John C

Thanks everyone for your insightful reviews!

Excellent job on both the pitches! It was great to see the founder and hear the confidence and enthusiasm backed by a solid idea in the elevator pitch. You've got your finger on the pulse of an exciting, well identified market with a clear solution to their pain point. The venture pitch was similarly impressive and I felt well informed about what this product was trying to be. Investment in this venture would be a great way to get in on the ground floor of a business that is set to expand exponentially as its development continues. The experience of the team was also reassuring because it is clear you know what you're doing. This product's alluring price point of less than $10 per month will be quite popular among instructors, thereby ensuring this product's profitability. For a small share of those profits over the next 10 years, I would invest in this and contribute additional funds to help its promotion in markets continent-wide (since the GED is a standardized test).

This is a great idea for an app that would certainly deliver strong value to users while providing advertisers access to specific demographics to send targeted messages to the growing number of smartphones out there. It’s an excellent opportunity and the elevator pitch did a great job of getting my attention. The pain point was clear and this solution improves on the archaic systems already in place. I would have liked to learn a little more about your team, unless you’re doing it all yourself. Also, what are your projections for achieving sustainable profits after your the operating costs are paid off? This would make a great investment and if I hadn’t already given the green light on three others, this would be on my list. Well done.

Feedback -- Great concept and compelling product, this will be a hit. What stopped me from investing on this one is (beyond the lack of a need for it, as stated in your section on reflections), what is source of revenue? Advertising could be one, but you would need to find a way to link it to Korean advertisers, since those are the people actually using your app. And where would the content for this app come from? If you are going to be continually updating it, that will require a lot of work, so your business plan would need to account for this. I'd love to see where you go with this idea, because after teaching in Asia for a while myself I can agree these are useful skills that people are going to be interested in paying to acquire. Great idea, guys.

Feedback -- Interesting concept but this presentation didn’t adequately convince me of the need for this service in the market, or why this venture would be able to out compete its competitors. The advantages it currently enjoys (extensive accolades, for example) are not exclusive to the design of this product. The venture pitch could have used more details like how e-portfolios are going to affect the international ranking of American university students, and the specific things this e-portfolio service contributes to that effort. How is it different from its competitors? What was being asked of investors? Projections about revenue and growth opportunities were absent, as well, which make this less investment attractive. Overall, good idea, but some more details would be needed before I would consider investing.

Very interesting idea, and because the $500,000 over ten years is tax deductible (though to what amount is unclear) this could be a very cost-efficient to advertise and develop branding for our firm. Using the existing museum team, which has done previous work building digital experiences, means that Tour+ can be continuously updated and closely aligned with current museum content. Moreover, the opportunities for future expansion of Tour+ into other markets means this technology is potentially wide-reaching and profitable. Not having any claim on those potential profits would be the downside of an investment in this venture. Our contribution of $4200 per month buys us only name association and exposure. We have no ability to improve these returns through our active involvement in the project and are instead relegated to a completely passive role. However, this could be a cost-effective way to supplement our existing advertising initiatives. I must recommend we invest in this project.

What captured my attention was this venture’s versatility and scalability as a platform instead of a narrow app. PeerScholar can be used across various contexts, cultures, and content areas. Its probably going to be a profitable idea because of its broad scope and the strong value it provides its users (presumably post-secondary institutions, including those in Chinese markets where large classrooms are commonplace). The goal of “a sustainable revenue stream at a price point that provides the lowest possible barrier to entry” is a reasonable one and the low marginal cost of this service means that there may quickly come a tipping point in its adoption if institutions begin getting on board. Moreover, this is probable owing to PeerScholar’s position as a pet-technology developed by the HEQC. The differentiation of this product is similarly strong. No other program supports as many different submission formats lending to PeerScholar’s scalability. And while, “[other] applications talk about how peer assessment develops students’ critical and creative thinking skills, only peerScholar collects the data that allows faculty to actually measure and report on this development.” This will be a huge selling point. Overall, this would be a great project for investment. The ask is substantial but represents an exciting opportunity to get in at the beginning of a strong venture with great potential for future expansion, sustainability, and profitability.

It’s hard to say whether this would be a profitable venture but it’s easy to say it’s not aligned with our goals as an educational technology firm since its focus is on the medical industry. That fact notwithstanding, this was an interesting proposal because of the clear value this product provides: more efficient access to medical care for users, and increased revenue for owners through greater quantity of patients. If the medical kiosk industry is indeed ready to “explode” - presumably in a good way - this could be a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor of an expanding market. But not enough information was given about the place of Solo-health’s kiosk in this new market to justify our investment. What does it do differently? Why would we invest in this venture instead of its competitors? More than anything, this pitch effectively introduced a new market (medical kiosks) but did not adequately promote the new venture (Solo-health). Ultimately, I must recommend our firm pass on this venture.

Using personal devices to aggregate digital fitness data for use in PE classrooms is an excellent idea, but do enough people need this to justify our substantial investment? It’s unclear whether this could be integrated into classrooms as a core part of the curriculum without additional hardware support for students who may not have access to their own personal devices. Because of this, I cannot recommend our firm invest in this venture at this time. In order for this to be a strategic investment, we would need to see more evidence that the infrastructure is already in place for this to be an effective addition to a regional PE curriculum. Please follow up with us down the line as this is indeed a great idea but is perhaps still underdeveloped.

This idea is very innovative and could be developed into a workable business. But, frankly, this presentation is sluggish and does a poor job of “pitching” the idea. A screencast format with someone reading from the screen while navigating a basic website was probably not the best choice for capturing attention or interest. The organization of the business seems improvised, without much market research. Why $100,000 on laptops but only $2,000 for graphing calculators, for example? And of what quality is the technology? Moreover, having no information about operational costs (staff, logistics, office space, incidentals) makes the financial projections seem somewhat unrealistic because they assume immediate, maximum possible rentals. While the need for technology in the classroom means there will be a growing market for businesses of this kind, ultimately, I must recommend our firm pass on this opportunity.