Empowered Learning
A better way to teach high school math:
Posted in: Pitch Pool
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David Vogt
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ETEC 522 – September 2012
Ventures in Learning Technology
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Peggy Lawson 5:20 am on September 19, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I felt as if this venture has potential. While about 3x too long for a standard elevator pitch, the four key features of a good pitch (David Shore, BCIC New Ventures) were addressed – (1) the problem you are trying to solve (from several customer vantage points), (2) what are you doing to solve the problem, (3) who are you solving it for, and (4) value/money proposition. The salesman had some sizzle without being irritating. The slide deck helped tell the story without being text heavy or overly distracting.
jhodi 9:08 pm on September 19, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Peggy,
I also thought that the pitch itself hit a lot of the key features of a good pitch. It was very informative about why this technology is useful, the features of the technology, and their asking price and potential for return. However, what this pitch lacked for me was a good description of why this specific technology is better than any other technology that is similar. I would have liked to know why they think this approach is better than that of others. As well, I just did not like the concept of the technology as it applied to math, but that is from the viewpoint of an educator.
Jhodi
jhodi 9:03 pm on September 19, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
NO, I would not invest in this venture.
This pitch claims to address the consistent problems in education dealing with wasted time teachers spend on paperwork and the disconnect in communication between teachers and parents. The solution to this problem is ‘Empowered Learning’, which pretty much amounts to an online tool that students use to complete their math homework that marks and gives feedback to students immediately. By doing so, problems areas can be addressed and ‘various forms of help’ can be provided. The claimed goal is for students to achieve 100% on their homework each night. Parents can monitor these results from home and track their child’s progress. This also releases the teacher from the administrative tasks and allows them time to focus on individual students. The implementation of this technology into the classroom is in theory seamless- no curriculum changes or teacher training. They are looking for $250 000 to launch a pilot that they will receive feedback from to modify the product and then launch the product.
Overall, at first glance, the pitch seems to have covered quite a few key bases. From an educator’s standpoint, I feel like their pain point is valid; there is some wasted time on paperwork and a disconnect between parents and teachers at times. However, where this pitch falls apart for me is in the solution. I chose to evaluate this pitch because it claimed to be relevant to high school mathematics, which is what I teach. To me, it is not good enough for students to know whether they got a question right or not, it is important for me that they can understand the process and if they get a question wrong, go back and reflect on why. This pitch was very unclear on the ‘various forms of help’ that it would provide to students should they get a question wrong. I have found that it is especially hard for students to show their math work entirely on a computer and therefore, I am skeptical about the ability of this program to give adequate feedback. Furthermore, it is important for parents to see results such as this, but it is also important for them to see classroom results, which leaves me wondering how this program interacts with progress in the classroom and showing parents at home. The next part where the pitch started to fall apart for me was the lack of comparison to other tools similar to this one, of which there are lots of similar tools. This pitch left me wondering why is this product so much better than the others? Lastly, the pitch failed to give a decisive timeline on return for me as an investor. The return is entirely contingent on how well the pilot performs. What if nobody likes the technology and there are very few sales? With everything else in mind, this is not a technology that I look at and think, ‘wow’, this is very interesting and useful with a wide range of applications. Therefore, I would not invest in this technology.
Ranvir 8:39 pm on September 21, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
No, I would not invest in this venture as there are open source and commercial tools available today that can provide the functionality at fraction of the cost. Developing another application from ground up to provide functionality that is mostly available in many LMS systems doesn’t seem to make sense. It would make more sense to extend an existing application or leverage a business intelligence tool to extract analytics rather than spend $250,000 to design a new application. The pitch doesn’t clarify gaps that a competitor is unable to fulfill. Moreover, it is not clear how the application specifically helps students to learn Math better.
The venture pitch is quite long and shows planned features of the application which is not necessary at the initial stage. The pitch mentions target market for math in US is $175 million based on which source? The marketing aspect of the product is missing. Finally, how and when will the venture get a break even or provide return to investor is not mentioned.
jameschen 6:52 pm on September 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I agree with your points on the problems found in this pitch. The numbers seem unrealistic because no sources are provided, and the lack of explaining exactly how this product differs from an updated version of Skinner’s teaching machine, for example, raises some red flags.
Suhayl Patel 10:15 am on September 22, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
No I would not invest in this venture. Right off the bat, I am one who enjoys listening to new ideas, but only by people whom I am able to see. I usually tune out when it’s done through pictures, graphs, etc. In this pitch, the entire pitch was done like that and I wasn’t able to actually see the person for even a short period of time as he made his pitch.
I rated all four categories rather low
Ceo-Team: Althought he might have had a background in large/small scale software projects, there wasn’t much said about his team. And I don’t think this would be a venture that an be done solo.
Veture Concept: I don’t believe this idea is new and original. A lot of (mathematics) textbook publishers (person, mcgraw hill) have online tools that do the same thing: grade, help, assess, keep track, etc of progress. Even Khan Academy has many of these features and it’s user-friendly and effective.
Marketing: They don’t have the competitive edge to go against the likes of the large publishers or Khan Kcademy (which partners with MS)
Venture Plan: Ther is nothing mentioned about the venture plan which makes me even more reluctant to invest in this.
Patrick Pichette 8:33 am on September 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
No I would not invest in this venture. There are too many alternatives that compete directly with this type of offering and the pitch fails to address how they differentiate themselves from these other popular solutions. On that point alone, there is no chance that I would even contemplate getting additional information as that should have been addressed in his pitch to begin with (especially since it was 3 mins long).
sophiabb 5:13 pm on September 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
No, I would not invest in this venture. The pitched failed in endear credibility due to a failure to differentiate itself, no marketing strategy, insubstantial financials and lack of a leadership skills.
The pitch highlighted Empowered Learning as a unique math teaching/learning web based software solution in the high school math market. Is it really unique? This market is proliferated with many competitors who offer same or similar “unique” solutions. The pitch failed to identify how Empowered Learning will really differentiate itself in this market; its unique selling proposition was no different from software that are currently on the market being offered, for example MathTutor and many publishing companies such as Pearson.
The pitch indicated a fairly large US market of $175 million. With a very dotted competitor field, the pitch failed to deliver a marketing strategy of how it would penetrate and secure market space/share.
The pitch identified an ask of $250,000 to pilot, build, measure and adjust. As an investor, I cannot help but wonder is this figure was just pulled from the air. The pitch failed to substantiate the financial need for the ask. It also failed to identify the return on investment.
The team seemed to the CEO only. The CEO might be able to carry a heavy load to pilot, build, measure and adjust. For the company assure the possibility of a going concern, other leadership skills are needed, such as skills in marketing.