venture pitch review

Hi Ryan, This is a very interesting venture and one that I can see myself wanting to get in on the ground floor. Piggy-backing on the Open Education Movement is a great way to set your venture up for success. This is a movement that has seen a groundswell of support as the digital age continues to cause the earth to shift under the traditional publishing companies. Open Allies has positioned itself to be a major player as an educational consulting group in an area that has very serious growth potential. Not only that, by making your venture a not-for-profit, you target investment from large foundations looking to help develop an education model that shares a philosophy of openness over corporate greed. Your ASK is fair but could use a little clarification. I would target the funding on building algorithms that help Open Allies develop, find and organize the information they are looking for. I think you are right to offer perks and rewards to investors. This could include logo advertising on your products and promotion of foundations who become the main investors. I see Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation written all over this venture. Finally, I think your pitch was very clean and straightforward Ryan. You have a keen eye for design and this makes reading through your pitch an easy and enjoyable experience. Count me in!

Hi Albert, You have an interesting venture here and one that I think has investment potential. Your elevator pitch was clear and focussed and that helped put me in a positive frame of mind to read your pitch. An academic manager is a service I could see a lot of parents adopting once they see it in action. Word of mouth in a wealthy neighbourhood would be all the advertising you would need. Most students don’t have a plan for how to reach their goals and this service solves this. I don’t think the home school market is necessarily the best place to target this venture. I see it as a natural offshoot of the private school system where parents have already paid to make sure their child has an “edge”. This type of programme helps them target specific pathways to a goal. Although storefronts are an option, I would save your money andncapitalize on the digital communication tools available and supplement this with on-site visits to homes. This is appealing to the busy family. With the added tweaks mentioned I am very interested in the potential of Personalized Education Inc. Count me in!

Hi Janna I am a huge dog lover and your pitch appeals to those of us who see how important pets can be in bringing support and compassion to a person who needs it. I would like to see more emphasis placed on the investment you want me to make. I feel like you are focused more on selling the programme itself rather than the investment into it. More information related to the team of people supporting your venture and why you are an expert in the field would also be an important addition. You have a real passion for animals and this is a big part of selling a business like this but without further detail surrounding the marketing and return on my investment I am not ready to recommend this wonderful cause yet.

HI Ali, I was interested in Babbel 1.0 so I took a peek at their website. Your development of a new version is a good way to start a venture. It is always smart to find success and work off of it. Your pitch is a bit text heavy for the average investor to get through, but what you have to say is very interesting. School French programmes are always searching for better ways to persuade students to stay in the programme. At our school, the grade twelve French class is down to about 6 students from 140 in grade nine. Your decision to use audio, video and visuals will make the programme appealing. I also think your research (McGee, 2014) helps to make Babbel 2.0 easier to sell to investors. Your “Why Invest” in Babbel 2.0 page leans heavily on the past success of Babbel 1.0 and I would like to see a little more information about the future. I would also like to know how you plan to invest the money I give you: sales, or development of the product? Although Babbel 1.0 is successful I would need a little more information before I jump into this interesting sounding venture. Good work Ali!

Nice work Justin. The importance of good grammar is becoming a lost art as young teachers enter the workforce with less and less background in the subject. I think your app has a lot of potential in that respect. I like the fact that your app is not a grammar checker that alleviates the need to learn grammar. As you point out, good grammar is what makes a person an expert communicator. I liked the elevator pitch, but it could be rewritten to be under a bout 90 seconds. Your website is set up logically and your headings allowed me to go back and find what I was looking for easily. Strengths include your CUBE analysis of your venture and decision to go mobile and micro. Not only this, you back up this decision well with research. My first concern as an EVA is the idea of marketing to teachers individually. Teachers like to help students but most don’t have the resources to invest in apps for their class. The number of apps that I wish I could use in my class is high and that forces you to compete with every other type of education app on the market when it comes to getting me to pay for your app. I would give teachers a chance to use the app for free in order to garner support. Teachers that sign up for free could become GURUS that help establish your apps presence in the K-12 market. I would offer increased functionality to schools or boards that sign on so they could use the big data to track student progress on a board level. My second concern may be unfounded based on your research, however I still have concerns about the availability of mobile devices across the group. I teach in a private school where nearly all kids carry an Iphone 6 in their bag, but my wife works for the board where this is not the case. In a few years many of the best grammarians will be retiring and at that point I will be ready to recommend Microgram as a great investment. The face of your company could be my grandma, whose penmanship, grammar and use of the ruler as a disciplinary tool were legendary. :)

Hi Anne, Your website is wonderfully easy to navigate and very well designed. Your data is a great way to show the growth of online learning, but I think you should also look at health and wellness data for the age group you are pursuing. I would also take out the 2004-2005 data. I was really taken by the idea of students having a way to exit the onslaught that is first year university with an app like Brain Yogi that gives them a chance to be mindful. I think that this type of app is helpful for kids but even more helpful, in a big data sense, to universities and colleges. As an EVA, I recommend that you market it to universities and colleges as part of a freshman package. By taking the data and putting it in the hands of school counsellors, I think it is more possible for large schools like University of Toronto to identify potential ‘high-risk’ students or a select group that counsellors could keep a closer eye on as they move through the system. The team you have assembled is wonderful and I think they have the credentials to get you in the door at most of Canada’s big universities. This shift to selling to big schools changes who you are competing against which is important in a market like this that is so saturated. If you are able to secure a contract with a big university, I am happy to recommend this product to investors, based on the mental health and wellness problems it will solve. Great Job Anne!

Hi Rob, Your website was easy to navigate from start to finish in a very timely manner. It also offers potential investors a good view of one of teachers biggest pain points: the overload of possible solutions we are being offered on a daily basis. I think your plan to build an LMS that gives teachers the creative control to manage the apps they use is brilliant. I use Edsby as our school LMS, but it sits in the background for most of the day as I shift from learning app to storage app to email throughout the day. Although the LMS market is filled with well established companies, I think a smaller company in the start-up phase can be nimble and move quickly in new directions as it finds its niche. Dashboard sounds like the type of LMS that can adapt to the ever changing list of apps we want without trying to be the best email software or micro-learning site. I think your data management pain point was clearly set out at the start, but I din’t see a lot of solution to this problem in the Dashboard LMS outline. I think Dashboard should stick to the framework and allow the rest of the community to design and build the things that make your platform such a customizable LMS. As an EVA, I would recommend this investment.

Great work Jakin, This venture pitch has polish and panache. Your elevator pitch had me very interested from the start. I was excited to see that you were inspired by our OER on maker spaces. The sharing economy has so much potential growth that any way to build a business off the concept of sharing what we own is compelling. My advice would be to look at where maker spaces are popping up and focus on areas that do not have close access to such a facility. I am up north in Ontario, and although there are many places that own the type of machinery I would like to have access to, there are no makerspaces available and this makes your service really essential. Unlike an apartment that you stay at for a night, a makerspace must be a safe environment and the liability of high risk machinery may be a concern. I would also be a little concerned with the same problems that air BnB has faced like pop-up rave parties and illegal ventures getting access to a location they can use but can’t be tracked to. Someone setting up a temporary Meth Lab in my makerspace would have me a bit nervous. I think your NEST partnership helps to make this a moot point. Your venture pitch is simple and cleanly laid out Jakin. I would recommend your venture as an EVA. Great job.

Hi Stephanie, This was a very easy pitch to take in. I really loved the way you set things up structurally, and the software you used to create this animation. (what is the software called by the way?). I think you are right to target millennial desire to stay ahead of the curve through continually updating their skill set. Learngevity’s biggest asset in my mind is its ability to track all types of learning from Linked-In discussion to a Code Academy course on Javascript. By allowing employers the chance to reward employees for this type of learning, you have created an environment that makes learning much more palatable. Add the fact that learning is less structured and this will increase the passion an employee has for learning a new skill. Soft-skills have also become a big priority for large corporations and I think this is a great combination for micro-learning in your app. I would let Coursera and Lynda tackle the heavier coursework and keep the learning you are offering to something lighter. Great look at the current competition and observation that so many companies need to rebuild their learning structure in the new economy. Excellent list of TEAM players in the finance industry. You have created a well organized pitch with a visual nature that helps investors feel confident in your ability to keep customers hooked on learning using Learngevity.

Hi Kevin, This was a project that has effort written all over it. The graphic you used for your logo was terrific. I also liked to learn about VTS and ended up looking deeper into this learning technique. The CADE’s role as an online professional development enrichment educator program based on a successful teaching strategy like VTS was very appealing to me. I am also a big fan of inquiry based learning models. I did find the text a little tough to swallow in places and like the idea of “keep it simple” in order to appeal to investors. I would also like to see more about CADE and less about VTS in your pitch overall. I also think you have a good sized market at the K-12 level and might do well to stick to this to start. Competition for CADE like ,UDUTU, ED or DOCEBO lack a focus on teacher PD and this also separates you from most of your online competition. Finally, I think CADE should make sure that it is SCORM compliant in order to help keep costs for users adopting this new programme in line. Great Job Kevin!