As more small businesses in Detroit look to open up their doors after the Covid-19 crisis, a group of entrepreneurs wants to help them also get online.
This past weekend, a team of Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni collaborated to create a platform that connects low-tech businesses with students who are eager to get real-world experience. The project was part of the second weekend of a virtual Forbes Under 30 Detroit Hackathon, a monthlong initiative developed in partnership with Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans and Major League Hacking.
Because many of Detroit’s small businesses don’t have the technical expertise or funds to build their own online presence, the team decided to build a platform that connects businesses with web developers that want to help make a website, e-commerce capabilities, or social media presence (or all the above). The platform, called VolunTier, taps into the students at various coding schools and universities to give coders a chance to get real-world experience. By using VolunTier’s web app or an automated phone questionnaire, businesses request services to be completed while students on the other end can select projects they’d like to work on. To incentivize participation, students have an opportunity to earn ratings, reward points, endorsements and networking opportunities.
“I think we all came at it with different perspectives,” says Katherine Relle, a portfolio manager with J.P. Morgan Private Equity Group. “Some people were thinking more storytelling, some people were thinking more actual technological solution like an app or a platform, and some people were thinking about social entrepreneurship type things. And I think what we came up with is a pretty good combination of all of that.”
Several people on the VolunTier project were from Detroit and weighed in with their own knowledge of the city. One of them was Rock Connections Change Agent Alice Ogadinma, who says one way of getting small businesses to adopt VolunTier would be to visit the city’s various neighborhoods and pass out flyers as part of a grassroots effort to explain how VolunTier might help business recover.
“The community funds and drives small businesses so it can be implemented as long as we are very intentional at understanding their niche markets and understanding who they are so we can get them the right support,” Ogadinma says.
The tiered model also helps solve another problem facing Detroit and many other cities: the economic downturn and subsequent weak job market. Kimeshan Naidoo, chief technology officer and cofounder of Unibuddy, says he’s spent a lot of time researching code schools with the plan of potentially creating one in South Africa to address the shortage of of training for developers. However, he says code schools teach content but often just for fictional concepts rather than real-world solutions.
“People think there’s a demand for tech talent, but there’s a demand for experienced tech talent,” he says. “There’s actually a lot of junior engineers that are looking for opportunities.”
While the initial focus for VolunTier was Detroit, it could be replicated and scaled to other cities of varying sizes. The team also thinks it could be expanded for other talents such as photographers who might want to take photos for small businesses.
“It’s a way to take a scalable, replicable framework and pilot it in or lease It in different cities while also keeping it local, keeping it authentic while building person-to-business or person-to-person connections within those communities,” says David Thomas Tao, CEO and cofounder of BarBend. “I think with the right stakeholders and connections, this could be making an impact in the very near future. This isn’t a yearlong build. This could start making an impact in Detroit next month with the right partners, stakeholders, and finding strategic sources of incentivized volunteers.”
Team Members: Katherine Relle, Portfolio Manager, J.P. Morgan Private Equity Group; Tiffany Pang, Cofounder & CEO, Outreach Grid; Princess Sims, Diversity & Inclusion Liaison, Rock Ventures; Alice Ogadinma, Change Agent, Rock Connections; David Thomas Tao, Cofounder & CEO, BarBend; Kimeshan Naidoo, Cofounder & CTO, Unibuddy; Naoki John Yoshida, Principal, Hellman & Friedman.
