ColLab

Hi Erin, A place to collaborate with trained facilitators to guide the collaboration! What a unique opportunity! A few questions: • Do you feel your venture is limited by having a specific physical space? Could your venture be done virtually / or through some type of “blended” environment some how? • Are you going to make money, or is the staff already paid, and you just need one-time-funding to get more resources? • Could the workshops developed be sold to other institutions to encourage collaboration.

Erin, your elevator pitch is well made and engaging. That said, it is long and could be more effective if it were focused more on just the pain point and solution. A minute isn’t much time (and I went over too! So easier said than done…). Your venture site is very well designed and quite appealing. I love the idea, and have myself always benefitted from doing pro d and other collaboration with colleagues from other subject areas. This is key as we move our students more into the 21st century skills...particularly the focus on multidisciplinary inquiry and collaboration. Your site answered a lot of the questions that I would have as a potential investor, except how and how much money I will be making! This would have me hesitate to invest in what is otherwise a fantastic idea.

Hi Erin, Nice choice of venture. Personally, I always enjoy presentations done with VideoScribe and thought your elevator pitch was succinct and to the point.  Great narration as it was clean, clear, and easy to follow. That said, it did go over the allotted 1min as outlined in the assignment details and as I understand your pitch should sell itself within the first 15 secs. A tough thing to do for sure! I know I had all kinds of trouble bringing mine to 1 min!  Your thoughts on "educational synergies and creative solutions" matched well with your service and showed you had a solid team to deliver the goods.  Your venture pitch had lots of great ideas and engaging material to pull me into becoming an investor. The collaboration, facilitation, and support section helped break down some of the critical parts of this service. I appreciated the highlighted/colored words as they stood out to mark your key points creating focus to thoughts and ideas. Great work as I would be willing to invest in this venture.

Hi Erin, Thanks for sharing, this was a great idea. The video for your elevator pitch was really well done. I love video scribe and you did a really good job putting the video together. I do think though that the introduction was a little long. It took almost one minute to get to the name of your product, let alone explain what it did. I also think you need to incorporate a bit more of information that would appeal to investors. Why should they go and learn more? What's in it for them? The website for your venture pitch was well laid out and easy to follow. It was a little text heavy in sections, but you had lots of great ideas. I think a key component that was missing was how are you going to make money? As an investor, I need to have confidence that I'm going to get a retun on my investment and I'm not sure that was conveyed effectively.

Erin, I really enjoyed this pich--I also quite love the idea. But throughout the entire review process, I always thought to myself: why limit this to only physical spaces? Why not create a creative online commons for members of a school, or job? I agree 100% that physical interaction trumps the online community in many ways, but this was a personal thought. I would also have loved a little bit more on how I, as an investor, could benefit, or see a return. Will the certificate program be the biggest area for income? I am wondering, if this area becomes a sort of school like program, whether that might hurt the creativity? I know a lot of people who lose that spark when the work becomes put under a ''certificate'' program.

Interdisciplinary course planning is key to fostering 21st century learner skill sets. You hit the main points right that departments should be working together to leverage different skill and knowledge sets. Interdisciplinary is where secondary education is going, and it is great to hear that post-secondary is heading in that direction as well. If I were to invest in The Learning ColLab, and I was not part of the organization, I would need some clarifying details based on your pitch. It sounds like you are looking for an investment that would go towards mostly a physical space and technology, and from that, groups would naturally collaborate. What I would like to have seen in your pitch is some evidence that this will actually be the case, and that having a physical space is conducive to collaboration. In my experience, space is not the prohibiting factor of meeting, it is time. With this, I think The Learning ColLab would benefit with an online component, as scheduling physical time can be strenuous, and would be a barrier that would consistently arise, as well as webinars, or the use of a digital connection suite with conference cameras. Not only can you remove space as a barrier here, but time-zones and travel as well. With this, there is also no direct feedback from departments mentioned that they would use this, and it sounds like it is coming from the top-down that they must be part of this. In terms of recouping an initial investment, it sounds like the majority of revenue would come from workshops and eventually a certificate program. In short, I would like to see some more concrete research and data to back up the assertions made before investing.

Hello Erin, Thank you for this venture that it seems that is working very well at Lethbridge College. As an educator, I can tell you right away, it is one of the best ventures that I have seen in terms of igniting the creativity for educators especially the ones who work most of the time in an office space. However, it seems to me that it is a physical location that exists at one location which you offer in this venture. If this is the case, as an investor, I should be one of the Lethbridge College to see the big market that is existing there. While I am an international investor, I have to be asking my self about the expanding market that you are targeting in the future. I would be asking would you share your expertise with other universities and colleges? would you be interested in consultancy services? The work place is one of the hottest topics within the corporate world of today. I do agree with you that the work place ignites the creativity and the increase the productivity of the employee. Would your venture be able to service also to the other professions other than education? Collab has a creative team that can guarantee the completion of projects through out hubs of innovation and many other which sound a unique offer to the teacher in general. However, I am questioning about the integration of technology in this venture. Is Collab open to offer software or application to keep up with the market of today? In sum, I will be very interested to invest in this great project especially that I am an educator and I can see the amazing and unlimited positive outcome of this project, However, we I think we should offer this cool experience to other places. Great job with the website. I think it was simple and direct to the point. Good luck in your venture. G.

REVIEW: This is a unique pitch, in that your company is already established, and your target investors are specific to the context of your organization. With this in mind, I think it was a very strong pitch, and if I was on the board of directors at Lethbridge College, I would definitely invest in this venture’s growth. You defined the pain points extremely well, and situated your pitch to solve each issue with comprehensive details. The ColLab facilitator certificate seems like a promising program to offer other post-secondary educators, and as the growing popularity of makerspaces and collaborative spaces increases, I think a demand for facilitators trained in the skills you are offering makes your pitch extremely viable for investors. The incentive to increase productivity across the entire campus is a definite selling point for higher-ed administrators, and as your venture achieves more success and concrete data on improvements, it will also help to improve the expansion of your venture into the other markets you identified. Inviting investors to participate in your workshops is also a nice perk, as well as great selling point to help your funding reach critical mass, as the professional networks of administrations do a portion of marketing for you! As an EVA, I would recommend my company to invest funding to meet your venture’s goals.