Time is the most valuable resource that any teacher has.
At GradeAIssist, we are looking to give as much of that resource back to educators as we can, at a time when they need it most.
Education is becoming more personalized, more independent and further integrated with emerging AI technologies.
GradeAIssist is helping bridge the gap between educators and AI. Our aim is to provide teachers with a grading and marking AI assisted tool that is easy to use, adaptive and maintains student data in a private and secure way.
To find out more check out the Elevator and Venture Pitch.
This would be a product in high demand, Mike. I like how you incorporated the school boards and the individual packages for the product. While single clients are good, it’s the massive schoolboard purchases that would make a huge deal to your bottom line.
I would love to know more about how you plan on marketing this product as there is so much competition out there and it would be quite difficult to break through the advertising clutter. Did you have a marketing strategy in mind?
Thanks for your comments and for taking a look at my Pitch! I agree that school boards and larger companies are the more sustainable and contribute much more revenue! I honestly do not know much about marketing so one of the first things I would do would be to hire someone who does! I often receive email after email promoting new websites, material, etc. and it is so hard to sift through to find out what is valuable. No doubt I have missed some gems. In my opinion the best way to get your product out in education is to promote it through education conferences and pro-d sharing. Get it in the hands of a few teachers right away and then if they like the product ask them to share about it with their colleagues. Word of mouth is surprisingly powerful in education.
So well done, Mike!! This is a very interesting product, and I can see how it would be incredibly appealing to teachers (for multiple different reasons, I’m sure). I like how the problem and the solution were clearly addressed, as coming from someone who is not in the education field, I wouldn’t initially necessarily have a grasp on the problem.
That leads me to the main question I was wondering about: how is the market for the buy-in from teachers? Schools? Would this be a type of product where each teacher at a given school would buy-in (with support from a school/school board, etc.)?
I think the buy-in from teachers would be immediate. Anything that takes time away from marking would be popular. I am interested to see if school boards would buy in quickly as well. Progress in education is slow and a technology like this would really shake up the current models of education that have been around for a very long time. It would need to be well promoted and highly successful to be picked up by school boards who have a lot to consider when making big purchases.
Thanks for taking a look at my pitch and for your comments and question!
There would be a tremendous amount of buy-in, especially from the context that you mentioned of IBDP teachers. Many of these teachers have an overwhelming amount of students and when it comes to having them practise for their Papers 1 and 2 as well as their Internal Assessments, the more feedback, the better!
I see a bit of a problem with the next step of using these marked assessments towards final “summative” marks… Do you see these as always being “formative” (anecdotal pieces that count when needed) or do you see them as being the first step, then the teacher reviews the AI work, and then it can be considered a “summative” mark. This is tricky since in our private school worlds, the stakes are high for (demanding) parents and stressed students!
I think they could potentially work as summative as the system improved. Much like how the IB has “seeded” test papers that are actually not real papers that check that the marker is in line with the IB Marking this could be done with the AI program as well and be run by the teacher.
Excellent value proposition and well thought out idea! Marking is a constant battle for teachers and I see high buy in. The idea of platform getting better and giving more individualized feedback for students over time using comparative data is also intriguing. I’ve recently being using built in quiz platforms through my LMS to streamline marking for small quizzes. I also used the platform Zip Grade for multiple choice marking for unit tests. Your pricing model seems fair and teachers are willing to spend money on areas of teaching that will save them time – as evidenced by the success of TPT. Even better if your admin buys a school wide package! Great Venture Pitch Mike thanks!
Thanks very much Paul! I think it would be an exciting tool for teachers as well. We use one called GradeCam and it is already popular!
Impressive job, Mike! I’m genuinely impressed with your project; it’s both straightforward and highly effective. Although I’m not a teacher myself, I’ve been a student at various stages of education. From my experiences and interactions, I’m confident that many teachers face the challenge of grading students’ work. I’ve collaborated with fellow educators on different courses, and a recurring concern I’ve heard is about the time-consuming nature of filling out report cards. During group project meetings, many teachers express frustration over having to prioritize report card duties, often feeling like it hampers their ability to contribute effectively. It’s evident that addressing this pain point could greatly benefit current teachers.
One aspect that I’d like to clarify further from your presentation is the allocation of the 1.5 million dollars you’re seeking. Could you elaborate on your plans for utilizing these funds? Understanding how the investment will be used would provide a clearer picture of how you intend to develop and scale your project.
Thanks for the feedback Terrence! This was certainly one of the most challenging things for me to think about.
Based upon some of my research the initial seed round investments should help float a company for 12-18 months (so I went with the high end of 18 months). Using this as a guide and an estimate that most engineers cost around 15k a month, and I was hoping to initially hire 3-4 software engineers this started my process. I also realized I would need a marketing team of 1-2 people to help spread the word and help us get going! Most of the initial money raised would be paid to my software developers and marketing process over the course of the 18 months.
Very professional, well planned and execute, Mike!
Your elevator pitch was very effective and did exactly what it was supposed to do in hooking me into the rest of your presentation.
I think you have tapped into a hot market right now as post-pandemic teacher burnout seems to still being strong and many sources attribute it to increased teacher demands to get students back on track while simultaneously not taking into account the toll dedicating increasing amounts of time takes on the teacher. I would not be surprised to see a revolutionary AI-grading tool hit the market soon and change the current K-12 educational landscape (maybe it will even be yours!).
For an earlier assignment, someone had posted about a program called SwiftGrade that really caught my attention. It functions similar to how your proposed application would seem to work. I have been in touch with the founders of SwiftGrade and we actually ran our first implementation test last week in one of our Middle School classrooms and it went wonderfully. We are looking into full school wide implementation for next year provided their iOS compatibility is as refined as their Android compatibility. In short, you are in a budding, soon to be very competitive market in my opinion, but I think you’re well prepared!
Thanks for the feedback Benjamin!
I would be interested in hearing your opinion of SwiftGrade for MS – it may be something we implement at my school if it works for you!
Great job. The subject is clearly described with a global look, especially pricing. Given the competitive market in education, bolstered by Chat GPT and AI, this is a realistic and very attractive presentation.
thanks,
Thanks for the feedback Sheena!
Great job and very professional pitch all around! The elevator pitch mentioned ‘safe and private’, I was wondering if you could expand on this more just as an assurance that the written work that GradeAIssist will have access to, will stay private. Along same lines, because of this available data will the written material just be for grading and not stored for other uses (ie. plagiarism detection?). Amazing pitch!
This would be a challenging one for me Carlo! I would have to hire a privacy officer right away. I think the most important thing like you said is where and how we would store the student data. The best option in my opinion would be to remove the student name from the material that is saved on our servers. The teachers could be the only ones that have access perhaps to a student number of other identifying feature. If the company could potentially track the general data overtime it would help the AI learn from habits so I wouldn’t want it all to disappear!
Excellent pitch Mike! This would be in high demand with teachers, grading writing takes up so much time and can lead to teacher feedback becoming more generic as they simply don’t have enough time. Being an AI tool, it’s excellent that as the bank of examples grows it will become more knowledgeable on how work is graded.
While looking through your site, I thought about the possibility of connecting this to specific curriculum. Would it be possible for teachers to select their curricular goals and when student samples are uploaded, after being graded, highlighted examples of where that student met curricular outcomes. (Ex. use of literacy devices). Might also be a great tool for calibrating marking between teachers of the same course.
Great idea! There is definitely a market for this
Thanks for your comments Kelby!
I would think that linking it to rubrics or curriculum would be really good practice and very helpful for teacher standardization. Ideally, it would also be great to have a the highlighting feature used to show students with feedback which strands were not met and why!
Hi Mike,
This is a very impressive pitch!
The problem and solution are very well defined, and as you’ve outlined in your market opportunity, the AI market in education has sharper CAGR increase than arguably any other area of technology so it’s a very appealing venture to capitalize on this market. I particularly like the pricing model as it facilitates room for growth with early adopters in the “regular” and “pro” plans to push for school-wide plans. Excited to see where this one goes.
One question I had which I think is alluded to in the pitch but I wanted to confirm: how is GradeAIssist delivered to the end user? Will it integrate into an LMS or is the initial intent that this is entirely a standalone website where teachers can log on to upload their marking styles to the AI? The reason I ask is because Benjamin had mentioned SwiftGrade, which offers both a website and an app with different functionalities. E.g. the website can display a comprehensive results pages whereas the app version is more basic but has the added functionality of visually scanning a paper document with a camera. Lots of possibilities with implementation with this kind of venture. Great work!