Executive Summary
This is your elevator pitch. (100 Word Max)
Opportunity
Convince us this is a breakthrough idea and an innovative approach.
Describe your product/service, the problem it solves, your value
proposition and what is unique or innovative about your approach. Who
is your target customer and how large is your addressable market? (3000
characters-with spaces-or less) *Note to Social Division applicants:
What social benefit is derived if you are successful and how big will
the impact be?
Plan
Convince us
your plan is commercially and financially viable. Explain your business
model including operating, sales and marketing plans. What activities
will your company perform and what partners/vendors will you rely on,
how will your product/service be priced and positioned, through what
channels will you reach your customers, how will you create awareness
and convert customers. Also, include a list of key team
members/advisors that are helping you develop the business. Please
include summary financial projections and assumptions including
projected volume, unit pricing and margins, major operating costs and
capital needs. (3000 characters-with spaces-or less) One excel document
may be uploaded with summary financial information.
Progress
What progress
have you made? Do you have a prototype, customers, strategic partners
or revenue? Tell us what milestones you’ve achieved to validate the
opportunity and bring your product/service to market. (3000
characters-with spaces-or less)
Our society has a wealth of ideas and information, yet people are often only able to skim the surface of that intellectual wealth. If you want to breach the surface, you have to really commit to a subject and dive into it.
Imagine though, if you could customize your learning, going precisely as deep as you want in all the topics that are important to you.
Okeebo's first step towards this goal of customized learning is our website, which enables people to express ideas and information in a way that lets readers control the level of detail they see.
"Knowledge is power."
Most people would agree with that quote. As a society we value learning because we recognize the capacity that ideas and information have to inspire and empower individuals.
For this initial offering Okeebo's target customers are thought leaders, individuals who are experts and on the cutting edge of their fields. Thought leaders write books, do speaking arrangements, and consult for other companies. They are likely to be early adopters, since they think towards the future and being innovative is crucial to their reputation. Most thought leaders already provide supplementary content, but many would like to provide more in-depth content that's easy to consume. Okeebo enables them to do this. Providing this kind of content will be valuable to thought leaders as it will help them develop relationships, further their reputations, and market their books, speaking, and consulting.
Later markets for this offering include educational resources (replacing textbooks), scholarly research, strategic planning for businesses, employee handbooks, and basically any content that's informative and in-depth. This gives Okeebo a large addressable market since more than 1.8 million scholarly articles are published each year and there are over 21 million higher education students in the United States.
(educational institutions leave learners out of decision process)
(which is the opposite of empowering)
(Okeebo flips that by providing choice)
(also achieves goal of customized learning and better accessing society's wealth of intellect)
(digital design: dynamic, nonlinear, social)
How can content be easily consumable and still thorough?
Disrupting linearity of content
Content
Multiple revenue sources
Thought leaders: monthly fee to embed Okeebo content with custom branding
Private writing: monthly fee so content is private
Fee for access controls?
Revenue sharing with digital sales?
Gamified -> Points -> Discounts -> Commission model with educational resources
Platform / social network / ecosystem
Scales better than being a content provider
More complicated business model
The Okeebo website is in public beta. The core functionality is complete, so people can create and consume content. A demo is available at okeebo.com/demo and a video walk through of this demo can be seen at youtube.com/watch?v=jlmsARdTMd0
Product testing and surveying showed very enthusiastic responses from university students. However, there were multiple issues with generating content for educational resources and instructor responses were less enthusiastic, so this market is taking a backseat for now. The collaborative editing feature that is in development could help alleviate the content issue, and instructors (often belonging in the majority adopter groups) are likely to be more receptive once the software has a larger user base.
Okeebo has talked with some thought leaders, and they were excited to create content using Okeebo. However, they want their finished content to exist on their own website, so a feature to embed content into other webpages has been recently developed and incorporated into Okeebo's business model.
Finally, a nationally operating nonprofit based in Minneapolis is using Okeebo for their strategic plan. This nonprofit shared their strategic plan made with Okeebo to their board, which received a positive response. Previously the nonprofit was using Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft PowerPoint to create this strategic plan and once Okeebo's collaboratively editing feature is stable to use, Okeebo will make "those software solutions obsolete" for this purpose.