A3 – E-Mining (an e-learning platform for the mining sector)

Thanks everyone for the reviews and feedback! Starting a venture is a lot of work... I can say that now.

Review: Great pitch overall, Mariana. Your elevator pitch is good and I know how frustrating it can be to use PowToon so I applaud your confidence to record yourself. I know very little about the mining industry or the components of education that go with it but you've done an solid job delivering information and research while maintaining my interest. This is different than other pitches since it is already an established app and, appropriately, your pitch is about expansion rather than grabbing initial investment. I wasn't exactly sure how to assess the venture as it is already established but I feel that as an EVA, you bring up some strong pain points in a market quite foreign to me and your statistics and research indicates good growth potential. You indicate that there are no other competitors but I am not sure why. Is it because the mining education market is so small or is it because your venture is truly original and monopolizing a niche market? In any case, your venture targets a very specific audience and I am not quite sure that I, as a general EVA, would be fully convinced. Regardless, I found your tone and presence credible.

REVIEW: I can see this working. I grew up in a mining town and know many who work in the mining industry. Corporate learning has come a long way and in many cases has cemented itself within whatever business they are in. Your venture does fall in line with many of the already established corporate learning organizations out there. I'm happy to see that you have researched the sector quite well and I think your venture could blossom based on the potential investors that may come into play. You have strong competitors. Perhaps make your pedagogy a lot more specialized? Mining in rural, difficult or dangerous areas. The human side of mining...things like that.

Mariana, nice work on the pitch. I enjoyed the executive summary format more than I thought I would. The information that I am trying to find is neatly laid out and labeled. Furthermore, you have discovered a niche market that I hadn’t considered before. I have heard it repeated in many places that finding the problem to be solved is half the battle for a successful venture.

The posts by Jesse and Briar have aptly identified some strengths and weaknesses with your pitch. I will not reiterate them here. I was intrigued by your choices throughout the venture. Like Chris noted, it seems your “venture” is more of an established business but as you illuminate, you are looking for investors to help expand your venture. You are trying to keep up with demand. The fact that syou have already seen much success is reassuring. As an amateur investor, I find it much easier to hop on a bandwagon than to board a train with an uncertain destination.

The numbers you present are impressive. There seems to really be a vacuum in that industry that is just waiting to be filled by a competent entrepreneur like yourself.  

Mariana, thanks for the interesting read. Mining education is definitely a nice market as others have said already so I'm not sure how qualified I am to critique your venture. However, assuming as was a specialist, I would choose to invest because it is a stable and needed market, and the data provided seems to prove the reliability. It's not about making a huge profit, and your goals will definitely be difficult to achieve, but I do believe in the greater good that E-Mining could bring to the mining communities. I also read your reflection which reminded me of my own experience with my project - trying to edit out real facts for privacy reasons and turning into something completely different from what you originally intended. This was definitely not an easy task, but you convinced me to invest, so good job!

I think it’s a smart idea to create a very specific and niche product market. I definitely have not heard of any MOOCs that are specific to the mining industry so your venture is able to exercise first mover advantage. I think you have done well in pinpointing the specific gap that exists in the market and have done well in explaining how your product is the solution. The only thing I wonder about is what is proprietary to E-mining that differentiates itself from others, other than offering courses? Is it simply the course selection that makes it different or will the functionality, navigation or learning experience be different in some way for the user? Also, I was a little unclear about the courses offered. It seems to indicate a Canadian mining focus but data is provided about world markets so would the consumer base be open markets outside of Canada? The other thing that concerns me is about the industry as a whole, whether the business has a sustainable model because you indicated a high degree of retirees by 2015 but will the mining industry be as significant in the next 10-15 years with the push away from non-renewable sources. That is more of a future market question. Overall, however, I think your plan was well outlined and well-articulated.

FEEDBACK: I had a difficult time assessing this venture, and I am sure it has to do with the fact that the world of mining (and its associated businesses) is very foreign to me. I’m not sure if I understand this correctly - your ficticious company (E-Mining) has already been on the market for 5 years. Doesn’t this mean that E-Mining is no longer a ‘venture’, but rather an established company? Perhaps I misunderstand. How is E-Mining different from a simple LMS? What does it offer than an LMS does not offer? I’m guessing that E-Mining provides pre-packaged, online *courses* that can be used for *currently existing* online learning platforms (like Moodle, Connect, etc), and these courses currently do not exist…? I suppose I don’t know enough about the world of mining to know how people are trained or certified in the first place. Perhaps more information on how training is currently accomplished, and how E-Mining would be a big improvement, would have been helpful for people like me.

Hi Mariana I'm a big believer in online learning, or LMS', to help with today's culture. I think the learn anywhere approach is key to keeping people trained on the latest and greatest. I didn't know about the statistics regarding today's workforce, but you've clearly identified a very real need for the workforce over the next decade or so. Your business model is very interesting too, although, I would have enjoyed seeing some fictitious numbers related to the industry (current spend on corporate training, average cost, time to recompense investments, etc). In terms of competitors, you've found your niche - I can't believe there's nothing being offered online currently! The fact that you are hypothesizing a design specifically for low bandwidth environments is great too, I'm sure many mining companies/operations would see this as a huge benefit. I had three major concerns going through this. The first is that, even though the product seems very well suited for today's needs, you mentioned it's growth over the next 5 years. Because your data regarding the workforce is dated (granted, only from last year), I found it difficult to understand how you'd expect to grow your business by a factor of 10 over 5 years. Is there a continued (and increased) expectancy for the workforce to shrink in terms of qualified workers? Is the mining field itself expected to enter a major boom? I think a growth of 10x is probably very optimistic, but some more data would have been great to try to justify this. My other concern is that the investment is specifically for researching and selecting a LMS, seemingly, in order to reach greater audiences. Similar to what Briar speaks to below, I think the migration to an LMS is a MASSIVE undertaking, particularly if you don't have one in mind already. I also think this could compromise one of your strongest selling points, which is offering online training tailored to low bandwidth requirements. Although I can't say for sure, I wonder if having to use an LMS would result in an increase in bandwidth requirements and thereby move your product out of that specific niche. If so, you might see the possible demographics shrink, in terms of accessibility. Lastly, I also think I'd need to see a much more detailed breakdown of the investment ask. 1M is a LOT of money, especially for a company that we're imagining has (only) a 1M revenue over 5 years. I'd sort of assume that 1M is over-asking given the specifics of what you want. I think a breakdown of costs would have helped me get on board with this (ie, hiring a research team at a total of $100,00 per year, migration team at $80,000 a year, etc). Overall, I think this is a really interesting product and a great solution for an existing problem. I really applaud what you've come up with here. It's always difficult to think of so many hypotheticals surrounding a fictitious company, but again, I think a bit more details would be great! great job!

Hello Mariana, You clearly identified the market focus, pain point and your objective with your pitches. As an EVA I do believe that companies will need to invest in online learning modules, or even programs, to help train new employees as the Babyboomer population begins to retire. There is a potential growing trend of students who will be graduating from high school at an earlier age (grade 10 possibility in BC) and so they will need what your company is offering if they want to have a successful career in any of the trades in Canada let alone mining. This would be a very highly effective strategy. Personally I have experience with volunteering for an organization that has these kind of online training modules as I was a Venue Workforce Team Leader for the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Winter Olympic Games. When I was assigned to Rogers Area (Canada Hockey Place) I had several months of online training modules to complete before I could formally accept the position that had been offered to me.

Hi Mariana,

You did a great video pitch, it was great to 'see' you. I thought you gave a compelling video pitch, you showed your expertise in the mining sector and had an important call to action at the end. (I also had difficulty with my audio syncing with YouTube too - So I hear your frustration. Well done.)

Your business expertise in the description of your established company is truly amazing. The business model has a proven track record of revenue generation. As an investor this gives me great confidence in your future prospects for making profit. Sounds like you have stable relationships with your partners, again which gives stability and credibility to your venture.

There a couple of things that might help strengthen your case for investment; I am only digging a bit deeper here because I think you have a real business case for investors.

As an investor, I would want more details about your financial performance. Hard data that shows me where your company has been and how the percentages you show translate into actual dollars. You have made some predictions about $10M but I don't know how you came to these numbers. Would be great to see this area filled out. I also am making an assumption you would provide financial statements & cash flows so that investors can understand your liabilities and the risk they are undertaking.

Also, as an investor, I want a bit more details about the investment. You have outlined four areas that you need money for, could you give more details about your pain points, reasons and why these are solutions.

For instance, market research for a new LMS. This is a big project, do you have a consultant working with you or do you have the right internal staff that has time to oversee this project. Do you already have a needs analysis done on your current LMS to help inform what you are looking for in a new LMS? I am not sure why you are transferring to a different LMS? What are your pain points here?

Transitioning to a new LMS. Again, as you know, big big big undertaking. I have done two platform migrations and was involved in a 3rd, and they difficult on even the good days. Having so many stakeholders who know your current product will be difficult migrating to a different platform (and risky for possible customer loss, although it sounds like you currently corner the Cdn market), not to mention just the technical specifications required to import all of your data and content. Are you going with a RFP process for the new LMS? Do you have staff or will you need to contract a project manager for this?

Expansion into different countries, is mining the same wherever you go? Will there be different standards used by different companies, will all of your content need to be transitioned?

Will the $1M investment be able to cover all of these costs, having a breakdown of costs for each of these sections will help make your case. Also a timeline for the 5 years with milestones would be really helpful. I feel you might need a bigger ask, however the return might be worth the risk. (Note: I think this is beyond the scope of the assignment, which you aced, but I feel as if this is a real project so having more input might help you. Maybe? Hopefully?)

Mariana your market is expanding and if I was an investor I would have great confidence that I would enjoy a significant ROI.

Well done. I really like how you made this assignment as 'real world' as possible. Fascinating. Briar