ETEC 522 – May 2012

David Vogt 7:56 am on May 6, 2012

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  gregcamp 2:37 pm on May 22, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  No, I would not invest in this venture. The pitch is only 54 seconds and the first 11 seconds are taken up by music and three slides and the last 10 seconds is taken up by credits. During the pitch there is no real metnion as to what rePhrase really does and we are not introduced to the manegement team or what their exist strategy is for investors. The venture concept is not clear, they do provide some statistic to show the sie of the market such as there are 8M students in America today in grades 4-12 who can’t read at their grade level and that 80% of teachers don’t feel that they have the tools to help theses students. The presenter mentionss that the cost of this problem is $2B but he doesn’t mention what % of this market they are going after. We finally hear that the technology allows students and teachers to adapt tet they are reading in class to their own reading level, however no details are provided as to how they do this. Again, I would not invest in this venture.

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  gregcamp 7:00 pm on May 22, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Reposted, I should have checked my spelling before replying.

  No, I would not invest in this venture. The pitch is only 54 seconds and the first 11 seconds are taken up by music and three slides and the last 10 seconds is taken up by credits. During the pitch there is no real mention as to what rePhrase really does and we are not introduced to the management team or what their exist strategy is for investors. The venture concept is not clear, but they do provide some statistic to show the size of the market such as there are 8M students in America today in grades 4-12 who can’t read at their grade level and that 80% of teachers don’t feel that they have the tools to help these students. The presenter mentions that the cost of this problem is $2B but he doesn’t mention what % of this market they are going after. We finally hear that the technology allows students and teachers to adapt text they are reading in class to their own reading level, however no details are provided as to how they do this. Again, I would not invest in this venture.

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    Bridget 5:04 am on May 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Greg,
    I agree with your analysis. The tune was catchy and I expected it to lead into a clever pitch. I thought it was clever to use part of the joke “What is ‘black and white and read all over ‘ ” . My focus was on the 3/4 head, forearm and trying to figure out what is over his left shoulder.
    Bridget

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  shawn harris 8:09 pm on May 22, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Greg, I do agree with you on this elevator pitch! You hit the nail right on the head and could not be more on point with your response. To me the pitch is too short to convince any potential investors. I was definitely not drawn by the idea he put forward and he certainly did not seem convincing either. I replayed the pitch several times just to get the gist of what rePhrase really is and that did not help. The venture concept is not clear, therefore I would not invest in this venture.

  ~Shawn

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    Dennis Pratt 8:19 pm on May 24, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Shawn;

    i agree that the pitch was quite short, which left me wondering about a number of things. This seems to be a common thread in many of the pitches that are presented. I found a similar computer app on http://www.cruxbot.com/ that has a 2 1/2 minute pitch, free trial and how-to videos that go with it. I think it is a much better example of how I would like to see a pitch presented.

    Dennis

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  mackenzie 3:31 pm on May 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Hi Shawn and Greg,
  You both make excellent points. My greatest concern was competition, and what a supposed lack of competition may indicate in regards to marketability or funding (from school districts) for such a product. Also, is this a product that is helpful and wanted by teachers? Although it may offer a way for students to read text without trying too hard, could this be more harmful than help. If a student knows that there is software that will translate for them, will they see a need to push for greater literacy. As a partial dyslexic, I found having to struggle was a great help to gaining proficiency. If I had then all the software tools at my disposal now, I definitely wouldn’t have tried as hard and developed the self-sufficiency I have today.
  Cheers, Steve

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  Danielle 8:43 am on May 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  RePhrase

  No I would not invest in RePhrase.

  CEO and Team
  The CEO is a likeable character but does not seem to know his target market, nor how to pitch to this market. He seems a little too convinced that the viewer will be immediately intrigued and therefore interested in researching his product further based on the “pain point” of students repeating grades due to inappropriate reading material.

  Venture and Concept
  I am not entirely sure what the concept is and how it works. Is the text scanned? Does it need to be a soft copy that is then copied and pasted into a “rephraser”? Where is the new text stored? Are there copyright implications? Why would I not just choose a text for my students that is already at their level? Are literacy issues directly related to inappropriately chosen reading texts? There are perhaps too many questions here that need to be answered before an investment can be considered.

  Marketability
  There needs to be more emphasis on how RePhrase is better than simply choosing a more appropriate level of text for a reading teacher’s students.

  Venture Plan
  I like the CEO and he has done his homework, he just needs to better convince potential investors that he actually has a plan…and an innovative product with competitive advantages.

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  maybacon 7:22 pm on May 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  No, I would not invest in this venture for several reasons:

  1) Although the presenter uses the term “we”, it is unclear who is the team behind this product/idea.

  2) After viewing this pitch the first time, I had no idea what product rePhrase was selling or offering to the public – I wondered whether I had missed something. Upon second viewing, I realized that there was no explanation of what the product was. Is it a permission to adapt existing texts? Is it a technology that processes higher-level texts and summarizes them in more basic words? Is it something else altogether? I really had no idea.

  3) While the pitch included a problem (students not reading at grade level and having to repeat grades), there was no explanation of how the product might resolve this problem or even what that product might be. Even if I could imagine a product/service that could adapt texts to a lower level, how would that resolve the problem? Students would not learn to read at the expected grade level but simply read the same texts at a lower level. While this might help if the texts were not related to language arts (i.e. Math, Science, etc), it would not necessarily allow students to succeed better in school.

  Overall, I found this pitch very poor in every area, as it didn’t clearly address how (or what) product/service was providing a solution for the problem.

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  Donna Forward 9:28 pm on May 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  No, I would not invest in this venture. This fellow gets off to a good start by stating his problem (there are 8 million students in the United States in grades 8-12 that cannot read at their grade level. Also, 80% of their teachers don’t feel that they have the necessary tools to help out their students. However, this is where his pitch ends. He doesn’t compare this problem with any other countries or competitiors and he only mentions the billions it costs ( taxpayers?) to pay for students to repeat grades. How does he plan to market his product if he doesn’t discuss it? He also doesn’t mention why we should buy his product over those of possible competitors. The absence of a five year projection or anything tangible for a possible investor made this product completely laughable.

  For the overall presentation, almost 22 seconds out of 54 is wasted on some hokey intro and exit music. This time could have been used more wisely, perhaps telling us how the product actually worked! Also, who is this person? He didn’t present himself. We’re not sure if he’s the CEO of the company or some guy practising a sales pitch in his garage. He did show some passion for his product but unfortunately tried to make it sound intriguing by not telling us very much about it. Instead he simply invited us to “check us out”! Well, I would argue that I’m checking you out now so if you can’t tell me more about your company, then you’ve lost me as an a possible investor.

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  gillian 9:59 am on May 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Like most of the comments above, I was hoping for more … much more. While the concept of this product is intriguing and clearly needed based on the stats given in the pitch one thing is clearly missing WHAT IS THE PRODUCT?

  A good start, but a bad finish.

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  Hussain Luaibi 4:50 pm on May 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  In spite of the fact that the concept or the idea presented in this short clip sounds tempting in the sense that potentially there will be a great need to it and the market is heading towards it as well, I still believe that the presenter’s lack of enthusiasm and the indirect sense of indifference in giving more details denote that this is not serious and can’t be taken as a something that can be invested in.
  Hussain

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  Yves Mainville 9:58 pm on May 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  No, I would not invest in rePhrase.
  At the end of the pitch, I was left wondering what the pitch was about exactly. It seems to be about making text simpler to understand… I was left wondering : “Does it dumb down the text for me? Am I not ‘smart enough’ to understand regular text’. I think it would have been more effective if directly stated how it was beneficial to me without making me feel like I was an idiot (he did not imply this explicitly, it is my knee-jerk reaction).
  This was intended as an elevator pitch – yet, the first ten seconds were music and intro – wasted valuable time… is this a reflection of how the company presents itself and operates?
  Unlike some of the other pitches I looked at, this one here does not give a quick, simple overview of how the product works. He refers us to the website to get more information – if you can’t tell me in 60 seconds what this product does and how it works, I am certainly not going to chase it down on the internet… that is what the 60 seconds I gave you was for.
  Thus, perhaps it is a brilliant service / product – but this was not conveyed in this pitch, and as an EVA using a standardized analysis of this pitch, I could not effectively evaluate if there was a dynamic team behind this product, the Venture concept was unclear to me (what exactly is the pain point? How does the solution work?). Because of the lack of clarity in the concept, it is difficult to gauge the Marketability of the idea – it seems to be exclusive to the K-12 space, but that is about all I could surmise.
  This is capped off with an unclear Venture plan – I do not like the CEO by the end of the pitch as I felt I was confused about this product and that I was not told coherently and concisely what it was about.

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  danishaw 4:04 am on May 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  No, I would not invest in this venture due to a lack of information provided within the pitch. The overall concept of the technology is a great one. As an educator, I am very interested in a technological solution aimed at struggling readers. This being said, the pitch is more or less an advertisement to buy the product rather than to invest in it. In addition, we do not know if the statistics are valid or what makes the venturist qualified. Here is my breakdown of the pitch:

  Pain Point: In the US there are 8 million students from grades 4-12 that cannot read at grade level. Furthermore, 80% of teachers feel that they cannot meet the needs of these students. As a result, students repeat grades resulting in a waste of time, money, and additional resources.

  Solution: Teachers and students can use rephrase to adapt and adjust texts to student’s reading level.

  Differentiation: Within the pitch, it is claimed that it is the world’s first automatic text leveler.

  Marketing: It does not state explicitly how and where buyers and users will be reached however, it can assumed that it will be marketed to US school system managers such as principals, superintendents, etc.

  Championship: It is not stated why the venture’s leader is an expert in this field. We do not know if the lead team are educators, technologists, business people, or none of the above.

  Competition: There are no other ventures like it on the market.

  The Ask: The pitch does not contain any specific asking dollar amount.

  The Return: The pitch does not state how the investor will be compensated.

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    Donna Forward 5:59 pm on May 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Dani,

    I really like the way you laid the 8 points out. It makes it so much easier to follow your analysis and see where the holes are in the presentation of the pitch.

    Donna

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  Allan 2:40 pm on June 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  No, I would not invest in this venture. The presentation has a good sense of the product and certainly tells me some of the key points of why the product should be a good one to invest in, that is, it can certainly help the students’ improve on their reading level (which according to the presenter, is not up to par).

  CEO & Team:
  The presenter displays both confidence and enthusiasm for this venture. The presentation had an engaging tone and the information presented smoothly and sensibly. As an investor, I would be attracted by the knowledge and confidence of this pitch to invest in.

  Venture Concept:
  rePhrase is the world’s first automatic text leveler, allowing students to change or adapt the difficulty of text they read to meet their own reading level. I think the presentation needs some specific information regarding “text levelling”. It’s an important point to consider for those who are not familiar with this terminology. As such, the product pitch is severely hampered.

  Marketability
  There is no mention about which particular institutions the text level is marketed to. Sure, we can assume it is K-12 sectors, but is there a definitive grade level it attempts to attract? With ambiguity the presentation has a lot of polish, but not enough substance to draw me as an investor.

  Allan