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.
Fortunately, the Internet gives everyone access to all information that's ever existed. Unfortunately, while a lot of innovation has happened around short content (like Twitter), the Internet is still not very good at providing in-depth content. The most popular way of supplying long content is eBooks, which are basically just digital ports of static physical documents. This means that most people can easily skim content, but it takes a really large investment to learn any sort of depth on a topic.
Okeebo thought this was a problem, so we went about redesigning a reading format with a digital first perspective. What we ended up with was a tiered structure that let's people control what they see. In other words, it's like a mind map with various summaries and explanations built in, and people can navigate it however they like. This is extra empowering because it puts the reader in the driver seat of their learning experience.
Next we created writing software, so anyone can create content in this format. This means that authors no longer have to choose if their content will be easy to consume or if it will be thorough. They can have both without compromise, and they can show how all their ideas relate to each other.
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.
For the initial market of thought leaders, the business model is a freemium model where they can embed content made using Okeebo onto their website and there will be a small monthly fee if they want the embedded content to match their branding. The price point hasn't been determined yet, but it will probably be $5 to $10 since the fee should probably be less than their hosting costs.
There are other premium features that Okeebo could charge for should as keeping content private and having access levels for collaborators. Okeebo could also act as a self-publishing partner with authors and make a percentage of those digital sales.
For educational resources, there is a potential business model that leverages a larger learning ecosystem that Okeebo plans to develop. The plan is to have a homework and interactive problem system integrated with the educational resources. When students complete these problems, they earn points like with other gamification systems. Okeebo would partner with local vendors like Target and the Guthrie to offer discounts to their products and services. Students would spend their points earned from doing homework to get the discounts they want. Okeebo would make money on the commission from these deals.
This model is appealing for multiple reasons. First, students could receive their educational resources for free, switching the financial burden from a group that doesn't have a lot of money to corporations who do. Second, this model allows companies to target price discrimination specifically at students. Third, this model is basically a much less intrusive way to advertise because students bring themselves to the advertisements. Fourth, students are a good group to advertise to in this way because while they currently don't have money, they have readily available disposal income once they get jobs after graduating. Finally, advertising in this way is positive for a company's brand because they can brag about supporting education.
However, there are some negatives to this business model for educational resources. First, it's very complex and they are a lot of parties involved. Second, some critics may claim it "cheapens" education, and I'm not sure if that is actually the case.
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 and was met with a positive response.