Zaffold

FEEDBACK: Christopher, it is a pleasure to see your instructional video skills in action. I particularly liked the video montage at beginning. It actually felt like I was watching a TV news item! At times, I thought the music might have distracted from the message and the text was difficult to read against the backdrop. If it would be possible to have a side panel of text on white background that you could point to, that might be more effective. The concept of Zaffold is an excellent and exciting one. I do wonder how it would work and who you would like to attract as investors. With a little more clarity and your outstanding production/communication skills, I'm sure you could sell it! Well done.

[REVIEW] Thank you for all the work you put into this set of pitches, Christopher. Your elevator pitch was highly engaging, and I wasn’t surprised to read that you teach sales and marketing. Though it did feel a bit more like an ad for the software rather than a pitch to potential investors, it was nonetheless strong enough to draw me in. It left me curious, hoping the venture pitch would show a presentation of the product in some way. I know Zaffold is stated as being a “conduit” and a “portal” as opposed to an app or a platform, but it wasn’t clear how that would work. I wasn’t looking for a full proof-of-concept, but at least a small mock-up of the interface that users would be presented it. Also, it’s not clear to me who you’re referencing when you mention “alternatives” that your venture is better than. What’s the difference between these “alternatives” and the “competition”? Is there truly no competition out there? Even if your product out-delivers these products on nearly all fronts, to me that would be a huge selling feature that I would be wanting to include: “Sure you can sign into almost every website through you’re a single Google Account, but that won’t do _______”. Overall, I like the general idea of this pitch, but I would need a better vision of the working parts and user experience before contemplating an investment.

REVIEW: I thougth this a very strong, well put-together, and persuasive pitch. Regarding the problem, I agree that there are so many platforms and ways people can learn these days that it somewhat disarrays the learning and real and valuable experience may not be acknowledged. Zaffold offers a solution to synthesize and recognize knowledge and skills. It makes use and encourages the trend towards taking ownership of one’s learning and this will only continue to grow and so has the potential to support the growth of applications like Zaffold. Especially now and with the changes we are seeing in the world I feel like we are going to have to take greater ownership for our own learning now and going forward. There is a clear target for this venture and trajectory for the development and expansion of the technology which looks promising. It’s a great idea and a solution to a problem that many only continue to grow and become more overwhelming because of the continual development of new learning management systems and platforms and so streamlining and tracking learning from all different sources is going to help make learning much more organized and help learners stay more accountable and in control of their learning. However, I have some reservations. Given that Zaffold relies upon existing platforms I wonder how changes and updates in those platforms would affect their functioning with Zaffold? Or how changes in Zaffold would affect its ability to work with other learning platforms? I’m still not totally confident in how the program will work with all the learning platforms it is supposed to interact with. As an EVA I would not invest in this venture at this time. It seems like a great idea and would offer an attractive solution to organizing and recognizing learning experiences which would be of great help, but I feel I need greater understanding and evidence of how it will function and be maintained.

REVIEW: Hi Chris, your elevator pitch is absolutely fantastic! You deserve credit for the amount of work you put into this elevator pitch and the results show; it is practically perfect and works. Your pitch is convincing and I believe it would succeed in getting you what you wanted. I like the name of the venture; it works and sells your venture. The presentation of your venture pitch is polished and looks professional. You identified the problem your venture is addressing and how your service provides a solution. You have identified a real good problem and you have an original idea for a venture for generating original value. This is impressive. I think that the neat thing about your pitch is that it is an original, credible and compelling story. How feasible is it? You could tell us but we understand it is a fictitious venture at this point. If we were to follow through with developing this idea, my question is who would you have to pay? For example, would you have to pay Kahoot! or would they allow you to use their platform for free while you are making money? I am excited about the originality of the idea and the potential for a real venture. I would invest.

REVIEW: Hi Christopher. As an EVA, your elevator pitch had me hooked for sure. You were able to effortlessly identify the pain point—tracking individual progress of personalized learning goals can be a nightmare, and how Zaffold would provide a solution—by being an infrastructure service provider that enable you to ‘access, track and report personalized learning’. Loved the green screen idea—made it look very professional. You did a good job identifying the CEO credibility in your venture pitch, which was detailed and addressed almost all the crucial areas. The information provided in the ROI, Market Focus and Offering Type was explained well, and added to the credibility of the overall pitch. There were a few areas which I feel if they were addressed would make your pitch stronger. For instance, I was not clear about the differentiation strategy. While you did talk about ‘Why is Zaffold better than the alternatives’, it was not very clear what the alternatives were? The ‘Competition’ section mentioned ‘other venture pitches in learning technology’ as competitors, but it would have been good to know if there were any existing service providers out there that could be potential competitors. In my opinion, the roll-out phases would be more relevant in the ‘Business Plan’ phase. Lastly, it would be helpful to know what the company’s strategy was on data security. I think considering that your product has great potential and provides a unique hybrid solution of a business intelligence platform and an LMS combined together, and considering the ROI, I would surely consider it as an investment opportunity. Good job!

REVIEW: Wow....this might honestly be the best venture pitch in the whole forum. The elevator pitch useful and the green screen use was commendable. I was especially impressed with the venture pitch though. Chris packs a huge amount of information in a concise, clear manner. And it didn't feel overwhelming at all. The market and product were clearly laid out and the forecasts look highly realistic. Overall, the entire feel of the pitch is very professional and respectable. The idea is sound and I think he's correctly identified a niche that needs to be filled. I like that he's not trying to compete with the already huge players in this market - but instead plans to work with them and eventually make them come to him to make their content easily accessible through his app (once critical mass is reached). There would be some challenges with getting everything to be able to compare apples to apples (ie. similar courses from two different organizations....would they give extra 'credential' or simply 'check off' the same boxes. But nothing that some background work wouldn't cover. Overall, this is a for sure YES that this is something I would be willing to invest in.

Thanks for all the interest. I filmed with my iPhone in front of a green bedsheet. Any colour works as long as it is even AND evenly lit (shadows change colours). I used an app called Green Screen by DoInk (pink octopus app logo) to remove the background and have an image or video show through - there are lots of green screen apps out there, but I like this one because it gives a lot of controls to adjust the colour of background to remove, and sensitivity (If I'd used blue, my torso would have been see-through, which is usually undesirable but can be useful for creative effects). After that I made edits in iMovie, but there are lots of editing programs out there: Adobe Premier, GoPro, Vegas, etc.

Review--I am impressed Chris, your elevator pitch was quite professional looking, your eye contact could have been more consistent. I would also like to know what software or platform you used for you video. I appreciate how much planning you put into each phase of your roll-out--especially that you segmented by region and what offering type to projections--quite detailed and specific. You listed pushing reports and how you would utilize social media to realistic numbers. I am concerned about how you would get third-party companies to release their data to your platform. I don't think that would come easily. Though you were focused on users and had done some research for that, what would be the incentive for those companies to share their data? Nevertheless, your whole pitch is designed well and looks well organized.

Hello Chris, your pitches are very well done but I'm sceptical about the idea of giving credentials when we don't know if the student has actually done any of the work. What the platform can tell me is that a video was played under the account of X or that a quizz was completed under the account of X.Let's say I am playing a video to learn about Pythagorean theorem and the report is sent to my teacher. Well, I might have been playing a video game during the video or eating a snack and chatting on my phone and not watching the video...

(Feedback) Hi Christopher! I love this idea and would find it very useful as a grade 5 teacher. First, I think you did great with your elevator pitch; I understood your product right away. I think there is a major need for a product like this. The online providers/platforms you mention in your venture pitch are platforms I am using daily and I would definitely invest! Great idea!