Michael

FEEDBACK: Hi, Mary: Great work! I like that you’ve grounded the issue geographically and used example organizations from Canada to illustrate the work already being done in the field. I think the ability to save valuable information in a cloud database is also appealing to organizations who have limited tech budgets and experience and who want to avoid data loss from issues like local hardware failure. In terms of improving the pitch, I’d recommend including more specific information about the venture in the Elevator Pitch to get people interested in the venture and what actions it will involve.

FEEDBACK: Hi, Sandy: I think you’ve done well creating a focused Elevator Pitch, and the Venture Pitch is direct and easy to navigate. I can appreciate the need for the product, as I’m actually in the opposite situation: I prefer learning about a topic by reading about it rather than hearing someone talk about it. Good work! My main suggestion is to clarify the need that the venture addresses. The Elevator Pitch mentions difficulty reading but it also mentions student difficulty in accessing information, which could suggest the app might help with research. Then the Venture Pitch mentions differences in learning styles. I think that clarifying the one need the app addresses will help to strengthen the pitch. Another issue with the pitch might be clarifying how schools will ensure consistent device availability in classrooms where not all students have smartphones or not all students bring smartphones to class.

FEEDBACK: Great work, Meril! I like your pitch’s emphasis on simplification and understanding NPR as an ecosystem. My main sense is that commentators and strategists have often misunderstood what radio listeners want in 2015. As your pitch notes, “In 2013, NPR launched Generation Listen, a poorly-conceived, half-hearted, and ineffective effort to recruit younger listeners, involving twitter hashtag memes, cross-country roadtrip tours, listening parties, and preaching-to-the-choir online testimonials.” However, “NPR needs to be saved from its aging self, but this young group of insiders are not quite pulling it off.” I think you’re on to something here. I’d argue that successful radio isn’t going to depend on the success of its hashtags. Consider a podcast like Serial—it was so successful because it fulfilled people’s basic desire to hear a fascinating story, told orally, unadorned by social media, apps, and auxiliary elements. Many of Serial’s listeners are young social media users, but they’re not listening to the podcast as a function of social media. After Serial came out, a gushing tech-enthusiast commentator on the local CBC station tried to explain how podcasts in the future would use interactivity, VR, and other tech elements, to make their podcasts as engaging as Serial was. I remember think how deeply the commentator seemed to have misunderstood what made Serial so successful. What made it so successful other than the story? A great website, linked to the podcast in design and theme, that provided auxiliary items like documents on the case, blog posts analyzing the case, profiles of the creators, and an email list notifying readers of updates. And later on, an active third-party community on Reddit that dwarfed its Facebook & Twitter discussions many, many times over. Maybe most importantly, the social media engagement emerged independently from the podcast itself; the creators never set out to create a social-media-engaged podcast.

FEEDBACK: Great work, Jacyln! I think the pitch is particularly relevant now, as people become more familiar and comfortable with wearable tech, whether FitBit or others. Although many people seem to give up on the fitness-related wearable tech that they’ve bought, I think that EmoTech is potentially more viable since it addresses a completely different need. I think the Venture Pitch does well providing contextual details about time and place to define the mental health situations and trends that the venture intends to address.

FEEDBACK: Great work, Lane! The Elevator Pitch is really clear and polished, and the Venture Pitch has an easy to follow structure. I think your pitch makes a good point—that e-textbooks and interactive texts have largely been sold to the college market, without much thought to the K-12 market. My main suggestion is that the issue being addressed by the venture could be clarified further. There might be a bit of a disconnection between the two pitches in that the Elevator Pitch focuses on students with learning challenges (autism, FASD, ADHD) and advanced learners (those who’ve moved beyond their grade level), whereas the Venture Pitch focuses more on how I-Read-You can address different learning styles (auditory/visual) in the classroom and can be used across various grade levels.

FEEDBACK: Great work, Victoria! I think your Elevator Pitch blows all of us away with its sense of confidence and the amount of information you’re able to pack into it. The combination of video and graphics also works well. The venture addresses a real need—I’m sure most people are tired of keeping a long list of usernames and passwords memorized or written down. Your Venture Pitch provides a good technical breakdown of how the app would be managed by users over time, and its end goal for investor of acquisition by Apple or a password company. There’s lots of potential to market the app beyond the educational sector.

FEEDBACK: Good work, Kate! I think your Elevator Pitch does well establishing the problem you want to address with your venture. I agree that this is an issue affecting faculty across North America, but I’m wondering if the pitch could provide more specific context—e.g. is ReciPROcity relevant for faculty at specific types of schools or specific subject fields, or is it relevant across the board? In terms of technical aspects, I’m wondering if a more linear structure would be better for the Venture Pitch. When reading through the site, the reader can find himself/herself clicking “More” or “More Info” in a number of corners of various pages, which can make the information seem a bit maze-like—it’s not always clear how the information is structured overall. I think this is important because your pitch has so much valuable information about the issue it intends to address. Congrats on getting through MET!

REVIEW: Great work, Tina! I like how you’ve used the anecdote of your own son to illustrate the relevance of the problem and the necessity of the product. Is the printing shown his? Mentioning both personal and professional experience helps your pitch gain credibility. You’ve also done very well describing the technical components of the product, making the pitch even more credible. I also like your emphasis on the benefit of avoiding apps and upgrades—the things that have come to make lots of ed. tech. devices seem cumbersome and complicated. My questions are: What age range do you envision using this product? Is this something high school students like your son might use to improve their printing and longhand, or is it intended for younger grades? Do you think this is a problem affecting students across the world, or is it a uniquely North American problem? In terms of the product, I think this information can make the pitch clearer, but either way, I recommend funding for the venture.

REVIEW: Great work, Osayma! I think you do really well identifying the need and relevance of the venture. Using key figures, like the one at the beginning of the Elevator Pitch illustrating how little funding is being direct toward education in the Syrian crisis. But inversely, this figure also helps to emphasize the potential impact of your venture for Syrian students. Your Venture Pitch has a clear five-year timeline for the venture that is grounded in both time and place,specifying particular locales where the venture will move forward. My two concerns are (1) the name of the venture—“Spark” is already the name of a somewhat popular instant messaging client from a company called Ignite. It’s similar to AIM, and it is popular in the business community and in some education markets, so that might potentially cause some confusion for your venture. What do you think? And (2) What is the mobile access like in refugee camps in the countries specified in the timeline and in areas within Syria? Can kids expect consistent access on their mobiles? With these issues clarified, I would recommend funding for Spark.

REVIEW: Great work, Laurie! I think out of all of us, you always do the best with enunciating, an overlooked but especially important skill when trying to clearly let investors know about your pitch. For the Venture Pitch, I think the main strengths are how clearly you’ve delineated the problem and the solution. A combination of real-world clips mixed with static images helps to illustrate real world uses. My main suggestion is that the Venture Pitch could be improved through contextual details about time and place that help establish the problem and apply the solution to the real world. For example, in what grade-level and in what countries is the venture relevant? Is privacy of a particular concern to Canadian students? It might help to connect this issue to broader privacy themes that we have in Canada (e.g. the way a number of our schools prohibit using U.S.-based cloud services due to the PATRIOT Act in the U.S.), or to clarify whether privacy is especially important after Edward Snowden’s revelations, or whether it has always been important, especially for students who are minors. With this context in place, I recommend funding for 3DCreatingSpace.