5 ms·
You're about to give up. What faces you in the next 6 months will be toughest period you will face in this enterprise, because you have a chicken and egg proble
by joel_feather 17y ago
You're about to give up. What faces you in the next 6 months will be toughest period you will face in this enterprise, because you have a chicken and egg problem. The easy part is over, and now the very difficult part will come, and this is where you have a 90% chance of giving up.
Also, your focus is wrong. I know you won't change it, because you've spent 6 months working on this idea and I'm just some random dude, but as-is, you will have a very hard time gaining users for your project. This is what you can change to actually be successful:
"Companies post a process or business problem they are having. Students post solutions. One students answer is rated as the best and the companies pay."
That is a tried and tested model that works. You will have the students because everyone is looking for cash. I mean, think about it for a moment! What is all that text! What is all that signup form? Make a single field with an email address where the student can give in his email address, and he recieves the projects from the companies strraight up. When he wants to answer and earn $200 or so, he needs to give in his details then!
And charging companies?! You know you are aiming at the enterprise market if you follow that model, and I sure as hell hope you know how to do enterprise sales.
Let me give you an example of something that would work:
Student John Field comes to site. He sees the text - "Help companies optimize and fix their business processes with your ideas - and get paid for it. Enter your email address". He thinks, sure, why not, enters his email and forgets about it.
Joes Bicycle Shop stumbles across this website. He thinks - ah, I need to get cheaper bicycles from Asia down to my shop. Maybe these guys know how that works. He posts this. John Fields recieves the posting. He sees that he can make $90. He researches on the net, posts a reply. Bicycle shop saves several thousand bucks, John gets his $90, you get your cut.
- dejan 17y agoThat's a nice way to start a conversation :) Thanks for the encouragement, I get those a lot :) You are absolutely right about what you say, but, I don't think you got the point of Aleveo. We're not trying to be next Google or Yahoo Answers, or any sort of similar service. What you describe is answer service. Also the focus is wrong. We do not aim at making money out of students' ideas, but to provide them with help to get in touch with companies, so that they can have better jobs tomorrow, and there is space for profits too. I know it's difficult to understand social oriented business, but here is one. If we think about companies, they do not have problems, or if they did, they wouldn't talk about. They have employees to solve their problems. But, Aleveo provides the company with this channel for external input on their offerings, with constructive feedback how to improve stuff, or make new. Lets say I think of a new automotive door handle that is easier to user, looks better, yet is cheaper to produce. What will I do as a student? Build a company around that? Not really. But at least I will show it to someone who will appreciate it. If lets say FIAT adopts this idea or thinks its viable, they award the student with something either money, sponsorship, internship or whatever they like. Moreover, the company gets to see who can is suitable to be part of their innovation culture. There is no innovation in tried and tested model, and for sure no entrepreneurialism. It's not all about the money. The major idea of Aleveo is for students to push ideas to companies. And this is especially needed in visual things such as industrial design let's say. So, for the student above, he could tag his idea "FIAT" and when someone from Fiat logins, he can see ideas submitted to them. Challenges are a "pull" method on the other hand. Indeed, we've been doing a research on the topic for 6 months, but the development took only one. I'll post the research as an idea, I think you'll find it shocking what the current youth unemployment situation is doing long term. Thanks for the critic, I find it highly constructive, and I appreciate your toughness.
- auston 17y agoYour design is fine as it is for a first iteration - your choice of words is not (that is, in my opinion). "GREAT IDEAS, CHALLENGES & AWARDS a bridge between the worlds of education and work." I have no idea what that means for anything - tell me what you do in more of a straight forward fashion. Those are all fairly uninformative words try something like.... "Aleveo helps your company get fresh new ideas -Engage youth by evaluating their fresh ideas to improve your products/offering-"