Assignment 3: Venture Pitch for Schulich Startup Online Community

Hi Galina, Your enthusiasm for business and wanting business students to succeed is clearly evident in your venture. While this is a wonderful idea to have students supported in their start ups, I do not think that this is a company I would invest in. As mentioned in previous posts, if I was enrolled in one of the elite business schools, this is something that I would come to expect with the educational package. Mentors and past alumni often help for free, and with elite schools often elite alumni come back to share their experiences and expertise.

Thanks for sharing, Galina. I like the idea of students creating start-ups in school, undergrad or graduate programs. I believe securing the funds (grants) to do so would be one of the more challenging aspects of this venture as it seems there will be may students. As a teacher, I often wonder how work like this will be assessed? If a start up is not successful, did they fail? There are valuable lessons in success as well as failure. I also like the idea of investing in individual groups pitches rather than the entire project of startups in school. It would be sort of Dragon's Den like for investors to be able to choose who they would like to support and ask for a return on their investment. I think that informally, much of this already happens in business school but if it becomes a requirement, we might push some real life skills on people and possibly a successful start up. Neat idea, if I could, I would consider investing.

Hi Galina,

You seem to have identified a very valid (and also sad - this should not be happening) pain point, but as an EVA, I would not invest in your venture. Maybe it's just my lack of experience with the business world, but I really didn't see how your solution differentiated from the other, already pre-existing tools - they all seem to be good for networking and potentially finding mentors or funding.

It sounded like you want to create a university-specific social network, which caters to the needs of entrepreneurs within the business program. But you also want to extend membership to the whole university in a later phase. There may be limited interest in your network outside of the business student community, so I feel like this is unlikely to result in much growth except within the business college.

Feedback: I would invest in this venture because I like the idea of creating an environment that gives students an opportunity to learn real like skills for something they like or want to do before they actually finish school and have no immediately available support. I think your idea ties in with the concept of hands-on learning but at a post-secondary level. So I believe if done well, it would work. Back in high school, I've seen the marketing and business class students work on semester-long projects where they were given a budget and a timeframe to start and try a business as a class/company. They were given a space as well, so every semester, that class would present and run their business in school and evaluation would be given based on the outcome and what they've learned. The students all learned a lot, but the resources were limited as it was just secondary school level. I think at a post-secondary level, this idea would really work. Good job.

FEEDBACK

An interesting presentation. I am not looking to invest in this kind of venture at this time, however, so I will only offer some feedback on your presentation.

I applaud your efforts to bring the spirit of entrepreneurialism to students. I think the entrepreneurial drive is a critical component in growth in our society, not only economically, but socially as well. I think you presented this clearly in your elevator pitch. I do think, however, that your choice of a text-only format for your venture pitch might not hold the interest of investors long enough to motivate them to buy into your venture. I read through it all, and it was well presented, but it really would have benefitted from something more visually appealing. I wish you the best in the future of your venture!

I enjoyed your elevator pitch, I had a good understanding of what your venture was after watching it which was not always the case with other elevator pitches. I think you have targeted a real-world problem with your venture – I agree completely that there is a disconnect between what students are learning today and what modern employers are looking for. Your venture pitch is very clear and concise and your goals look very doable. I am unclear how the individuals who lecture and provide support are compensated – are you hoping to have many of them on a volunteer basis? I have certainly seen this in the public-school system – many are willing to volunteer to come in contribute but would they do this for a for-profit venture in university? Overall quite good and I would invest in this.

As an EVA, I would not invest in this venture. As Joshua mentioned, despite its attractive cost,I feel that some of this mentorship should already be included into a business student's studies. I am also concern about intellectual property. A lot of startups/ventures are for new products. As of now, a good number of universities still own IP rights to what their students developed while in school (although U of Waterloo has now changed their IP policy, this is what made Blackberry co-founder leave U of Waterloo 2 months before his graduation), unless Schulich's IP policy doesn't claim student ideas while they are in school, why should students work on developing their idea in their school?

FEEDBACK: I have a huge question: why would someone volunteer to mentor through this program. If I am mistaken, then how do you plan to pay the coaches or mentors that will essentially be teaching the students. The low price point for the student is very attractive but I can’t see how that will pay for qualified coaches. It is a cool idea and an area that will allow for growth through innovation.

I would not invest in this venture. I think the idea of scaffolded startup experience is an excellent idea, but I don't see it as a viable for-profit venture. With a variety of services in this space, as well as entrepreneur access to incubators, I think it would be difficult to convince people to pay for this service. I would encourage any business school (or secondary school, for that matter!) to adopt a program like this, but if I was a paying university student already in the faculty of business, I would expect this to be woven into my program and the cost of development included in my tuition.