The document outlines a mission to improve access to education through a web-based platform that helps students raise tuition funds more effectively. By surveying students and potential donors, the study identifies key challenges students face in funding their education and proposes a new service that connects students with scholarship opportunities while allowing for donations. The project aims to recruit 1000 students as early adopters to validate the need for this integrated application process.

1. Kick-start Your Future!

2. Hari Vedam Volkan Karabacak Melanie Hardie
• Illinois, United States • Istanbul, Turkey • Nova Scotia, Canada
• BA, Economics • BASc, Molecular Biology • BSc, Computer Science
• Specialties: • Specialties: • Specialties:
Accounting Marketing Software Engineering
Data/Business Analysis Product Development Network Security
Product Development • Passions: • Passions:
• Passions: Improving education Access to education
Open source movement system Animal rights
Access to education and
healthcare

3. We believe access to education should be available
to everyone. Online learning platforms are making
this more a reality every day. However, until these
web based forms of education become recognized by
employers, access to traditional education streams
remain imperative to most individuals who are
seeking work.
For some, the reality is that dreams to pursue a
formal education must be set aside. Our mission is
to provide alternatives such that everyone may have
the opportunity to create a better future for
themselves and their families.

4. Our initial hypotheses are:
•Students find it hard to raise tuition money
•There exist charitable people that cannot find local causes
to donate to
•People would donate to students if they were provided
with a web-based platform on which to do so
Using the online validation board, we identified our riskiest
assumptions to be:
•Students have trouble finding funding sources
•People in any given area want to support local students

5. We set out to validate our assumptions using a web-based
survey that asked the following:
Students:
•What resources do you seek out when raising tuition money?
•How and where do you search for these resources?
•What challenges, if any, did you encounter?
Potential Donors:
•Have you ever donated to a charitable cause?
•What was the cause and what motivated you to donate?
•Would you consider donating to a local student?

6. We received 24 survey responses, including 16
email addresses. Broken down into students and
donors:
•15 responded as students
•11 provided their email address to be notified
as early adopters
•9 responded as donors
•5 provided their email address to be notified as
early adopters

7. Summary of our findings:
•Students fund education through family contributions,
jobs, savings and scholarships/grants
•Students encounter the following challenges when
searching for funds:
• Searching online is time consuming and frustrating
• Hard to find relevant scholarships for which they
qualify
• Many different websites and applications
• Information is limited
•People who would contribute to a student would do so in
addition to the causes they already support
•People donate to causes that they have a connection to

8. Based on feedback, we updated our
business model as follows:
•Service provided is modified such that
the old value proposition becomes a
feature of the new value proposition,
instead of the proposition itself
• Student customer segment for which
the service is designed is broadened
• Potentialdonor customer segment is
more focused

9. Value Proposition:
•Free web service accessible via web and mobile
applications
•Main function is to maintain a database of scholarships
which are suggested to student users based on the
information provided in their profile, for which they
may apply directly from our web service
• Eliminates frustration of searching multiple websites
for applicable scholarships
• Eases pain of filling out multiple forms by offering an
integrated application template
•Features a ‘Personal Education Fund’ that allows users
to raise money toward their educational pursuits from
donor contributions (family, friends, school alumni)

10. To validate our new model, we will use an online prototype:
Our goal is to connect with 1000 students to sign up as early adopters of our
service. We will also use this baseline of student users to support our
hypothesis that there is a need for an integrated application process.