High-Quality Advising at Scale

To learn the skills of entrepreneurship, young people need access to quality mentors and advisors. However attracting highly skilled advisors and connecting them with student entrepreneurs becomes difficult because of all of the logistics and communications that are required to maintain high-touch advising. AdviseUs is an AI-powered platform that creates automated workflows that allows advisors to efficiently schedule meetings, track advisee progress, and automate communications and follow ups with advisees. This platform allows highly qualified advisors to scale their mentorship and more easily stay connected to the entrepreneurs they are supporting. 

Entrepreneurship training programs are effective at introducing young entrepreneurs to the skills and requirements needed to develop and grow successful ventures. However the real success for entrepreneurs comes from learning directly from highly-qualified advisors who can consistently guide and support beyond an initial training program. Particularly for low-income and minority students who are often underrepresented in entrepreneurship communities, high-touch advising and mentoring provides a structure and process to learn new skills and build companies that support economic growth. However, it becomes very difficult for highly skilled advisors to effectively engage with many young entrepreneurs because of the logistics and communications that are required. We know this challenge exists because we deliver entrepreneurship programs and mentoring to develop the next generation of young founders. In the United States, there were over 750,000 businesses that were under 1 year old in 2019. Although not all of these businesses were created by teen and student entrepreneurs, we believe that focusing on this age provides valuable skills to prepare them for the 21st century workforce. The increasing number of new businesses, and therefore the increasing need for valuable advisors, creates the perfect opportunity to develop a platform that eases and enables their connection. 

AdviseUs is an AI-powered platform with a human-in-the-loop that creates automated workflows for advisors to efficiently and effectively offer support, guidance, and skill transfer to their advisees. The innovative platform connects advisors and advisees through a simple user interface and allows advisors to manage and scale their support with automated meeting scheduling, tracking advisee progress, and automating communications and follow ups with advisees. Advisees share their progress via the software, respond to automated questions about various aspects of their business, and have an opportunity to self-reflect on their work. Advisors then get a summary report of that progress and can easily provide feedback and comments. The system supports automatic communications and reminders for milestone tracking and setting up meetings.

AdviseUs is the perfect blend of mentoring, technology and automated processes, meaning more effective growth and development for young entrepreneurs who are learning and implementing valuable workforce skills. Advisors have instant access to the progress of each of their advisees and are able to quickly track and quantify their progress. They are also able to automatically schedule meetings and organize communications - processes that are often cumbersome and time consuming. Advisees benefit from more focused and high quality advisor time, allowing them to see more progress on their ventures and seamlessly integrate advice from their advisors at each step of their development. 

We actively work with young entrepreneurs and advisors, and we know the challenges they face with communications, scheduling, and tracking progress. As our solution develops, we are committed to finding ways to incorporate valuable, time saving processes to ensure both advisors and advisees get the most out of their relationship.

AdviseUs allows for more seamless skills transfer between advisors and advisees since advisors won’t spend so much of their time on logistics and managing. Instead, they can spend more time teaching, guiding, and supporting young entrepreneurs who are developing skills for the 21st century workforce. Although we are building for the use case of teen entrepreneurs who are starting and growing their own ventures, this platform could easily scale to other domains and industries where advisors need to stay connected and in touch with many mentees as they develop their projects, skills, and ideas.

AdviseUs creates an opportunity for entrepreneurship and early-venture advisors to truly connect with their advisees and focus on the things that matter. In this way, the platform enhances the performance of the advisors by allowing them to scale and leverage their expertise to support high volumes of young entrepreneurs at one time. There are some commercialized mentorship platforms and companies that support startups and small businesses, as well as bespoke solutions deployed in higher education advising and in business management. Companies such as GrowthMentor, Clarity.fm, Score, and MicroMentor (https://www.micromentor.org/) offer some form of mentorship for businesses, however all of these solutions are not specifically focused on scaling high-quality advisor time and directing it towards young, student entrepreneurs. In addition, they are often focused on specific and nice markets such as growth marketing, whereas our work focuses on the development and transfer of all skills needed for successful entrepreneurship. Many of these platforms only support one-time connections for questions and answers; we are creating a platform that supports sustained advising over time. Consultant advisors who work independently are potential competitors, however on their own (and even with a personal assistant) they lack automated processes in a single platform that allow them to handle many advisee clients at one time. We hope to build a solution that can be utilized by these consultants.

AdviseUs is an easy-to-use software platform with an AI component. The platform leverages an effective mix of technology and human resources to maximize the advisor/advisee relationship. The platform is driven by a predictive analytics engine to provide personalized guidance on advisee progress and next steps. The AI can also help track progress, provide strength based assessments, and highlight challenges, which are then delivered as insights to the advisor for the next meeting. Communications management and scheduling is handled by a bot to reduce time spent on logistics. All of these services are accessible through a web-based software platform.

The underlying technology and AI are not new concepts; they are adapted for multiple use cases across a range of sectors and have proven effective at decreasing time spent on management tasks and increasing output. In higher education, companies like CampusLabs and individual universities develop similar platforms that are used to manage a large number of students in academic advising departments. Meeting scheduling bots and communications assistants powered by AI are available in the corporate and consumer markets, including those from Schedule.ly, x.ai, and Zoom.ai. We intend to leverage machine learning algorithms and architecture that already exists in order to power our solution, and we will develop a novel software interface that facilitates the connection between advisors and advisees.

As a company that delivers entrepreneurship training and advising to teen entrepreneurs, we understand the struggles that come with both building a new business and advising first-time entrepreneurs. We also know how difficult it is to develop soft and hard skills needed to be successful in entrepreneurship and in the 21st century workforce. Although our experience centers around challenges for teen and youth entrepreneurs, the same is true for adults in the workforce who need to consistently develop and learn new skills to stay apace. We have seen personally how high-quality advising can impact the outcomes of young entrepreneurs; they have higher business survival rates, they generate more revenue more quickly, and they develop and make use of transferable skills. According to MicroMentor, mentored entrepreneurs create twice as many new jobs as solo entrepreneurs based on their cohorts. In addition, advised entrepreneurs are able to focus on what solutions make a difference in their markets; they are able to use their skills, interest, and ideas to create real impact in the communities they hope to serve. As we scale access to high-quality advising to young and first-time entrepreneurs, we expect to shift their businesses to be more successful and more meaningful. For low income and minority entrepreneurs - which is a major focus of our work - this could increase the opportunities for economic independence and durability in the job market.

Currently, we provide mentorship and education training programs to 100 young entrepreneurs each year. With the development of the AdviseUs platform, we would be able to scale that number to 1,000 per year within the next year. After five years, we expect to be serving 10,000 young entrepreneurs and connecting them to highly trained and skilled advisors. 

As a company, our vision is to train and develop 100,000 founders by 2030. WIth the ability to scale high-quality advising time for young entrepreneurs, we believe we can increase that reach 10-fold and ensure that the ventures created are more likely to survive and generate impact. We can also make sure that young entrepreneurs are able to gain the skills required to stay afloat in a changing world. 

We believe we can reach more students through scale and replication of our business model. As we develop online approaches to powerful advising at scale, we can reach young entrepreneurs all over the world, giving them connections to sustained and effective advising. We can also replicate our business model for other types of online advising and mentoring. This could be through schools (advising for student success) or through organizations who seek to reach young people for personal and professional development.

The main challenges we will face over the next five years are financial, technical and market barriers. Financial capital is needed to invest in the development of the proposed solution, and the technical requirements are a needed skill set for our team. Although there is already a concept and model for advising businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs, market barriers might pose a significant risk, especially if we start to focus on industries that are outside of our immediate service delivery (advising for teen entrepreneurs). 

To solve challenges related to funding, we will seek grants from both private foundations and governmental agencies who are interested in scaling high quality advising time. In order to tackle challenges related to technical development, we will hire and engage a software engineer and a machine learning engineer to design and develop our product. We have a significant amount of experience in the startup industry, specifically in the United States, and this will allow us to both penetrate the market and develop alongside early adopters.

We have 8 full time staff and 4 part time staff who are working on delivering entrepreneurship programs to young people, and who will contribute to this work. 

Our team consists of passionate, dedicated, and experienced individuals who have over 50 years of entrepreneurship and educational experience combined. We have been working with middle and high school students for the past decade, as well as creating startups of our own that have been valued at over $5 million. Through our work as educators and entrepreneurs, we have seen the economic impact that entrepreneurship can have on communities and individuals, as well as the effectiveness of high-quality advising and mentorship.  As advisors ourselves, we also know the challenges that advisors face as they support and guide many entrepreneurs at once. 

Our team has extensive experience delivering entrepreneurship training programs, and we have the capacity and expertise to develop the AdviseUs platform. One of our Co-Founders, Tom Rose, is the co-founder of Testive, a company that uses specialized machine learning to build adaptive learning programs. Tom has a BSE from Duke University and an MBA from MIT.

Currently, we partner with UNC Chapel Hill to deliver in person residential summer programs for teen entrepreneurs. In addition, we work with Launch Chapel Hill to deliver make-a-thon workshops to engage young people in hands-on solution development to real-world challenges. We have additional partnerships with NC IDEA and Innovate Carolina to develop and implement programs for young entrepreneurs.

AdviseUs allows advisors to connect and communicate more seamlessly with students they are advising. Our commercial business is a B2C that generates revenue through product subscriptions and payments for personalized services. Advisees who seek to connect with advisors pay a monthly fee, which goes towards paying for the advisor time and maintaining the software that powers their connection. The platform allows us to scale and leverage high quality advisors, and ensures that advisors feel like they are able to stay connected more easily with those they are mentoring.

We intend to commercialize the AdviseUs platform and monetize the service through monthly/ yearly fees in exchange for high-quality advising on entrepreneurship ventures. Through our work providing entrepreneurship training, workshops, and mentorship to teenagers in North Carolina, we have come to understand how important it is for new entrepreneurs to have effective and quality advising. We have validated that this is a service and solution that can be paid for by students (and parents) who are committed to the development and growth of their ventures.

Through the Solve Challenge, we are looking to get connected to a supportive community of peers and experts who can provide guidance and actionable advice throughout the development of AdviseUs. The potential for mentorship and advice from Solve and MIT teams will allow us to better understand how we can develop our solution for impact and get insight into the types of tools advisors need and want. We hope to accelerate and scale our solution effectively so that young, passionate entrepreneurs are able to access high-quality advising, and so that advisors can do what they do best - without being weighed down by scheduling and management tasks. 

We are seeking partnerships with other companies or organizations who are passionate about developing the next generation of founders. These partnerships will allow us to better understand the challenges faced when providing high-touch advising. We are also interested in connecting with MIT faculty or Solve Members for their guidance and support. In addition, we are seeking individuals who currently work (or would like to work) as independent advisors as partners and/or clients of the AdviseUs platform.