Scott Richmond

Michael, Let me start by saying yes. Fantastic idea with real-world application. This one seems less 'pie in the sky' and legitimately viable. I don't teach music, but I play many instruments and have played all my life; I don't need to be convinced of the value of music education. Any music teachers I have worked with all say the same thing - that it's difficult to really teach kids in the time frame given. The individuality of each instrument is so hard to deal with in a room full of noise and chaos. In a way, this could lead to "flipping" music classes, with high differentiation. Music Matters is seemingly low production cost with the potential for high return, and that's one of the big reasons why I'd invest. You seem to know your stuff about the market, and your financial breakdown instills confidence and transparency as an investor. This is furthered by your admission of potential weaknesses. The valuation seems fair, and I would invest in Music Matters.

Robert, Solid idea, and like Jessica says, it's something I've been thinking a lot about, especially during the pandemic. The only thing I would add is that given it's specifically developed for Apple Watch, it would only be available to those who can afford a watch like that, and I would argue that those people might already have the resources to seek help in another capacity. With that said, it doesn't mean that only those with high socioeconomic status have the resources to get help. I like that it's a straightforward idea with low upfront costs to develop, and that is why it's an intriguing idea for an investor.

Hi Kendra. Love the elevator pitch, and although it was informative and a funny idea, as an educational venture analyst I would have liked to have seen more of who you are; I'm not only interested in what the idea is but who is steering the ship. The idea itself is a good one, and a perfect niche response to a quickly-changing employment and training landscape. Things will shift very quickly, especially for those that are considering upskilling or a lateral career pivot. The ability to connect employees, employers, trainers, and even certification bodies is great and stands to benefit a lot of people. Your valuation of $3.5 million seems about right based on your numbers provided, and I would certainly consider investing in your company provided two things: I had the chance to meet the leadership team or at least get a better sense of why I should invest in the leadership team (unless you're willing to sell the idea and brand wholesale), and secondly if there was a proof-of-concept of the application. Seeing the app mock up, how it might navigate and look for different user groups, any narrow AI incorporation, or otherwise would be helpful to gauge its future success.

Matt, thanks so much for your pitch. I completely agree with Carlo here - your skills as a marketer are impressive. The idea behind finding an 'in' between the funding and the actual delivery is solid, and I see the potential for a return on investment. I also love the idea of the disruption of an industry to drive innovation and progress. With that said, I have some concerns that would likely prevent me from investing in MeLearn. These are primarily ideological or philosophical in nature, as I see the evolution of a system with a tool like MeLearn as one that I'd rather not see happen. I tend to lean socialist and the idea of hyper-privatization doesn't sit well. I also see a lot of soft skills and competencies that are implicit with large group education, and MeLearn might overcome this if it was partnered with a startup like HIVE (Mel's A3) that helped organize group work. I wonder if teachers would be forced to a 'race to the bottom' as they scramble to market themselves as a high-value educator for a low price. This would exacerbate the teacher retention issues by removing any remaining incentives to become a teacher in the first place. Without strict language around class sizes teachers could have limitless classes, thereby turning them into MOOCs; a much less personalized form of learning that hasn't lived up to the hype. Ultimately, your presentation of ideas was really good. Professional and well-constructed. That I don't agree with the philosophical underpinnings doesn't mean I didn't like it. I really appreciated your market projections and other statistics. Shows you did your homework and understand the potential. I wouldn't invest for reasons stated above, but I enjoyed going through your pitch.

Thank you Carla. Your post found me at a time when I've been thinking about this quite a bit. I suddenly feel so inadequate with all the things I'm trying to balance right now. As an EdTech guy, I never thought I'd detest my laptop and phone so much! Cheers.

Manize, Nice work here. Your elevator pitch was well done and professional, however as a potential investor I would have liked to have been sold on you as opposed to the product itself - but I understand this is difficult as Rise 360 is already an established course-authoring product. I did appreciate the growth projections in the pitch; ROI is essentially the primary concern as an investor. Here's what I loved: * Identifying the pain points was great. You cut right to the chase that authoring eLearning courses are tedious and require experience - what a timely argument! Teachers around the world are struggling to take their delivery online, something that they weren't necessarily trained to do ( or want to). This is where Rise can help and is the edge that could take it to the next level. * Set up intuition is important as those trying to author a course can get frustrated when things don't make sense. Simplicity and control are difficult to put together, and without experience, it's a hassle. * Course development time doesn't dictate whether someone will design a course the first time, but it *might* determine whether they'll design another course, or work with the software again. Rise makes it conducive to repeat-use by cutting down dev time. * Swipe-enabled courses without any added work are in line with eLearning slowly moving toward mobile delivery. Gone are the days of having to optimize your content for operating systems and screen sizes. * I'm glad you clearly outlined the main competitors to Rise, and not only drew strong distinctions between them but offered their strengths as well. It would have been easy to suppress what they do well. It conveys honesty and a belief in the product. Concerns: * Rise doesn't have a version saving feature, something that might contribute to adoption, frustration, then dismissal, or even just non-adoption altogether. * You mention the two major markets, and I would have liked to see more information on these markets and their potential as buyers. Which do you think would be the most profitable - corporate training or educational institutions? * You're asking for $500,000 for a 20% stake, which seems conspicuously low. Verdict: Rise is an existing product, and a strong one at that. You convey a lot of important information that an EVA would need to make a sound judgement of investment. Based on your elevator and venture pitch, an established brand with reach, and more importantly your company valuation of $2.5 million, I would certainly invest in Rise.

Thank you for your OER contribution, Microlearning crew. My initial thought was "isn't microlearning just learning?", and you've successfully turned my ignorance on its head. First, I appreciate how you used microlearning as the format for teaching about the topic. Who doesn't like meta-learning? Secondly, the Pro-D angle was brilliant, as I am starting to realize the importance of Pro-D and how many different opinions there are on what constitutes "worthwhile" Pro-D. The biggest complaint I hear is that there isn't enough time >>>CUE MICROLEARNING! Bearing in mind, microlearning may not address the necessary brevity of some topics like assessment, universal design for learning, socio-emotional teaching and learning, etc, but could tackle some of the topics that are more digestible in a shorter amount of time. Things like school or district policies, emergency procedures, health and safety information, or even basic classroom management refreshers. Lastly, thanks for breaking down your learning into shorter modules with checkpoint assessments. Great teaching design!

One of the big jumps that digital textbook publishers will have to make in order to scale to the extent that they want to is how to align with so many education systems' curricula. Someone with more in-depth know-how of the textbook publishing world might know better than I but it seems that designing texts that match the ever-evolving curricula across the globe would be a logistical nightmare. This must be why Kognity has released interactive textbooks that align with three internationally recognized education programmes: IBDP, IGCSE, and GCSE. After poking around the internet I was struck at how little information available there was on Hugo Wernhoff. He is well known for the belief that technology has largely underperformed on the promises of revolutionizing education, and his digital textbooks are the answer to the problem. He has compiled a team of over 60 people and the company is rapidly expanding to markets and education bodies around the world, and for that reason, I think he's a real inspiration to entrepreneurs.

VEX is fantastic. I have taught robotics for about five years and have used Lego Mindstorm and VEX systems. The Mindstorm has been great for middle school-aged students but the VEX has been incredible for my senior students. Anytime they can work 'hands-on' it's always engaging. I have many kids who want to take the class but can't get in due to class size limits (and my own sanity). They way VEX has married their curriculum and kits with global competitions, giving potential robotics clubs a goal to aim for. I think they knew this when they started out and it's a stroke of genius. I will say that in order for schools to attend and compete in the VEX competitions they must buy the necessary implements from VEX that change every year. I can tell you they aren't inexpensive for schools. The classroom kits alone cost $1200, and I managed to get enough grants scraped together to have 10 full sets for my lab. For the mainstream public school it's almost out of reach.

Root coding robot - No I would not I would invest in this. As a computer programming teacher, I love how this has multiple levels of coding; from block-based drag and drop to text-based programming, but I don’t quite see what the pain point is. There are so many platforms available to teachers to engage students with coding: scratch, hopscotch, Mindstorms, sphere, dot and dash, etc, and I don’t quite see how they differentiate themselves here. The pricing is reasonable at $400 USD for two robots, but a classroom would need at least six. You can get six for $1200 but that is well above the budget for a single classroom unit that might last a week or two. I can see this being novel for an hour but I’m not sure this is different enough to sustain itself when compared to the many free options.