MotivatEd – Taking Game-Based Learning to new levels

Review: Starting from the strategic name, your pitch was well planned and executed from beginning to end. Your venture pitch addressed the pain point, provided rationale for the product and emphasized its link to curriculum. Your research was presented in an engaging manner and the graphs were especially effective in displaying projections and research. Showing the growing market and the sharp rise above predictions was motivating as an investor. Your example of the avitar and student page made clear your design. The research of numbers of students potentially included and the potential investments at each participation level was easy to follow and thought provoking. Emphasizing the minimal fee as an educational or individual fee gave more flexibility to your target audience. Providing a clear growth and revenue model increased my confidence in the venture. Your team of experts is highly varied and distinguished. Explaining how you would market, ie. Teachers' Conventions, was an unexpected but valuable addition to your pitch. A student testimonial would be the only element I feel could be added to your pitch, in particular the elevator pitch. Great job.

FEEDBACK: You elevator pitch was to the point and incorporated all the relevant details one would desire when looking a prospective venture. I am unsure of what your target area is for the initial roll out of your idea? Is it just in Canada, your current school district, anywhere that game-centered learning takes place? Your venture offers another assessment strategy for teachers which provides a real value and one that could be used through the entirety of a child's schooling which would definitely be neat to watch transform over a period of time. I am curious if the product would go through some stringent testing phase for to see how viable they were in the classroom and perhaps the game could be rated by teacher's and students so that improvement could be made to make them even better so to ensure a quality product.

Danielle, your elevator pitch is to the point and includes relevant details for a potential investor. The venture pitch is very professional. Good use of graphics to show the market status and you illustrate this information early in your presentation which I thought was an effective strategy. By doing this you capture the interest of the investor and subtly let them know it's in their best interest to pay attention to your pitch. Your venture pitch is well organized and follows a logical structure which as an investor was much appreciated. Your presentation was "crisp" and "uncluttered" allowing me as the investor to focus on important facts without visual distraction. I do think your product is interesting and my only concern would be the perception of parents. I think there could be some concern around health issues and concern for unhealthy attachments youth may potentially develop to non reality and "escapism" from their real world and life. I do see the learning advantages but I think it would be wise to consider the potential disadvantages as well. I do think you have a viable product but I would be reluctant to invest without further research into the potential psychological hazards; I would need some information/survey results illustrating how parents viewed your product before I would invest. That being said, I was quite impressed with your presentation, the amount of market research, and the use of effective and informative visuals.

Your software is intriguing and I really like both your product and your pitch! I like how you've included your growth model, to show where the investment money will be going and how you plan on making money. The $3 annual fee, I think is reasonable, as it both is affordable for schools and it continues cash flowing into your business year after year. I did have two questions. One, how adaptable is the material, as curricula changes between provinces/territories and even school districts? Two, how will you account for Moore's Law of Exponential Technology Growth? Technology will change so rapidly over the 12 years that students are in school, and your software will have to adapt to those changes. Overall, I think that the product is great, and I would like to invest! I'm excited to see how this product will motivate my students and their learning!

Feedback: Hi Daneille, I really like the idea of a more user friendly (avatar) & skills based profile that follows students through post secondary. I can see this as a new form of interactive assessment and interactivity for students too. When I think about it, schools have profiles on learner's anyways, why not give them a chance to actively see and visualize how they are doing. I guess this could be a modern day report card. With regards to your revenue model, have you thought about targeting schools/teachers instead. (ie Get schools to buy into this system and integrate it into their model of assessment and tracking student work.)

FEEDBACK: As a venture analysts, I see the value in the concept of combining GBL with continuity elements between grades. Your thoroughly outline of the projected growth in the industry. I am curious if this is based on the capacity to focus more on secondary school grades or if it is based on the status quo. You present a compelling case for perpetuating avatars year to year and having then grow as the student grows. The idea shares some qualities of mid-twentieth century house competitions, or the Hogwarts system in Harry Potter. I am not convinced to what extent that the pain point that you describe represents a genuine need on the part of teachers. My concern is the propensity and speed with which adolescents change their identity and interests, and how that would affect avatar and point totals that roll-over year to year. In other words, few interests persist from grade 8 through to grade 12. To that point, your 7 year development plan is possibly too long to ensure your survival against an upstart venture that could compete directly or indirectly with MovitatED. Classcraft is already a competitor for your market. They could most likely update their program to perpetuate characters and points year to year. It would be prudent on you, your partners and consultants parts to develop a plan for new feature rollouts to guard against copy-cat ventures. I would recommend investment in your project with provisions for such yearly upgrades to maintain a sense of newness and anticipation - particularly on the part of students.

Feedback - Overall, very well put together pitch. I'm especially impressed by the team you have assembled. Only because I have worked with programs attempting to offer a national program mapped to provincial curriculum do I know what kind of challenge you are facing with a core part of your strategy. It is more difficult and you will get more pushback and you would think That is a watch-out and has potential to take a lot of time before you generate revenue. One of your real strengths though is your moderate growth strategy. I liked the fact that you wanted to successfully penetrate the market in a couple of jurisdictions before targeting others. I question your method of rolling out geographically as I'm not sure your reasoning behind it. Wouldn't it make more sense to base expansion on student population size? Overall, great work. I'd throw some imaginary cash your way.

Sorry, you did mention Class Dojo, etc. but those are for classroom management, rather than gaming.

Hi Danielle, The main question I have, is what exactly these "pre-designed challenges and competitions" will look like. Having an avatar and a leaderboard won't do much if the games aren't fun, and you say "even 30%" like that will be easy to achieve, but there are thousands of games and other forms of online edutainment out there already to compete with, many of them free. You didn't mention competition at all. The avatar aspect reminded me of Bitstrips for schools, and that site is also open to any curriculum subject area, although making comics isn't really a game. Although having a game designer like Di Stefano on your team seems to indicate that you are capable of designing good games, I think your entire proposition rests on how good they are, and there is no mention of that here. If the games aren't fun, students will not be MotivatEd.

Danielle, I had some questions after the elevator pitch and you did a good job of answering them all during the venture pitch. In particular, I was thinking this is a great idea, but the curriculum's are so different in Ontario and Alberta that this will not be a good fit for my area. Then you explained your expansion plan, and it was well researched and planned out. I also enjoyed the layout of your team, it looks to be very strong. Great work.