mzivkocms

REVIEW: Bravo Yuki, for an excellent elevator pitch. I hopped that you will continue the venture pitch in the same manner, but you missed the narration that gives the dynamics and energy to the pitch. Investors like to hear the pitcher real voice to get a sense of passion and energy of the venture presented. Anyway the pitch covers the most important aspects of your venture, though your problem statement is little bit exaggerated. If the problem of faculty handling tablets and mobile devices was huge a few years ago, that problem diminishes year by year, so you may be losing you markets accordingly. Your statement of faculty members in institutions is right, but you should not readily infer that they all have problem with mobile technology skills. That percentage is constantly dropping due to in house training initiatives, as the institutions require those essential mobile tech skills for teaching with the technology, a must in 21st century. Also, you missed the opportunity to scan the competition more thoroughly, mentioning just two players, but there are hundreds of well established companies from local to regional, state and on the world level that do exactly what you would like to, so it may be your barrier to entry into their markets. Your ask is a little bit too high, $500K seed would work. You could have project your development in few phases and ask more altogether, and definitely state how the proceedings will be used, and the returns. That is crucially important for investors. If those questions are not addressed, they may assume that you and your team do not care about the business development, but just about your salaries and profits. Anyway, the venture is good, fix it as suggested and you will impress the investors and take off with the seed money. I hope that this review is going to be quite useful to you. Regards, Milorad.

FEEDBACK: You elevator is quite good and you provided lots of facts and ideas in 1 minute of the pitch time. The venture pitch outlines the problem and solution, but you did not do detailed comparison, service by service with your competitors, also did not point to their barriers to entry, and the time needed for your venture to take off, and moreover you do not have a definite ask for money and the use of proceedings. That is crucially important to investors, to see clearly how is their money going to be utilized and therefore assess the investment viability and the risks associated. You have very powerful competitors, so you must come with something that they currently do not cover well, otherwise the market will not respond. Do not focus to small BC market only, think globally! You have too little information provided on the slides and the slides are too static, so consider some fixes, and you venture pitch can go side by side to your elevator and win over the investors. I hope it will be helpful to you. Regards, Milorad.

FEEDBACK: Your elevator pitch is very interesting, that I thought it is a real venture. The venture pitch is good, but the website delivery method is inferior to video, so you should have recorded video with narration. That way your passion about the venture and energy radiated would be better transferred to investors. Otherwise, the investors have to scroll the pages and read, so there is a risk that they will not connect and pick up all your ideas well. Toward the end you slipped from selling the idea of real venture into the fiction mode, so it may repel the investors. Anyway, your hook is good and if the venture pitch was delivered in the same manner and medium, it would have been much easier to sell. You coverage of competitors is not well done, You should side by side compare your product with competitors. $1M ask seems to much for that kind of venture, and you did not provide details of use of proceedings, living that unclear to investors. Fix it a bit and it may be not only a good fictional venture pitch, but also build the real venture based on that. I hope this feedback will be useful to you. Regards, Milorad.

REVIEW: Congratulations on your very good elevator and the pitch. The video would be definitely much better choice that narrative over the images in transferring your passion and energy, so I do not fully understand why did you miss that chance and not used video. (Do not worry about the privacy, it does not exist anymore). Your speech volume is of low level, and to better transfer your passion and energy, keep it a few notches up. Initially, you did not offer any rough tech specs, of the product, which did not give the investors some tech ideas about your product, so they cannot easily assess the feasibility for investment, competiveness and market success. Also, the price you set is too high, so if you want to be and stay competitive, consider lower price. To me $70-100 would be much more appealing price. You have some big wearable industry players as powerful competitors, and you did not provide any analysis of competitor products, nor provided side-by-side comparison with your product, to show investors why they should care about your bracelet, not competitor bracelets. To make this venture pitch perfect, I suggest using video as the most powerful medium, cover the competition and employ your team to research the possible manufacturing costs (I believe they should not exceed $20 per piece), offer some specs of your product (even wish list), so that way you'll really get investors highly interested and they may accept your suggestion and invest into the product. You did not define what happens after the series B is done and your exit strategy. Anyway, you decently covered the most important aspects of your venture, and I RECOMMEND it for investment. I hope that these suggestions will be helpful to you and your team to launch quite decent venture and profit. Regards, Milorad.

REVIEW: Your elevator is good and clearly presents your ideas relative to the problem and solution. Prezi is interesting for showing any flow of ideas, though to my taste, to much motion is distracting, people think of effects not of content transferred. By the 10th slide the first one is usually already forgotten. Anyway, the elevator is appealing enough for investors to hook up on your idea, and it would have been much better that you continued with Prezi or any other medium that has multimedia employed. You did an essay format, that provides good rationale, but as a medium is not appealing to investors, they're tired of reading, they wanna watch something exciting and feel your energy and passion for the venture. The fact that your company is established, and you have a product, I expected that you'll show a recorded demo of your app and show us how it actually works, which would be an awesome proof that you have a viable product. You did not explain how you aggregate the news content, and how you customize the exercises compiled from that. Your ask is quite clearly defined, and i believe that your venture is feasible, to be RECOMMENDED for funding, though please find time to overhaul the venture pitch from essay into an applicable presentation format empowered with narration. YouTube video will work. Transfer your passion, show the demo of your app, explain how it works, and off you go, so the investors will like it! I hope this review will help you to improve and get the investment you need. Regards, Milorad.

FEEDBACK: Your elevator is quite interesting. You provided good intro to the problem and solution, giving us viable idea to addressing blended learning needs. The info graphic is also good, and you provided a variety of graphical information about your venture. Generally speaking info graphic is a good medium, though for your topic pitch is a bit lengthy, and may require additional effort from investors to connect to your ideas, which may be tiring and there is a risk that all your facts and ideas won' t be picked up immediately. It would have been better if you used other medium to deliver your pitch where investors would be able to pick up your energy and passion much easier. You should have done the pitch using video with narratives, or other kind of presentation, empowered with audio narration and visuals, and that would guaranty better and clear pitch delivery. You have an extraordinary team of experts on your crew, and good ideas and solutions, but you did not ask a definite amount of money, nor you offered any value of your company for investors. Looking from investor perspective, they may not be clear on your ask, therefore may require additional clarifications and justifications of your ask and the scope of your venture. Do not be shy to ask for money when you have the solution in place, and an excellent team, and huge market. I understood that you limited yourself to Canadian market only, which may be right for the take off phase, though later on you should be able to grow your team and your support base, to avoid turning down other HE institutions that may need your service. That way, you would be able to expand your offers to worldwide markets, do more and together with your investors profit more. I tried to analyze it not only from EVA perspective, but also from an educator and investor perspective, so I hope that this feedback is going to help you with your venture. Regards, Milorad.

FEEDBACK: You did a good job explaining your idea and venture rationale behind. I believe in appeal of your idea and product and monetizing potential through advertising, though you did not clearly specify which kinds of advertising would naturally fit and work within your app. Over advertising may simply repel serious people/potential buyers and customers, which is a case and the biggest problem of the mobile app development industry. You may consider in-app-purchase of advanced features, and give people a choice, not bombard them with advertisements. I see usefulness of your buddy app for language learners and travelers who find themselves in need to communicate with people who speak their languages, and who would readily pay a few bucks for fully functioning version. That is your chance, together with meaningful advertising that may appeal helpful to people, to launch this venture and make it profitable. On the ask side, the amount you ask is too small, why did not you project the development in a few phases and ask at least 100K and offer 30% of your company. That would be more appealing to investors, otherwise they think why don't you take $20k a line of credit and take off. I hope that these suggestions are helpful to you to better prepare your venture for take off. Regards, Milorad.

Thanks for your valuable feedback. I did consider your suggestions, and overhauled the elevator and the pitch. Please revisit and post your valuable impressions. Thanks in advance. Regards.

Thanks for your valuable feedback. I did consider your suggestions, and overhauled the elevator and the pitch. Please revisit and post your valuable impressions. Thanks in advance. Regards.

FEEDBACK: Your venture is quite well presented and clearly outlines the problem and the solution. The cloud based solution is appealing, though your ask is not clearly defined. You mention crowd-funding, but you do not specifically ask VC investors for definite amount of money to invest, which does not give them clear idea how much is needed to take off this venture. The fact is that VCs like definite ask to determine is it appealing and viable investment for them. When you ask for certain amount, you can predict and offer the amount of return and offer the value of company to share with investors. Put yourself in investor shoes, and it will make sense to you. Overalll, good work. Regards, Milorad