ETEC 522 – May 2012

Kenton Hemsing 6:58 pm on July 29, 2012

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  jtpatry 11:58 am on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Hi Kenton,

  Thanks for sharing your elevator and venture pitch. myPocketUni seems to have some great potential in the post-secondary market and I think would benefit those first-year students who might feel overwhelmed already with beginning a new chapter in their lives. (hypothetically) It might be even worthwhile to beta test the grade 12 students and have them use the application prior to embarking on their university career.

  Thanks,
  Jon

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    Kenton Hemsing 3:39 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Thanks for the excellent idea Jon. As grade 12 students embark on their post-secondary studies, focusing a marketing campaign and testing at this level might prove very effective.
    Thanks.

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  Meggan Crawford 5:44 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Hi Kenton,

  As a potential investor, I would be eager to learn more about MyPocketUni as your target market is also the group who are most familiar with mobile devices and therefore seem to be a viable group to target. Your presentation was well put together and you explained the venture well. My key questions and concerns are:
  1. How does MyPocketUni work around copyright issues? Are there problems with an application sourcing documents/texts? What does MyPocketUni do if there is no online source?
  2. How will MyPocketUni go from beta testing to full operation in only a month?
  3. You discuss expected returns from the mobile app, which seem very reasonable, but will this cover running costs, marketing, support, etc.?
  4. How does GenieScan know how quickly students read/learn from these things? Analyzing reading level is wonderful, but can the student make adjustments to the programming if they are a fast/slow reader?

  What I view as the strengths of this venture are the ability to personalize, the practicality of the programs, and the target market (the eager mobile device users). The potential for expansion of this venture is definitely large, as adding languages and expanding marketing could definitely bring more users, as will each new year when students start post secondary education. Additionally, with some alterations MyPocketUni could easily be adapted to suit the high school market, who would likely find uses for a homework type application.

  Depending on the answers to my questions above I would consider myself a likely investor in MyPocketUni!

  Thanks Kenton!
  -Meggan

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    Kenton Hemsing 4:33 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Hello Meggan,
    Hopefully I will be able to answer some of your questions well enough to ensure your satisfaction in our product and persuade you to invest in MyPocketUni.

    1) Since MyPocketUni uses the student’s university credentials to log into their library resources and repositories there is no worry about copyright issues, its the same as if you were to log into the University of British Columbia’s library system and search for a specific paper, its just that the system does this automatically for the student. If there is no online source available, MyPocketUni will still create an event in the student’s personal learning calendar as if it were found online, but the link and the estimated reading time would not be present.

    2) Although we are aware of the tight time frame we have set to get this product on the market, please rest assured that my team and myself are fully dedicated to this project and will ensure that it reaches at least a select few post-secondary institutions by our set deadline. My dedicated team and I will remain focused on this product upon release to ensure that any bugs that remain will quickly be fixed and the dealt with.

    3) We are confident that for a design like this we will be able to create and produce our product for under $40,000 CAD. Here is a quick breakdown of the costs that are anticipated and have been accumulated:
    Branding and Design – $8,000; Development – $8,500; Mac and PC Desktop Apps – $2,000; XHTML and CSS – $2,200; Misc Hardware – $3,000; Hosting – $1,500 a month (we will be working with a company that offers complete hardware infrastructure, maintenance and hosting solutions to ensure ease for ourselves); Legal Fees – $10,000 (estimated); Accounting – $1,000; Trademark – $300; Linux Specialist – $1,800 (contract); Fee Processor – $1,000; Other Misc Costs – $5,000.

    This leaves your initial investment covers the advertising, marketing and salaries associated with creating and producing this product.

    4) It is our intention to make the reading time estimator adjustable for the student. If the student is a slower reader, they will be able to change the settings on the scanner to ensure that there is an appropriate time allotted for each reading.

    Thank you for your interest in MyPocketUni and I hope that my answers have helped you to make the choice to support our venture.

    Sincerely,
    Kenton Hemsing, President and CEO

    p.s. As a reflection, I should have put those figures into the original pitch…

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  Allan 9:26 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Hi Kenton,

  This is an excellent venture and elevator pitches. I really am impressed with the energy you show in these presentations. This is a sharp presentation online, and shows how you integrate technology well. This is a unique product and I think has great potential. MyPocketUni is a perfect tool for those busy post-secondary students. Your analysis and clarification of the three key tools to this product — cloud-based technology, intellectual scanning software and mobile technology — is effective.

  I wonder however if there could’ve been more emphasis placed on the marketability and financial plan of MyPocketUni though. I think this could have given investors some idea of how this product could go out on the market once.

  Allan

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    Kenton Hemsing 8:42 am on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    I think that you are absolutely correct Allan. I feel that I spent too much time explaining just what the system does rather than the future of it. Something to consider in the future for sure! Thanks for the feedback, its much appreciated.

    Kenton

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  janetb 10:38 am on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Hi Kenton,

  I was very impressed with both the elevator and venture pitches. Your passion and confidence come through in the videos. Your elevator pitch hooked me immediately and drew me in to the venture pitch.

  You did a great job of identifying the pain point, the uniqueness of your solution and the vast market potential. Your qualifications and confidence gave the team and the venture credibility. I liked how you went through specifically what My PocketUni could do and how it worked. As a potential investor it gave me a clear idea of the capabilities and potential of the product. As a student, I would love having it organize all of my readings for me!

  I have a couple of questions. First of all, would the Genie Scan rely on an interface of some kind with the educational institutes or would it physically scan the calendar/documents? Secondly, the timeline for having your venture up and running seemed a little unreasonable. Even with some beta testing already done, one month to secure investments and patents, establish a website and market the product, could be problematic.

  Those two questions aside, this is definitely a venture my investors are interested in!
  Janet

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    Kenton Hemsing 8:47 am on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Hi Janet,

    Thank you for your feedback. The way that I envisioned the GenieScans program was to basically be a piece of software that would look for information and keywords in a text document, it would then log into the university library system and do a search for the document. If it found it, it would create a reminder and link for the student, if it didn’t it would only create a reminder.

    As for the time frame to get the app complete, I know its short but as I was making the pitch I realized that having this app available halfway through a school semester would limit the uptake and purchasing of it.

    Thanks for the comments, they are much appreciated.

    Kenton

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  Claire Burgoyne 4:43 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Hi Kenton,
  Thank you for sharing your pitch here. MyPocketUni has some valuable features that you’ve clearly described and shown during your presentation. In particular, the capability to combine the course calendar, readings with estimated reading times, course notes, and links to classmates to ease access for discussion lead me to recognize that this is a product that students can benefit from.

  While you’ve identified the initial potential market as being an estimated ten percent of the 1.9 million Canadian university students your breakdown of profits doesn’t include sufficient detail to convince me that your initial projections are realistic. I wonder how well research and surveys support this venture. What percentage of university students are concerned with organization and recognize its importance in their success as professionals? The answer to this question is required in order to realistically estimate the portion of the 1.9 million students who would be drawn to MyPocketUni.

  While you mention that your team includes experienced sales staff some elaboration on your marketing strategy is needed. The description of your marketing plan doesn’t convince me that your potential market will be reached. How will you communicate to potential customers the benefits of your product so that they will add the MyPocketUni app. to their devise?

  Also unclear, are ongoing costs for marketing, operations and future development. A gross profit of $180,00 to $360,000 sounds good however, with a team consisting of professional programers and sales staff, costs for wages alone will account for much of that revenue. In order to consider this venture for funding there needs to be a clear marketing strategy, evidence to support that the estimated percentage of the potential market who will purchase MyPocketUni is realistic, an overview outlining costs, and potential for profit.

  Claire

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    Kenton Hemsing 11:55 am on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Thank you for your wonderful feedback Claire, you have definitely highlighted some of the areas in which this pitch would need to be improved. Its amazing how intense putting together a pitch for an imaginary venture is, I couldn’t begin to guess at how difficult it is to have your livelihood resting on a total of 10 minutes to present and convince people to invest.

    Kenton

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  Danielle Dubien 3:19 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Hi Kenton,

  First of all, I think your pitch was fantastic! It’s filled with energy and enthusiasm and your explanation is clear, using purposeful visual support. The proposition gave me a lot of the info I was wondering about.

  I understand that your venture is fictional, but it absolutely has potential, so I’m treating it as if it were real in case someone does want to make a true venture out of it. Also, don’t feel like you have to answer all of my questions or you’ll be here forever!

  Almost 30% of the 1.9 million Canadian students are Francophones, many of whom don’t understand English at all. Has your entire system been translated to French?
  If you go internationally, will you target countries where English is not the first language?

  Do students need to verify whether the information is displayed correctly? If they have to make too many manual corrections, the time invested could deter students from wanting to use the app.
  Each instructor, let alone each university, has a different way of presenting course schedule info. Does GenieScan read all these different formats accurately? What if instructors have different ways of distributing notes and don’t use a format that GenieScans recognizes? I guess the student would add that stuff manually. If one person in the class does it, the info could be shared, saving other people the extra work.

  What is the purpose of the discussion board? Will there be a moderator that you need to pay to ensure that it enhances the users’ experience, rather than diminishes it, what with the potential for negativity?

  Could your discussion board include alerts for when students find about schedule changes? When I was in university, I relied heavily on rumours to find out what was going on, and without those rumours, would have missed out on a lot of critical information. For example, a classmate of yours posts a message in the discussion forum, perhaps clicking on some sort of calendar button and announces a change they heard about. The change is sent out to relevant students in the forum and asks for your approval before making modifications to your calendar. Something similar could exits for when students plan meetings together. Instead of having a chain of 20 or so messages where students discuss the most convenient time to meet, the app could do it for them, offering a few choices, one at a time that each person can accept or decline.

  If students are only uploading info once a semester, they may forget certain steps by the time the next semester starts. Tech procedures that are not habitual need to be as simple as possible so that students don’t get frustrated at having to re-learn how to use the app.

  There should also be functions or buttons that students can click on to add tasks to the schedule, like laundry, groceries, meetings with profs, dental appointment, team practice, work schedule…

  What is the significance of the colours of the boxes in the examples you showed?

  Other comment: The app would have to ensure security of the passwords granting access to the library.

  I’m not sure that everything could realistically be ready for September, but if my concerns could be put to rest, and the app made ready for December, in anticipation of the next semester, I would likely invest.

  Once again, I think you’ve done fantastic work!
  Dan

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    Kenton Hemsing 9:07 am on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

    Hi Dan,

    Thank you for your fantastic feedback! I’ll try to answer all, if not most, of your questions here.

    1) I do fully intend to make this program available in French and upon going international, will be available in translated versions.

    2) Students will need to verify the information, this will come up as a text box that asks “Is this correct? – Yes or No”. Simple and straight forward, they can edit as they like from there adding information as needed.

    3) The system would be designed to look for references to authors names, publishing dates, pages etc. This should be hopefully a rather common component to any instructors course outline/syllabus.

    4) The discussion board in the original design was meant to log students into the one specifically created for the class. For example, for ETEC 522, the link would take the student directly to the homepage of this blog or it would link to the dedicated Vista site.

    5) I do like you idea of creating alerts for students on new information. This certainly could be included in the final design of the application. I think a function that allows students to make individual contacts with others in the class would also work well in this program. As simple as getting another students name would allow them to contact one another in the class. This would need to work like a social network within those that are using the application.

    6) I am hoping that the uploading of documents is very straightforward and not too complicated for students to use. This will limit frustration when using the system later. I also feel that since students will be logging into the site frequently that they will be quite comfortable with the interface when they need to use it for a new semester.

    7) In one recoding I know I mentioned that students would be able to add their personal reminders to the task calendar, it must not have made the final cut in my presentation. It will be fully customizable and students will be able to add what they would like to their site.

    8 ) The boxes are used to differentiate tasks. Students can assign a different colour to each class or to each type of task (readings, notes, assignments, exams, etc)

    9) Yes, security would be of the highest importance. This would need to be maintained and carefully protected by my team and developers.

    Perhaps you are correct in that it may be better to make these additions and alterations before rushing our product out to market. We will delay the release until December to ensure that everything is to your satisfaction.

    Thank you,
    Kenton Hemsing
    President and CEO

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  HJDeW 4:32 pm on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Kenton, you have a valuable product and enthusiasm and passion to sell it! Nicely done. As the parent of a struggling university student (one who desperately needs a pocket uni) I was enticed to take a closer look.

  You have identified the need and found the solution to something that many college and university bound learners are faced with… and your 10% of the 1.9 million students I think is a low-ball estimate. Once students start using this tool, word will spread.

  Are there any possible links or connections from My Pocket Uni to facebook or twitter – that would potentially provide the necessary link for these socially connected learners.

  The one challenge I see with your product is the potential need for one-one support since you need to be organized to get organized. Students need to make a habit of updating and monitoring their pocket uni in order to know what’s going on, what to read and when to read it, and when things are due. If they don’t actually do that, then the tool is no good for them. Do you have a some way of monitoring to see if someone has not been on Pocket Uni for a while and somehow connect with them to get them back on track?

  This venture is worth a closer look, just for the value proposition. Thanks.
  Helen

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  Denise 7:46 am on August 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  HI Kenton,

  Ie njoyed oyur enthusiasm in both pitches. I did find it difficult with you standing in and out of the projector screen at times and going dark, and in the venture pitch some of the screen examples were not easy to read from the distance.

  That said as an investor i could see the real potential for a product like this. You clearly identified the pain point, solution, market and uniqueness of the product . It was really important to see how the product would work and made the venture seem even more enticing to invest in.

  I was concerned about the time to market – very short. If investing i would want a business case and more financials – there wasn’t much time for this.

  If you were pitching to a number of investors and then decided to hold off a few months for the release to add even more functionality from their suggestions, I am not sure I would feel reassured, rather I would be concerned that the original idea could lose its innovative foothold. I would prefer to see the current product which already fills a gap out in the marketplace – with the additional functionalities added in later with an upgrade. This would be a bonus for thiose who bought the app initially (and become part of your market “team” when they tell their friends)and potentially increase the market further with the upgrade.

  As identified earlier some more figures would have clinched the investment for me – even without a business case. Great venture.

  denise

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  danishaw 8:03 am on August 4, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply

  Kenton,
  I found your pitch to be very informative yet to the point. Although your venture encompasses three fairly complex/detailed components, I found that you did a great job of not overwhelming the viewed with too much information; well done! Within your venture, you included a great deal of information pertinent to your venture, however I would have like to see a little more research-based data. Although your presentation platform worked very well, perhaps you could have included some of the information as text on screen as you reviewed it. Screenshots or a webcast of manipulating the software would help the viewer buy into your product more so ( I found the distance from the camera to the projection screen a bit far to see how it actually works). The close-up shots of GenieScan really aided in modeling how it works (I would love such a tool to keep my courses organized!). Items that could help sell such to an investor is backing up some of your statistics with research. Examples could be number of Canadian post-secondary students who have access to mobile devices or other products that do not measure up to the triad of applications offered by MyPocketGenie. Overall, very well done!

  All the best,
  Danielle