Interviews before the course: 21
Interviews during the week: 50
Last 24h interviews: 6
Total customer Interviews: 71
TOP FreshMan
Helping Brazilian college students to graduate and plan their careers
Team:
João Gallo
Miguel Andorffy
Why Top Freshman???
How does higher education look like in Brazil
● Students must choose their major BEFORE they get into college
○ They must have another admission in order to change their majors (REALLY STRESSFUL
AND TIME WASTING)
● Admission to colleges done through one flat test
○ No recommendation letters
○ No interviews
● 7.305.977 students in college
○ 5.4MM (73.5%) in private institutions
○ 4.7MM (64%) won't graduate on their majors (THIS % IS RAISING ON THE LAST YEARS)
What is Top Freshman?
● Information aggregator about career opportunities on every major
○ Exchange programs
○ Scholarships
● Information producer about careers
○ Interviews with experienced professionals
○ Course selections aligned to each career
○ Extracurricular courses for professional improvement
● Information producer about courses
○ Interviews with professors and coordinators of different institutions
○ Interviews with senior students and recently graduated professionals
● Handicap fix
○ Identification of academic gaps to take courses
○ Online remediation courses
○ Online career counseling
Top Freshman Delights
● Customer relationship
○ 10 MM students from Me Salva! that are in high school and college
○ 700K students from AppProva
○ B2B relationship from AppProva with 2 of the 5 largest higher education groups in Brazil
● Partner relationship
○ AppProva relation with professors and content producer of higher education groups
● Technology
○ AppProva's data processing tools for academic gap identification
○ Joint venture matching of Me Salva's remediation courses and AppProva's technology
● Content
○ Me Salva's remediation courses
Here's what we thought: Day #1
Steve’s feedback day #1:
“The worst canvas made by
experienced entrepreneurs
who already work in this
market I've ever seen!”
Progress this week
Day #1 Initial idea
● Identify academic gaps
● Provide remediation courses for higher education
Day #2
● Information about careers showed up as a major value proposition
Day #3
● Parents turned to be a possible customer segment
● Students to be leveled prior to courses have been refined only to technical based majors
● Channels refined to use AppProva's and Me Salva's reputation and customers
Day #4
● Students willing to change majors expanded to include students willing to dropout
● Parents influence but are not a customer segment
● Information gathering, production and distribution turned to be the main value proposition
● Colleges showed deep interest on developing and using the solution
○ We are already spending money to try to do it but we are no experts
○ We should definitely talk more about this when you come back to Brazil
● Landing page test collected 170 interested people in 20 hours
○ 50 BRL in adwords / Family and friends Facebook sharing
Here's what we learned
● Students are more concerned about knowing what they can really take from their majors and what
they have to do to take what they want than dealing with academic challenges
● Lack of fundamental knowledge is a problem for students of technical majors such as engineering
and computer science
○ Specially in courses like Calculus, Programming and Analytical Geometry
● Colleges are more than concerned about students dropout
○ Reducing the 67% churn of private colleges is definitely something they would pay for
● Parents are always involved and influence students choices but the students have the final word
most of the time
○ Parents are more driven by their prejudices and are likely to be changed by information
presented by their kids
● Many students who have dropped out or changed major wouldn't do it if had a broader view of their
choices
● Colleges are definitely not doing a good job on showing the career opportunities to their
students
6 - Key Partners
Colleges
Professors
Former Users
Student groups
Market reference
professionals
Senior students
Recently graduated students
7 - Key Activities
Data analysis
Content publishing for career
SEM
Social Media Marketing
1 - Value Proposition
(A, B,C,D) Show the career
opportunities in a major
(B,C) Build a course
selection based on a desired
career
(B,C) Know your own skills
and have counseling
(E) Lower churn rates by
keeping students motivated
4 - Customer Relationship
Online Ads
Mobile Ads
College Bulletin Boards
Word of mouth
2 - Customer Segments
(A) Freshman students of
Engineering, Computer
Science and Other
Science/Tech majors.
(B) Students that are willing
to change majors or dropout
college.
(C) Students that wonder
about they’re future and want
to have a clear view of
opportunities early in college.
(E) Private colleges that want
to reduce churn
8 - Key Resources
Professors
Data Scientists
Content Publishers
Information Architects
3 - Channels
Own
- Direct Web Sales
- Direct Salesforce
Partner
- AppProva’s B2B customers
- Me Salva!’s B2C customers
9 - Cost Structure
Content Development
Software development
Servers
Marketing
5 - Revenue Streams
Remediation courses > Subscription model or individual modules
Tutoring
B2B contracts with strategic partners
Online counseling
Online vocational test
Online skill analysis