Here are a few things I found while surfing:

The Entrepreneurial Foundation of Saskatchewan has some information on what is necessary to be investment-ready:

http://www.efsk.ca/services/investment-ready.html

This column has some good tips on pitches, including the 10/20/30 rule: 10 slides, 20 minutes including questions, 30 point font.

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2007/sb20071019_563293.htm

This is my evaluation of the Royal Roads pitch. The open courseware initiative at MIT is successful, and the creation of  the open courseware consortium both points towards the concept of open courseware as being successful. The pitch for RRU is asking for money without a cash return – not in itself a problem since I believe investing in education is a smart move, but for the reasons outlined below I feel this pitch is weak.

http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html 

Sage advice from Paul Graham

http://www.bdo.ca/library/venture/documents/Jun07-MakeYourBestPitch.pdf

Polish your pitch  from the Financial Post

http://www.venturepitches.com/

A beta site with some sample pitches. Youtube meets VCs.

Here’s my 2nd go at a pitch analysis…hope it makes sense…my eyes are starting to close!

• CEO Credibility – Does this person exude capability and convey confidence that they will achieve success against all obstacles?
  • Ted Dodds appears confident and well-spoken.  He exudes a very professional, experienced demeanour.
  • He speaks of UBC’s mission, considers the students and the community

• Management Team – Have they assembled a stellar team along with the other human and material resources required for success
  • Dodds suggests that UBC is a very decentralized university.  Each faculty has its own e-learning component.  He stresses the importance of formal and informal meetings and strategies, including the use of E-strategy Townhall meetings, which include invited leaders of other institutions (peers and competitors), boards members, deans, vice presidents etc.  He stresses the importance of collaboration between these e-learning stakeholders.

• Business Model – Is this feasible? – have they done their homework? – are their arguments and information accurate and compelling?
  • Yes, I believe this model is feasible.  By working collaboratively with e-learning stakeholders, university leaders, and competing educational institutions, UBC’s reputation stands to gain.  In turn, registration may increase.
  • Dodds suggests that the E-strategy is a framework, not plan or mandate, thus giving more freedom to members of the community.

• Competitive Products – What is a realistic market size, market share and selling price that these products or services can capture in a very competitive world?
  • There is a demand for e-learning and UBC IT’s vision is to be a active an collaborative partner in the e-learning community.  They are working together with other universities and educational leaders to create products that can promote e-learning.  Unfortunately, Dodds does not provided any statistics on market size, student enrolment, demand etc.

• Market Readiness – How long and difficult is their critical path to success?
  • No time length is given but UBC is working with other educational institutions in the e-learning community.  It is leader in e-learning innovation.  Path to success is ongoing.

• Technical Innovation – Do they have an edge, and can they keep it?
  • Dodds mentions that UBC is well known for “commercialization of individual research within the campus”.  E-learning innovation at UBC has brought about commercial products such as WebCT.  He mentions that UBC is taking a leadership role in opensource software and community source software which help to get campus level innovations to a broader audience.  Working with other campuses to create a community source system

• Exit Strategy – Do they really know what success looks like – is their destination clear
  • Participation and altruistic relationship in the e-learning community helps to promote UBC reputation.  By taking a leadership role in opensource software and creating E-strategy townhall meetings for community stakeholders contributes to UBC IT’s success.

• Overall Investment Status – Am I going to risk my investment capital on this proposition?
  • Yes, as an EVA, I would invest in UBC IT’s vision for e-learning.  Furthermore, I would encourage and recommend potential students to take a serious look at e-learning programs through UBC.

Here are a few links to consider:

http://www.venturecapitalexpos.com/

The following pitch builder seems interesting.  Please let me know what you think of it.

http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/careers/pitch/

Surfing around, I discovered this:

Technology Ventures

http://www.stanford.edu/group/techventures/index.htm

Which lead me to some samples resources, such as this:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/techventures/resources/TechVentures_Chap1_2e.pdf

and

http://www.stanford.edu/group/techventures/intro_textbook.htm

If you explore, you can find videos, pdfs, sand sample syllibi. This may be useful.

EO Credibility

Yes, the speaker definitely displays confidence in Recombo’s ability to reach goals and achieve.  It is clear that Brad McPhee knows his product, the market and potential problems his business may face.

Management Team

The management team of Recombo is not discussed heavily but Brad does mention that he has a small team of experts and is looking to expand.

Business Model

Recombo prides themselves as a company that “plays well with others” both in how they and their systems operate.  This sharing is facilitated by their contract negotiations and their Content Integration Router platform.  McPhee explains that this router facilitates communication and integration of products like learning management systems and performance evaluation systems with the potential of allowing published content to be shared among Recombo’s customers.

Brad McPhee offers multiple examples of how his product can serve existing markets and make the common problem of integrating content from different systems using their infrastructure.  With this in mind it is clear that Recombo has found a need and utilized some creative business and technical strategies to progress their business.

Competitive Products

McPhee seems confident that there is a big market for his company’s services and products.  It is clear that he can offer a level of integration the learning management market rarely sees, allowing communication across platforms and systems.

There are many companies using learning management and content systems in their human resources and training sectors although Recombo gives no direct numbers within this pitch is can be assumed that with a small, focused company Recombo could offer these new services at competitive prices.

Market Readiness

They have been struggling in the past but now have a “lighthouse” customer that will hopefully prove Recombo’s ability to solve business problems.  As it stands, Recombo is providing a service and tools that bridge a common communication gap in training and education systems and, at least initially, this should give them an edge on the market.

Technical Innovation

At the time of this pitch Recombo seems to have an edge on the market.  After making changes to his company’s direction McPhee is confident that he has found a product and a service that is in need and cannot be met by competitive products.

Exit Strategy

McPhee is clear that success lies in a dollar amount for their business.  He is pushing for success through his “Lighthouse customer” which will expand their business by proving their publishing and learning management competencies.

If his company does not meet the goals laid out McPhee is honest with himself and comfortable with going public or selling to a larger corporation like IBM if need be.

Overall Investment Status

I think I would be willing to risk my capital investment to support Recombo.  It is clear that the company has changed greatly and maybe faltered slightly in the past but has quickly learned from its mistakes and adapted to the market both in their product offerings and overall strategies.

My evaluation of the Ingenia pitch is organized in a chart, which I hope will be legible. As you will see, I was not impressed with Ramona’s pitch. Not least for her complete disregard for the difficulties involved in brining Canadian intellectual talent up to speed with regards to the language and culture of another country. This pitch focused too much on the personal experience of the presenter, and not on the capabilities of the company.

Just a few links to resources that you may find useful.

Canadian Business Online Get advice, tips and strategies on starting and running a small business in Canada. A decent resource if you can handle the large number of ads.

Instigator Blog Entrepreneurship, Business, Social Media, and Marketing. Down to earth blog articles.

Dragon’s Den TV and Online Business hopefuls pitch their ideas to millionaire investors.

TED TALK: David S. Rose on Pitching to VCs

and I can’t leave this one out:

Richard St. John’s 8 Secrets of Success

Ok, here’s my first pitch analysis.  Next one to come later.

Royal Roads University Pitch

• CEO Credibility – Does this person exude capability and convey confidence that they will achieve success against all obstacles?
  • Based on the pitch presentation, Burgess does seem to have done her research and has a good working knowledge of the university.  She provides a confident, enthusiastic pitch, but to me, this appears to be due to her charisma rather than track record.  She does not present anything at all about her credentials or personal background that would help further sell her pitch.

• Management Team – Have they assembled a stellar team along with the other human and material resources required for success
  • There is no mention of a management team or who may be involved in instituting such a program.  I’m assuming there would be some faculty members or key people at RRU on board already.  This can’t be a solo effort, can it???  If so, forget it!  Establishing the management team clearly is needed in this pitch.

• Business Model – Is this feasible? – have they done their homework? – are their arguments and information accurate and compelling?
  • Burgess seems to provide good information on opencourseware, including some history, current opencourseware consortium, and how RRU fits in the market (benefiting and altruistic relations).  She has done her research based on a model of opencourseware from MIT, a much larger school.
  • Importantly, Burgess seems to suggest having opencourseware available to prospective students would help attract more tuition paying students to the school.  However, is there a guarantee that this would happen?  What is the cost of marketing this free, opencourseware?  Is there a guarantee that the university will be able to recover its marketing costs over time?

• Competitive Products – What is a realistic market size, market share and selling price that these products or services can capture in a very competitive world?
  • In following the footsteps of the much larger school, MIT, RRU would be in competition with MIT’s reputation, established program, and larger financial budget.  Burgess mentioned that there were over 200+ institutions involved in an opencourseware consortium so there must be many other universities that would be in competition with RRU.

• Market Readiness – How long and difficult is their critical path to success?
  • There does not appear to be any timeline provided for this venture.  How long will it take before the university sees a profit from attracting paying students to RRU by marketing their opencourseware?
  • There does not appear to be a market analysis performed to show the demand for opencourseware among prospective students.

• Technical Innovation – Do they have an edge, and can they keep it?
  • To me, what Burgess is pitching appears to be something that other universities are already doing.  There isn’t anything that sticks out that is different than what is already being done by RRU’s potential competitors.  This plan is obviously taking after MIT’s model.

• Exit Strategy – Do they really know what success looks like – is their destination clear
  • It appears that success would be measured based on attracting paying students to RRU as well as more experienced faculty.

• Overall Investment Status – Am I going to risk my investment capital on this proposition?
  • Though the presentation was well-prepared, it seemed somewhat ‘amateurish’ to me.  The video was filled cheesy text messages inserted on top of still-framed pictures of the university.  Between still-frames was low-quality, handy-cam video clips of Burgess providing some commentary.  Though the information presented was fairly good, I thought the low-quality, amateur-style video detracted from a ‘professional’ pitch.  As an EVA, I’m not sure I would entrust my money into what may seem like an amateur venturist.
  • Furthermore, I think more market analysis needs to be done and presented to demonstrate that there is demand for opencourseware.  Burgess needs to provide more persuasive evidence showing how the university stands to gain financially, not just in reputation, and how long it will take to recoup marketing costs.  After all, if this venture is a money losing one, then there is no way the university should go for it.