Hello Fellow ETEC 522 Educational Venture Analysts,
Below you will find my preliminary pitch for Story Steppers – an AR Storytelling App to the Natural and Cultural History of a Place. This is a concept that has been tickling at my synapses for some time now to solve a problem that was presented to me by a Museum Board Member, and that has slowly taken shape as I have tested different immersive experiences at natural and cultural history sites. A couple of weeks ago I unintentionally pitched the idea to the cultural branch of a municipality, and they got excited about it, so I have been developing this pitch as a base to other tailored pitch documents that I will be crafting around this concept, although there are still pieces that I need to get in place, like identifying the developers that would fit well with the project and our team, and developing a realistic budget with them.
You will notice in the project pitch that I use ‘we’ and ‘us’, as oppose to ‘I’ and ‘me’ – that is because when I go to pitch this to an investor, potential partner, or grant, it is important for them to understand that it is not just me, but that there is an experienced team behind the project. And with that preamble done, here is Story Steppers:
Elevator Pitch
Venture Pitch
As the slide deck for the venture is limited to only those with the link, it won’t embed, so instead I will share the link with you:
- In Dropbox (this version has better resolution quality): https://www.dropbox.com/s/418l8vk8qvz6ttz/Story%20Steppers%20Venture%20Pitch%20-%20Updated.pdf?dl=0
- On Slide Share (some of the resolution was lost in posting to Slide Share): https://www.slideshare.net/secret/eSBjjFvutnqBPz
I look forward to your thoughts and feedback.
Thanks!
~ Erica
REVIEW: Foremost I would like to say that I approve of any idea that embeds storytelling and proactive learning into everyday activities. The idea of bringing immersive learning alongside while hiking, visiting historical landmarks, museums and culturally relevant locations seems like an ideal way to revitalize hands-on learning.
I thought your Elevator Pitch was personable and captivating. I liked your use of movement, music and a personal experience to really showcase the relevance of your idea. After watching it, I couldn’t help but agree that I’ve found myself in situations where it would have been nice to have Story Steppers on my phone.
Your venture pitch was thorough. It provided me with a good insight on Story Stepper competitors, your business model, marketing plan and timeline. I did have some problems reading some of your content as your brightly coloured slides made it difficult to see the white text. Also, there was noticeable pixilation when switching your presentation to full screen that blurred your letting a bit.
I would have liked to have seen was more information on how Story Stepper intends to create content. I worry that there is an onus on the Story Stepper team to create content, connect with local institutions and define narrative. I see this as a possible bottleneck as content creation can be a long and tedious process. I wonder if there’s a solution in crowdsourcing content creation away from the Story Stepper team and into the hands of locals. Doing so empowers local communities to tell their own stories through their own perspectives and allows them to define how visitors view their culturally important landmarks and interact with their stories. Perhaps Story Stepper can also focus on providing templates, instructional materials and how-to guides to institutions and communities who wish to actively incorporate Story Stepper in their local heritage and nature locations. Internet connectivity (especially when using the app in more rural settings) and the cost of downloading augmented learning/storytelling content on data networks would be another concern that I would like to see addressed in the venture pitch.
I would consider funding Story Stepper if guidelines on content creation/curation and data usage costs/concerns are clarified.
Thanks for these really helpful notes, Julio.
Sometimes I get carried away on bright coloured slides when I’ve been buried in work. I had wondered if the bright colours made it difficult to read a couple of the slides, so I appreciate you confirming that. I’ve updated the slides with darker colours.
The resolution issue seems to be a Slide Share upload issue, so I have now shared the Dropbox link first.
I’ve been pondering on the ability for communities to add in their own tours too, but was hung up on quality, as that is important in order to give people a good experience with the app. Your suggestion of training materials would fix that, along with establishing a quality standard. I have added that in the updated version.
Wifi and data have been a challenge I’ve wanted to tackle with this since the beginning. It is something I referenced at the bottom of the Solution page, but I can see how that could easily have been missed, so I add it in on the Traction Page too. Its that piece that’s been crucial to me as I began to look for tech solutions, and I think Peter Wittig may have pointed me in the direction of a few such solutions last week.
Thanks again for your notes, Julio. They are extremely helpful.
REVIEW: I like how you used your own personal story as a lead into the elevator pitch. The entire pitch was very thorough and it is very clear that a lot of research has been done in this venture pitch. I appreciate that you listed a competitors’ page, and outlined the advantages and disadvantages of each of the APP. In doing so, it helps to give the audience a better idea of where your product is positioned in the market. Having the project timeline is also a great idea because it means that you have a structured plan on when the APP will go live, which increases the success of the project. From my own experience, once you begin to create APPs, you will need continual upgrades in order to keep up with latest phone models, or new AR technology. If this was a real venture, I think I would want to learn more about the background of the people doing the AR animation design also, to make sure that what is created will not look outdated quickly.
FEEDBACK: The way that the slides are laid out could be adjusted more for catching attention. Currently, each slide has mainly text of the same style and not many visual emphasis on key points. I think since investors would probably be viewing lots of venture pitches, they would need to have a way to stay engaged and get the point of each page right away in order to stay interested.
Thank you for sharing your venture pitch!
Thanks Emily. I very much appreciate your feedback. While limited in word count within this proposal, elaborating on the team’s experience with an additional document, highlighting the team’s work and including links to the team’s work is a great idea. Quality of the graphics and sound is very much an issue with current AR tour guide apps, particularly the AR History Guide app, so you are bang on with this being an important element to emphasize in the team’s abilities.
And yes, you are quite right, I need to be better at visually displaying my research and words, so that key points standout in the proposal. I will work on that as I fine tune the pitch for the current parties that we are discussing this with.
Thanks so much.
REVIEW:
This is a very well done pitch, I think the elevator pitch is especially strong due to its narrative nature and connection with a personal story. As for the venture pitch itself, I think you did an excellent job of exploring the market within which you will be competing and I really appreciate the detail put into your marketing plan. This is something most pitches (including mine) haven’t covered. I did find it interesting that your key competitive advantage hinges mainly on the quality of your content rather than a standout feature or entirely new take. Normally I would take issue with this, however in the case of Story Steppers I think you have backed up your position well enough through details previous projects and team member bios that I’m completely willing to believe you. If I were a real investor, I would want to see the app in action, however for the purposes of this assignment you get a very strong “yes” from me.
FEEDBACK:
As others have pointed out slideshare was probably not the best option, but I do appreciate the dropbox link you added. Secondly, I did find many of the slides quite text heavy. A suggestion could be to add a voice over and only include key points, or explore your slide design and highlight important information in a more obvious manner. These are however pretty minor points and really didn’t detract much from the experience.
Thanks for your insights and feedback, Adrian. Yeah, I would never normally share a venture pitch via Slide Share, just did so here, as I was hoping it would allow me to embed the slides, which in the end it did not. Left it just to allow people the choice of how they wished to view this, although I am now thinking I probably should have removed the Slide Share option.
That is a great suggestion, re adding in a voice over. Had never thought to do that, but it makes sense.