EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

During our Business Project we worked on the idea of UNIFY, which is a task sharing marketplace designed exclusively for students. We conducted several interviews and surveys and did extensive research which helped us develop first wireframes as well as our pitch deck. In addition, we started gaining traction by becoming this year’s Entrepreneurship Avenue finalists and initiating first marketing activities on social media. To launch UNIFY, we believe that further validation and a minimal marketable product will be necessary.

Goal

From our personal experience we have realized that, on the one hand, university students often either need help with certain tasks or want somebody to complete tasks for them. On the other hand, there are students willing to earn money by performing tasks for others. Nowadays, various fragmented channels serve to connect these two groups of students. However, posting tasks and responding to tasks in these channels is neither appealing, nor particularly convenient. In addition, even if a potential match is generated, trust issues and fear of scammers remain. Therefore, our goal was to develop and test the idea of a single all-in-one mobile platform allowing for fast, convenient, and safe task assignment and completion among students.

Methodology

In order to do so we, first of all, developed an initial business model draft which helped us identify our main competitors as well as potential customer segments. We used this information to conduct customer discovery interviews and a product optimization survey with users of existing solutions that provided us with valuable insights for our idea. After refining our idea, we sent out a survey to determine whether there actually is demand for our solution. The positive feedback of this survey led us to develop wireframes which helped us visualize and convey our solution more easily. To do so we used the social media channels Instagram and Facebook and we linked those to our website, where interested customers could sign up. Furthermore, we participated at the Entrepreneurship Avenue and the E&I Touchdown to gain traction and receive feedback. 

Results

By employing the aforementioned methods and instruments we gathered necessary inputs which enabled us to create an extensive pitch deck including a market and competitor analysis, revenue model, market entry strategy and expansion plan, among other aspects. Moreover, we managed to be one of the 10 finalists at the Entrepreneurship Avenue 2021 and our website received 48 unique visitors of which 3 actively signed up to be notified as soon as UNIFY is available. From this rather low conversion rate, we conclude that further validation as well as marketing activities would be necessary to launch our task sharing platform UNIFY.

Cooperation Partner

• UNIFY

Contact Person

• Helena Sarcevic – h1550076@s.wu.ac.at

Student Team

• Tina Reitmeier
  Helena Sarcevic
  Stefano Gentili
  Adel Nour