Simu-Career: The Future is Now

Well done, Michael! I really enjoyed your presentation. Simu-Career reminded me of KidZania, a chain of family entertainment centers that allow children to work in adult jobs and earn a salary (pretend money, of course). Here is article from the New Yorker about this place: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/grow. Now going back to the venture: the elevator pitch provides good information of the product. The venture pitch is nicely organized and provides valuable information like strengths and weaknesses, competitors, etc. I found the team was a bit too general. Also, I don't know if I missed it, but how much money are you asking? Software development is huge and will take a lot of resources. Good job overall!

Hi Michael, Great Elevator and Venture Pitch. In fact, I would consider investing in your venture. Your pitch covers most of the required details, like a plan in phases, market, competitor analysis. The only thing I would focus more on is You. The investors are interested in your venture , but they will ultimately invest in you/your team. So what is your expertise, who are you partnering with? These are the details I would focus a little bit more on. One more thing, is there any reason why you are targeting the school districts for your product first? In my opinion, you should focus on organization training, as it is easier for organizations to roll out this kind of money for training purposes than a school. Later when your product has gained traction in the organizations, you can use it as a marketing tool to the schools/institutions and showcase that the students will get a greater feel of the actual professional world by using your product. You can also partner with eLearning organizations for targeting specific clients and provide VR training as service (My idea is, in fact, a service based e-learning venture.). Please let me know if you want to discuss more. Regards, Moumita

Review: I really liked a lot about this venture pitch. The product idea is forward thinking, taking advantage of an emerging market to close the knowledge and experience gap between school and the world of work. Simulations are prevalent throughout the highered market – Sniffy the Rat comes to mind in Psychology, but there are others in areas like business and chemistry. None of the simulations focus on virtual reality. Also none of them offer a variety of different careers to experience, they are often task or scenario focused, at the most focusing the career outcome of one particular course. There were a number of strong elements of this pitch. The market analysis was comprehensive in the breadth and depth of the potential market. The competition was well covered, particularly highlighting the key differences and Simu-Career’s advantage over the competition. I love the use of a SWOT analysis and really wish I had thought of including this in my venture pitch! The pitch also did a great job of outlining the phased deployment and pinpointing exactly why the venture money is needed, how it will be used and when a ROI is expected. As an EVA I would consider investing, but I would have several key questions including, this is not really a BYOD scenario, where is the money coming from for the hardware in Phase 2 and to a lesser extent phase 1? Who will maintain the hardware? As the profit is reliant on the corporate sector, it’s debatable how much budget would be set aside for simulations, however, I guess this depends on the job – there is a big difference in the sorts of simulations you would need for a firefighter versus an accountant. Maybe I missed it, but was there any discussion of the team/who else was involved. Overall though, good job!

Hi Michael, your venture pitch is very well done and thought-out! I especially like your detailed external analysis and thorough implementation plan. While you have presented a such great venture idea, I do have problem imagining how will you develop such software to meet your ROI in year two. The software sounds like a million-dollar investment to me; therefore, if I were an EVA to invest in a project costs that much, I would like to know a little bit more details about software development. Other than that, everything else is perfect! I love how you planning out each phases so that I can see clearly how would you want to move strategically.

FEEDBACK: Hello Michael. Sims-Career seems like a great idea - a virtual version of the 'Take Your Kids to Work Day' we have for grade 9 students in Ontario. I echo some of the other concerns raised that the cost of producing the required content may make the application unaffordable as a venture. That being said, I agree with you that VR is one of the most revolutionary technologies to affect the education market and will have huge impacts on learning. It would also be interesting to envision how the technology would be incorporated into a classroom environment. I can't imagine walking into a classroom where every student was wearing a wearable device acting out scenarios for different professions. Where do you see this technology and application fitting into the current curriculum used in school districts. I think your idea of introducing the technology to corporations has very valid applications - could be used as part of an interview process perhaps. Great work.

Michael - I believe you have identified an area that really needs to be addressed. As you, I don’t think that a lot of high school school students have a clear idea of what is involved in many careers. Your elevator pitch is well done and gave me a good understanding of your product. The main thing that concerns me with the concept is just how much detail you will have to go into to create the VR environments for each job scenario. With all the career options out there and the various tasks that go along with each one, you are looking at hundreds or thousands of different possible environments. A daunting task to be sure. That is a lot of work for programmers and graphic designers. This would lead to astronomical costs, I would think. Great job and very thorough presentation.

Michael, as a business education teacher, I am very interested in your venture. Your venture pitch was very detailed and left me with little questions in regards to Simu-Career. I do have reservations though and it involves getting this technology into the hands of students. You mentioned that many teachers would like to get VR into their classrooms and, as a teacher myself, I agree – but what would be the cost for a class set? I also don’t remember you mentioning what the yearly premium would be. Finally, if the aim is to create accurate simulations of careers, how does Simu-career plan to bridge the gap between an accurate representation and the lack of skills and knowledge students will inevitably have? If these hurdles can be addressed, as an EVA I would look very closely at Simu-Career as I think it has a bright future.

I think you have made a good case for the possibilities of using VR for career simulations for students. It makes sense that you suggest expanding it into more corporate training environments as well. There was a fair amount of feedback on your audio, you may be able to find software to clean that up. You also went a fair bit over time, so you could either cut some of the spaces between slides or cut out a few slides entirely. Practicing through the script a few more times may have also made the time a bit shorter and the overall delivery a bit smoother. I like the idea and think you have a solid plan for rolling it out!

Really great idea, Michael - and very well thought out too. You’ve done a great job here. A few things popped out as real strengths with your concept: > A phased approach to investment and development is very strategic and will open you up to more of an ability to improve and iterate upon the product > Similarly, a lite launch is a great idea to test the concept in its basic form without doing too deep into a financial commitment Identifying the opportunity around the rise of VR over the next 4 years shows that the timing around your business concept is excellent. You’re coming in right on the cusp of the upswing and before major players have taken an real market share, which is critical. > A characteristic of your product was “tracking performance”. This was a bullet-point that really stood out for me as it suggests an added an extra layer intelligence to the tool. I am assuming this is where your abilities/personality as an individual is compared to what is considered ideal for a particular type of work. The weakest point of the concept was really the argument for using VR versus another medium, such as web. What VR brings to the understanding of the career can, of course, be imagined but would be specific to the software you built. Some value statements around this would have sealed the deal for me. Again, great job. Very pleased to have had a chance to review your pitch. Regards, Esther

Well done Michael! This is a brilliant idea. If I could see the product in action and if it does what you say it will, I would invest in this startup. I think you covered all of the bases well from an EVA’s perspective, including a description of the competition. Your business plan appears to be sound. I think this concept has great potential for schools (all levels) and governments in particular. Like you, I believe VR and AR are going to take the market by storm and I think people will be shocked at how immersive an experience it will be. The time to get into this market is right now and I think the potential for career simulation dwarfs anything currently in existence. If I were to criticize anything in your presentation it would be to suggestion that you incorporate more images and video and less text.