Testing Our Value Proposition

HypothesisThe online video market segment (especially the one offering educational videos) lacks advanced features as far as interaction with the video content and interaction among the users go. Most online video platforms only offer basic discussion features.

Our team brainstormed and came across this idea, which all of us agreed with and could relate to. We believe that a discussion feature synced with video in a clever way would improve online video learning experience for both the end-users and businesses which provide the videos.

The value proposition to businesses:

- Better audience engagement- User generated content- Analytics- Leads generation through discussion spread over different social channels

The value proposition to end-users:

- Better discussion experience- Richer experience with the ability to take notes and see other's notes in context- Ability to get questions answered easily and in context- Integration of comments and discussions across social medias- Higher retention as you get to highlight, write and annotate the video like you'd do with a book

ExperimentsWe did around 7 face-to-face interviews with potential end-users and spread out our end-user survey, from which we collected 70 responses. We will be able to add 10 more face-to-face interviews in the course of next week.

The following were the questions we used for the end-user survey:

1. How many hours in a given week do you spend learning something?2. How much of your learning is based on video courses or standalone videos?3. What is the most you ever paid for video learning if at all?4. How do you take notes while watching videos?5. If you take notes, do you share them with others?6. How often do you have questions or feedback on the videos you watch?7. If you have questions about the video, how do you get them answered?8. How often do you discuss online education videos you've watched with your peers?9. Where do you have those discussions?10. Do you find the discussions improve what you learn from the videos?

11. If there's anything you could change about the process of learning from online videos, what would that be?

12. Would you mind helping with a short follow up interview?13. Can you explain why you never discuss online education videos with your peers?

And the following were the questions we used for the business survey:

1. If you had to sell the video portion of your business, approximately what percentage of your business would you be selling?

2. Which of the following services do you use to deliver videos to your audience?3. Approximately how many videos do you publish each week?4. Approximately how many MINUTES of video do you publish every week?5. Do you organize your videos in groups of similar content with the expectation that your viewers

will watch them as a group?6. Please explain why video is the best way for your viewers to consume content for your business.7. How do you promote or attract users to view your video content?8. In a short sentence, how would you describe your targeted (primary) viewer?9. How do you measure the success of your video content?10. Is there anything you would improve about the experience your viewers have when consuming

your video?11. Would you like to share where you publish your video content?12. Could we follow up with you later? Please leave your email address where we can reach you.

Estimating the Market SizeOur team based this estimate off U.S. census data, as that was the most reliable and affordable source we could find. Yet even though there is no easy way to find related data for the whole world, the “CIA World Fact Book” does state that the U.S. economy represents about 19% of the world economy, followed by the EU economy (19% as well), India (6%), and Pakistan (1%), as measured by GDP.

Our approximation could then serve as a rough estimate of actual world numbers based on data from Google Search Insights on terms such as “Khan Academy,” “Udemy,” “TED Talks,” and the like (whose visitors represent our primary target market), which are most popular within countries we mentioned above.

Our analysis not only adopts a top-down approach to measuring the market size, but is also two-sided to reflect our business model. In addition, it focuses on the number of potential end-users of the product on one side, as well as the total addressable market (TAM) for the product (in U.S. dollars) on the other.

ResultsSurveysMost participants stated they spend three to five hours a week learning something, which accounts for 1.8 to 3.0% of total weekly time resources, but except for that, the distribution is spread rather evenly from one to 20+ hours. In addition, 67.65% of respondents have never paid for video learning resources. (And of those who had, 14.71% have paid between $10 and $50.) Furthermore, 26.47% of participants

do not take notes from those videos at all, but of those who do, 41.18% usually do so with traditional pen and paper, while nearly 28% use a software text editor, and 29% share those notes with others. Moreover, 72.06% of respondents sometimes have questions or feedback when watching videos. Of these, 66.18% participate in online discussions with peers (e.g., via Forums) about them (and nearly 62% have found that those discussions sometimes improve what they learned from the videos), while 36.17% have them in person and 22.34% use Facebook. Almost a third have used search engines to find answers to their questions, and 21.82% leave a comment with a question on the video’s page.

Although our findings indicate that most people spend three to five hours each week learning something, there is a great number of individuals who spend 20+ hours a week doing so, of which one to three hours are spent learning from online videos. In addition, the vast majority of respondents do not pay for video learning.

The most common way for taking notes on those videos is with pen and paper and using a text-editing program. (Most do not share these notes though.) Also, almost three-quarters of respondents stated they sometimes have questions related to the video, and that they most likely asked others about them on Facebook or in person.

We also contacted several businesses for an interview or filling in our business survey, but we’ve had zero response rate so far.

Market Size EstimationEnd-UsersGoogle Insights for Search showed that the search terms mentioned above are also predominantly popular with individuals who have graduated from college or graduate school and with ages 18-34. The chart below shows U.S. accessibility to the Internet according to various age groups, and then a breakdown of the 18-34-YO segment. (The absolute value is stated in thousands and the percentage of each category total is in parentheses.)

The age segment “18-34” represents 28% of the total market by age. This segment is then divided according to individuals’ achieved level of education, 70% of which is comprised by the one we focus on (i.e., graduate school or college). The absolute value of this group is about 26 million people. With the U.S. share of the world economy (GDP-wise), and using a 95% confidence level, the final TAM of end-users is approximately 60 million to 62 million people.

U.S. Reported Internet Usage for Individuals 3 Years and Older, by Selected Characteristics: 2009

BusinessesIn order to calculate the dollar size of the market, it is necessary to take a look at the other side of our business model: the key (i.e., paying) customer– small businesses (such as the various educational websites that offer lectures online, educational and how-to blogs, businesses that sell online tutorials, and other publishers of online video content.

The first section of the top-down analysis accounts for expenditures for ICT equipment and computer software. The segment mentioned above represents 3% of this category, which is then split according to capitalization (i.e., whether the software has been actually purchased [capitalized] or simply licensed [non-capitalized]). Since our product does not change owner when “purchased,” it falls under non-capitalized software, which makes up about 46% of this category. This segment then splits into how the product/service will be sold; ours will be sold for a fee, which, together with other paid services, represents 61% of this category.

The last section accounts for the type of software being sold for a fee. Since new products in this category, including ours, usually enter a new, non-existent market, there is no specific metric to determine its actual size. It is here where our business surveys would help. Unfortunately, we have not had too many businesses respond to our survey and could therefore not effectively estimate how much businesses would be willing to pay for our product. As a result, we took the average prices for applications falling in the same family of software as ours and made an estimate based on them. As a comparative price we took $300/year, which would be up to $27 million in the U.S. Taking this into consideration, along with the world GDP distribution mentioned above, the final TAM in U.S. dollars would be up to $63.56 million.

U.S. Non-capitalized Expenditures for ICT Equipment and Computer Software for Companies With Employees by Industry: 2010

New HypothesisAfter the experiments phase, we stayed pretty much consistent with our initial hypothesis. We haven’t tested with businesses yet, but our value proposition to the end-user is valid, which is what matters the most as it is the driving force for the businesses that serve them.

The value proposition to businesses:

- Better audience engagement- User generated content- Analytics- Leads generation through discussion spread over different social channels

The value proposition to end-users:

- Better discussion experience- Richer experience with the ability to take notes and see other's notes in context- Ability to get questions answered easily and in context- Integration of comments and discussions across social medias- Higher retention as you get to highlight, write and annotate the video like you'd do with a book