The Gartener

I'm Alex, a 23 years old guy from San Sebastian, Basque Country (Spain). I have started creating since I was 15 when I designed my room. I began crafting myself the furnitures I had in mind and soon realized the lack of opportunities creative people have to show their talents. 4 years later, I organized an exposition for all those creative minds that were willing to show their creations. I evolved the expositions to a space where people of different areas and ages gathered to speak about ideas. This took me to work on my last project: the platform that encourages collaboration between entrepreneurs and creative people by finding those who are suitable for the idea in mind. It basically focuses on young people with lack of resources. 

I'm passionate about creativity and science, and I find business the tool to balance passion and money source.

The Gartener is based on a collaboration platform. There's a lot of people who have great ideas but are not able to develop them correctly because they find themselves alone. They struggle looking for those who are necessary for the project due to lack of contacts or resources to pay them. Our platform is created to help them find both entrepreneurs with ideas and creative people with talents that are willing to collaborate on the project because they believe on the greatness of the idea, they want to create a portfolio or they want to work on innovative projects. Collaboration is a non-paid work driven by a common idea, so we believe that our platform can encourage many individuals and societies with lack of resources creating innovative solutions to their problems by multidisciplinary teams. Imagine collaborating with poor communities and giving them the chance to show their skills.

I am working on the lack of opportunities to innovate for people that don't have enough money resources or don't know where to start from. 

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, in the Basque Country entrepreneurship activity has increased to 5.8% in 2017-2018 from 3.3% in 2016. In Spain the activity data is around 6.2%. And about 6.02% in the USA. All of them struggle the same problems at the beginning of their adventure: need to pay someone for something they need to fill their projects, most of the times asking for a loan or investment.

What we expose is the idea of working together on the same project instead of paying for an external service. 

Allen Garnett stated in entrepreneur.com the reason for a high entrepreneur circle called Knowledge Spillover as "a process where ideas are shared between individuals and institutions when they meet and dialogue."

An article from Rocketspace, the global ecosystem of people and ideas that bring the future to market, explains the "Faster Progress" as "a way of working with other individuals at the same level of compromise for success, which creates the work ethic of San Francisco improving the learning experience".

The Gartener's platform is an app where, creating an account, users have the opportunity to look for entrepreneurs and creative people around with different ideas and skills to collaborate on a created project or potential idea. It creates a worldwide community of people seeking innovative ideas and willing to collaborate without any paid service in between. We encourage working with a diverse skilled team, because it improves the quality and the originality of the project. This app is a compound of the net of people, the personal portfolio to show your interests and make it easier to match with the correct collaborators, the project page to organize the collaboration and next steps, and the sharing of inspiration. 

Besides, The Gartener organizes meetings to meet people with different characteristics and debate about ideas. Our aim is to work on creations for the future based on multidisciplinary teams. 

Our community is based on visionary individuals who want who work to change how things are made around them. They are skilled enough for that change, but, as we all know, things can't be done alone. They need collaborators to keep working and creating and money is not their greatest resource. 

I personally connect with them because I have been in the same situation many times in my life since the first time I started to create. I organized the exposition for new and original creative people to help them show their talents, and by the meetings I could understand them deeper and make sure how they think, what they think, and what they lack, mainly skills they don't have but cost money. These meetings are still organized as a way to keep connecting and learning. 

Our project address their needs by letting a space where everyone with same ideals are connected and they can find who they need at the moment to collaborate and start creating knowing that they will seek the same general goal. 

Our system is controlled by money. Mostly everyone who impacts the world has invested a lot of money on marketing, innovation and research, education or institutional taxes. The lack of money blocks lots of valuable citizens to impact the world with their ideas and work. Every famous people or company have an industry behind that controls them by money. 

Our platform seeks deleting this need of money for those who are passionate about their projects and want to make a real change. By putting together people with the same ideals, they can be stronger. Same happens to poor societies. 

I started creating very young with the interior design of my room. I had many ideas in mind that when I made them real I felt like there were no opportunities to show them. That's how The Gartener was created. 

After several projects as an entrepreneur, I found the same lack of visibility and skills. I wasn't able to learn and do it all by myself, and search people that were thinking as ambitious and creative as I was. I noticed that entrepreneurship is driven by money and contacts. I met many people who were oppressed by the society for thinking ambitiously (my country punishes ambition) and will to work on their ideas, but found themselves alone. So I began gathering them to speak about our thoughts. 

Soon, most of them started to ask me about people I know who can help them with their projects and most of the times they couldn't pay external services. 

After my trip to San Francisco, I started designing and testing this new collaborative platform: a space where ideas can happen because visionaries can meet and support each other using their skills and knowledge. A teacher I had has helped throughout all the way. 

With many ideas in mind and projects that were difficult to show if I wanted to be different, I struggled during many years to make people know what I could offer and make them believe in me. Every time I wanted to create something new, most of the people around were negative about it and it was difficult to find those who could help me without asking for money. Basically, it was difficult having collaborations without a name. Fortunately, I could find people crazy enough to believe in me and help on my way, people who at some point of their lives dreamed as big as I do. 

Knowing that these kinds of people are not visible due to our society's mentality, I created meetings to put them together and reach conclusions about different ideas related to creativity, possibilities, and situations in life. 

Now that I'm working on a platform to help everyone in the same situation as I was and still am, I believe that things can be changed. Collaboration can lead them to feel in a community and to create what they believe in hand-in-hand with others alike. 

I'm passionate about this because it can change the system.

As told before, I have started creating very young. Due to my imagination and creations, I suffered the same problems that the people I want to help are suffering. I felt limited by what is commercial or "functional" these days giving no interest to new projects. I have always thought about living from my creations and that's what I have been working on the last years. 

I have studied interior design and entrepreneurship, I won the best interior design project and the best innovative project of 2017. 

I met many different people that I benefit from by their help and knowledge. 

I organized a space to show new creative people's talent in San Sebastian and Helsinki. I evolved it to spaces where ideas were discussed by diverse minds. 

I have collaborated in several projects with creativity as their root, and still collaborating on projects mixing different creative skills for the final project.

I learnt that the system controls what it's currently good or not, and it is based on money and contacts. 

I have travelled to San Francisco for a couple of months because I wanted to learn why it is the center of innovation and technology in the world, which is their mindset, and how they work. What I found, very similar to what I have been having during my life, it's the opposite to the Spanish mindset. Although it doesn't mean there's no people who think differently.

All these you can find it on the webpage: 

thegartener.com

I can mention some physical problems, but I'd rather explain an emotional one. 

Since my trip to San Francisco, I was sure that this platform was strong enough to help people create together. I presented it to the local economy department asking for financial help, and they put me in contact with someone who works for an accelerator. The first meeting was great, he believed in the project. 

During the second call, he thought nobody would pay for this and that in this direction it wouldn't have any value. I believed in the project, but I wanted to trust him. I listened to him and thought he could be right due to his experience. I felt bad because I knew the potential of the project.

After that call I was confused. Did I need to change the whole project? I called my teacher and synthesized my ideas. The project was great and I knew why. I took every strong reason I found since the first day for its success and strengthened it.

I took advantage of that situation to build a solid basis of The Gartener and know exactly what, why, how, and for who I was working on it.

The Creative Dinners, the spaces that gather people of different skills and ages to discuss ideas, have been the most meaningful project I have made. They gathered people from 17 to 60 years old, from about 8 different countries, and from entrepreneurship and creative fields. They met people that started collaborating on same projects, helped each other, and made new friends. The most satisfying feedbacks that I had were: "this, The Gartener, is the future."; and "I didn't know where I was coming, but I felt like I grew up." (even if he's in his 60s).

The exposition organized in Helsinki, the first I lead indeed, was a big failure which made my team thought it was an error. After a deep conversation, we saw that, at the end of the year, it brought more learnings for the team that any other project during the year. 

In a moment when my old team was struggling and many of them thinking of leaving due to bad decisions that we were taking, I took a moment alone with each one to know about their feelings and thoughts. At the end of the day, we were motivated again to work on our projects.

The innovation of The Gartener is based on its collaborative system. It permits a new way of working within the app and encourages multidisciplinary teams that are composed by collaborators from different areas to work on the same project from different viewpoints. Therefore, new solutions will happen.

Collaboration is the system that will change the way we work. We are used to hire people or associate with others to improve our projects/business for long-term periods. Collaboration, instead, will create a way in which freelancers and project owners can work for certain moments with the opportunity to change collaborators depending on the profiles needed at specific moments. This can encourage new creative people to work with bigger projects, and start to share their skills sooner and deeper.

Besides, collaboration brings the opportunity to connect citizens from poor countries with those with resources and better educational background. Let me ask what can happen when we begin to give importance to cultures, minds, and ideas from third world countries. It can put our world in a more balanced level.

In relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) from the United Nations, our 2030 Agenda requires from 17 blocks in which the last is about Partnership: "The SDGs can only be realized with strong global partnerships and cooperation" - United Nations.

The last years entrepreneurship has increased by 2% in Spain and with a total of 6,02% in the USA. According to AES Digital press, Spain is becoming the centre of entrepreneurship in Europe. Moreover, the new disruptive solutions for the improvement of the Earth are provided by young entrepreneurs who, most of the time, struggle from the same lack of economic and knowledge resources. 

Our platform seeks to provide collaboration between minds to solve the lack of knowledge by encouraging multidisciplinar collaborative teams that can create the projects of the future, collaborations with academic organizations to share data, and private and public entities to improve the economic part.

We aim to become the tool that creative and entrepreneur people need to work on disruptive solutions for sustainability, ecology, and society.

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1000

200000

Our goals for the next year is to have the app built and operate in Spain. For the next year we would have observed the repercussion of the system and tested it enough to solve technical problems. We estimate to have 1000 users at least, 55000€ of income, and at least 50 collaborations made.

Within the next five years we will focus on growth and improvement. We expect to have 200000 users at least, to operate in 4 entrepreneur countries (Spain, Mexico, USA, and The Netherlands), and to witness impactful projects created from collaborations out of our platform.

The main barriers for the next year is to achieve enough money for the development, marketing of the app, and team recruitment.

For the next five years, I expect to have the same possible money barriers due to the strong investment marketing needs and a lack of collaborations due to a possible lack of functionality of the system and the app that will need constant analysis and implementation.

Money issue is solved by external public and possible private investments and reducing the cost as much as possible.

For the next five years, our plan is to receive investments and produce benefits. It will be key to expand the team, but maintaining it small with everyone focused on one sector and collaborating with external people by an internal entrepreneurship. An every-week check of the collaborations is going to be made to specify its efficiency and work on the barriers that will appear as soon as possible.

We don't currently partner with any organization, but will seek partnership with those organizations and schools based on culture and entrepreneurship to offer a place to develop for their clients/users.

We are providing the possibility to create without the need for a big budget. For that we will share our app platform where creatives and entrepreneurs who want to work on their ideas or attractive projects can find people that will suit them by their skills or projects and start a collaboration. 

Our aim is to be worldwide so users will have the opportunity to look for international collaborators and start working without meeting in person. To achieve the efficiency of the collaborations, the app will have a project profile which will serve to organize every idea, goal, and step of the collaboration. 

We will start with a personal investment on the MVP of the app. Our goal with the MVP is to test its efficiency and weaknesses to improve it as quick as possible and to estimate the most sustainable income source. 

Once tested, the second step is to ask for a crowdfunding and public financial aids to build the whole platform. This one will be based on a freemium and premium model where users will have the option to improve their profiles by adding more content and positioning within the community. Besides, it will have a marketplace for the projects created in our platform. 

Finally, we will work on raising capital for the so required marketing among the platforms world.

We seek a 50,000$ of grants by the first quarter of 2021 for the whole development of the platform.

Our expected expenses are 25,000$ for 2020 composed by the creation of the app, server, legal costs, marketing, and minimum salary.

The barriers to overcome are primary the money, contact with institutions, and coaching.

We are in need of money to invest in the app development, marketing, and business legal requirements. We have already started to create the platform to test it and provide the best tools and experience to the users, but we will need more investment to approach more people and make it useful to the ones inside. 

Besides, the image that The Elevate Prize can share about us will help us contact with institutions and organizations to provide resources to our users. The bigger the organizations are, the more contacts they can provide, and the more projects can be created by generating more solid collaborations.

Finally, our team is formed by a financial profile with experience in investments and project coaching. Nevertheless, a collaborator like SOLVE MIT can provide a third perspective far from our vision that will always improve the project in international, business, and sustainability areas.

We need money to continue developing our platform and make it more suitable to our public, and to invest in marketing and approach more people.

We need coaching to get out of our vision and improve the project with an external partner that can cover holes that we may not appreciate.

We need marketing to get to more users and institutions as possible. The bigger the network is, the more opportunities users will have to collaborate with diversity and create the solutions of tomorrow.

Basically, we would like to partner with organizations of two areas: philanthropy and social sustainability. 

Philanthropic organizations can help us give the economic opportunity that entrepreneurs and creative people from our platform may need to work on their solutions, and collaborators with deeper experience in the fields that some users may take.

By social sustainability organizations we will be able to connect people from poor countries or conditions with those with the opportunities of the first world countries. This might be the start of a more balanced world.