As Director Marketing, I made and used this to present NearPeer at the GSEA (Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards) in Islamabad in January 2017. It sums up a lot of NearPeer's journey well. Copyright - Danish Farid 2017

1. BEGINNING, MIDDLE, END NearPeer.org

2. THE
BEGINNIN
G

3. "HOUSTON, WE NEED A PROBLEM”
Why? > Necessity is the mother of all
invention/creation
Because you need to have:
A problem you want to fix
Some wrong you want to right
A gap to fill
Truly useful

4. WHAT HAPPENED?
We looked around, what problems to students face?
Food at PDC
(trust me, it’s
funny)
…..Hold up, can we
do something about
that?
Problems with
Academics
MY ROOM ISN’T
BIG ENOUGH!!!!

5. ME? I’M DANISH, HELLO!
Danish Farid
 Internal Marketing, and activations
As with lots of little companies, I end up doing lots of interesting
stuff
(…but we’re not so little anymore)
Who?:
Sophomore, LUMS
SBASSE, Computer Science
I love Technology, long coats and soup

6. SO WHAT PROBLEM DID WE FIND?
Lets transition into…

7. THE PROBLEM: LACK OF CLARITY
Lack of clarity with resources for courses
While some courses in LUMS

8. WHAT DO STUDENTS NORMALLY
DO?
S.O.S
Ask a friend
Head to the library to
sift through books
www to the
rescue
• Dependency
• Isn’t always possible
• “you’re only ready when someone
else is”

9. SEARCHING: TIME CONSUMING,
CONFUSING
While it is one of the many ways to learn additional information
Often Not enough payoff for the required content
Not useful when time is short

10. YOUTUBE, KHAN ACADEMY WIKI…?

11. WHAT DID WE NEED?
Specific and Precise Time Effective Optimized
Cover only the
required material to
the required depth
Cover it with an
emphasis on concepts
Allow for time
flexibility, be in bite
sized portions
Be just as useful in 10
min as it would be in
2 hours.
Cover concepts and
immediately reinforce
them with real world
examples
Practice Questions

12. THE FINAL (OR SO WE THOUGHT)
PRODUCT
Launched in Spring 2016
12 Courses
Hired Top
Students
Gave them
content creation
equipment
Guided them to
create online
versions of LUMS
courses
Graphics Tablet
Microphone
Screen capture
Software
4 modules
Each with videos
covering each
concept
Identified through
vigorous application
processes

13. AN INSTITUTION SPECIFIC VIDEO
COURSE WEBSITE

14. HOW DID IT HELP?
Created by LUMS students,
people that had been
through the very same
courses that users were in
Precise
Precise
Precise
Courses:
4 modules
350/-
Post Mid
350/-
Post Mid
Always Free
Pre Mid
350/-
Pre Mid

15. THE RESPONSE
1500 Users
600-700 Active Users
Generated more than 100,000/- PKR
Revenue Split:
70/30 for our Instructors
So much for making money….

16. MIDD
LE

17. SEMESTER 2 AT LUMS, AND LSE
Hired Full Marketing and HR teams
Courses created over the summer
In a 3 phase plan to ensure everyone had equipment
Went into Fall 2016 with about 35 courses for LUMS
10 full courses for LSE
Some with multiple instructors!
Giving the User choice
Creating healthy
competition
Try before you buy
Improves course
quality

19. NEW AND IMPROVED
3000+
Videos covering
40+ Courses for
LUMS & LSE.
Videos cover core
concepts of course
Documents
That complement
these videos and
provide deeper
insights for learning

20. SECOND SEMESTER
47
Courses
7000+
Users
1,00,000+
Page Views
15 Mins
Avg. Online Session
per student
* Information from Google
Analytics

21. THE RESULT OF TWO SEMESTERS
~200,000/- PKR from
Universities generated in
revenue
800+ Course Modules Sold
7000 users total

22. GLARING PROBLEMS
Ceiling with the current Model
LUMS: ~3000 people, fixed
0.5 * 3000 * 1050 = 15,75,000/- PKR – A LOT!! … but is it?
Instructor payment depended on how many people buy their course
No one opted to make a course for Quantum Physics II – (10-15
people)
Much Rather spend time on Calculus, Linear Algebra, Mechanics,
CS200 (150+)
Lack of course coverage, a very obvious max user base
We’ll get back to this

23. KEEP MOVING
Expensive website (user accounts, download protection, multi-user
prevention)
A great team
Why sit still? What’s next?
ACCA?
A/O level Academy
Collaborations?
Rocket to Mars???

24. ACCA MODULE CRASH COURSES
Instructors from SKANS academy agreed to take their courses online
Months of negotiations and deliberations and course creation later:
CFAP 2, CFAP4, CFAP

25. 13,000/- PKR PER MODULE, ERRR?
Cheaper than what you’d pay for a course in person from these
instructors at any institution
EasyPaisa Solution, works everywhe
Taking the course online has it’s own benefits:
Downloadable
handouts
Question,
Answer facility
that works
everywhere
Available
everywhere, all
the time

26. course live for about a month
120 STUDENTS REGISTERED USERS - Using EasyPaisa
OVER 400,000/- PKR in Revenue

27. EN
D

28. MOVING FORWARD
Help the University Model do better:
Get more breadth in the variety of courses we offer
We’d like to get as many of them online as we can!
Improve our online platform, help make it even better and more
optimized
We’d like it to help the students out even more that it already does, we’d like it to be
smarter
How do we accomplish both?

29. CHANGE THE CURRENT BUSINESS
MODEL, IN UNI
Pay instructors Upfront, a guaranteed amount
1. Create more incentive, get people paid faster
2. People will opt to make courses for the less populated
ones in LUMS as well
3. Maintain the idea that course performance -> more
payment
Will encourage more
variety in the courses
we offer

30. CHANGE THE CURRENT BUSINESS
MODEL, IN UNI
Make our courses…Free!
Get everyone on board the platform, everyone
wins
Remove the hesitation, and make it a sure fire
thing
People certainly more likely to try it out, a lot
more people!
Our secret
weapon

31. THE SECRET WEAPON
An intelligent platform
Computers are dumb, but they’re good at analyzing
lots of data
Different kind of people come to Nearpeer
 All presented with the same resources
 A student at a B and a student at an F will both start with video
1, can we improve that?
 Can we suggest videos and tailor experiences?

32. YES WE CAN!
How? By analyzing behavior of lots of students:
1. Take a quiz when they arrive at a course page
2. Understand their level
3. Suggest what videos they should watch based on their performance
and standing
Such a system needs:
DATA! And lots of it, to understand what people do

33. more people need to use NearPeer
A certain Incentive to do so
Everything being free, certainly counts
HOW TO GET DATA?

34. OUR NEXT SEMESTER
Better for Instructors – Paid up front, payment guaranteed as long as
they make the full course
Better for Students – It’s free, ain’t no better deal than that
Better for us – We get oodles of data to analyze and start building our
new expert system to guide students better

35. NEXT TARGETS
10 modules with our ACCA courses – All developed by
our partners at SKANS
200 more customers
A targeted and realistic 22,00,000/- in Revenue
Our first A level course creation, already begun!
Our next university courses too, are underway – will be
free soon!

36. LONG TERM
Become the biggest and best name in online education in all of
Pakistan having
Have an extensive platform of Educational Platforms covered
1. Universities
2. A/O levels
3. ACCA
4. CSS?

37. CORE PHILOSOPHY
Specific and Precise
Time Effective
Optimized

38. THEN?

39. YOUR NEAREST
PEAR

40. ‫شکریہ‬