Hatch (2): Pitch Day
Recommend to read my previous Hatch story if you haven’t done so:
At the end of the Creative Founder course, we were asked to pitch our idea as if we were pitching for funding. We had an ask of $520,000 to start our product and achieve our next milestones and pitched this to a group of 11 venture capitalists.
The following was the pitch that got us 9/11 venture capitalists’ funding, totaling the investment to $1,681,500!
Why Hatch?
Most students go online to try and solve problems when they’re learning something, and get stuck. However, it’s not the most effective way to learn.
Based on our interviews, we know that students think it is much easier to just ask someone who knows the material. Learning and sharing are common behaviors that we see in schools. However, it’s hard to ask for help when the person who can help you is outside of your social circle. There’s also hesitation in asking for help because people don’t want to be burdensome. Hatch can solve these problems by expanding students’ connections, and by creating mutual learning experiences where peers can help one another.
What is our market size?
Learning and sharing are preexisting behaviors. There are 9 million members in Facebook learning groups, and about 390K subscribers in the Reddit IWantToLearn community. There are about 81 million people currently using educational platforms, which is our total addressable market. Our serviceable addressable market is college students in the U.S. who are using academic services.
Based on our acquisition experiments, we think we can capture 5% of them.
Who are our competitors?
There are many other learning platforms in the marketplace that range from tutoring to learning exchange apps, and we want to foster face to face interactions and mutual learning experiences, because based on our interviews, people are more open to seek help (and to also provide help) when they are physically close to each other.
What set us apart from our competitors?
Firstly, Our service is school-based, so it’s convenient for students to meet up, and it’s also a safer experience for them. Secondly, mutual learning & sharing can create bonds between students. With this information, we hope that we can cultivate a strong sense of community in school. Besides, learning from peers is a more flexible learning experience for students.
How do our financials work to create a sustainable business?
Our service is free for up to 3 connections per month, and students can pay $0.99/month to unlock premium features. Our secondary revenue stream is advertising academic-related products. Our estimated revenue for a year is $1,962,882 when we achieve the number of users in the Serviceable Obtainable Market.
At the early stage, We will have 7 employees. With other additional costs, the total burn rate is $603,748, making our estimated annual profit $1,359,134.
How is our concept validated?
We have done our concept validation, launched and tested with a concept MVP, and run marketing initiatives with onsite recruitments. 12 people have experienced the early version of our service. The method in which we ran these experiences was by pairing 2 students up where they can meet and share their skills with each other. We have a QR code on our marketing collaterals that brought students to our website, and as of now we have 117 scans, 80 offline sign-ups and have run 12 experiences in 3 weeks.
Why invest in us?
The acquisition numbers we have achieved in 3 weeks proves that there is a need that Hatch can fulfill. Research also shows that 78% of students are using academic help, and 27% of them are willing to pay for it.
What Hatch can do is to provide learning experiences that cost way less than tutoring sessions and other competitors.
Also, from the expert interview with Brooke Hessler, we know that Hatch can be a complement to the current tutoring service in school.
What is our next step?
Right now, we have a digital prototype that is undergoing multiple rounds of usability testing. We believe we can release an MVP in 4 months, and acquire 17,000 users in 10 months.
We’re asking for $520,000 for the next 10 months for new hires and scale adoption.
Invest in Hatch! Just like this anonymous commenter wrote on our poster here, we can create a better world through the sharing of knowledge.
Our pitch deck:
Learn about my experience of the overall project:
