. Although the words did seem to move pretty quickly, it encouraged me to give my full attention to the presentation, which was a positive in my case. In your venture pitch, you made great use of the Haiku Deck tool to ask the questions that post-secondary institutions would relate to. The “News and Publications” section brought to my attention just how prevalent the issue of faculty development in online learning is at the post-secondary level today. It is one thing to throw some of the statics out there yourself, but to include a handful of supporting publications from trusted sources, certainly adds an element of legitimacy and credibility to your pitch. Above all, the “For Investors” section provided an in-depth overview of what you expect out of investors at each stage in the game, and what they should expect to see in return for their money. You even went as far as to include separate timelines for each investment phase, which left me feeling more secure in my decision to invest.

I agree whole-heartedly with your first couple of statements... Is the intent to have professors sign up for their own professional development or would universities require their faculty to participate?

FEEDBACK: Hi Kate, your elevator pitch was very informative and packed with information. I also really like the name ReciPROcity, very clever. One thing that did detract from your elevator pitch was the speed at which the words quickly disappeared. I understand it is hard to pack all that good information into 1 minute. Unfortunately I found my focus was mostly on quickly reading the words and I was not able to digest the information at all. I did watch it a couple of more times, which helped me fully understand, but ideally this shouldn't be the case. Again, a great amount of information in it, and once I was able to digest it all, I wasn't left with a lot of questions.

Hi Kate – Your pitch was very informative and definitely had a very professional/polished quality to it. As it is an area of particular interest for me, I am certainly sold on the need that you identify for affordable, robust/comprehensive faculty support in online learning. Your pitch is very effective in highlighting the understandable inclination of faculty to “stick with what they know”. From this perspective, institutions that recognize the pressing need for change, may be quite interested in ReciPROcity’s services, if they do not offer comparable support internally. Overall, for the potential end buyer, I found that all the aspects of your pitch, pricing included, were quite appealing. That said, from an investment perspective, it would be very helpful to provide some additional information. While you point out the differentiation between ReciPROcity’s services and those of a typical higher education IT department, you do not outline the distinction between this venture and the services often offered by centres for teaching and learning at colleges and universities. Are there other commercial firms/agencies currently in business offering these types of services? If not, it would be worth highlighting this fact for potential investors as well. Finally, a marketing plan, along with clarification on the “ask” and the “return” for investors would definitely help to round out the vision that you have presented for ReciPROcity. You must be so pleased to be wrapping up your MET! Whether it is through ReciPROcity or through other endeavors, I think that your materials for this pitch are a sign of great things to come!

Hi Kate, while I haven't heard of mentoring like this and this idea of mentoring an institution is unique, I think you would have a tough time differentiating from a lot of existing college and university programs, like MET, for one. If I, after getting my MET, I went and worked at an Institution that licensed ReciPROcity, I'd feel like it was pretty redundant. Your cost for developing 4 courses is the roughly the same as that of this graduate degree, and I think you'd agree that with a Master of Education Technology, we're very well-equipped to teach courses online. I feel like most institutions, at least at the elementary school level where I work, have enough early adopters to help out their colleagues who are computer-averse. An even tougher differentiation defence would be against OERs. Would an institution want to pay for the monthly subscription when "access to (an) expanded library of learning videos", the "ability to enroll in short topic-based courses", and being a "member of online learning community of other instructors and educational technologists" are all available for free through a Google search anyway? And speaking of Google, your team was so gorgeous I just had to right click "Search Google for Image", which showed me that this image of Brad, for example, is also selling everything from "nail and skin care" to "spiritual awareness for a more fulfilling and inspirational life", so I'm assuming ReciPROcity is on the more fictional side of things at this point.

REVIEW - Kate, this is a great idea. The biggest positives for this venture are that I know it is close to your heart and you would bring a lot of personal experience to its operation. Your commitment and subject matter expertise would be invaluable assets in this venture. Your identification of the problem is also based on keen observation and insights. Your solution is stated clearly. However, I don't believe that the model of engagement you have proposed will engage your audience (i.e. faculty) any differently from the current engagement model offered by institutions internally. The limited success of the existing professional development model for faculty has been its "if you build it they will come" approach. However, we know that "they" do not come because they are not motivated by any external factors to do so. Regardless of how well designed the engagement model and the professional development program may be, it will still enjoy limited success until faculty are deeply externally motivated to buy in to the professional development and implement it. Currently, your model does not offer a solution to the real problem - the lack of motivation of faculty. Even though your service offering seems diverse and offers flexible engagement models, I keep thinking that it is modelled on a "good faith assumption" i.e. faculty actually want to develop in this area. I think the limitations introduced by this assumption are what you need to overcome as you refine this model. Namely: "What can you offer that will increase faculty motivation?" Quality and diversity of professional development services will only provide limited appeal to an audience that doesn't think the product applies to them. Until the motivation question is answered you have a great product with no buyers and as a venture analyst I believe that you need a great product and an audience who sees the value in your product in order to succeed.

FEEDBACK: Good work, Kate! I think your Elevator Pitch does well establishing the problem you want to address with your venture. I agree that this is an issue affecting faculty across North America, but I’m wondering if the pitch could provide more specific context—e.g. is ReciPROcity relevant for faculty at specific types of schools or specific subject fields, or is it relevant across the board? In terms of technical aspects, I’m wondering if a more linear structure would be better for the Venture Pitch. When reading through the site, the reader can find himself/herself clicking “More” or “More Info” in a number of corners of various pages, which can make the information seem a bit maze-like—it’s not always clear how the information is structured overall. I think this is important because your pitch has so much valuable information about the issue it intends to address. Congrats on getting through MET!

It is a very interesting company because, as mention, most teachers are not well versed in technology and its applications. I particularly like that ReciPROcity tests out new technologies for the faculty. With new products being released all the time it is hard to keep up with it all especially if it is not your area of expertise.