Veritas Education
7.Nicely

Executive Summary:
Veritas is the first-ever educational institution specializing in fact-checking and dealing with false information.
The company will educate and promote awareness on the topic of information validity in the form of lectures, offeringboth online and in-person education on how to identify and deal with modern fraudulent information. Rather thanconfronting the issue directly, we aim to educate our users with the skillset to recognize various forms of false informationon the internet, television, radio, newspapers, and the mass media. Through a combination of online and in-person
platforms, we will provide our users with an affordable, efficient, and comprehensive solution to the issue of misleading
media. Veritas will market the skill of validating information as a necessity, and our target market is teenagers and young
adults who are between the age range of 15-25 who have access to the internet and mobile devices.
Market analysis:With the development of technology, misleading information has become increasingly problematic. Vast
expansion and development in social and synthetic media have exposed the general population to a spectrum of
unverified information. Academic research pointed out that “deepfake videos are growing rapidly online, doubling overthe last seven months, with 96% concerning reputation attacks to public figures in the form of fake adult material. Someof the top four websites considered in analysis received more than 134 million views” (Ajder, Patrini, Cavalli, & Cullen,2019) Overall, the amount of fake news from various mass media platforms has increased substantially since the emersionof media platforms. It is expected that the impacts of fake information will be magnified significantly, and the skill offact-checking will become a fundamental skill for every individual.
The company projects that the need for fact-checking will be around 3 million in the year 2022, and the expectedmarket will be 5 million by the year 2030. The assumption is based on the fact that there are 4.62 billion users on total
for social media users, and fact-checking is an essential skill when browsing content on the internet. (Chaffey, 2022)
Since there are limited resources and have not yet established an educational framework on fact checking, it is likely thatVeritas will gain a significant advantage, or possibility for a monopoly as the pioneer in the field. The primary target
market of Veritas will be 15-25 teenagers and young adults, since they will be the ones experiencing and living with thedevelopment of technology in the mass media. Moreover, a study pointed out that more than 81 percent of the teenagers
in the age range of 15-25 use YouTube, and 53 percent use Snapchat. (Khoros, 2022) This research again, showed thehigh relevance between media and teenagers, adding on to the urgency and the need for a fact-checking education on theteen demographic. Other than the primary market, Veritas also have a secondary market of 50-70 years old seniors. Thismarket mainly focuses on in-person education and intervention, as it is recorded that 1 billion dollar was lost in the seniorcommunities dur to scams and fake information in 2020. (Barr, 2021) It would be Veritas’ social commitment, utilizing
our platform to support our senior communities through a friendly, effective, and cost-efficient manner.
Technical Concept:
The users will be able to access services through the Veritas app. The app will be available for both android andIOS systems. The app will three main functionalities. First, online fact-checking through the Veritas AI. Second, theonline resource center/database, and finally, live lectures. Online fact-checking is a function in which the user can either
take a picture, record audio, or put in a hyperlink of the media source. The program would then use the user input, retrieve
the content of the source and analysis its validity. This function draws upon a combination of image recognition, voicerecognition, and natural language processing, to correctly identify and evaluate the information from a plethora of media
platforms such as radio, television, internet, and the newspaper. The resource center is an exclusive collection of pastlectures, video resources, or written reports on ways to fact-check. This database is owned by Veritas and its values andcontent will build over time. The live lecture functions on one-time purchases, the customer can purchase the lecture andjoin remotely for the lesson or the pre-recorded versions. Other than the remote pieces of Veritas, we also provide
education service through in-person talks, speeches, or information sessions offered by professionals. However, theseare only available to corporations such as schools, companies, neighborhoods, etc.
Operation Plan/Marketing Strategy:
Our online/in-person education platform is organized with two types of educators. First, educators who will work
full-time, producing pre-recorded classes, copywriting contents or editorials on the topic of information validity. This
type of educators is required to have teaching qualifications, and they will be signing an annule contract with the company.
The second of educators are free-lancers or part-time employees. These educators will have their own jobs and would be
able to gain additional income by free lancing in our firm. For these educators, Veritas will focus on recruiting professors

from universities, or famous academics in the field of information validity. They will be hosting master classes, live orrecorded lectures to the Veritas community. The capital cost for the free-lancing educator will be relatively higher, butthey will provide greater returns, as they can contribute to the overall reputation of the brand, promote popularity, or add
credentials to the online/in-person programmes. One great example of this type of classes can be “A session with Elon
Musk: Opinions on the 21st century modern media.” Since Veritas teaches skills that are not related to school curriculums,
no certificates are not needed to enter the market. (Khoros, 2022)
Veritas will take a phase plan to launch, and we will gradually increase our overall shares in the education market.
First, we will mainly rely on the fulltime educators to make pre-recorded lectures and starts to accumulate fame andoverall reputation for the company. The pricing of these lessons will be relatively low, and accessible to all classes ofthe society (e.g., 4.99 per lesson). After the company has built up a good database of lectures, and 10, 000 active users,Veritas would then shift towards an increasing number of live lectures done by distinguished individuals and the overallpricing of remote lessons. This approach will be maintained until there are 50, 000 active users. Then, Veritas would
phase into the last phase, where we will depend on the database of resources and main revenue would be app subscriptions.
Competitive analysis:
This section would compare Veritas to two other businesses, Snopes, and Udemy. Snopes is a fact-checkwebsites that specialized in identifying fake information and facts in online passages. However, Veritas provides a morecomprehensive fact-checking service, coving every form of the mass media. What’s more, the mechanism of Snopes is
to have group of experts to research the validity of the information. Personal bias is inevitably in the process, andtherefore, the accuracy of identifications cannot be guaranteed. Veritas chooses to educate identification skills rather thanprovide results directly so that our customers can become experts of themselves and identify the information. Veritas
also provided a community page where users can interact with each other and share their interpretations on different
information. Therefore, limiting the amount of bias. Another great business model to compare with would be Udemy, aleading online education platform that provide services ranging from academic subjects to workplace training. However,most of the courses are expensive and does not include any curriculum on identifying fake information, exaggerated
facts, or biases in sources. Veritas fill in the gaps with online courses at a much cheaper price. Besides, Veritas will holdoffline speeches in communities to approach the old who seldom use online platforms and teach at schools to ensure thatstudents receive such information. By providing a combination of in-person and online services, Veritas reaches a wider
range of user that is previously unreachable.
Cost, price, and profit:
Based on the service type that Veritas provides, some of the fixed costs that are associated with our product are:Server fees, customer service, office rent, office equipment (one-time purchase), start-up fees for legal and accounting
costs, etc. Some of the variable costs that the service consists of are application maintenance fees, part-time employees,
teaching fees, and more. Since we are the original developer of the app, there will be minimal development fees in theinitial stages of the app. A total fixed cost of 100,000$ and 500,000$ of variable cost (first year) is calculated. Moreover,250,000$ will go to app development and advertisement. For the pricing of our product, the user can purchase services
in three locations: app subscription, remote lessons, and in-person lectures. There will be two different access levels forthe app, basic and premium. The basic version is free, and the premium for 20$ per month. The basic accounts will only
have 3 fact-checks per day and can only preview the pre-recorded lessons. The premium accounts will have unlimitedaccess to the fact-check function, access to 50 lessons per month, and will have a 10 percent discount on any live lessonpurchases. The cost of any in-person events will be determined based on the size of the event. A break-even point isprojected to happen after the accumulation of 42,500 purchases of the premium subscription. Our product will gather thenecessary financial foundation from a combination of sources namely government grants, angel investors, and individualfunding. Our estimated budget of 850,000$ will be gained by 20%, 60%, and 20% from the three sources respectively.
Works Cited:
Ajder, H., Patrini, G., Cavalli, F., & Cullen, L. (2019). The state of deepfakes landscapes, threates, and impacts.
Barr, L. (2021, June 21). abc News. Retrieved from Senior citizens lost almost $1 billion in scams last year: FBI:https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senior-citizens-lost-billion-scams-year-fbi/story?id=78356859
Chaffey, D. (2022, March 29). Global social media statistics research summary 2022. Retrieved from Smart insight:
https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-mediaresearch/#:~:text=More%20than%20half%20of%20the,social%20media%20is%202h%2027m.
Khoros. (2022). The 2022 Social Media Demographics Guide. Retrieved from Khoros:
https://khoros.com/resources/social-media-demographics-guide