I’m helping run a student business startup competition: Audacious. This year we’re experimenting with crowdsourcing: Audacious Skulksource. The system is 95% complete in terms of interaction design and functions, just missing some graphic elements and real text.
The objectives are:
- To provide a vehicle for student engagement beyond the entrants;
- To provide a vehicle for including Audacious in teaching programmes;
- To provide entrants the experience of managing marketing and narratives surrounding their business;
- To generate technical and commercial validation and feedback for the businesses;
- To provide a base for integrating social media into Audacious;
- To make greater use of the pitches (the details pages will be updated with the videos);
- To provide exposure for sponsors (commercial, academic and government);
- To provide a mechanism for formalising non-top40 participation with a repechage; and,
- To provide a mechanism to simplify logistics (especially when used for Round 1 in 2014).
We’re promoting the following as a simplified business analysis structure (toying with wording _ote). The design, of the front page (not shown) and especially of the Analysis screen (below) will reflect this sequence:
- Favourite (Favourote). Browse and thumbs up the businesses that look interesting on first glance. Random order (default) or sort by category.
- Analysis (Take note). Go through your favourites list and score according to simplified judging criteria (stars).
- Invest (Vote). Spend your 100 Foxbucks. (the slider bar – will be more aesthetically engaging).
- Promote. Send the ones you like to facebook and twitter. People who receive such messages can come back and vote once (for a “People’s choice”) or register and spend FoxBucks.
- Feedback (Quote). We hope to strengthen the start-ups by building community and advice around each one. This may be in the offer of technical advice, offer to be a first customer, or one-off suggestions.
The scoring system is based on set allocations within bands, and different weightings. This means that judges, lecturers (and their classes), entrants, sponsors and public can all participate equally (on the surface at least). Much thought has gone into making the game gameproof. The scoring will be hidden until after the final awards (so as to avoid a couple of front-runners getting all the attention).
The system will be shown at the Top 40 Awards on Thursday 30th May, used for the repechage by mid-June and used in full to support Round 2 in early July.
PS Skulk (noun) is a group of foxes. We know it has a negative verb, but think we can overcome that by always pairing as Audacious Skulksource
Computing for Sustainability 
David
May 29, 2013
Notes as I read through your post.
Simplicity is powerful. Trying to be all things to everyone is most often a mistake.
Feels like you’re designing an academic exercise. This is a mistake. Make it real. Otherwise the one’s that are destined to create something big will ignore and do their own thing, and it will just become an “exercise”.
I think you’re underestimating the real world opportunity here.
Why not think even more laterally. Forget the whole concept of a challenge and the history of being unable to pick “winners”. This is a big, hard problem that a judging panel will not solve. Ever.
Provide a platform to launch businesses.
Whatever you do, don’t build this yourself. You immediately reduce the chances of this being a hit. Fork an open source project like selfstarter.us and tweak. Run it like the real Kickstarter, for real rewards and dollars. i.e. businesses pitch their product or service, offering rewards (product, etc) for levels of support.
Your objective list is too diffuse. I’d suggest this:
Provide a platform that is tightly focused on launching an enterprise. Real dollars. Real rewards. The power of this is in it’s simplicity. Hit the site, you immediately understand what it is and it’s easy to back businesses. The question that needs to be asked at every point is, “Will this help launch a business?”. If no, don’t do it.
The collateral damage in doing this right are many-fold:
Businesses understand immediately the traction they have in the market (validation).
They get pre-sales and funds to get going with their business.
The great ideas are obvious from early in the piece. Absolutely essential that the “funding” progress is front and center.
The momentum created means businesses get going early.
I recall from 2011 an idea that I thought had legs …. rated 230th. The above scheme removes subjective opinion that have undoubtedly crushed interesting ideas.
Conversely, the ego boost given to lesser ideas upon subjectively “winning” a challenge don’t happen, which is equally powerful.
If you want broader engagement, then there is nothing better than a successful crowd sourced funding site. Just look at the stats around this. You will get broader engagement beyond your imagination – local and from further a field.
Forget including Audacious in teaching programs. Compulsion is a real negative for a program like this. The goal is not to “try to make” or “guide” or “advise”. The sole goal is to identify and nurture.
Don’t provide entrants “an experience”. Get them to do. Best learning experience ever.
Don’t try to integrate into the existing structure. Rebuild something better.
Exposure will not be your issue. And the relationship sponsors, if needed at all because of changing cost and income structures, changes. In 2011/2 we had a sponsored mobile development facility signed up before I was foreclosed. Bottom line is if you create something bold and successful, exposure is not your problem. Some leverage and choice of appropriate sponsors is also a side effect of this.
Cut the complexity. Choose the one signal that means the most and go with it. Back it. Or not. Trust me, this is important to get right. More options here will subtract from the power and success of the project.
Simplify, simplify, simplify. Make it real. Understand your focus. Get someone that understands how to build a culture of momentum to pull together the community. Get out of the way. And in this you have an interesting prospect that will do more for the individuals starting up, the city, and as a kick ass profile lifter / student attraction engine for the institutions.
I have a sense of deja vu …. followed by an immediate sense of frustration and loss. Audacious would have been there this year if the success of 2011 was recognized and changes that were required implemented. Hope you have a better outcome, but beware of the “committee”. It will make it beige. Be a pirate and and just get it done, with purity.
Samuel Mann
May 29, 2013
Thanks David. Your “will it help launch a business?” is indeed a very useful mantra. Some of the points you make are indeed what we are doing – such as the “experience of managing” vs making it real, just different language- they are doing, they are getting the experience. Also your not embedding in teaching – we’re trying to widen the engagement to include (some of!) the other 24K students, hence this will provide a platform for lecturers to use Audacious in their teaching (rather than compulsory entries – which I agree don’t have high frequency of success). As I’m sure you know, NZ legislation prevents actual investment in companies, so the next best thing is game investment, but this is really a vehicle for exposure and importance of building a support network around the young businesses.
I agree that Audacious has to be more than the challenge, it has to be about building the culture to support innovation and enterprise – the challenge has to be one of the tools to do that. Also, the inherent issue of the great idea (and more importantly, great person) not getting recognised in the early rounds. We hope a repechage, facilitated by Audacious Skulksource will lessen that risk.
David
May 29, 2013
Congrats Sam on pouring energy into this.
I suspect our language, and our understanding of that language are different. Very different. We come from different worlds.
Re crowd funding, it is in fact legal to fund a project, product or event in NZ. And soon also to fund a business capital structure for equity. But the later isn’t what you are attempting here so there are very few legal limitations on a crowd funding for real dollar model in this case.
The real issue isn’t so much the tools you use. A competition (the last thing we need is another competition actually), crowdfunding play, or dropping money from a helicopter. The real issue is providing some value here. There are a percentage of students that will startup regardless of what you do. Most probably the only one’s with the fortitude to get it done. The understanding around this is all about building a community and culture to draw in other talent and resources. The tipping point is a critical mass of smart groups that identify as part of a local community. This becomes self perpetuating. I really mean it when I say getting out of the way is the core skill in achieving this.
Look at the numbers still doing it that have been recognized through Audacious over the last 7-years. Ridiculously low. And most would have done it anyway. This doesn’t indicate an understanding of what the value is.
I’m very aware that even the goal of what the program is for is unclear.
I’d be more concerned with the precipitous halving of the participation in Audacious 2011 to 2013. This has little with what you do front end. Changing nothing and resonating with the dozen or so from each new intake that are doing it anyway is more important. Building community around them. Rinse and repeat. Not getting what I am saying defines the problem.
This might help with context: http://steveblank.com/2012/10/08/startup-communities-regional-clusters/
Too much personal energy expended already on this. I wish you luck.