In a 21st century classroom, teachers face the monumental task of enabling learning experiences that engage and challenge every student every day, while being responsive to each student’s interests, needs, and abilities. Too often, professional development fails to engage and challenge teachers in the same robust ways we ask them to teach, and is rarely responsive to their daily needs.
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Hi Kevin, like my colleague, I am unable to tell if this venture has been implemented and running for several years or if it was constructed for this course. You have done a lot of research and provided lots of information about the business and its concept. Breaking down the different layers of the business is useful. However, the venture is quite overwhelming with information that seems to be repeating itself and sometimes not consistent. The venture's focus is for K-12 and post secondary education but it is seeking investment/buyers from corporate training. It would be helpful to have seen the ventures 1-3-5 year plan and which stage it currently is at. Unlike the other proposed venture, this venture seems to have been implemented for a while now. Courses provided are focused on inquiry-based teaching strategies, how is this applicable to corporate setting, if you are considering corporate investors? would they even know what inquiry-based is. I would also like to see a sample learning section of a course. What makes this PD opportunity different and unique? What exactly would an investment mean for me? What is the return? financially and for my institution. I would suggest to keep the site simplified with key selling points to hook potential investors.
FEEDBACK Wow, Kevin ! What a huge amount of work, It shows how strongly you feel about your topic. I especially really liked your first elevator pitch and how you seemed to start off with a bang. You were clear and direct right from the start 'we are a new start-up…we want to offer investors …" The right to the point approach really worked for me as an EVA, and I knew right away what you wanted and were offering ' a robust professional training program' As an EVA I did have a couple of questions? The first was about the funding in the elevator pitch it is a new start up, but on the website, you are already in series D funding with 75 million invested, and 8,000 teachers in 14 countries with a profit of 5 million. So it could be me but I was confused as to why you would need my top pledge of $10,000. Sound like you're already a great success and as an investor, I might want to have more invested in your venture. As a MET student, I really appreciate all the information about VTS, I'm actually looking for ways I could use it for my teaching. However, as an EVA I'm not sure I would require all that information versus a succinct run down on the venture facts and why I would want to invest in such a successful venture. It took my quite a bit of back and forth to put together the business/venture information. When I did I decided that as an EVA I would definitely invest in this Venture, especially if I could get more than the $10,000 piece of the pie. My worry would be that some EVA's would not put as much time into looking at a venture. I think you've got it all in there and perhaps just narrow the focus a bit. You've definitely got the approach and wording that would get people excited about CADE. I was really impressed with all the wording/messaging you embedded in your video and website. 'dedicated and innovative educators' 'robust' 'professional', and how you presented yourself in such a confident, relaxed professional manner. Something for me to work towards. The best part was how you neutralized the competition a 'decisive inroad to a well-established market' sounds good to me. Eva
Hi Andrew, I enjoyed both pitches: I can see you put loads of work into them, and the final products show it. Like Janna, I wondered if this was a real venture (did you really work in a museum?). I like your crowd-source funding model, it's concise and looks like it would be effective. The only constructive I think I can give has to do with your footage and videos, but perhaps you've already got this covered: do you have permission to use this outside content (copyrights etc.)? Other than that, steller. Thanks for the share. -M
REVIEW: Hi Andrew, as many others have said, this demonstrates a high level of creativity, hard work and dedication. Most of my feedback mirrors that said already: - I was told at the start this would solve the lack of engagement in PD, but other than the ideas it will be video-rich and have expert coaches, I am unsure what separates it from other PD programs. - the love and belief in VTS as a teaching method is very clear and well articulated, and I am intrigued by that, but that is a teaching outcome post PD, but does not address the issue of the PD being engaging of different - perhaps focus on the VTS and sell that, with PD as an method of getting it into teachers hands, rather than the PD itself being innovative? For example, on the Competition page, the two pieces of information that stand out are "tools for tutors" and "classroom using VTS learning strategies", why not have a picture of the innovative PD. Overall, love the selling of the VTS principles and its advantages, but other than that I did not see how the PD itself would be all that different from other programmes? Again, great work and not trying to take anything away from that. You clearly have passion and creativity.
Hi Andrew, The user-friendly layout easily guided the potential investor through your venture proposal. Like Agnieska I was left wondering I was wondering if this was for "real" or "mock". In the end I was not actually sure what you were selling. What do teachers get? What is provided in this ongoing Professional Development? Is it continued support and resources on how to implement VTS and IBL into their lessons, assignments, projects and teaching? If a school district invested in CADE how would teaching and learning change?
The amount of work you put into this was really amazing. That said, I have to agree with Ryan a little, that it is quite a heavily text-based presentation, which is sadly a little ironic coming from a product which wants to enrich education with Visual Thinking Strategies. It would have been nice to see more of these strategies employed in the presentation of your pitch, this would have helped a lot in the arousing investor interests. I am left wondering who are the buyers, I found that this section didn't really answer that question for me, and I wonder what is the marketing plan to get your name out there and into the marketplace further.
This is a great website, impressive, I cannot decide if this is for real or a “mock” version :) I really liked the design of the website and enjoyed the media parts (although for some reason they are blocked when my newly acquired Ghostery is on and they do not play). When approaching the website I played an investor with some free cash on my hands. My main question was: if you are so successful, what do you need my money for exactly? I could read that between the lines: for reaching out to other clients, for expanding globally, but it is not actually written in a clear way anywhere. I was also not sure if your company is a socially-based or community-based company and thus you use a “pledge” format or a private company that looks for multimillion investments (I assumed the latter because you bought another company, for millions of dollars I thought). So that was not entirely clear. And a small note at the end: although I really enjoyed the way company is presented, I still had to turn off an Eastern European squirming in me: in my parts it is culturally unacceptable to write so much about the founder or CEO in positive terms as a marketing tool, it is considered fishy. A small remark in case you wanted to go global also into multi-million people market in that part of the world :)
Hi Kevin, This was a project that has effort written all over it. The graphic you used for your logo was terrific. I also liked to learn about VTS and ended up looking deeper into this learning technique. The CADE’s role as an online professional development enrichment educator program based on a successful teaching strategy like VTS was very appealing to me. I am also a big fan of inquiry based learning models. I did find the text a little tough to swallow in places and like the idea of “keep it simple” in order to appeal to investors. I would also like to see more about CADE and less about VTS in your pitch overall. I also think you have a good sized market at the K-12 level and might do well to stick to this to start. Competition for CADE like ,UDUTU, ED or DOCEBO lack a focus on teacher PD and this also separates you from most of your online competition. Finally, I think CADE should make sure that it is SCORM compliant in order to help keep costs for users adopting this new programme in line. Great Job Kevin!
Hello Kevin, Thank you for introducing a great, well designed and planned venture to all of us. In this venture, I have seen a very well representation of your venture with great details which is a very positive aspect to invest in you as well as in your venture. The well-produced elevator pitch video was a success to capture my attention to your venture. as well as the main topic of enriching and professionally develop teacher skills to match the 21st century level of teaching to the future digital students. Often, the PD days that teachers attend to focus on the existing ways of teaching instead of introducing new innovative ways of teaching in order to reach out to every student in the classroom. As an educator and international teacher, I can affirm that there are lots of demands to this type of venture especially when it comes to teaching internationally. While working internationally I have seen and experienced a great variety of curriculum that required a special kind of training and coaching for teachers. IB program, Montessori, English National curriculum etc. are simple examples of these challenges that teachers need to learn in order to keep their job and catch up with the new 21st century students. I have seen that you are offering services in both online and face-to-face which can guarantee the inclusion of all teacher learners. At this point, I am wondering about the coasting factor of this venture offering face-to face services especially internationally. Do you have personal around the world that teach and enrich teachers experiences in the classroom? As an investor, I am wondering how much this services would cast and if this cost would affect the price that you are offering when you are selling the services. The price if it is high, would affect the supply and demand factor as most of the international schools are private and looking after their profit as well as the PD cost for their teachers. So, how can this venture be a competitive company in price to the online courses that are very low in cast? Overall, it is a great venture that would have lots of potential investors who can see the educational and the financial benefits. G.
FEEDBACK: This is an exciting pitch, Kevin! I think your presentation is extremely detailed, but a bit text-heavy to find the pertinent details; perhaps consider adding more sections, more graphics, and more visuals to your pitch to improve the presentation, as well as to connect it directly to your product’s main feature of visual learning strategies. A ‘visual’ executive summary would be a novel way to illustrate how your strategies are effective while at the same time making your pitch stronger in its visual elements. I really like the small soundbites of anecdotes from teachers and admins who shared their experiences and successes while using VTSs - they really add credibility and strength to your pitch.
