anne coustalin

Yikes! That 2004-2005 info was not what was supposed to be there. Thank you for the good catch!

Scott, I really appreciated this pitch. You have a genuinely great idea here and I think you might be just the person to make it happen. I have a few notes on your pitch that hopefully will help you in moving it forward. The app itself is great, but I wonder at your future directions. I love the gamification piece, but I have concerns about the use of social media in the app. Isn’t your student population (middle school) a vulnerable population? How will you protect against predation, online bullying etc. Maybe add a “report post” feature or something and have someone moderating? Just a thought. Also, might it be a good idea to remove personal identifiers for the competition piece? I don't know what the rules are in Japan about protecting privacy for minors, but it's worth looking into. RE the numbers around potential gains in scores, as an EVA I would note that just because microlearning in general is shown to produce specific gains in student scores doesn’t equate to your app necessarily having that same effect. I ran into this with my own app (in the mindfulness part). I found out that some apps had been marketing themselves as having all these benefits to wellness but only using general data on the benefits of mindfulness as their evidence. Luminosity was sued for using that kind of promotion. Just something to think about. I would suggest adding that you will be evaluating and running ongoing anonymized analytics on the app (using student self-report data as well as usage data) so that you can start making claims about the effectiveness of the app itself. That would be awesome. Finally, I love how competitors are just future partners, though it is possible an actual competitor will enter the market before or shortly after your launch (be emotionally prepared. :) ). I also think your numbers for the go Ad-free options might be conservative. There is real profit potential here. Overall, I'm really impressed Scott. I wish I could see how this works out for you, but I'm wishing you all the best in the meantime. I think it's going to be great.

Hi Ryan, I enjoyed your pitch very much. The visuals were great and it wasn't too text heavy. I have some notes on your venture though, that I hope can help if you are taking it to the next level. First, I think you have differentiated your product quite well. I particularly appreciate the emphasis on design thinking and the annual challenge and blog. Those are great features. For the design thinking though, you mention that students could use the kit to to design a solution to a problem related to water. It would be helpful if you included an example of what that might look like. Having little experience with the products in the kit, I am struggling to imagine it. Also, it would be nice to see examples of how this could look across different grades. The functionality of the challenges could be a big selling point to teachers that lack experience with teaching design thinking in the makerspace so I think it's worth elaborating on. RE the kit itself, I right away wondered why the cedar box was important. Your kit is not related to woodworking in any way, and the handcrafted box seems like it necessarily adds cost to what is probably already a costly investment for schools. Also, consider dropping the whiteboards. Virtually every classroom already has multiple whiteboards. This is another item adding unnecessary costs. Where you might consider beefing up the kit is in the number of each item. If the kit is to be used by a class, will two of some items be enough? Will six (solar car, terrarium) sets be enough? For a class of 28, that's almost five students in a group. Is that optimal? My experience with kits like this is that schools (not individual teachers) tend to purchase them and then teachers take turns using them. The kit itself has to be substantial enough that teachers don’t have management issues around giant teams and too little equipment. Also, could you offer regular things in subscription format to supplement the initial box (ongoing projects, new components, etc.)? You use the word subscription in your pitch, but I don't see what that looks like. RE professional development etc: it would be nice to know more about this piece. Does it come at an additional cost? How much pro-d and class support comes with the kit? RE, your team: the information on you is helpful, but it would be good to know more about your team. Finally, RE cost and ask: there wasn't specific info related to dollar costs of the item or the investment ask, so I can't speak to it. Thanks for sharing your venture idea, Ryan. I believe it has a lot of potential. The differentiation you offer adds great value to the makerspace kit ideas already out there, and I hope that you plan to move this idea forward.

Hi Madeleine, This is a very ambitious venture pitch. I can see that you are passionate about the pain point here. I have a few comments about your pitch though, in case you want to pursue this further. For you elevator pitch, the speed was much too fast. I was unable to read most of it, and I found the infographics particularly frustrating as they were too small to read and they were only up on the screen for a second or two. The product itself sounds interesting, and I liked your emphasis on adaptability. It was good to learn that you would be constantly revising and updating your product, though it wasn't clear what you would be basing revisions on. Will you be assessing your product on a regular basis? Have you created an assessment strategy for that process? This might be a good selling feature if so. I also wondered if the content that you will be creating will be set to match requirements in specific geographical areas. I think curricular requirements are different from place to place, aren't they? Also, I had a lot of questions about the cost of your product and the investment ask. There was no information at all about those things. I guess a lot of that will depend on how much actual human one-to-one instruction occurs within the app. it sounds like you have actual human instructors that users can interact with. How much of instruction happens this way? What does assessment look like? Who is creating content? What kind of activities will you offer? If I'm understanding your product correctly, content creation will likely be a very costly and labour intensive process. Finally, a note on design: I found your site difficult to navigate as there were no buttons to the next section at the bottom of each page. In fact, in some instances the buttons at the bottom of the page actually navigated the user off the site completely. I found it hard to figure out where I was and what I was supposed to read next. Thank you for sharing this pitch, Madeleine, I wish you success in the future!

Hi Agnieszka, this is a very interesting pitch. Your idea is highly creative and addresses a genuine pain point. I have a few notes on your pitch though, in case you wish to pursue it further. First, about the product. I like parts of it very much, in particular the VR component and the microlessons. In fact, I think all of the parts that don't involve actual driving seem great. For the driving part though, I am very concerned that an app like this with AR functionality would create more distraction and confusion in non-native drivers than anything else. For most of us, AR technology is still quite new, and even I, having driven here all my life, would find it distracting if it was running instructional content while I was trying to drive. I would also be concerned about the related lawsuits that might arise out of distracted driving concerns. I think existing AR driving technologies try to be as non-intrusive as possible and that is probably important. Also, I don't totally understand how the drone part works. When you talk about how customers can actually drive the car on an empty parking lot in total security, do you mean they can virtually drive the car? Or are they really in a parking lot? And where does the drone come in? I found all that part confusing. I like very much how your product is portable from car to car. You are right, this would be a popular selling feature. RE the pitch itself, if you are presenting it for real, consider shortening the statistics section. Could you say enough in half the words? It was a hard slog getting through all of that. Also, the investment info was a little thin. How much do you need to get started? What is the ask? The potential return? Finally, your team: who are they? are they the right people to create this product? This was an incredibly ambitious idea, Agnieszka, and you have utilized design thinking in your approach to great effect. Good luck with this if you intend to carry on!

Hi Eva, I'm really glad I got to review your app. It looks great and I hope you are actually going to follow through with it. Your elevator pitch was pitch perfect and had me fully engaged immediately. The app itself clearly addresses a pain point and it is clear that you are the right person to develop it. Your team seems great, if a little small. Would more staff be coming on board down the line? A couple of small notes: I like that you use gender neutral language almost all the time. I would suggest catching the one or two "she"s and replacing them. Gender neutrality seems important to me for this field. Also, if you are presenting this pitch for real down the line, I would first consider data security and how you can ensure it within the app. I have had MET classes with people working at various medical schools and the data you are handling is highly sensitive and should be kept private (since it will likely link to patient personal information). I think the UBC school of medicine has a section on their website on data privacy. Also, I think you might not need to include AI for what you have in mind. Simple data analytics ought to be able to give you the information you need without adding too much expense and complication. Finally, consider adding an exit strategy. You have no competition yet, but you may by roll out time. That said, your roll out is pretty quick, so maybe you'll be fine. Overall, I'm really impressed, Eva. This is the best pitch I've seen so far. You have inspired me! Good luck. :)

Hi Mackenzie, Great pitch! I wish I understood your product better. Having read your executive summary of what a rapid e-Learning authoring tool is, I think you are saying your app would allow teachers to access the benefits of such tools without having the expensive development phase? I am not sure what that means, but my understanding may be limited by my own tech knowledge. I tried to explore the examples you gave on the Prototypes page, but I wasn’t able to explore them without giving up a lot of personal information (which I didn’t want to do). I was impressed with your identification of an exit strategy. Yours is the first pitch I’ve seen so far to do that. I also really like your 4 step plan. It seems quite complex, but well thought out. I am a little concerned at the seven year time frame though. At a time when technology is moving so fast, seven years seems like a lifetime. Who knows how the market will have changed in that time? I think maybe emphasising your ability to flexibly respond to changing market and technological realities might be helpful here. Also, I wondered at the price point you identified in step 2. It might be that I just don’t understand your product well enough, but it seems like you’re suggesting charging $5-10 for each use. How many times would you expect teachers to use your product in a given year? Is this an app they would use only rarely? Your team inspires confidence. I believe that you are fully capable of getting this app off the ground. Honestly, if I understood all of this better, I might well consider investing. Sorry I can’t be more helpful. Good luck though, this all shows great promise.

Hi Shayla, I enjoyed your site and your pitch very much. I can see that it comes from a pain point that you feel personally. I have a few questions though that jumped out at me as I was looking at it. I have separated them with asterisks since I can't make a list in this format. * First of all, I have to wonder at the statistic you gave: "teachers spend on average three hours a day planning student assessment". That can't be right, can it? Three hours on average implies three hours every day on average. This seems impossible. Maybe consider looking at it again or citing a source or something? * It wasn't clear to me how the app would save me time in creating my assessments. Is it because I'm able to input my information on a pre-existing form? There are many such forms available online already and I always find I spend as much time adapting them to my needs as I would in just creating my own from scratch. * Much of the assessment I do is on tangible learning artifacts. How does this translate to digital? Am I not intended to use the app for assessing projects like presentations, dioramas, etc? * One of the reasons that assessments tend to be paper based is that students don't all have one on one access to screens in the classroom. Handing out paper assessments does not involve a trip to the lab and is much more practical where I teach. * From what I understand of your pitch, it seems like most (all?) of the assessments available for teachers to reuse come from other teachers in the community. Would your team be responsible for ensuring quality control of those assessments? Mightn't teachers be motivated to submit assessments of limited quality just to gain access to the discounted rate? * Is it three different apps, or one app with three different aspects? I wasn't clear on this. * Finally, I have concerns around the privacy of student personally identifiable information. Where would this be stored and how would its security be assured? This is a huge issue in my district and I think if you want to ensure maximum buy-in, you have to address it. Info should conform to state, provincial and federal privacy laws. * Oh, and one more tiny detail. You have a typo on your investment page that makes it look like I can get 25% of the company for $500.00. If you are not planning on actually creating this app, I am sorry for giving so much feedback. I did like your site, and I appreciate where you are coming from. Maybe your app will be the next great assessment tool! Good luck :).

Hi Charmalee, There were many things I really liked about your pitch. First of all, I totally buy that you believe in this product and that you are the right person to roll out the program (with a team supporting you of course). You are very passionate and your identification of the pain point seems accurate. It must be tough for many new immigrants to get to language classes when they often have so many other responsibilities and obligations. I also like that you were clear that there would be no financial return on the investment. You are looking for donors, not investors, right? A couple of concerns that jumped out at me from your pitch: What does the personalized learning plan look like? What's the point of doing multiple assessments if you are just selecting a variety of apps to load onto the device? From what I understand, language learning apps are already designed to ensure learners are working at the right level. Also, you mention having weekly support for users but in the form of regular group meetings. Doesn't this lead to the exact same potential problem as regular language classes? Perhaps it would look a little different: short individual meetings with teachers and the rest of the time milling about (practicing English) with other students? That might be worthwhile. In the early part of your pitch I worried that your service would remove the human interaction piece and lead to further isolation. The weekly meeting addresses that concern, but the concern about the user's ability to attend remains. Overall I think you have a lot of excellent ideas here. I'm not totally ready to donate yet, but if you could address my concerns, I might well get on board. Good luck!

Hi Amanda, Congratulations on a very good pitch! I could sense your enthusiasm throughout and it was quite infectious. Your use of media was great; both videos were engaging and had just the right tone. I also appreciated that they were very content rich. There were a couple of areas that I would need more information on though, if I were a prospective investor. First, it is unclear to me what kind of profit I could reasonably expect for my investment. You mentioned how many users there currently are for Prodigy, but not how many of those users were paying customers. What is the current value of the company? Also, I was unsure how you would be reaching more paying customers. I see that teachers in other disciplines might be brought on board, but would that guarantee associated paying customers? It seems like a tricky balance, making your free offering robust enough to be of interest but still not quite as good as the paying option. Also, would children from paying families be enjoying a better experience in the classroom with their peers? I am curious about all that and how it affects the app's popularity. I noted that the two current investors seemed to have a focus on the public good over profits. Is that what you expect from further investors? The other thing I think should be fleshed out a little more is what the app might look like for other disciplines. Would they all be quest-based with fantasy characters? It seems like that would get a little old after a while. It would be nice to hear more about the creative people you would put on your dream team to come up with new worlds etc. that will expand popularity without saturation.