One Paragraph Pitch  
 

 

 

   
 

 

 

Prof. Pentland wrote:

The pitch you should be one paragraph only, and answer three questions:
(1) what service/opportunity/merchandise will you offer that can touch 1B people near the bottom of the pyramid (and is it an innovation in some way),
(2) why will people pay for this (e.g., replaces current communications but costs 1/10 as much). For a business to be successful in this space it needs to be MUCH better: we are looking for 10x better/cheaper that existing competitors, with ROI of 3 months for local entrepreneurs.
(3) what technological or organizational innovation allows this 10x improvement.

For FMS (the group last friday) the paragraph might be:
FirstMileSolutions will offer WiFi-based digital communications, including VoIP, web browsing, IM/SMS/email at a cost that is 1/10th of
existing solutions. It accomplishes this by placing mobile WiFi
transmitters and digital caches on existing transportation infrastructure, thus avoiding the cost of building transmission towers and backhauls.

For CircleLending (the group two fridays ago) the paragraph might be:
CircleLending offers lower costs and greater flexibility than traditional banking. It accomplishes this by enabling friends and family lending though web-based legal and replayment services.
Traditional F&F lendings suffers from apoor repayment record and all to often results in interpersonal stress. CircleLending addresses these problems by providing inexpensive legal contracts and automatic repayment services.