OCR Technology – Photomath

Great job, Ian! I teach people from all over the world and the part of the available translation in so many languages is an awesome idea! I think it can be used in so many different ways! The presentation is very clean and visually appealing.

Hi Ian! Welcome to MET. :) Great work introducing OCR technology and the opportunities it provides for students, parents and teachers. Because of your launch post title, I initially thought your venture was the PhotoMath app, but in visiting your site I understand that we would be potentially investing in the parent company (Microblink), and that there are multiple OCR subsidiaries. You did a good job in presenting what the products do and how they work, and your site was easy to follow and the layout was great too. I would have liked to learn more about your deployment plans for your products for schools, and ideas about how they could fit in as a supplement to existing curriculum. The TextHelp company (https://www.texthelp.com/en-us/) could also be a competitor for Microblink, as they provide similar products using OCR technology and are integrated with G Suite for Education. Nice work!

FEEDBACK: I enjoyed watching your elevator pitch, Ian. It was creative and well-done. My biggest piece of feedback is that the pitch felt a bit more like a product demo to me. I think it could be improved by addressing what the problem or pain points are and how PhotoMath helps solve them. Your longer venture pitch contains some excellent information on the product itself and venture opportunities that could be solidified even more with some market stats or data.

Hello Ian, welcome to the MET program! Nice work on this venture pitch project and thank you for going into such depth about OCR technology. It is definitely a new frontier exploring the affordances of OCR in education. As an EVA, my critique is that I wouldn't feel comfortable making an investment in this company as I wouldn't know what the steps towards profitability are? As you put it, Microblink researches and develops computer vision technology for mobile devices and applications. In doing so, your goal is to expand into various venture opportunities such as Photochemistry, Photophysics, Photowriting etc. So would Microblink become a parent company of these future applications and investors would see a ROI on these new companies? Or would Microblink sell data and research to new developers of these applications? I think if you narrowed your focus into one application of OCR technology in education and provided a proof of concept grounded in theory, it could be more of an attractive investment. The concept definitely has a tonne of potential and thank you for sparking my curiosity for how this technology impacts education!