University textbooks are too expensive, costing students over $1,000 per year. While textbook content is widely available online for free, students are still comfortable learning from print books which allow highlighting and note-taking. A proposed solution is to create video versions of textbooks that map directly to print content. An initial MVP found that most students are open to learning from videos but want a free trial first and would only substitute videos for print if the video content was completely comprehensive. Next steps include pre-selling video chapters with companion print excerpts and tests to validate comprehension.

2. The Problem
University textbooks are too expensive Textbook content is widely available
The average college student spent more
than $1,000 on textbooks per year, up Wikipedia, university sites, and not for
more than 40 percent since 2000. profits offer the written content found in
-College Board, 2010 major textbooks

3. Solution

4. Assumptions
1A 1B
Students will be comfortable Students will pay for video content
watching and learning from videos in place of print book

5. MVP

6. Process

7. Analytics #2: “Boring” prompt
Cycle #1: “Expensive” prompt Cycle
136 unique views 86 unique views
35% 15%
40 signup clicks 75 signup clicks
10% 18%
4 signups 2 signups
Cycle #3: “Supplement” prompt
25 unique views
24%
6 signup clicks
0%
0 signups

8. Analytics

9. Conclusions and Next Steps
Conclusions Next steps
• A majority of students are • Pre-sell access to video books
comfortable learning from video
• Students would be willing to • Quickly create new MVP:
substitute engaging videos that
mapped to their textbooks if they – chapter of content and test for
thought it was 100% comprehension side by side
comprehensive – though some with print book
would only use it as a supplement
– Sell chapter of content
• The loss of print book functionality
(highlighting, writing in the • Establish relationships and have in
margin, dog-earing pages) would
person or telephone conversation
stop many students from making
a full switch with those that signed up on the
site
• Customers uniformly require a
free trial before purchasing