Investment Memo: Imagication

By Brian Li

In a collaboration with LaunchPad@Stevens, Rocket Fuel Ventures wrote investment memos to help analyze LaunchPad’s in-house/incubated startups. Ultimately, LaunchPad used the investment memos to help distribute funds to their startups. In this investment memo, the Rocket Fuel Ventures team analyze Imagication.

Imagication aims to provide a free and accessible guidance counselor that everyone deserves by developing a learning experience platform that creates a personalized plan for its users.

Imagication

Founders: Diana Rosado & Bryan Pinos

Headquarters: Hoboken, NJ

Memo Created by: Jon Samuel, Wallis Toscarelli, Brian Li, Nina Caldarone, Madison DeJong

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Company Description: Imagication is the newest approach to education and the college acceptance process that seeks to absolve most of the issues that shroud high school seniors with confusion, stress, and anxiety. By developing an alternative college guidance resource for high school students, the company seeks to consolidate most of the resources available online, but also keep it simple and digestible for high school students.

PRODUCT:

Imagication aims to provide a free and accessible guidance counselor that everyone deserves. We plan on developing a learning experience platform that creates a personalized plan for its users.

Their main product seeks to provide a platform for students and educators to navigate the educational process, especially with important decisions such as colleges. Most students are easily overwhelmed with the amount of information and opportunities they have to choose through, which guidance counselors are usually there to help with. Unfortunately, many students don’t connect with or get access to guidance counselors, especially in underprivileged areas. These high school students are primarily disadvantaged, not having access to a guidance counselor or 1-on-1 opportunities that keep them both personally and academically up to their peers nationwide. Imagication is hoping to fill this space by offering solutions and online access to everyone that fills the niche and levels the playing field for high school students everywhere.

MARKET AND PAYING CUSTOMERS:

Imagicaton focuses its product within the education market, with a focus specifically on high school students. In the United States, there are 15 million public high school students, with 1 million of those students living in New Jersey. Passaic County alone has 30 thousand public high school students, the first sample size of where their product could be applied due to the founder’s residency there.

As college applications continue to go up along with the price of tuition, there’s more focus on improving the process and investing in one’s future. Hence, once the value and proof of concept is provided over time, Imagication can start scaling to a paid platform with pay levels for various levels of access. Along with potentially charging for monthly subscriptions, they can mimic the pricing structures and plans competition (similar to Chegg) utilizes. Additionally, they will be targeting their services toward students who do not have easy access to guidance counselors at their school, while maintaining services like calculators and AI guidance counselors as supplementary tools for people that may have access but feel unfulfilled or heard.

COMPETITION:

Imagication has the following competitors

AI BASED PLATFORMS: (Akala, MyKlovr) These competitors usually focus on one aspect of their business or products, rather than combining these aspects and giving students access to different modules like Imagication does. They can be considered “one-stop shops,” while Imagication combines college planning logistics with the assistance of college counselor input.

NON-AI BASED PLATFORMS: (Naviance, NextStepU, Crimson) These larger companies are already implemented by many high schools and likely hold contracts with schools to allow for student use. Imagication’s platform makes college counseling simple and accessible, and gives a pathway for customers to use and follow, which competitors don’t necessarily prioritize.

MANAGEMENT TEAM

DIANA ROSADO (CO-FOUNDER, CEO): Diana is a Junior Computing and Business major who, in regards to the company, focuses on design and marketing. Diana seeks to get rid of the wall that was built between students and guidance counselors and offer high schoolers a way to access information about college as well as life after high school.

BRYAN PYNOS (CO-FOUNDER, COO): Bryan is a freshman computer engineering student focused on the technical aspect of education. Bryan is focused on the backend engineering of the software and helps from a software engineer role.

One of the weaknesses of the team is the lack of mentors aside from Professor Mukund. Their leadership structure and how they plan on executing the vision would not be complete without additional help and support.

INVESTMENT MERITS, RISKS, AND CONSIDERATIONS

INVESTMENT MERITS:

Increasing costs of college and the competitive landscape of colleges

• Due to how increasingly competitive and expensive college is getting, there are increasing expectations surrounding the admissions process.
• Over the last ten years, college tuition has gone up by 4% and median household income has decreased by 0.2% each year

College admissions acceptance rates have plummeted in the past few years causing fewer kids going to college and taking alternative routes

• High schools are recognizing the challenges of providing college resources to low-income students
• There have also been several concerns with the exclusivity that shrouds higher education, and many colleges have been aggressively trying to implement affirmative action policies that benefit their overall diversity and open the doors fairly.
• Schools are also realizing that mental issues are rampant, and COVID has only amplified the overall negative stigma that surrounds a college education and achieving the results necessary to get admitted to a target or higher end university.

Student Debt Loan Forgiveness and Current Political Climate

• Student loan debt is ballooning to dangerous levels, there’s increasing concern that default rates will go up and borrowers will be unable to pay their expected monthly payments. By increasing the knowledge and access that people have regarding college, we can begin to chip away at the expectation that people can’t pay for or afford college, along with increasing the awareness and applications for scholarships and other funding sources.

INVESTMENT RISKS:

Crowded Market with many competitors

• There are many college cost calculators online and many free resources already available on the internet that offer to navigate the questions that Imagication intends to address. Imagication needs to focus on highlighting their differentiators to ensure that their product is recepted by the addressable market

Imagication is at an early stage in its development and needs to develop a strong prototype

• Imagication AI college counselor program is currently in its beta version. AI college counselors exist online, but also only in very basic/beta versions and behind a paywall. Because questions from users can be so varied and complex, it is difficult to create a product that outperforms competitors while integrating well with their existing other products while keeping the site user-friendly and simple to use.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

Imagication is a very interesting and necessary product that captures one of the most essential foundations for most modern-day workers. There has been increasing issues with college admissions, applications and the viability of a degree. More students have applied than ever before, and Ivy Leagues are only getting more and more exclusive. By solving the issue of access and comprehensibility, Imagication would be able to fulfill the increasing need for assistance with higher education, and also potentially open the feasibility of adding people from all backgrounds, including the more underprivileged areas that don’t receive equal attention.

If they work directly with schools and get local high schools to sponsor them and push their product through their schools, I think there is great opportunity because if their product is presented to students upfront, it will eliminate the need for students to google and look up other online counseling resources like their competitors. However, they will have to get over the hurdle of creating such a comprehensive tool that also utilizes AI, and is something that will need to be tested by fire and put in the hands of many high school students to really see if it’s something that they find convenient and reliable enough to use. Once this can be proven, Imagication seems to be an excellent candidate for investing into the education space.