Lab 5: LLM Pitch (25 pts)

OIDD 2550, Professor Tambe

A. Overview

Lab 5 can be completed in groups of either 3 or 4 people. You will have the opportunity to form and submit your own group. Otherwise, you will be assigned to one.

The rapidly growing capabilities of Large Language Models are likely to lead to a new “gold rush” in the tech community. The objective of this assignment is to generate a pitch deck presentation for a new LLM-based business venture, and it must include an illustration of a proof-of-concept (i.e. prototype). To build this proof-of-concept, you will use the tools that will be workshopped in class on Mar 29th by Jaden Dicopoulos. A step-by-step guide about what was covered is available here.

B. Deliverables

The final deliverable is a slide deck to be submitted on Canvas and an in-class presentation that you will present on either Apr 12th (Wednesday) or Apr 17th (Monday). Groups with odd numbers should plan to present on Apr 12th, and groups with even numbers should plan to present on Apr 17th. Group assignments (1-17) are as discussed in class and can be found on Canvas under the People tab.

Your presentation should be no more than 2 minutes per person in your group. In other words, a three person group should keep their presentation to under 6 minutes, and a four person group should keep it under 8 minutes. Everyone in your group should plan to present, although it does not matter how the time is allocated.

In your presentation, I would like you of course to conceptualize a new product or business model, but also show that you understand what the tradeoffs are, and what the potential weaknesses are technologically and in the marketplace.

Your presentation should include screenshots of a working prototype, its output, and you should describe how it was built, including key decisions you made. In other words, using the OpenAI tools, you should create a small application and interface that demonstrates that your product or service could feasibly be built using these technologies. It does not have to be a “robust” product and we will not ask you to demonstrate it in class. It does not need to be that different from the examples shown in the workshop but should demonstrate how it would work and provide value in your application context. You should also feel free to use tools like Illustrator, Sigma, or Powerpoint to “mock up” a User Interface design that looks attractive.

Your deck should cover the following topics, in addition to anything else you would like to discuss. The bullet points below are intended to be a guideline, but not exhaustive, and you do not need to follow this order. Feel free to add additional points of emphasis as suits your context.

Value Proposition and Market

1. How large and attractive is the market opportunity?

2. What is the value that you will provide to your customers?

3. Who is the ideal customer? How many of them are there? If relevant to your product, how do you retain customers?

Solution and proof of concept

1. You should illustrate your prototype.

2. What, if any, are the potential challenges from a product design/UI perspective?

Business model

1. How will this product be priced and how will it be sold?

2. How will you get your product in front of your market? What are the relevant sales channels?

3. Who is the competition and how will you differentiate your product relative to this competition? How will you retain an advantage over future competitors?

4. How will you prevent any potential value that is created from being extracted by suppliers (e.g. providers like Open AI) and/or customers?

Ethical considerations

1. What are the ethical challenges that can arise from your pitch? What form might bias take? How will you address it?

2. Are there any important intellectual property considerations that arise from your proposed use-case?

Regulatory risk

1. What are the risk factors related to regulatory concerns, such as those concerning data privacy or loss of jobs or intellectual property?

2. How will you anticipate and address future regulatory risk, especially regulatory risk that can influence your ability to grow your business?

The slide deck should be submitted through Canvas. Only one person per group needs to submit. (Please convert it to a .pdf before submitting.)

C. Grading Rubric

Grades are out of 25 points and are composed of the following elements:

• Quality and clarity of presentation (5 pts)

• Is the go-to-market strategy clear? (5 pts)

• Does the prototype provide clear evidence of product viability? (5 pts)

• Have the ethical and regulatory risks been carefully weighted and considered? (5 pts)

• Peer evaluations (5 pts). Your classroom peers will be asked to evaluate you on the dimensions a VC might consider, i.e. how willing would they be to put their (limited) capital into this venture, as opposed to other ones?