Venture Concept No. 1

POD (Personal One-on-One Development) Schooling

Opportunity

• Children are required to get an education and attend school up until the age of 16, when they can legally choose to drop out. Not every child is thrilled about staying in school or learning when all they are being taught is how to take a test or when it is not something that they have not excelled at, they have just been floated through the grade levels. Private school may be the alternate option, but it is so much more expensive. The other option is homeschooling, but that will not work when parents have to work to support the family. There are also Charter schools, which also have high costs. Then there are programs like Florida Virtual School, however there it is lots of reading and homework with no lectures and no classroom-like feel.

• Just 28% of high- and medium- to low-income public school parents are completely satisfied with their child’s education. Thirty-four percent of elementary parents (grades K through five) are completely satisfied compared with 25% of middle school (grades six through eight) and 25% of high school (grades nine through 12) parents. Despite significant federal and state-level focus on education reform in the past decade and a half, public school parents are no more satisfied today than they were in 2001 with the quality of their own child's education. Children are our foundation and our future, if they cannot get what they need in order to be successful in the future then; I believe we fail as a country. The children deserved a high-quality education where they can thrive without parents having to break the bank trying to make it happen.

• The forces that allow this to occur is all the testing/teaching towards the test, politics, government education policies, and cost of going to a school whether it be the tuition for private schools or the high uniform costs and limited spaces for charter school. The combination of all these things creates a big window of opportunity that will be open until the need is fully satisfied.

• Customers are currently just using the options they have to try to best satisfy the need. I believe that if there were a better option, like my POD Schooling Venture, the customers would happily migrate towards it.

Innovation

POD Schooling or Personal One-on-One Development Schooling is a holographic schooling system. There are two models: the POD chamber and the POD chair & virtual glasses. What this innovation does is bring the classroom to you and in a personalized way to maximize your learning and build a stronger educational foundation. There are many services that come with the system, like tutoring sessions, parent-teacher conferences, etc. Social activities are community based and if students want to participate in sports they still can. The financials are somewhat straightforward in this business model. Private donors will cover the expense and along with fundraisers and gala events, the only expense to the parent would be the POD system. We get most/all of our revenue through the purchase of the POD system and any extra tutoring sessions that are requested above the standard. The students are provided a set number of tutor hours per semester. The cost of the POD system is cut down dramatically through an adopt a student program where a donor pays for all or most of the cost for the POD chamber or POD chair & virtual glasses.

Venture Concept

• POD schooling allows a student to get a better quality of education for less than what it would cost to send the child to private schooling. Customers in my market are extremely sensitive to the quality of the service provided as well as price. Students get to interact with their teacher and fellow peers, learn, and all while saving on transportation.
• There are few (if any) competitors that I know of; there are no businesses of this type using this technology for the same purpose that I am.
• Price is important because I am targeting my concept towards middle- to low-income families. Location, distribution, and packaging do not play a huge part in defining my business concept. However, along with price customer support and customer service is a huge part of defining my business concept. It is built on those relationships I make. One of the main features POD Schooling is customer support. There will be detailed teacher comments for the parents so they can keep up with the student’s progress.
• Essentially, there are two parts to this business; there is the manufacturing part or product and the educational part, which is the service. The number of employees needed is undetermined. There are a lot of different roles, such as:
• Product Designer
• Engineering
• Marketing
• Analytics
• UI Designer
• Lead Developers
• Teachers
• Customer Support, etc.

The Three Minor Elements

My Most Important Resource

POD Schooling people (human capital) are my most important resource; whether it is my own support systems, my customers, the students or the teachers my relationship with them all is what can make or break my business. It is hard to copy a personal relationship with, like a fingerprint it is one of a kind.

What Is Next For My Venture?

There are many details I am not quite sure about when it comes to the technology that will be used for this venture. It is not something that is typically standard. I want maybe to look into to how the system can make university online learning more interactive while still keeping that flexibility.

What Is Next For Me?

I may pursue this business idea in the future, but for now, it is just for the class. I do not have the extra time right now that it would take to get everything started, up, and running. Five years from now, I know for a fact this venture will not have launched. If I do decide to continue it within the next 5 to 10 years, I would probably be in the preliminary stages of getting the systems manufactured, looking into the curriculum setup, and running trials. Within the next decade, I want to have started my own business, mostly likely POD Schooling will not be the first business I start.