the elevator pitch

Elevator pitch week! Unfortunately, my group did not expect the elevator pitch to solely consist of the video, so we did not present this session. We expected the video to be followed by a short speech or Q&A, so we didn't include a lot of details. We redid the presentation and added a voice-over. I got some of my friends to view it and feedback was varied. Many people caught many different things from the video. Some could clearly tell me the concept of our business. Some could even tell me the revenue model for our business, our target audience and which segment of the market are we trying to reach. Yet there were others unclear even of the medium we were using. There is definitely room for improvement, but so far feedback is not bad and most people understood our idea, so I'll save any changes until after the pitch is given next session. I can't wait to show it to the rest of the class and hear what they think of it!

Our idea is to replace the conventional tour package with a game played entirely on the mobile phone. Our target audience are families or younger travellers, ie. backpackers. I'll wait until after the next session before I blog more about it.

We saw the elevator pitches of the various groups and it was good that none of the groups came up with similar ideas. All their ideas were different, again showing how diverse the students taking this modules are. However, none of the ideas caused my heart to skip a beat. I might be overly critical but everyone is entitled to his own opinion and this is nothing personal. I feel the idea of a website that gives tourism information is nothing new! People have already been doing it, and it's probably no different from carrying around a copy of Lonely Planet. The next idea on the traveller's card requires the installation of the card reader all over the nation. This means everyone has to buy this idea in order for the idea to even work. This comes up to a rather high startup cost. The great thing about this idea is the reusability of the cards everytime the tourist comes back to Singapore. However, how many casual tourist visit the same place twice? The last group's idea was basically a personal chaffeur, whose car has a laptop placed in it. I think one thing all of these groups missed is the element of play and the idea of fun. There are plenty of means where information can be provided that are already in place, so the only way one can be different is how this information is actually provided. That is why I quite like my own idea on the mobile phone game. An important concept in Web 2.0 is interactivity on the part of the end user. He must feel like he can contribute to the community.

The most important point the elevator pitch must bring across is the value proposition and the revenue model. This is probably the biggest take home of the day. From our analysis of various elevator pitches, we can clearly see that one doesn't need a technically excellent and aesthetically astounding video to bring across the 2 points. One of the groups did a rather archaic one-man-talking-to-a-video-cam pitch but it was interesting and presented his ideas in a clear and concise manner. After this, we proceeded on with the lecture proper.

This week's topic was on Freedom. As mentioned earlier, a big part of Web 2.0 is end user interactivity. This immediately allows the user to feel like he has a certain degree of freedom, that is, freedom of speech. He can blog, podcast or upload content of his choice via any of the 'sharesites' such as flickr, blogger and youtube, all of which are household names now. The onset of such technology is a dual-edged sword. On one side of the balance, there is freedom and there is choice; yet on the other side, comes the removal of privacy. Previously, privacy infringement was a widely debated issue. Now, the disappearance of privacy is almost as sure as the popping up of the next tissue from the box of Kleenex. I guess this is another case of 'Who moved my cheese?". In the book of the same name by Dr. Spencer Johnson, a story of 2 pairs of mice is told. They were eating cheese from a cheese station. One day, the cheese ran out, so the first pair left their cheesestation in search of a new cheesestation. However, the second pair got furious and immediately belted out the now famous line, 'Who moved my cheese?". It speaks of being able to accept changes, adapt to them and move on. As e-commerce and m-commerce continually play a larger role in today's society, we must learn to accept and adapt to the changes that this force brings about. The cheese in the cheesestation will not magically grow back, just like technology doesn't move backwards. Web 2.0 is here to stay. We may move on to Web 3.0 and with it comes a new set of rules, but we will never move back to Web 1.0.

Anyway, another session was concluded and its more work yet again as we work to improve our elevator pitch. We just found out that part of our project evaluation would be the performance of our pitch on YouTube. Now that was something no one expected. Yet another MB362 surprise. ;P