10 thoughts on “Up2Date Learning”

  1. NO, I would not invest in this venture. Mr. Rae is asking for $650,000 to assemble a team– he does not yet have a team– presumably to create a third-party app (?), although this is not specified beyond “send[ing] alerts to teachers giving them the option of updating their eTextbook.” I am unsure how Up2Date learning proposes to earn a profit. How will the company send alerts, and how do they presume to “give” the option of updating eTextbooks to teachers? Whose eTexbook do they propose to update – the teacher’s copy, the class set, the school district? Even if an update is available for a textbook, the teacher is unlikely to be the person who purchases new editions. If this is an app, will it just crawl publisher websites looking for update announcements, in turn notifying Up2Date subscribers of the news? Will Up2Date learning somehow strike deals with publishers and become a middleman between teachers and publishers? I am not certain, but I would hazard a guess that eTextbook publishers have sales reps with vested interests in notifying their clientele when new products are available, and also have the ability to send update notifications. Furthermore, I am also unconvinced that eTextbooks are close enough on the horizon of becoming inevitable and ubiquitous. Finally, although Mr. Rae seems earnest and that he believes in his product, he is reading his pitch (we can hear somebody flipping papers off-camera) which detracts from his CEO credibility.

    The transcript of the pitch is as follows: Good afternoon, my name is Michael Rae, and I am a certified teacher, a former investment adviser, a current Master of Education Technology student, and CEO of Up2Date Learning. High schools are filled with print textbooks that are unaligned with curriculum and outdated. How can someone teach about weather systems without discussing hurricane Sandy? Up2Date learning will send alerts to teachers giving them the option to update their etextbook, saving the time of scouring the internet to supplement their old books. Etextbooks are already crashing the market in higher education, and will inevitably be come the norm in highschools as comfort with digital media increases, and their devices become ubiquitous. This is a chance to attack an emerging market at the ground floor. I’m looking to raise $650,000 dollars to assemble a dynamic team that will join me in my vision of helping teachers and students keep up to date with their teaching and learning.

  2. candelaria says:

    Yes, I would invest in this venture but I would need to look at some facts and figures to solidify my decision. Overall, this pitch peeked my interest and caught my attention. The presenter had enthusiasm and passion about his product even though the presentation lacked hard concrete evidence and visuals to support his business venture. He started out his presentation with his credentials which established a level of credibility and trust among potential investors. And then he hooked investors with a clearly defined problem with a clear solution to the problem. He attempted to defend his solution with open, blanket statements which would have benefited from the numbers of higher education using e-textbook or the number of e-textbooks in a typical higher institution or secondary school. As a result, the potential market or market share or competitors of this product is unclear. He has a clear goal and a realistic amount required to establish this new venture. It would be nice to see a business plan to see how he would establish his business and instil confidence in potential investors that he has a clearly defined method of starting his business.

  3. Shaimaa says:

    Yes I would support this venture or at least I would be interested to view its Business plan as it has a strong venture concept which is original, feasible and compelling. The concept is also marketable as there is a clear market need and space and the entrepreneur has a competitive edge focusing on up-to-date books for high schools (which is an untapped market). He is familiar with this area as he is a high school teacher so can easily reach contacts. He was clear and specific in highlighting the existing pain, the solution he is offering as well as the amount of investment he needs.
    The pitch lacks in 3 components:
    • Management Team: there is no team yet; It’s only the entrepreneur and he still needs to gather a team to start working on the project
    • Venture Plan: it is not detailed enough concerning the existing competitors in the high school market as well as potential partners and expected forms of partnerships. He also did not mention possible challenges that could face him like convincing school districts to use his books.
    • Investment return: The entrepreneur did not state how much and how soon the investor will be compensated and how the initial investment would be spent.

    To ease the process of evaluation and make ratings more objective, I used the points in this module to create sort of an evaluation rubric. You can find it here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/sotify/2013/09/19/evaluation-rubric-for-venture-picthes/
    I did not want to crowd the space here but I would be interested to hear your feedback 🙂 Thanks

  4. Shaimaa says:

    Hi Nicole,
    You pose very important and valid questions. Some (but not all) of the answers are already in the full venture pitch, you’ll find it in the related videos after the video. I was not sure myself if we need to rate and assess the venture pitch or the elevator pitch. However I ended up evaluating the venture pitch as I thought rating the venture plan would very difficult using the elevator pitch alone. However the plan was also not much detailed in the venture pitch but it was definitely better than the elevator pitch.
    I agree with the reading part; I also did not like it and even in the venture pitch, he has a projected screen which is very far and you can’t really figure out what’s on the screen but the details are better

  5. Hi Shaimaa, thank you for your response. I evaluated only the 55 second elevator pitch for my analysis as I believe that was what was listed under the pitch critique instructions, although after I wrote my analysis I did follow through on the suggested Youtube videos on to the 8 minute venture pitch and noticed what you were mentioning, especially the screen. Perhaps the data presentation would have been more effective had it been added to the video in post-editing rather than recorded as a background.

  6. Hello Shaimaa, your second bullet point ” He also did not mention possible challenges that could face him like convincing school districts to use his books.” is one thing that struck me most about this elevator pitch. The pitch left me unclear as to what he is proposing – are they HIS books, or is he a third-party middleman? Is he selling textbook updates… or is he selling “the notification of the option to update” which will presumably then come with additional fees from the publisher? One major gap I see in the whole concept is this: just because print-based textbooks may not have easy notification updates, does not mean that eTextbooks will not have easy notification updates.

    Nice job on the rubric 🙂

  7. sarahrowe says:

    Hello all,

    As a textbook publishing professional, I can tell you that for the most part, we keep customer records for digital book purchases that allow us to contact them if need be (such as if a subscription-based service is about to expire, or if a major release is available for an eBook). What the entrepreneur may not realize is that for the majority of publishers, reprints are made to correct errors – they rarely add new content that a customer would ever need to or want to pay for. Many times we make these corrections available to teachers via our website as well. If a teacher buys a copy of the book (print or digital) they are getting the most up-to-date copy we have.

  8. Shaimaa says:

    Interesting point Sara. Thanks for sharing this piece of info. This even makes his idea more interesting for me. If the only updates for textbooks is correction, then there is a market gap in updating textbooks with new information or recent events. However, your comment as well as Nicola’s made me realize though the idea could be really good, he is still lagging behind in his background research to understand the market dynamics and he does not have a clear plan of how to implement this idea. So I think the question here might be as an analyst, would I choose a venture idea that is good but there is no research or plan and work with the entrepreneur on developing it or would I go for a well-researched and planned idea even if it is not that good. Off course, having both is the best scenario but we don’t always get this in real life (or at least this is what I think so far).

    This reminded me of reading “how to pitch a brilliant idea” by Isbach where one of her classifications was the neophyte who shows his ignorance and eagerness to learn as away to convince the venture capitalist . This pitch could be turned into that if he highlights his weaknesses and asks for specific ways to help him deal with his weaknesses. What do you think?

  10. alemon says:

    No, I would not invest in this venture. I’m not sure that I buy into the idea that e-text books are going to become rapidly out of date in the future or that teachers are currently spending countless hours “scouring the internet” for updated sources. These are the stated problems that the service intends to address. E-text books are not in widespread use yet. If and when they do become ubiquitous, publishers may include options to automatically update materials with new content. As a result, the service may become obsolete by the time the e-text trend has fully emerged. I am also not satisfied in the qualifications and passion of the CEO. He has some experience in related fields but did not do much to sell his strengths or the competitive advantage that he will provide. As he stated in his ask, the CEO is also without a pre-existing team to work with, as the substantial $650 000 ask money was needed to pay for a “dynamic team” that would make the venture a reality. If there is no team already in existence and there is no service to speak of at this time, this sounds more like an idea that a venture. There can be no talk of profitability or return on investment until a service is up and running and revenue streams are generating money for the company. If the service cannot begin operations until the “dynamic team” is hired with large amount of investors’ money, it will not be this investor that gets involved.

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