Gary Ma

Review: I enjoyed watching and reading about your venture and I commend you for pursuing the development of a service as opposed to an actual product. It is clear that you understand the pain points of start up companies and your venture is designed well to deal with their difficulties. As an EVA with experience working in a start up, I find it difficult to invest in an LMS consulting for start ups. As an employee of a start up company, it is expected that employees are self-motivated and independent, and have the ability to problem solve and to learn concepts individually. Many workers who join start ups are looking for such a challenge, and as a leader of a start up, they should be looking for employees who are independent learners to join their ranks in the beginning, why it is hard to implement an LMS for these start ups is because in a lot of situations, employees at a start up get very little time to "learn stuff on the side". Many of them are tossed into the fire, and rightfully so, because investment in too much employee training in the beginning stages of a start up is thought of by many as not a good use of resources. However, I do believe there is room to offer consulting services to companies looking for an LMS to train its employees.

Review: I thought the premise of your venture is unique. Most students in this course chose to pitch a product to others, while you decided to pitch a service, one which is very necessary for educators to navigate the upcoming AR trend. The use of visuals throughout both the pitches were excellent and helped show the power of AR. I believe that something you can do to improve the pitches, is to make more clear in the elevator pitch what your service is exactly, as the elevator pitch seem more like a pitch for AR in general and not the service you are trying to provide. Overall as an EVA, I would invest in a company that aims to consult on the correct deployment of AR.

Review: I found the use of live footage in your elevator trip gives your audience a good idea of what outdoor education is. Like some of the other replies below, many people were unaware of such programs and the use of the videos makes your pitch more accessible to the audience. One of my suggestions for your elevator pitch would be to make a stronger emphasis on the pain points that you mentioned: administrative tasks or other activities that detract teachers from planning lessons. How do teachers carry out their administrative tasks before using Redwood? How exactly will your application help them? As for your product and the venture pitch, I commend you for your research into outdoor education and it is clear that your product is aimed to address difficulties. None of the features seem excessive. Some of the features in your product would also help teachers in regular classrooms as well. One point that I have to make about your app as a startup is that it is very difficult to develop, and maintain that many features initially, it may be a good idea to limit the functionalities you have in the beginning, and aim to develop more of them as you receive more investments. As an EVA with stakes in outdoor education, I would invest in Redwood Technologies.

Review: I found the concept of being able to create AR markers for education to be an intriguing and a worthwhile pursuit. I think it is only an eventuality in which AR apps for education gets developed. One thing that I thought was lacking in the elevator pitch was a strong discussion of the pain points (what are the gaps you mentioned about specifically?) and some practical examples of how your app can be used in different settings (I believe Kenkosei can be used in a tremendous number of situations if implemented). As an EVA, I would also be interested in exactly how Kenkosei will be better than the competition you have listed. Overall, I think the concept behind Kenkosei is strong, and as an EVA, I would invest if I was given a more concrete set of application scenarios.

Review: I believe the name of your venture and your slogan at the end captures the goal of your venture well. Your elevator pitch discusses the premises well and encouraged me to look further into your venture pitch. My concerns as an EVA began when I looked closely at your venture pitch and found that some important details were missing, or at least difficult to pick up. Without improving upon current smartphone cameras, how can a 3D image of an object be taken by a camera that takes 2D images? I am also uncertain about the differences between your free, and freemium options. What are the benefits of freemium and why should the users be enticed to make a purchase? Without learning about these things, it would be very hard to convince myself as an EVA to make an investment.

Review: Hello rstpierre. I thoroughly enjoyed your elevator pitch and it encouraged me to go further and learn more about Akwire in your venture pitch. I thought your voice was great, and the animation you used supported your venture well. I also thought the storyboard behind the elevator pitch was well executed. My only complaint is that in the graphic you showed for learning Japanese, the writing on most of billboards was actually Chinese. I liked the organization of your venture pitch and I thought that it did a good job in discussing the pain points, what your application is, and some of the lacking features of your competitors. I believe you have a sound plan in place for the future of Akwire. As an EVA, I find it difficult at the current time to place an investment in Akwire solely because there is no evidence that AR, VR, and adaptive learning is mature enough to make Akwire come to life the way you have envisioned it. Akwire reminds me of the Holodeck experience from Star Trek, and I think we are currently many years away from making something that resembles that type of technology. The concept is sound however, and in the future once there is a clear evidence that the available technology could make Akwire a possibility, I would not hesitate to invest.

Review: I found the conversational piece in the elevator pitch the be unique and I don't think many people did something that similar. The conversation relayed the pain points well but I thought that it was difficult to get a good sense of what BizSchool is, what it can do for the entrepreneur, and how exactly it was going to do it. As an EVA reading into the venture pitch, I thought the pitch lacked specifics on how Biz Venture manages to personalize learning for the entrepreneur, and how it differentiates itself from the competitor. For example, using the premise brought up in your elevator pitch as an example. If the entrepreneur wanted to start a restaurant and was unsure of how to proceed, how would Biz Venture teach accounting, marketing, strategy, business intelligence, operation management, international trade, real estate, economics, and finance specifically to help him start a restaurant? Is Biz Venture suppose to do that or am I missing something here? Perhaps Biz Venture could be augmented so that it provides this sort of information as opposed to general business knowledge in order to differentiate itself from the competition, which you have listed. I believe that in order to more strongly differentiate your system with your competitors, you needed to discuss how your system personalizes learning path for the learner, and seeing how it offers something competitors do not have, it is difficult to determine whether or not Biz Venture is a good business to invest in.

Sentinel is in direct competition with classroom, however, no such app exists for Android, and Windows phone, which are both different platforms that could benefit from the app.

Hello. As I discussed in the "Controlling the app" section, the students will have to turn on the Sentinel app themselves in class in order to have it functional. My initial plans, as outlined in the "Market Strategy" section, would be for Sentinel to be installed on laptop carts at schools first. I also believe that educating students on proper ettiquette and citizenship directly to be the best approach, but I believe Sentinel can serve as a hard line solution where needed.

Hello Baljeet. The early versions of the app will strictly be focused on school owned devices, and not devices owned by students. For example, they would be installed on loaner devices, or laptop/tablet cart devices. If they are using school property in class for research, I don't believe privacy would be a problem.