Joshua Elsdon

I would not invest in this venture. That is not to say it is not worth pursuing - only that, as an investor, I am unlikely to see a large ROI. If you make a product that is the best on the market and promote your company well, you could be very successful, but the venture lacks a disruptive technology or idea that would give you an unfair advantage. Since the only thing differentiating your company from others in the ELL space is making a high quality product, I fear your competition will be stiff. Best of luck!

I would invest in this venture. However, if I was on your team, I might suggest a different marketing/customer payment structure. I think it might be more effective to target service providers, like local health authorities or school districts to sell them licenses in bulk. Then they could give out login credentials to their designated students so both parents and teachers could use the app with their ASD students. I think this would be a powerful way to create a collaborative approach between home and school, since issues like hygiene, public/private spaces, personal space, etc are relevant in both spaces. It would also mean you were marketing to fewer people, making it easier to target your resources, and those people would be making larger purchases. Best of luck, Jason!

I would not invest in this venture. The idea of a platform that teachers can customize to their teaching is great, but I struggle to see how the software would work. There is such a wide range of lessons that teachers deliver that I fear to make the platform truly user friendly for teachers, it would be an enormous undertaking from a software engineering standpoint. Another thought, should you choose to consider pitching this in the future: the venture pitch (magazine) was very text-dense, and needed some POP...I wanted to be sold on the idea by a passionate, visionary CEO.

I am interested in investing in this venture, but I have one major concern. I am worried that your target users might have trouble making the videos required for the assessments. I know the landscape is rapidly changing, but many of the seniors I know struggle to use smartphones. That being said, I have a couple of ideas that I think might benefit your company: first, you mention in your venture pitch (during the bathroom video), that the premium version of your app would allow users to order the grab bars with an in-app purchase. I would suggest that you make that function available for every version of the app because it is a potential revenue stream. Presumably, you will be able to take a percentage of that purchase, so why limit your opportunities to make money? Second, the word 'virtually', as an adverb, means 'nearly' or 'almost'. While I realize that you want to put the word 'safe' into a digital context, you might not want to have your fall-prevention company's name be synonymous with 'Nearly Safe' or 'Almost Safe'. If the target user is a senior, it is likely they will be more familiar with the word 'virtually' in that context. Great idea, Edwin!

I would not invest in this venture, though I think it is worth pursuing as a lifestyle business. As an investor, I would be wary that the market is too limited to realize a profit. Content Connection's main 'unfair advantage' is that it has lessons specifically tailored to BC and Alberta curricula. Once we look beyond these two provinces at the prospect of designing and aligning content with other provinces (or countries), Content Connections is exposed to much more competition. Meeting students where and when they can learn is definitely part of the new landscape of education. However, with creative tools like powtoon becoming easier to use, and many teachers are making instructional videos themselves. I think it would be a good idea to showcase one of the Content Creation lessons or units i your pitch so we would have an idea of what sets your company apart from things like Khan Academy, or some of the emerging microlearning platforms. Good luck!

I would not invest in this venture. I think the idea of scaffolded startup experience is an excellent idea, but I don't see it as a viable for-profit venture. With a variety of services in this space, as well as entrepreneur access to incubators, I think it would be difficult to convince people to pay for this service. I would encourage any business school (or secondary school, for that matter!) to adopt a program like this, but if I was a paying university student already in the faculty of business, I would expect this to be woven into my program and the cost of development included in my tuition.

If I was your school district, I would pay $3500 for your program in a heartbeat. For teachers young and old, digital footprint is a topic that requires attention for all employers, especially school districts. For those new to social media, a primer on how to use it positively and avoid pitfalls would be extremely valuable. More and more, new teachers are joining the profession have grown up with social media, and learning to navigate the transition from personal to professional use will be a crucial skill. I hope you follow through on this proposal, and please share your video with the class when it becomes a reality. I know my school district could benefit from this type of training, too!

Yes - I would give money to this organization as a charitable venture. I think you have an amazing story and vision, and it seems like an extremely viable project. From a philanthropic standpoint, it is a home run. From a business standpoint, it strikes me as something that could develop into a lifestyle business, but would have trouble scaling. As an investor, my main question would be, "what is your unfair advantage"? As first to market in the UAE, you definitely have an leg up, but if the company is centred around training teachers to effectively use tools like iPads, it would be easy for another company to step into that space and compete without much trouble - and if they were not dedicated 30% of profits to charitable efforts, it could threaten I Am Learning Here. I hope this is something that you continue to develop and that you continue to make positive change in the world!

Yes - If I was CEO the of Spotify, I would invest in developing this product. Spotify is a small, but immensely successful fish in a pond that has, of late, attracted some great white sharks. With the launch of Apple music, and Google's purchase of Songza and subsequent foray into music streaming, Spotify will be hard pressed to compete on a dollar for dollar level with their competition. One way to stay competitive is to continue innovating new ways to deliver content to listeners that they can't get anywhere else. That being said, I think the long term viability of Spotify might be in danger. What is stopping its larger, deep pocketed competitors from adopting a 'wait and see' approach and integrating Spotify's hard-won successes in new spaces at a fraction of the development and venture costs? I would have liked to see more in this pitch about how the monetization works. I liked the idea of companies paying to host or create content, but there still seemed to be a per-subscriber cost. Is this for an ad-free version?

No. I would not invest in Symposium. As a teacher, I love the idea. The desire to increase student engagement is always in the forefront of my mind. After 12 years in the classroom, I know it is a complex interplay of the culture/relationships created in each class and the systems put in place by the teacher. I think Symposium is a wonderful platform, but the cynical side of me thinks it would turn into another version of the online discussion boards we see in online classes, where most of the content is generated by students that feel obliged to post something, rather than the insights of engaged students posting of their own interest. One of the strongest aspects of this venture is the marketing plan. The model where professors - who have strong influence over a large number of students - get free use and the cost is borne by the student is very intriguing...it is a new way to leverage teacher influence, which historically has been centered around textbooks, with publishers lobbying profs to choose their content. As online content becomes more prevalent and the old paradigm decays, there is an opportunity for new ventures to step into that space.