Venture Pitch Critique
SalaDeMaestros.com is a venture that seeks to facilitate a more fluid communication among all the members of the educational community of Baja California (Mexico). The venture pitch provides the professional profile of all its members, demonstrating a high qualification for working in this project (e.g. by mentioning their degree of expertise in the field).
This venture pitch lasts 10 minutes and clearly explain the main goals: to offer an online community where teachers can store, organize, plan and share information with students, staff, other teachers and parents. It offers services for teachers through an interdisciplinary team that provides software design and management, technical support to educational institutions, educational projects design and management, and extensive teaching experience in all educational levels (e.g. workshops for teachers).
The venture concept looks feasible as it intends to solve a limited problem by providing more efficient ways of communication within the whole school community and a better involvement of parents in the learning process of their children. However, it intends to cover a large population. In addition, this venture pitch does not provide a clear explanation about how their product will capture revenues and how competitive is their market. The fact that their potential marketplace is depending on other national programs, such as Escuelas de Calidad and Enciclomedia, shows the need of the success of these programs to achieve their goals. Other difficulties for the future of SalaDeMaestros.com are related to accessibility. Currently this venture provides a service in a population that has unequal access to computers and Internet. If not everyone has access to these technologies, the primarily purpose will not be accomplished. By watching this venture pitch it is not clear whether it will success in the future or not. As this venture pitch does not offer any solution or way to cover these problems, SalaDeMaestros.com will depend on the evolution of these issues.
Posted in: Week 03: Analyst Bootcamp
jarvise 3:50 pm on September 19, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Angela,
Your point regarding the fact that this product is unclear on how it will “capture revenues” has been something I’ve been thinking about too. Is this a product that involves a customer paying for the service? I have been thinking about ed tech products in general, and trying to figure out how a customer evaluates whether or not they are getting their money’s worth. If you invest in a tool that is supposed to improve communication in your school, how do you know if it is happening? I guess some planning would have to take place beforehand to decide what the benchmarks would be. I’m often wondering when it comes to educational products, how do we know when it is working? How can we attribute a positive change to a particular product in a complex environment?
Emily
Angela Novoa 12:59 pm on September 20, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Emily,
I get your point. I have seen how sometimes schools invest on technologies that later turn out to be underutilized because teachers do not learn how to use it, because teachers are not clear about the purposes for using it, or because these technologies weren’t tested before.
David William Price 12:28 pm on September 20, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Nice work providing balance in the critique. Noting dependencies on other services and barriers to uptake by the intended clients are great points!
Angela Novoa 1:00 pm on September 20, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for your comments David 🙂