Assignment reflection

I really appreciated completing this assignment as it gave me an opportunity to dig deeper into myBlueprint, a program that we have subscriptions for at our school but is severely underutilized. I enjoyed looking at the business side of this program, a side which I have never looked closely at a program like this from before. I found it most interesting that this program was created by someone with a desire to start a business, not to create technology for education. As Silberstein said in one of his interviews, "If [I] didn’t take that time to understand... needs, and pain points, [I] would have just come out with another app that nobody was prepared to buy or invest in" (Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship , 2020). It goes to show that entrepreneurs are unlikely to create a successful product without the help from field level experts, but also that experts in the field probably won't be able to create a successful product without support from business experts. We need to work together and leverage each others strengths, which is another Silberstein quote, and one of the deeply strategic elements that has made the myBlueprint venture so successful. 

As a venture analyst, I discovered that I need to learn more about the market for educational technology. I feel that a lot of the recommendation and considerations I made for this investment were based on my own personal perceptions of what the current market is, not necessarily based on evidence. As I continue in this course, I will pay closer attention to the market projections for the assignment, as well as the references for where those projections were found so that I can research the market closer to make more evidence based recommendations in the future.

Summary of AI use

AI is not something I used much of for this assignment (or any assignment) as you can probably tell from my old fashioned formating and lack of glitz and glamor. Doing everything with my snails-paced brain might also be a reason why it took me so long to complete this assignment. 

I did use gemini to do a comparison amongst myBlueprint and its two closest competitors however. I then used the links to the articles provided by gemini to verify the information. 

Lastly, the image of the cube for the cube framework analysis section was AI generated. It took me several prompts to make it look real as the first attempt had the cube defying gravity by balancing on one of its edges on the table near a full coffee cup. In order to ease my anxiety I asked for the cube to be layed flat on the table before it caused an unfortunate accident.