Matt

Thanks.

Thanks Aziza, I would love to have unlimited time and resources to really pursue this (but I guess those are just excuses aren't they!)

Very nice thoughts and important considerations to be sure! Thanks for taking the time....and you could not have paid me a higher compliment than you did with your last sentence!

Totally understandable. Glad you could appreciate it for what it is! Many thanks. We'll save the political debate for some other time. ;-)

Hi all - to hopefully answer Carla and Aziza's questions (which were great!) and clarify for everyone, I thought I'd post here. The target market (in my ideal world) would be a complete shakeup of the K-12 and post-secondary education system that we have today. I'd be aiming for a 100% publicly funded, but 100% privately delivered education system. I should have made that more clear in the video, I can see now. MeLearn would basically be the means of HOW people would connect their students to the type of privately offered education they want for their students (or themselves in post-secondary)....and then it would take a cut (%) of the transaction. But the 'delivery' of the education would be a total free-market. If teachers/experts wanted to get together and form a traditional "school" setting and offer it at a lower rate to attract more students, then they would advertise that on MeLearn. If a teacher wanted to provide one-on-one mentoring, then they could offer that at a higher rate....whatever the market demands. And all this would be communicated through MeLearn profiles. Parents would do some homework and find what works best for their situations. The idea is that competition would drive the education system to improve and not remain stagnant...in all these areas. UDemy is getting closer to the idea I'm proposing....but it is also used as a content delivery system so the instructors are generally limited to the online environment. MeLearn would act more as a commission-taking middle man with no content delivery. I realize the $$'s I used represent the entire education spending of the government each year (including on buildings etc), but what I'm saying is that if the whole delivery system (K through post-secondary) becomes privatized then all that infrastructure would also become privatized (eventually) and those costs would be built into what teachers (and potential "schools") would eventually charge the students....and MeLearn is designed to take a % of all those transactions - hence the huge potential! Sorry to be verbose. Hope that clarifies! :-)

REVIEW: This pitch has a lot of great ideas and like Manize mentions sounds a lot like a broad, all encompassing vision of what the education system should be like. I definitely agree with the sentiments and think that it has a similar flavor to my own venture pitch. I did have a few concerns with the venture pitch though. Though the ideas are broad and grand, I'm still a little unsure what I would be investing in exactly. I'm thinking it's basically an online school with some physical/local elements. But I didn't get a clear picture of this in the pitch. The video was extremely slow which didn't help with my motivation to keep watching to find out more (but I did!). The numbers that were given near the end were flashed up quickly and I was a little unsure what exactly I was looking at or how they related to the pitch....especially the ask for the specific dollar amount at the end with the promise of millions. It all felt a little bit vague and Dragon's Den-ish. Overall, I have to say that I *think* I agree with the idea, but I'd need more information before investing.

REVIEW: Haha, first of all....anything with that Allen Iverson quote makes me more happy. So, that's a win for the venture pitch. Honestly, after the elevator pitch, I wasn't too excited and figured that there was already something out there on the market that would do something similar. But reviewing the venture pitch changed my mind. So that's another win! James' website offers a thorough exploration of pain points in current market - and his excellent credentials in the field back them up. He uses the "Cube" model as an effective way of pitching it to investors....even though they likely won't know what the model is. But he uses it in a way that they will understand. One concern I have is whether or not people would be willing to pay for such an app since I always want all my apps for free, but James gives an explanation of how all the funding would work and how the price of the app will drop - and it made a lot of sense. The two things that most convinced me were the description given of the current market and how this app will fill a niche that currently isn't being filled which helped me realize that maybe there is use for 'another' math app. This coupled with his significant credentials in the field helped to convince me that this is a good product. Would I invest, I'd have to say no....but not because of anything I can find wrong with the pitch. It's just simply not something that gets me super excited emotionally. But the pitch is very well done.

REVIEW: Wow....this might honestly be the best venture pitch in the whole forum. The elevator pitch useful and the green screen use was commendable. I was especially impressed with the venture pitch though. Chris packs a huge amount of information in a concise, clear manner. And it didn't feel overwhelming at all. The market and product were clearly laid out and the forecasts look highly realistic. Overall, the entire feel of the pitch is very professional and respectable. The idea is sound and I think he's correctly identified a niche that needs to be filled. I like that he's not trying to compete with the already huge players in this market - but instead plans to work with them and eventually make them come to him to make their content easily accessible through his app (once critical mass is reached). There would be some challenges with getting everything to be able to compare apples to apples (ie. similar courses from two different organizations....would they give extra 'credential' or simply 'check off' the same boxes. But nothing that some background work wouldn't cover. Overall, this is a for sure YES that this is something I would be willing to invest in.

FEEDBACK: Love the actual elevator too! Funny. I was a little confused at first, but then I got it. :-) This idea sounds pretty awesome and your website looks really well developed. I didn't read through everything, but from what I saw, it looks like you've got a good handle on what you're doing. Just a thought - a little more excitement/interest in the elevator pitch video (some images...or anything) would help keep people focussed and interested.

FEEDBACK: Well this is a timely product! And you elevator pitch video is very well made. My son and daughter both just had online class meetings with their teachers via Google Meets (part of the G-Suite for Education) and a product like this would have been helpful, I'm sure. It sounded a little chaotic today! I think you'll have a difficult road ahead getting Google to hop on board. Zoom already does everything mentioned in your video and knowing Google's track record, they might just buy Zoom instead! Good luck!