Albert

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).

FEEDBACK: Yesterday, I was out with a friend of mine. Driving in her car, it had a whole series of 'features'. It told her when she was wandering out of her lane, when someone was in her blindspot, when she was driving a little 'fast', etc. etc. She had just purchased the car and she mentioned that it felts a little bit like the car was driving her with all the warnings rather than her driving the car. Later in the day, we were sitting on a picnic blanket in the park chatting when she looked at her apple watch and said she needed to stand up, as her watch was telling her she had been inactive for too long. She stood up and suggested we go for a short walk. I laughed and asked her if her watch was also driving her like her car was? Later in the day, I got an email from my thermostat giving me some advice on how I could lower my heating/cooling costs. What I noticed yesterday is that more and more the technology we use, computers, cars, home thermastat, etc. are 'driving' us with both positive and negative reinforcements (positive in terms of her getting a congratulations from her phone for standing up, and negative in terms of the warning chime going away when she got back into her lane when driving). Your app, seems to fall in line with this idea of 'driving' work place behaviour and training through similar types of reinforcements. The difficulty in a coroporate setting is how to get employee buy-in. With my examples, My friend and I spent quite a lot of money on the technology that is telling us what to do, yet in a corporate setting there is no buy-in for the employees. I know that insurance companies are getting around this by giving discounts to customers who accept a driving monitor into their car so that the customers have buy-in to the device that pushes them to drive in a 'safer' manner. I wonder if an employee could offer incentives or some other 'volunteer' aspect to using a product like this so that employees buy-in and are therefore more invested, but not penalized for opting-out. If the incentive is high enough, and the service is gratifying, helpful and seen as non-punitive, then others will buy-in out of peer pressure/following the early adopters example.

REVIEW: I really love this idea and believe that it falls into the "when" category rather than the "if" category of future enterprises. When reading your initial statistics on the number of maker spaces to population, it got me thinking that these would all be in big cities, and, therefore, only servicing the larger population centres, rather than small towns and rural areas. Your idea, however, addressed this concern in an awesome way by having Hosts included 'regular' people who have invested in their hobby/creations and want to share their space/tools with others. As Ryan Dorey pointed out, this helps to connect people in every place and might encourage more people to invest in higher end tools, as they can get a return on their investment to off-set some of the costs. The idea of having a video and insurance to off-set some of the concerns about damage is a good idea, however, there may need to be a little more clarity around training of users so that they are aware of safe and proper usages, perhaps inspections of the spaces to ensure there are clear instructions and safe working conditions, and clearly outlined prices/costs to damage, plus a damage versus accident resolution versus normal wear and tear resolution dispute resolution process. On the financial side, the 10% commission seems a tad high. On the website Board Game Geeks, a database of board game reviews, comments and related information (almost all user-generated), their commission structure for connecting game sellers and buyers is 3% (and they also have advertising revenue). Keeping individual costs as low as possible drives traffic to the site and means greater advertising revenue, so keeping all barriers to participation low is a good thing. On the idea of a Kickstarter, I am always pro-crowdfunding, but you may be better served by an alternative crowd-funding approach. Perhaps you could sell "shares" in the company so that investors are also quasi-owners (not official shares on a stock exchange, more like cooperative shares). I was thinking that if the Hosts were also investors then they would see even larger returns on their participation (they get clients and they get dividends - perhaps lower commission rates), and if Users were investors, with a different tier of shares that gave perks rather than monetary dividends (perhaps some free usages or lower insurance deductibles) then they would have a greater incentive to both promote the site, greater sense of ownership, and may respect the facilities more. On the idea of school participation, there would probably be large hurdles with traditional schools, mostly due to insurance concerns and 'safety' concerns, however, private schools would be a great place to begin working with as they often have very high end equipment, are looking for untapped revenue streams, have a lot of empty space in the summer and would be ideal 'learner' spaces. Overall, I think this is the most interesting idea that I have seen so far and would love to be a part of this if it moves forward, initially as a user investor, but ideally as a host investor in the future. I could even see it evolve into simply being a way for people to meet up in small group to work on a project where they all bring resources, ideas, etc. to the meeting - you may want to think about a 'free' section for meet-ups and creative projects that may or may not lead to a 'creation' phases where they use the 'pay' maker spaces at a later date. The more users you can get using the site the better. Having a 'free' area where someone offers their home and others bring materials and equipment and then a 'pay' area where some offers their space for others to use their equipment or training at a price would make the site easy to jump into (free) and then would lead many to the next level of paid spaces.

FEEDBACK: I am agree with some of the concerns other posters have had over how exactly to make a non-mathematics based game based educational tool, however, I am very excited by the concept of having a world, somewhat like World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, etc. that students could 'live' within, as avatars, and grow, level up and learn a wider variety of lessons. If (when?) learning becomes a lot more AI generated and personalized through data analytics, this would be a perfect way to keep the setting interesting and exciting and almost hide the learning though play.

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.

This was a great site. I really liked the padlets, and that you commented on so many of the ideas within them. It really felt like conversations were being had and that my own ideas would be read and considered, rather than just given a checkmark for completion. The tasks pushed me to research the maker resources in my own city, and I have even, since the week, recommended the Toronto Library 3-D printer courses to a friend who's child is starting to get interested in the field. A great site and I feel I learned a lot from it.

Sal Khan has created a juggernaut of a site. He had really captured the spirit of the DIY way of thinking. My wife learned to knit using YouTube videos, my brother-in-law learned plumbing the same way. While there are a lot of good math videos out there, there are few people with a clear idea of what they want/need to learn and how to sequence that learning. With the two examples I cited, the videos work hand in glove with practical necessity. With Mathematics, there was a need, and hence a niche, for someone to help and guide, and Khan Academy does that very well, in easy to digest formats and is always innovating.

The rating is based on their being a "strong role-model". I have to applaud Zach Sims for his creative ideas and using a more modern approach to teaching coding, and self-learning rather than going at the pace dictated by institutionalized education. I have even taking his courses and enjoyed them. However, the reason I ranked him 4/5 is because working 14 hour days is probably what it takes to be an entrepreneur, but it is a punishing schedule that is not sustainable, nor healthy, in the long-run. Work-life balance is something that needs to have a plan, as it probably won't be achievable in the first few years, or burn-out sets in.

NO, I would not support this venture. It is a great idea, but it has already been done, better, by EdPuzzle. You can upload a video from YouTube, or wherever, and embed quiz questions (open or closed). You have settings so that they cannot skip ahead, or turn that off. You can also pre-set some feedback where you explain why certain answers are wrong (if they are chosen) and why certain answers are right (if they are chosen), or, for an open-ended question, a summary of what a right answer would sound like. It is a great site, already made, that does what Brainitz wants to do, but is already on the market. Two other things I found curious in the video were 1) the statistic 75% of teachers use blended learning - where did this stat come from? 2) there is a gap in classrooms where some students struggle and just cannot access the learning, while others are bored and ready to move on, requiring greater tools for differentiation, self-pacing and a wider variety of modalities of teaching.

YES, I would be interested in hearing the venture pitch, but not quite ready to invest yet. Using Chris Ming as an example teacher/client helps to personalize the pitch and it demonstrates the functionality of the product. Personalizing the pitch makes the presentation more engaging and understandable, rather than simply being a list of features. The differentiation of Educreations seem to be that it a) doesn't require pre or post production to make a video, b) uploading is fast and c) students are notified. What is missing from this elevator pitch (and perhaps rightly so), and what I would like to see in the venture pitch, is more about the cost and the competition. The product does not sound dissimilar to using screencapture to make a video of a presentation, and it sounds quite similar to 'Show Me' as a product. For these reasons, the cost and profit strategies would be needed to see how they plan to compete with these types of alternatives.