Valuing Project Achieve

Introduction After years as a teacher and principal frustrated by the inability to effectively track school and student progress, Stacey Boyd and HBS classmate Mandy Lee founded Project Achieve, an information management system for schools. In a quickly changing industry with fast-moving competitors, Project Achieve aimed to use leading-edge technology to reduce the workload of teachers and administrators while simultaneously keeping parents and students aware of performance. In an attempt to raise capital from an array of investors, Boyd needed to assess the firm’s value before moving forward. _Project Achieve’s Competitive Advantage_ Project Achieve hopes to differentiate itself from its competitors via its emphasis on a completely web-based product and its founder’s knowledge of schools and teachers, its two main competitive advantages. As the first mover amongst entirely web-based products, Project Achieve hopes to gain significant market share before imitations of its products appear. Being entirely web-based, the system was created in a standardized manner to allow numerous schools to have the capability to use the system and get support simultaneously. In short, the firm’s products are especially scalable. The company will also collect tremendous amounts of information on students, creating yet another potential revenue stream from advertisers and content providers. Potentially, Project Achieve could evolve into the nerve center for schools. With high switching costs, such a position could be attractive to content providers and other potential acquirers. Compared to NCS’s SASI and ABACUS, Project Achieve has a more integrated web-based design and most importantly, is cheaper. Additionally, Project Achieve features an easier template and user-friendly interface compared to similar systems like IMSeries. With the potential to be used by administrators, teachers, parents, and students, Project Achieve could possibly become the platform for distance