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Cowise
Cowise
Information Technology
Limited liability company
Belgium
Connecting students with businesses
Jelle Van Roosbroeck
Guyllian De Beule
Jelle Van Roosbroeck, Pieterjan Criel en Pieter Van Brussel
Summary
Cowise is an online crowdsourcing platform that closes the gap between students and the business world. Via the platform, students can solve current problems or issues in the business world. With this, students can create visibility and gain practical experience, while companies can enjoy the talent and creativity of these motivated students. Cowise creates an added value for both companies and students.
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With Cowise, companies can test upcoming students if they can achieve something great and eventually even hire the person when they’re graduated. Also, the students can gain experience while challenging themselves.
Background
Cowise was founded in 2014 by Jelle Van Roosbroeck, Pieterjan Criel and Pieter Van Brussel. They were just graduated and at the end of their studies when founding this company. They noticed that on the one hand students had a need to exercise their knowledge in real life cases, where they can help companies with their current problems or issues. On the other hand, they also saw that companies were open working with students or taking advise from them. Based on these two needs, they started an online platform that connects both parties; Cowise.
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The company was primarily financed with own financial resources, where after family and friends where the second biggest source of financing.
Mission
Close the gap between students and the business world. Develop the students with practical experience when they should be developed, while still in college or university.
Vision
Pass on the platform to the students.
Values
Ethics, durability and professional development.
Business Model
A platform always has one purpose: to connect two or more parties. With Cowise these parties consist out of students and companies. The revenue process first starts with a company who has a certain problem or issue that needs to be solved, then the client decides how much they want pay to students who find the best solution with Cowise giving advice. Or in other words, they discuss what a reasonable amount of money would be that the student could win. This depends on the size of the project. Cowise would then decide the distribution of the money; how much the first, second and third gets.
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Once the value and the distribution is decided, the project is being placed online, where students can search and sign up for a specific project. If the project is solved, payment is done to the students based on their results; first, second and third place. This is the stage where Cowise makes its money, they charge a commission on the money that is allocated to the winners. This commission varies with every project, it is decided between Cowise and the client.
Additionally, when a company is highly satisfied with the work of a certain student, it can acquire the contact information of that particular student via Cowise. This contact information is very valuable because some students are really high potential employees and therefore isn’t given to companies for free.
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The main source of revenue is from the commission on the prize money , only a small part of the revenue is being generated by the contact information agreement.
Growth
In the beginning, achieving growth was difficult, this because in general building a platform is not an easy task. As mentioned before, a platform always connects two or more parties meaning you need to engage them simultaneously in order to succeed.
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On the one side, you need at least 10 projects on the platform to get students engaged. But on the other side, before companies are getting interested, they want to know how many students are on the platform. This is could only be executed successfully if there’s a lot of money invested in marketing to both sides.
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Eventually, the founders decided to shut down the concept due to the fact that they didn’t feel engaged anymore and that a country as Belgium wasn’t ready for this kind of innovation.
Customers
All companies on a global scale who have challenging projects.
Competitors
Cowise is an entirely new concept, they do not have any competition. Although, there was one competitor; Brainspot. The founders of Cowise spoke with him but he also shut it down due to the fact that he noticed that a country as Belgium isn’t ready for a concept like this.
Conclusion
The biggest opportunity for Cowise was the war for talent. This means that there is a high demand now and will be even a bigger in the future for highly talented profiles. The main reason for this is because talented profiles are becoming more difficult to find and more importantly; harder to acquire. Also, letting a project go when it’s necessary is something that an entrepreneur needs to be able to do, realizing that a certain market isn’t ready for the concept, because holding on would be useless.
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Jelle believes that a good team is the most important factor in a company, more importantly; a flexible team. This because when you start a company, a lot of things that you’ve planned will turn out differently or change. You need a team that is capable to quickly cope with this kind of change in order to survive. Also being honest and complementary on a professional and interpersonal level within a team is necessary to achieve synergy.
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The second most important tip that Jelle gave is that your professional network is highly important and can add a huge value to your company. Your first customers can be acquired by using your network in a good way. On top of this, when you satisfy the need of the customer within your network, word of mouth will take place which is good for the business.