U-News Feasibility Pitch
By: Raquel Van Ry, Danielle Kuelker, Zander von Neudegg & Firaoll Umar.
Executive Summary
What is U-News?
U-News (aka. You/University News) is an online application and website platform through which universities and its students, staff and event organizers can communicate. With recent COVID-19 developments, the world has changed drastically and Canada’s educational institutions have not been left untouched. Universities have had to limit their capacity or close down entirely, forcing them to turn to platforms like Zoom or Slack as an alternative means of education.
Although educational institutions like the University of Calgary have managed to effectively pivot relatively smoothly, there are several new challenges that have arisen. Simple activities like connecting with classmates and study groups, or even meeting new people has become increasingly more challenging if not virtually impossible for university students. On the flip side, universities and their student unions are struggling to promote events and resources as email correspondence is their primary channel through which they can do so. This proves to be a challenge because according to a study conducted in 2016, it was found that approximately 12.1% of the student population relies on email as a communication platform, proving that email is not enough for universities to connect with their students (Straumsheim, 2016).
U-News will enable students to be able to easily connect with classmates and reach out to peers to form friendships and study groups. Additionally, by potentially connecting with the university’s student union and communication platforms like the University of Calgary’s Gauntlet magazine, both U-News and the university would benefit.
For a quick overview, please see the presentation below.
COVID-19 has forced the world to change its ways, no longer are students able to attend there classes all together in-person, no can they meet up with study groups or learn about upcoming events on the bulletin walls. Times have changed and universities either have to change with them or get left behind. The EdTech industry is thriving and U-News’ founding team identified an opportunity. U-News founders, a group of students from the University of Calgary, experienced first-hand the added challenges that come with online learning. Tasks that were once simple, like getting in touch with group mates for projects, become tedious processes. With an educational background in communications, business and technology, U-News’ founding team aims to create an intuitive platform that streamlines student’s lives.
As students become more and more connected through the internet, platforms, and social media, it is imperative that universities keep on top of current trends and provide teaching, content delivery, and information in ways that will best be received by staff and students. Social media has continued to grow with over half the world’s population on some sort of social media platform so tapping into social media for marketing opportunities is crucial to promoting U-News (Bullock et al., 2020).
Competitors and Financial Overview
There are multiple direct and indirect competitors that U-News will face upon launching, including major social media platforms and pre-existing university services such as D2L, Zoom and TopHat which are used by the University of Calgary. Thus, U-News will need to depend largely on its founder’s diverse skill-set as well as its competitive advantage of differentiation that it holds over its competitors, or else propose potential website integration of these services to the university customer.
Financially speaking, the cost of starting up a business venture in the EdTech industry is low relative to other industries, especially because the majority of the initial stages of development will be done internally by U-News founders. Future scalability will depend on external talent, but once U-News obtains more customers, U-News founders do not anticipate the added cost to be too high compared to revenue. As U-News will be targeted at universities large budgets and potential for long-term, profitable contracts are possible. As U-News gains more market share, the development of an app is expected to improve the service and attract new customers.
U-News will take a licensing approach to universities as its main source of revenue. This leaves U-News room to diversify revenue streams by implementing the use of advertisements or by selling basic user data. Key costs will be kept to a minimum during the start-up of U-News due to the diverse skill set of the team. U-News does expect testing, UI design, and integration to generate the most costs during the design of the service. U-News does expect to be profitable by using the bootstrap approach to limit costs and begin gaining profit while the current pandemic forces universities to continue to consider online approaches.
Research
Customer Value Proposition
Fourth year student from the University of Calgary, Amritpal Saini, expressed his frustration, “it is so hard to find classmates for group projects now and professors just expect you to figure it out on your own” (Personal communication). U-News’ founding team is comprised of students who have experienced similar feelings. U-News is the solution to this hole in market demand. In the future, additional primary research will be conducted to assess the feasibility of future university clients.
Universities that deem U-News a valuable addition to their institution will pay on a subscription basis and they will benefit from U-News by helping their students to thrive in their online education environment. To prove this, U-News founders interviewed fourteen individuals and asked them a series of question that relate to U-News and its success. 94% of the participants were post-secondary students and 84.7% of them were willing to adopt an alternative social platform for their education as can be seen in Figure 1.
Based on the feedback collected from the survey, the most popular elements the participants wanted to see in U-News includes chat options and class schedule and assignments, see Appendix 1 for more information. As a result, U-News opted to guarantee chat and course content services within the website, and any additional elements can be added as per customer request. Additionally, survey participants were encouraged to provide feedback on specific elements that they would want U-News to include, including peer tutoring and better integration with both social and academic sites so that they do not have to use multiple platforms. U-News intends to include these as well as many more features to simplify students lives.
Industry Analysis
Target Market
Due to the nature of U-News, the target will include post-secondary institutions, student unions, clubs, and students. However, the main target customers are those that will actually be paying for the product, the actual school institutions themselves. Individuals that the website will be targeted at are students between the ages of 18 to 65, with the majority falling in the 20 to 24 age range as that is the average age of students whom will be the main users (Duffin, 2020). Initially, U-News will be targeted at post-secondary institutions in Canada, specifically, the University of Calgary to begin with then later the target market will expand to the U.S. and other countries.
Location: U-News will initially be launched in Calgary, Alberta. Should U-News succeed, its target market will grow to include the rest of Canada’s universities.
Age: The target customer will eventually be universities across Canada, and students between the ages of 18 to 65, and primarily those between the ages of 20 to 24 as the majority of Canada’s post-secondary students are within that age group as can be seen in Figure 2 (Duffin, 2020). However, initially, U-News will test its feasibility by targeting the University of Calgary which U-News’ founding team is familiar with.
Size: There were reportedly approximately 1.4 million university students (full and part-time) attending Canadian institutions in 2019 alone, and this number is projected to grow rapidly every year (Universities Canada, 2018).
Growth rate: U-News’ founding team anticipates the target market to grow as the number of students enrolling in Canadian universities is increasing (Statistics Canada, 2020). The increase is largely due to the increase of international students choosing Canadian universities to complete or attain a degree. Based on this information, U-News’ target market is projected to grow at an annual rate of approximately 2% (Statistics Canada, 2020).
Marketing Tactic
In order to attract buyers, the U-News founding team intends to employ several marketing tactics. First of all, it will be important to contact universities and their Information Technology departments. Starting with the University of Calgary; the team will contact Brock Kahanyshyn and Trevor Poffenroth who are the CEO and director of technology services and operations, respectively (U of C, n.d.). Additionally, the team will contact student unions and its student club leaders to gain student support. By contacting players at the top and bottom of universities hierarchies, there will be both a top-down and bottom-up push to implement this technology. U-News will also be promoted through university social media platforms, student platforms and U-News social media, this will include Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to gain as much awareness and support as possible.
Marketing Channels
Universities choose online tools based on several criteria, including the needs of its students, the number of staff and students as well as the type of courses being taught. For example, an institution that focuses more on hands-on learning would have different technology requirements than one that focuses more on distance learning like the University of Calgary. Universities may also consider the compatibility of the technology with the existing course management system (Kelly, 2008). With this in mind, U-News will need to approach potential university customers with an in-depth understanding of the university’s values and needs, creating a personalized prototype and pitch depending on the university.
Once U-News has sold its services to a university, the university will then promote its use to their students, but U-News intends to match these promotions by advertising U-News on social media platforms as well. This additional marketing is crucial to increasing U-News use because based on U-News’ survey responses, 78.6% of the participants were active on two or more social media platforms every week, as can be seen in Figure 3.
U-News intends to sell to target customers through a subscription-based approach, universities will have the option to implement and use the app and will be charged by the number of users, renewing their subscription annually. This will allow easy repetition of customers, growth, and scalability.
Industry Overview
The Educational Technology (EdTech) industry is quickly becoming more concentrated. Innovators and software developers are developing new technologies to improve effectiveness and efficiency of teaching and training. However, various efficient and flexible technologies are becoming more integrated in the teaching and learning process of today’s education curriculums so the industry is extremely competitive. The two major factors that contribute to EdTech market growth are the increasing penetration of mobile devices and the readily availability of internet (EdTech, 2020). Additionally, the current global situation resulting from COVID-19 has intensified the need for online teaching resources, making the Educational Technology market one of the most attractive markets for investors as is evident in Figure 4.
Globally, the EdTech industry was reported to be valued at approximately USD 76.4 billion in 2019 and it is projected to grow at an annual compounded rate of 18.1% between 2020 to 2027 (Grand View Research, 2020). Furthermore, the upsurge in partnerships between EdTech companies and educational institutions is expected to create more opportunities in this market (Grand View Research, 2020). As can be seen in Figure 5, between 2020 to 2026 then EdTech industry is projected to experience positive growth, proving the industry to be an attractive one for U-News to enter in both the short and long run (Mak, 2020).
Competitors
Most universities provide their students with programs such as recreational activities and student-run clubs designed for increasing social interaction between students. However, these programs are impractical as students are unable to interact in person as a result of COVID-19. U-News aims to remedy this issue by providing students with a platform that will enable them to more easily connect with their peers and peer tutors, be updated on campus events and have access to additional interconnectedness of the whole campus by utilizing the readily available technologies.
Indirect: Indirect competitors of U-News consists of pre-existing post-secondary communication services. At the University of Calgary for example, U-News’ competitors would include ucalgary news, The Gauntlet, D2L, and Zoom. Although there are pre-existing platforms through which students can communicate, the process can and should be streamlined. D2L for example, is academic focused and does not enable students to share content with one another. Currently, University of Calgary students aiming to find critical services and professor contacts, must do so through the University of Calgary website, D2L, and the Outlook mail directory. Thus, it is inefficient to have multiple sources of information. U-News will incorporate all the necessary contacts of school faculties and staff. However, U-News would be pitched to universities like the University of Calgary and/or its student union, in a way that it does not threaten pre-existing communication platforms. By proposing that the ucalgary news and Gauntlet be further promoted via U-News, both parties would benefit, and U-News would potentially be more positively accepted.
Direct: U-News’ direct competitors are primarily social media giants that students use to connect with peers and create study groups through. However, as they are such large organizations and students will likely still use them beyond school, they would likely not see U-News as much of a threat. However, as post-secondary students’ main form of communication between each other is via social media platforms, especially Facebook, as is evident in Figure 6, the threat to U-News is definitely present (Nagel et al., 2018). A study conducted by the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and Royal Roads University found that roughly six out of every ten Canadian’s used platforms like Facebook approximately nine times weekly (Nagel et al., 2018). Thus, U-News founder’s have determined that utilizing these social media platforms and marketing to students through them would both encourage students to use U-News, while simultaneously establishing a positive business relationships with the social media giants because they too would benefit from additional marketing payments from U-News.
SWOT Analysis
PESTLE
- Political: Universities are not exempt from political policies. Tuition fees are ever-changing, and political decisions when it comes to COVID-10 regulations will have a large impact on universities, their revenue, and the students that U-News would be targeting.
- Economic: Given the current state of the economy as a result of COVID-19, the loss of jobs and stable income has led to a decrease in disposable income. Similarly, university institutions across Canada are no longer generating income as the majority of students are no longer visiting campuses in person, nor are they purchasing locker memberships, eating or purchasing items through the university stores. As a result, universities may have less monetary resources to pay for an additional platform for there students. U-News founders intend to promote U-News’ all-in-one design, this could attract buyers who do not want to pay for several services when U-News contains them all.
- Social: Word-of-mouth and success stories will be crucial to the future of U-News. By obtaining at least one of Canada’s major universities, specifically the University of Calgary to start with, U-News’ founding team hopes that will generate interest in the product. Already, utilizing online platforms to communicate with others, so there is little to no foreseeable social obstacles.
- Technological: As U-News’ founding team has such a diverse background including education in computer science and software development, U-News’ hope is that the initial website platform will be able to be developed internally using pre-existing technology. However, the tech industry, specifically the Ed Tech industry is already densely populated and highly competitive so it will be challenging to become known.
- Legal: The use of student data is highly restricted. Ideally, U-News will be able to work closely with a lawyer that specializes in such a field to mitigate any potential political risks.
- Environmental: As U-News is entirely an online platform, there is little to no environmental concern.
Porter’s Five Forces
The SWOT (Figure 7), Porter’s Five Forces (Figure 8), and PESTLE analyses are all valuable tools that have highlighted U-News’ greatest strengths and weakness. Overall, U-News is entering an industry that is highly competitive, but U-News valuable differentiation factor is its unique streamlined service. By combining several communication elements into one, universities will only benefit by adding U-News to their existing services.
U-News Differentiation: The biggest difference between U-News and its competitors (i.e. social media accounts and existing communication platforms), is its all-in-one aspect. Students are busy enough with school and assignments, the added challenge of sourcing out academic help and peers is an unnecessary problem that U-News has the capacity to mitigate. By proving students and staff with a platform through which they can easily find and connect with one another in addition to staying updated on the universities upcoming events and services, their lives will be made much easier.
Competitor Response: Both indirect and direct competitors have the potential to have a positive relationship with U-News. U-News can potentially team up with existing indirect competitors like D2L or ucalgarynews to promote one another and bring each other additional traffic. Similarly, by using platforms such as Instagram or Facebook to advertise on, students that use such platforms to connect with peers will be made aware of U-News, and the social media giants would simultaneously benefit by receiving marketing payments from U-News to advertise through them.
Suppliers: U-News is unique in that its end-consumers double as their suppliers. The more universities and students that use U-News, the more successful it will be, if no one uses it, it is unlikely that U-News will scale beyond its initial clientele.
Threat of New Entrants: The EdTech industry is an attractive one to enter provided recent COVID-19 impacts. Additionally, the barrier to entry is relatively low, especially because the necessary technological elements that would be required such as website development are easily accessible. Thus, the threat of new entrants is high.
Exiting the Industry: As a result of the low entry barriers of the EdTech industry, it is highly concentrated. However, as there would be no need for a brick and mortar shop, nor extensive staff, should U-News fail to sustainably establish itself in the market, it should be able to fail quickly and cheaply.
Technical Feasibility
U-News’ founding team has a broad spectrum of talents. While there is a strong core in business between members, one of the key strengths possessed is technology-based, specifically computer science and software development. This allows U-News’ founders to develop a lot of its key service in-house, at least during the beginning. Initially, U-News will be developed as a website and is intended to become an app in the future should U-News succeed. This allows for faster development and pivoting as the product evolves. Along with the inhouse development team and a close connection to our starting market of the University of Calgary, this further increases the speed of the feedback loop that can be crucial to start-ups such as this.
New or Existing Technology?
Initially, a simple version of U-News’ website will be created using existing technology, U-News’ sample website interface can be seen in Figure 9. The website will include simple features such as a news feed, chat options, and some school integration like event promotion options. From here ideas can be refined as primary feedback is received from the users. One particular development tool planned to be deployed is the “painted door” technique. This is where a button with a new feature is applied to the site that users can click on. When clicked, the user is directed to a “coming soon” page, meanwhile analytics are being collected on the number of users that would click on/use such a feature (DeFranza, 2020). More unique features may also be developed, including document scanning/uploading/transferring, as well as some level of automatic plagiarism detection system.
Later as the product expands, U-News will likely have to expand beyond its founding teams’ abilities. To scale effectively, to connect with different university systems and to create more involved features may all require outside help. For this the plan is to bootstrap as long as possible, using systems like AWS (amazon web service) to host the service, and using existing university API’s (application programming interface) for communication. Once bootstrapping is no longer possible an outside hiring should begin, this is not expected to be required until expanding beyond the University of Calgary (1–2 years) by which point revenue is expected to help cover costs.
Technological Obstacles
There are a few foreseeable engineering obstacles that come with developing a website such as this that U-News is planning to get ahead of. One of the most pressing will be the handling of user data. As most of the platform’s data will be of University student’s communication and information it will be critical to them and the university that this information is handled appropriately and safely. This security can put additional strain not only on development but on servers for scaling as well, being another possible problem. While using a service like AWS (amazon web service) is great for scaling, it also may be against university policies to keep user data in a third-party system, this may limit the extent such a service can be used. Further, when connecting to universities, there becomes the problem of integration with their often quite old-fashioned servers. To accomplish this, working alongside universities to access and use their API’s effectively will be very advantageous.
While the backend service of U-News will be perhaps the most difficult to develop. It is often the frontend of a service that can make or break its acceptance. The ability to create a clean looking, modern user interface, can make a big difference to the users’ impressions. Because even though we have always been told to not judge a book by its cover, people still do. then, once actually on the site, the user experience being attributes like load times and downtime have to be kept to a minimum as users can be particularly picky about this, with some users leaving after just three seconds of load time (Desk, 2019).
External Obstacles
Outside of technology there are additional problems to keep aware of to be able to better solve. For instance, the problem of user data and privacy is not just something that people like, but there are many laws and regulations surrounding them meaning extreme care must be taken. Further legal note has to be taken of the contracts that are made with universities. These contracts have to be meticulous in their detail and understood well throughout development to make sure that no lines are being crossed. Finally, plagiarism will be an important piece to cover. As users will easily connect with other students from the same class, universities will want to know that instances of plagiarism will not be a major issue. As mentioned before, implementing technologies to scan to check for plagiarism are planned. Not only will this have some direct ability to stop plagiarism, but similar to the TSA stopping terrorism, the hope is it will act as a deterrent to even attempt at plagiarism (Down, 2015).
Financial Analysis
Pricing Strategy
The main way that U-News plans to make money is through licensing to universities. This is a strategy already used by many profitable companies such as Zoom, TopHat, and WeBWork. While this is not often their only source of revenue, it is believed to make a significant portion of it resulting in it being a good option to peruse. Additionally, with there being 103 universities in Canada alone, this leaves a healthy sized market to expand into, with the ability to expand internationally in the future as well (Universities in Canada, n.d.). On top of this there are also many schooling districts which each license their software which could also be sold to. U-News also has the ability to diversify revenue streams, by using advertisements, selling basic user data which would have to be done very carefully — perhaps even back to the university, or even offering a paid tutoring service where other students on the service could be hired.
Key Costs
Luckily due to U-News teams’ skillset many of the early costs can be reduced. Through internal development and bootstrapping costs can be kept to a minimum. The main costs for the business will likely be the development and hosting of the website at least early on. Things like testing, UI design, and integration are all areas that may cost money to develop correctly. Further, the servers to host the website may be one of the largest costs. If the universities we intend to license too feel the need to keep their student’s data off third party hosting platforms such as AWS, buying, setting up, and maintaining private servers could be a task running into the hundreds of thousands. There is a chance however, with the right partnership, universities such as the University of Calgary will allow use of their pre-existing servers to run the site from. This approach will be explicitly perused to keep costs down. Costs outside of tech include expanding to new universities. This takes sale time, lawyers for contract review and setup costs.
The direct costs associated with creating and operating U-News will consist of hardware, software, operations and administration costs. The cost for hardware and software are the initial hardware and software lease costs and purchase. There are various licensing, subscription, maintenance contracts and set-up fees associated with the software aspect of U-news as well. The operation costs include all the labor costs for database administration, website, IT operations and facilities costs. Finally, the main indirect costs are the downtime and end user operations. Please see Appendix 2 for U-News’ in-depth one-year income statement projections.
Profit
The path to profitability seems clear for U-News. Using the bootstrapping approach, beginning costs should be able to be kept to a minimum. This means that getting an initial website running should be able to be done in only a few months through only the team’s skill and hard work. The only major cost that could be incurred for this would be hosting the server on a private server, however confidence is high that a deal could be made with the University of Calgary to use their pre-existing servers. This would allow the cost of servers to come out of the profits only after a contract is secured. Though our starting contract would likely be only to break even on costs to entice acceptance. In the case that the University of Calgary does not allow any partnership, we would have a working prototype to approach investors or other universities with.
After gaining a short or long-term contract with the first university and running a pilot program, garnering attention from other establishments to work with becomes significantly easier. The idea is quite scalable, with a large market and minimal setup costs of integrating with other universities, relative to contract value. Not only can profits be made from contracts with Universities, but alternative routes such as the previously mentioned kickbacks on tutoring, user data selling, and/or advertisements can also be perused. However profitable contracts with the universities is the preferred option due to its set, upfront, high value, low overhead arrangement.
Due to the unusual times of COVID-19, the world has increased its speed of conversion to online connections. This trend appears to be continuing and is projected to stick beyond pandemic times (Herschfeld et al., 2020). The result of this is that universities will continue to be online at least to some degree, which makes a similar product to U-News inevitable. This product is a when, not an if. Leveraging the first mover advantage, which is extremely valuable in the social network space, and leveraging our team’s abilities the value of this idea is clear.
Cash Flow Risks
There are a few risk U-News faces for becoming profitable. While these risks are apparent and potentially damaging to the business, they can be overcome, and have been planned for. The main challenge foreseen is the challenge of finding a university to use as our pilot project. If U-News was unable to begin a pilot program, it is easy to see that going any further would be impossible. With no user data or analytics to improve the product with, no revenue stream to continue, and no market to scale, this is the first and foremost problem for the company that must be avoided. However, the team has seen and planned for this challenge and is confident in our ability to build and pivot to come out on top. This is the key reason the University of Calgary was chosen as the starting university. The connections U-News has at the university, being students and part of the network of the university makes it a great place to try first. On top of knowing University of Calgary, there are also strategies like offering our deployment and maintenance as free for the first few years while U-News expands and develops, which would allow for a more enticing proposition.
The second risk, being the issue of the high costs of setup and maintaining secure private servers, can also be navigated by partnering with universities. Fortunately, universities like the University of Calgary have the required type of servers already installed and set up. They also allow student projects to be run on the servers from time to time. So as part of our deal with the first partnering university we would ask to be allowed to run on their servers, even going as far as they would not have to pay for our service if we can do this. otherwise their payment would go mostly to covering the costs of a server, which to begin we would likely have to rent to not have large upfront costs. However, running on university servers also gives the university an additional level of security and control which may add value.
Finally, another main profitability risk U-News founders foresee is the ability to produce a website of decent quality on time. Though the minimum viable product has the bar set low and within the realm of development the team has built before, there always is a risk of needing development outside of realism for the team. Designing a good user interface, developing features to create a useful tool and integrating with the universities all offer challenges. Likely these problems do not pose a monetary cost as much as a delay to deployment. To combat this, timelines will not be over rushed, and the website will be mostly finished before approaching universities for partnership. Having the website mostly done also will act as a great tool for selling to the universities, so this seems to be the best approach regardless. Additionally, in the event that no universities want to directly partner; with a working website, we are able to pivot to act as an independent website, bringing on users individually through a more traditional growth strategy.
Overall Analysis
Potential Competitive Advantages
U-News differentiates itself from its competitors by providing its users with a more efficient solution to their academic communication needs. Most of U-News’ competitors focus specifically on fulfilling one need of universities, be it professor — student access to course content as is true for D2L, or simply just to update students on upcoming events and services that students have access to as can be found in the University of Calgary’s Gauntlet magazine. U-News on the other hand, will incorporate every form of communication channels that a student could possibly need into one platform. Upcoming events, campus news, peer tutors, text-book exchange, etc.
Additionally, each university would get a personalized version of U-News, unlike what it might experience with platforms such as Zoom or a combination of social media platforms. Once a university approves of a U-News prototype, they would then have the option of requesting additional embedding of their chosen communication channels; whether they want to add in a points system for students that share upcoming events, or even bi-monthly competitions based on student fitness engagement. By creating a platform that is slightly unique to each university, the risk of imitability by new entrants to the industry is much lower.
Critical Risks
The EdTech industry may be less risky to start-up in but gaining a solid reputation and obtaining new customers will likely be the biggest challenge U-News faces. Thus, the most critical risks to U-News’ success, are both market and technology based (Hsu, 2015).
To start with, if there is not enough interest and U-News is unable to obtain enough, if any, customers, U-News will never be able to take off. As universities are such large organizations, every EdTech company is targeting them as their next big client that will ensure they stay afloat. Companies much larger than U-News with even more connections will be fighting for the same spot. By knowing this fact going in, U-News will be well equipped to battle it to the end. Although U-News is just a start-up, underselling it is not going to prove to be beneficial in the long run, as it becomes increasingly more challenging to raise prices in the future, especially in such a competitive market (Hsu, 2015). 29% of start-ups fails due to financial loss alone, so U-News intends to avoid being part of that stat as can be seen in Figure 10 (CB Insights, 2019). Thus, U-News will focus on creating a streamline, attractive prototype that will appeal to potential customers, and U-News’ unique proposal of creating personalized platforms for each university will hopefully set it apart from its competitors.
Although U-News’ founding team has an education background in technology, there is still risk that the technology will fail to work or fail to meet the standards of the universities. If this should occur, U-News would join become a member of the 17% of start-ups who fail due to poor product development, as can be seen in Figure 10 (CB Insights, 2020). Kind of like submitting a cover letter with typos, any university that is pitched U-News’ prototype that deems it no good enough, will likely no longer consider any future proposals (Hsu, 2015). To avoid this, U-News will take time to ensure that its initial prototype is as efficient and aesthetically pleasing as possible prior to pitching it to any potential clients.
Feasibility
Based on the feasibility research U-News’ founding team has conducted, there is no better time to launch U-News than now. COVID-19 has ravaged the global economy but there are opportunities that have arisen. According to IBIS World, “the pandemic has hastened the adoption and use of technology in an educational setting”, opening many doors for new EdTech start-ups to enter the market (Mak, 2020). The industry is densely populated by reputable competitors and the barriers to entry are low so there is little room for mistakes on U-News’ part. However, U-News’ founding team is confident that by working closely alongside universities, students and other stakeholders in this business, U-News should be able to create a successful product. Financially speaking, U-News is projected to be able to do more than breakeven relatively quickly, as soon as at least one customer is obtained, and its profit is expected to grow rapidly as more post-secondary institutions purchase the service.
There will undoubtedly be setbacks once U-News is launched, but by preparing as much as possible and putting as much time as is necessary into the start-up phase, U-News will hopefully have a solid framework from which a scalable, sustainable business could grow.
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