Post-Ideasinc Analysis

This Saturday I had the pleasure of watching the top 10 teams pitch it out on the NTUitve stage for the chance to win $20,000 in prize money.

Here’s some of my thoughts:

Level Up

Problem: K-12 kids not engaged with education.

Solution: Gamify worksheets and customised practices that the teacher can go through. Providing a platform to synch your child’s results with teachers and tutors

Questions that I have:

1. Why would teachers and tutors want to be synched up via the platform? Unless parents can show the tutor that the child’s progress, which reduces the need to even get tutors onboard.
2. What’s in it for the tutors if you’re looking to onboard them?
3. Level Up wants to target students of all levels, but that means a ton of content to produce with 1 teacher only. And they say that they want to onboard publishers once they reach critical mass but why not just on-board them immediately, it saves all the effort of creating the worksheets.
4. They’re charging $10 per month for their main service? People will pay for education, why not charge more?
5. How much does it cost to acquire a customer?
6. What is the definition of success for Level Up? Is it getting a pass for the student? Increasing engagement?
7. What kinds of approvals must you get from the schools if you’re targeting teachers?
8. I’m not sure if parents will care too much for the micro-transactions. Ultimately Level Up seems to not be a game, it’s a worksheet disguised as a game.

Presentation:

• Really great, eloquent, easily understood
• I liked that they used videos to take the customer through the process of picking out the worksheets etc.

Team Gauss

Problem: Too much business data out there in the world, but not enough “intelligence” to help make clear decisions and hiring data scientists is expensive.

Solution: They will store data (like Amazon services), They will charge for business data analytics and consultation fees.

Questions and comments that I have:

1. What industry do they want to attack first? Which industry need this BI urgently?
2. Why are they targeting SMEs?
3. What kind of data SMEs want so crucially that they will pay for your service? How does this affect their businesses? Currently unclear.
4. I still don’t really know what is the problem they are solving and for who. Very unclear. Or maybe I’m not smart enough to understand what they are trying to solve.

Presentation:

• Generally good, but too much changing of speakers.
• Data shown not compelling enough, quite hard to follow the presentation

Insect Feed Technology

Problem: Not enough protein in the market to feed aqua farmed animals

Solution: They breed black soldier fly larvae to dry them and use them as feed for prawns. They have a 12–14 day lifecycle and high nutritional content. Better conversion, resulting in bigger prawns.

Questions and comments that I have:

1. They asked for 1 mil funding in exchange for 20% of their company. Their idea seems way bigger than a mere 5 million dollar company. Although I don’t know much about their competitors.
2. Will the quality of the food waste affect the growth of the larvae?
3. Should they go into other types of farming industries? Or should they stay in the aquafeed industry and dominate the whole market, rather than split their marketing resources to fight against pet food suppliers, pig food suppliers etc etc.

Presentation:

• Very good ppt, very concise and easily understood. Identified the problem really well.
• Plan for the future is very clear

Stayr

Problem: Spaces in hotels especially not fully maximised. 70% vacancy and 1 in 3 hotels cannot achieve maximum capacity. Property owners under-utilise about 30–50% in unbooked rooms. $400 billion dollar industry currently untapped.

Solution: App to book rooms for 1 hour slots rather than 1 day slots, and they can give you confirmation for a booking 5 minutes in advance.

Questions and comments:

1. They target hotels and travellers as the main beneficiaries. But hotels are so rigid, they need to make up the rooms, clean it, etc etc. How agreeable are these hotels to the idea of 1 hour long bookings, can they prep the rooms within 5 minutes?
2. What happens when it’s peak holiday season? Where hotels are super busy and your users can’t find a space for the morning.
3. Which would make more money for them in the long term, B2B bookings? For example working with insurance and property companies to allow their agents to meet with prospective clients in vacant spaces near their clients’ offices? How much more productive would this be for agents themselves rather than meeting at Starbucks.
4. What are the resources needed on the side of the people renting out the space if they are able to meet the 5 minute advanced booking?
5. How do they intend to re-educate people on what spaces can be used for? They talk about it throughout their presentation, but didn’t really go in-depth. So I don’t really understand what “re-educating people on spaces” means.
6. What regulation issues that people can get caught with? Can I rent an office then use your platform to sub-let to gig workers?

Presentation:

• Very well put across
• Feels like there are lots of holes in their business

Mo Batteries — EV bikes

Problem: Lots of petrol bikes in SEA, huge carbon emissions.

Solution: Convert petrol bikes into e-bikes and include a battery replacement solution. Creates a 10% saving for corporate clients.

Questions and comments:

1. They claim that they are battery and vehicle agnostic, but didn’t really explain more into what they meant and how they make it that way. Caused confusion amongst judges.
2. They mentioned that they can convert petrol bikes into E-bikes in the beginning. But when they showed their financial statements, they spent 5 million into “vehicles”. So I’m a little confused as to whether they build bikes or modify them.
3. They target more towards corporations with bike fleets like singpost.

Presentation:

• Very well presented
• A little unclear as some points
• But very concise and easily understood in general
• Can tell that they are very experienced

Outside Technologies

Problem: No trustable platform to help with micro-jobs

Solution: Micro-jobs platform where people can take small jobs

Questions and comments:

1. They seemed very focused on the local community, but at the same time they are unable to get people to do more jobs 15,000 users, 2000+ jobs so far. What’s missing here? Is it hard to get jobs? Or not being fully engaged.
2. They mentioned that they want to add stuff like lost pet advertising, or dementia parent location thing. Is that really essential to their business model? It feels like they are doing too many things.
3. Follow up from the last question: Which customer base should they target first? If home business owners are the people you want to target first, then target them first. Then match them with job seekers.

Presentation:

• Well presented
• Didn’t really talk much about revenue when prompted but I guess he had his reasons
• Had a clear plan for the future

Date ideas

Problem: Decreasing quality in dates leading to breakups.

Solution: Platform for curated date plans, prevention tool for breakups?

Questions and comments:

1. Have they understood the question they are solving? Many factors that result in a breakup. Not just stale dates.
2. They have 30k followers and spent 0 on marketing, that’s fantastic of course. But converting these freemium customers to actual paying customers will be a different story
3. They don’t really grasp the full gravity of divorce and the issues that come with it. Is their solution just plaster over a deep would? Since they package it like a “break up” prevention strategy.
4. Revenue 2020: $18,000, Revenue 2021: $400,000 ++ Where do they even come up with these numbers????
5. Focusing on their partnerships with CMB and Paktor to increase their user base is huge! Potential for growth there. Like how Singsaver collaborates with companies.
6. Did they consider using advertising as a way to bring in revenue? Rather than subscription model, carrying on what they do best which is curating content. That’s what the 30K followers look for right?
7. They understand the SG market. But do the understand ID relationships? And as such, how can they project their growth based on the fact that they will get ID business for sure.
8. Their fee is 2.99/month + 15% commisions i believe. Should they use a Fave style coupon?

Presentation:

• Well presented
• Anyhow project growth
• Have they understood the factors that result in a breakup?

EOT

Problem: Health screening is cumbersome for diabetic patients. Especially now with Covid-19

Solution: A Telehealth infrastructure. A pod essentially that does your check up.

Questions and comments:

1. How much is the cost of 1 booth?
2. How to get these older patients to adopt this
3. Insurance companies should be the low hanging fruit.
4. What is their USP? Is it speed? Is it only being the first? Or is it their expertise, they are an expert team

Presentation:

• Well presented
• Didn’t talk about revenue if I’m not wrong, didn’t talk about how much to build one or when a prototype is up.

Savour

Problem: Food waste is a huge issue

Solution: An e-commerce platform to reallocate close to expiry/ blemished food that is still edible.

Questions and comments:

1. How to scale to other countries?
2. Can they work with farms as well? To prevent waste higher up in the supply chain. Lots of ugly veggies that still can be eaten are thrown away.
3. Working with NDP would be great. Lots of wasted food thrown away
4. What else can they explore to increase their revenue streams. Because 1%, 2.5% and 5–10% seems a little low when you’re not doing huge volume.

Presentation:

• Well presented
• Partnerships secured seem great

Magorium

Problem: 91% plastic un-recycled

Solution: Recycle the plastic and turn it into a road additive

Questions and comments:

1. They mentioned that it’s cyclical, what does that mean. Does it mean that mean ALL plastic doesn’t convert
2. Not sure why they want to license to waste management companies. Didn’t catch that part.
3. What happens when plastic is banned? Will it affect the supply chain?

Presentation:

• Very pro
• Once they figure out the business, then they are ready
• Got regulation down in Singapore already