YOUR CAMPUS, ONLINE.
Social Hub Goes Viral among University Students
Campus life can be pointlessly complicated. Between course advising, tutoring, filing complaints, flat-hunting, book auctions, event posting and a heap of other things, students often feel lost and at a disadvantage. However, it was only a matter of time before some tech-savvy entrepreneur with his share of campus hassle thought of a solution. Campus Society is an online social platform that started out with one simple goal: to make campus life easier in the bureaucratic American University of Beirut (AUB) institution. After garnering 20% of AUB students in the first two days, the Londonbased startup was quickly embraced as the most efficient “go-to” social platform for students who just want to “get things done,” track events, post jobs, rate professors and reach out to their peers. Word quickly spread last week to the 14 other universities located in Lebanon, who did not waste any time contacting the tech-savvy graduates. So far more than 2000 students have signed up, 15% of them from AUB.
Cousins Rashid Ajami, a Georgetown graduate and music producer, and Oliver Muller, an AUB graduate with a Bachelor in Economics, knows how hassling campus life can be. “It was a real issue getting things done on campus.” Muller said, recalling his student days in AUB. “Finding housing, tutors, events… it all seemed a bit difficultand outdated. Lebanon is a few years behind with technology.” The AUB Facebook page - or pages actually - was too cumbersome and crowded to cater to the students’ growing inquiries. Muller and Ajami were quick to spot this disadvantage and work on filling these gaps. “We have detailed filters, hashtags, and search options. We break down our users by major, university, graduation year...we're really trying to cater to the students,” said Ajami. Students registered in Campus Society use the network to post comments, inquiries, polls or events that deal with following topics: sports, buy/sell, class talk, complaints, housing, I’m-looking-for, politics, Professors, jobs, Music/film, tutors and others. On first glance, Campus Society may seem like a throwback to Facebook’s legendary success story, when the then-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg created a social student network that went epically viral. However, Muller and Ajami aim for a more functional platform that solves the online overlap between the academic and social aspect of universities. “We like the service that [Facebook] started out with. They initially targeted universities, but then they changed direction. We are trying to go back to that model, because we see a lot of value in it.” The tech-savvy co-founders soon intend to make the platform exclusive to college "edu" addresses. They have received requests from universities all over the MENA region, and they already have plans to grow big. “We will take it one step at a time,” said Ajami. “By 2016, our plan is to extend to all universities in MENA.” The London-based startup had their own bevy of challenges before things finally worked out in the direction they wanted. After several hiccups with outsourced firms who did not seem to share their enthusiasm, the tech-savvy cousins decided to hire a full team of top-niche employees. “We found it very difficult with outsourced teams,” said Muller. Misguided communication, location barriers, and cutting corners on costs ends up hurting you in the long run. The work was not done properly.” Hunting for suitable employees with the same vision was not easy either. “We spent three months finding the right talent,” said Muller. “Building such a platform is a 24/7 challenge. It requires dedication, real passion a good vision… and someone whose heart is in it.” After self-funding their project with a modest $20,000, the two tech-savvies secured a fund of $500,000 from big international investors and are looking for a few million in the next round. These will definitely come in handy, considering that a mobile application of their website will be available by next year. If its success rate is anything close to the website version, we have good reason to believe that it will hog the headlines.
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Social network & resource database for everyone who lives and works in a college environment; Students, Faculty, Alumni, Companies.
Launched Beta at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon - April 2014.
3 months later: Open to 15 universities 8,000 registered users 8% average penetration into each university 123 requests from universities across Middle East
1. Problem: Too much "noise" - irrelevant content Lack of centralized searchable services for students; accommodation, jobs, tutors No "localized" community specific to university students No platform to voice and share opinions High youth unemployment in the Middle East - few job opportunities for graduates University administrations out of sync with student bodies & alumni
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2. Solution: The Campus Culture "Noise filter" - allows you to filter data from a World Wall down to Country, University, and Following.
Sub-filters Account type: Student, professor, alumni, clubs & societies, corporate, administration. Categories: Academic, Career, Classified, Social Tags: custom tags created by users Keywords: specific keyword search Trending: most-liked, most-commented, most-recent
Privacy - users choose to post to the World Wall, College wall, or Following. Exclusivity - students receive verified full-access accounts only after providing an "edu" email address. Localized college communities - within larger communities (friend circles within colleges, colleges within cities, cities within countries, countries within global Campus Society community). Following - the first platform that allows you to "follow" influential people in the Educational space,
such as professors, deans, heads of departments, around the world.
Campus Society "GPA" - Every user - including professors and faculty - gets a GPA score (out of 4.0),
an algorithm that summarizes engagement, quality of content, klout, etc.
"A professor can increase their GPA by uploading interesting content, answering student inquiries, engaging with the student body, and can even reach out to a global audience with his/her publications".
Timetable - an application that allows students to upload their course schedule, professor list, and
other relevant data which CS can then use to personalize a user's feed and send them targeted content. Example: we collect course name, professor, class location. We can then send the student professor ratings, course material and books for sale, possible tutors, etc. The app can also serve as a calendar or agenda that sends reminders/notifications.
CV upload / Job Board - an application that allows students to upload their resume into their profile. This allows us to send the student tailored jobs & also allows us to show these CVs to potential employers who are looking to hire from a specific school, major, graduation year.
Location aware services – check in to your lecture – share notes with other students on your course or worldwide - integration with Dropbox.
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3. Business Model: Once target user and engagement numbers are achieved, we plan to generate revenue in the following ways:
Premium accounts Administrations Corporates
Peer-to-peer tutoring Free student to students sessions Premium paid for services – User Rated tutors – per session/cost Professors and Mentors
Advertising Promoted posts Banner ads
4. Marketing: Top Contributors
interesting content.
- committee of influencers (students and professors) who post
Facebook Advertising - CPM ads with a target to school and graduation year. We are currently seeing 35% conversion rate. General PR - Business journals, university publications, magazines (Arabnet, Zawya, Reuters,
Daily Star, many others).
On-campus Marketing - Merchandise giveaways, student events, sponsorships. Social Media
- A consistent clear brand across all social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn).
Monthly Webinars - Monthly webinars for users with special guests.
Partnerships with University Administrations - Official partnership with university administrations; free exposure to entire student body.
SEO - Building a strong SEO for the site based around advanced related keywords. Advertising Agencies - Digital agencies in Europe and Middle East.
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4. Marketing Unii.com is the best comparable to our business, but we would like to caveat that we view Unii as lacking in many ways and that our product offering will be significantly better. Unii.com is a social network dedicated to university students in the UK. Students can post photos, videos and connect with one another without having their professors, parents, alumni looking over them. Unii raised ÂŁ1.8m in seed funding to develop their platform in 2012 and 2013. They have been marketing the brand for over 1 year. As it stands, their platform is technically very weak; bugs, missing links, missing pages, and a very week back-end. The site is not up to standard. There is very little engagement between students. We believe they are technically inferior to Campus Society. Unii's UI/UX is confusing. It is not clear how users should navigate through the site; features are all over the place. Technically, we do not see Unii as competition whatsoever. Campus Society is working on next generation technology for our site and mobile app, which will be released towards the end of 2014. Further, Unii is focused on students in the UK market. They eliminate professors, alumni, administrations, corporations and avoid that academic route entirely. Campus Society is pushing towards an interactive academic environment focused on the Middle East where we believe there is tremendous upside, no competition, receptive users, and a chance to build something revolutionary.
Rashid Ajami, 24 Founder
6. Team
Rashid Ajami is an entrepreneur and globally recognized music producer signed to some of the biggest record labels in the world; Universal Records and Armada. He has built a name for himself through social media in the music industry within two years. Rashid is responsible for day-to-day operations as well as all marketing initiatives, PR, partnerships and investor relations. Rashid graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in International Relations.
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Oliver Muller, 24 Founder Oliver Muller is an entrepreneur and investment banker with 5 years of international experience in capital markets. Oliver worked as an FX derivatives trader with Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai on the biggest market-making desk in MENA. The desk was highest revenue generator and Oliver was responsible for trading roughly $1billion per day in FX spot and swap transactions. Oliver serves as a Board member on another tech venture. Also, Oliver co-founded the International Literacy Foundation, a charity that aims to alleviate illiteracy in the world’s poorest communities. Oliver pursued his undergraduate studies in Economics at the American University of Beirut, as well as the University of California, Los Angeles.
Feroze Rub, 44
Chief Technical Officer Feroze’s early career was spent engineering and developing complex systems for large corporates focusing efficiencies available through their back office systems and gaining an understanding of challenges faced by corporations such as IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Mars. As a developer working on many of the technologies that now form the backbone of the modern Internet becoming known collectively as Web 2.0. Later moving on to work with digital agencies such as Publicis and high technology start ups, Feroze honed his skills for an Internet world. Feroze has brought these core skills together to develop products and businesses from concept through to funding, production and eventual sale.
Founded OYBike Systems in 2008, Managing Director/Technical Architect creating a successful public bike hire system utilising mobile technology, tracking functionality and back office accounting systems Took business from start up through funding to eventual sale Managed multiple successful tenders to city authorities and corporations based in locations that included Cardiff, Nice and Calais. This led to over â‚Ź100M worth of contracts. Recruited and built world-class development teams to deliver some of the most technically advanced solutions for the industry Commitment to high quality, clean, scalable solutions and Agile methodologies
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7. Milestones & Projections September 2014 - Website version 2.0 and Mobile app version 1.0 launched January 2015 - Official launch of website and mobile app across Middle East Summer 2015 - 100,000 registered members** (conservative estimate) Summer 2016 - 1 million users** (conservative estimate)
8. FEEDBACK
9. Fundraising The proposed equity fundraising will be for between a minimum of £400,000 and up to a maximum of £1 million at a pre-money valuation of £4 million. Page 08