Venture Pitch (A3): Personalized Education Inc. (Albert)

Hi Albert! I really enjoyed your elevator pitch and was excited to read through your venture pitch. Personalized learning is fast growing in the education field as many educators and districts are looking into ways to implement student centred learning at their own pace. As has been stated below, I was left wondering if students involved in this venture would receive all of the necessary requirements for post secondary institutions. I would see this being a large obstacle in gaining the trust of parents/guardians to register their child for this program as an education alternative. I would be interested in hearing how you plan to overcome the biases or preconceptions that parents have towards different types of education.

FEEDBACK – Good pitch, Albert! You clearly identify the pain point, and how your venture would seek to solve the problem. I believe your target market is quite a bit larger than the percentage of homeschooled students in Canada and the US because, as you mentioned, there are a great number of students whose parents already enroll them in tutoring services – that entire population would likely be interested in what your service plans to offer. While your pitch lays out some information, I am not sure how much you are actually asking for, and what sort of return an investor could expect.

FEEDBACK Hi Albert, What a great concept, an academic manager would be something that parents and upper-grade students would be very interested in. I'm thinking especially in terms of those wanting to go on to post-secondary education. There lies the one question/concern I have about the whole huge area of post secondary admission requirements. As a client and even as an investor I would want to know how you would be able to ensure the students have the necessary requirement for the particular institution. I would want really specific information about the academic manager's qualifications and knowledge base. I like how you are starting small with an inaugural location, as this would help manage the amount of information you would need to have. My second question is about your business plan (which s way better thought out than mine was). First, let me say I do not know a lot about K-12 teaching salaries. I your plan you have budgeted $80,000 per employee, is this a good wage to attract the quality of people you need? I think the venture you have outlined has a need for very experienced and knowledgeable people, are there other incentives for them to join and work with Personalized Education Inc. I really liked your analogy between a sports manager and an academic manager, I think you can get a lot of play and marketability out of this. I also think that you could be the answer to a lot of parents that would love the home school option but don't have the time or knowledge to work through all of the details and pitfalls. Once again, a great venture idea, when will it become available for Grad students? Eva

REFLECTION: Thank you all for your feedback. 1. The idea from Ryan D. to not use a store-front location and rather do at-home consultations where necessary and the rest online is a very good one to keep costs down and to maximize the digital landscape. I do agree with Charkirk that one central location, as a flag-ship location, which includes a maker space or work spaces or some of the physical parts of the operations, would be helpful, but it could be in an industrial area rather than prime mass-transit location and there would only ever need to be one until new centres open. 2. The idea from Ryan D. to transition away from home-schoolers and instead target private schoolers instead is also a good one. As others also mentioned, parents sending students to private school are looking for an edge, and the option of extra support in areas outside of the curriculum and diploma and the expertise to offer a greater edge than even a private school student has, at a low cost, would be appealing. The word-of-mouth advertising strategy would also save on advertising costs. 3. The idea from Ryan S., and mentioned by others, to continue the sports analogy makes me think that this should be a major part of the advertising and sales pitch. It is an idea people are aware of, and they almost instantly can make the connection to what the service does for the student. This is a good 'hook' to help people visualize the product. 4. Speaking of "visualize", I agree with many that said the formatting was an issue. I originally wrote the proposal in one software, then moved it to google docs, that often does funny things to the coding, and did not take the necessary time to edit the google doc effectively. Personally, I agree with Agnieszka, that investors prefer documents and cogent paragraphs to too much glitz and glam, however, a little more professionalism and perhaps a few bells and whistles beyond the initial elevator pitch would have made the whole thing better (probably some branding would have been the best place to invest some time and energy). 5. Amanda's idea that I am offering a lot of expertise is a good one. I would have to, as many others mentioned, collect a very competent team and highlight each of their skills as something every child (and every parent) would get if they sign-up. The manager a child gets is just the 'face' of the many services that a child gets; they would be using the other members of the team to create the plans and options being offered by the manager - "you see the manager, but you get the team". I could have faked a team that had all the credentials I would need, instead of merely outlining their basic job descriptions. 6. Mackenzie makes a good point that this project would need a lot of flushing out. A team really would need to be assembled and a large number of policies and plans would need to be hammered out before any type of investment idea was truly created. 7. Madeleine makes an interesting point about using the term students rather than clients. It double with Scott's point that I haven't clearly defined how to actually get customers, nor which types of investors I am looking for. I think to answer Madeleine's suggestion I would need to answer Scott's explicit and implicit questions around who I am actually aiming this investor pitch at, and what sort of language they would be most comfortable with (as technically the client would be parents in most cases).

Albert, I like that you're trying to fuse together the concerns of home-schooled students' parents with those of parents more generally, and I see the benefit in addressing the personalized educational gap the way you've outlined. I have concerns about going the centralized route you're going, both bricks-and-mortar as well as the online component. What would make a parent/guardian trust your services? A lot of this will hedge on your team's personability/likeability. To help with this part, it'd be good to include an introduction of yourself and any team-members you may have for the venture pitch. However, the issue will not dissolve from this alone, how will parents trust individual educational managers assigned to them? How will these managers' work be assessed? I think fleshing your venture pitch out in this direction a bit would help strengthen your case.

Albert, this is an interesting idea. You really grabbed my attention with the video for your elevator pitch, which was well-paced and visually engaging. I was looking forward to learning more in your venture pitch, but I felt a little let down by the presentation method, because it wasn't as appealing. This concept reminds me of AltSchool, whose goal is to provide whole-child, personalized learning. However, the direction you've taken it removes the constraints of a physical school, providing access to more resources and educational options. My only concern is how you plan to follow through on the requests students and parents would have. Your educational managers would need to have contacts in the many areas you've promised access to, be able to create schedules for the students that are functional, know all the requirements for provincial accreditations/exams and the knowledge to guide students' academic path. This seems like a lot of responsibility and a very time consuming process for the number of staff you've proposed with regards to the amount of students you project. I would need to see that these ideas can be translated into a functional plan before investing in this venture.

I have always been skeptical about home schooling and you venture made me realize what I thought was wrong with it: lack of an academic manager, lack of professional supervision. Your venture solves this issue for me and probably many other parents. I think it has potential to attract especially wealthy parents in search of novelties. It can definitely bring return on my investment. Yet, I was wondering about the format of your presentation: I do not mind documents, I actually think that many investors prefer documents to media-based presentations, but I think that the doc you presented had some font issues and that was distracting. But the content was really good, with a lot of information, thoughtful analysis and a clear plan of action. I just would like to know more about the concrete plan to market this venture.

I felt that your elevator pitch needed a little more information about your product and a little less background about education. Anyone who would be investing in an educational product will already know this information. I think that your overall idea is a good one, but it lacks any bells and whistles that an investor would be looking for. A google doc with poor formatting, and different fonts throughout it is a little distracting, and not too impressive. There are a multitude of medias for presenting materials that you should have thought about. I am really wondering about how you plan to get your name out there, what is the marketing idea? If you open a pretty store, they will come? Kidding aside, I think you need to address how you will attract your customers in a more detailed way. I would need a lot more to decide to invest in this venture.

Albert, your business venture is very creative and will definitely be something families would be interested in exploring for their children, especially if its a cheaper alternative to private school, but produces similar results. Growing up I attended BrainChild (a tutoring services) but was never engaged in the content because it was repetition of the same concept. Your venture combines components of Makerspaces and tutoring services, to allow the student to grow in ways that they may be able to. I would be interested in seeing more visual to help explain the process. I would also suggest not referring to the student as 'clients'. You began your venture pitch with a sports analogy, and could've ran with it throw out the pitch. I agree with Ryan D. that an option would be to reduce cost by eliminating or reducing the number of storefront and moving to digital communication tools. I would be interested in investing in this venture after learning more about its services and how the team plans on "design, refine, support, represent, advocate, implement, connect and mentor learning opportunities."

Hi Albert, You have an interesting venture here and one that I think has investment potential. Your elevator pitch was clear and focussed and that helped put me in a positive frame of mind to read your pitch. An academic manager is a service I could see a lot of parents adopting once they see it in action. Word of mouth in a wealthy neighbourhood would be all the advertising you would need. Most students don’t have a plan for how to reach their goals and this service solves this. I don’t think the home school market is necessarily the best place to target this venture. I see it as a natural offshoot of the private school system where parents have already paid to make sure their child has an “edge”. This type of programme helps them target specific pathways to a goal. Although storefronts are an option, I would save your money andncapitalize on the digital communication tools available and supplement this with on-site visits to homes. This is appealing to the busy family. With the added tweaks mentioned I am very interested in the potential of Personalized Education Inc. Count me in!