Pursuit
Pursuit is a digital platform that prepares creatives to launch successful start-ups through expert guidance and offers unique opportunities for investors and makers to bid on business concepts. Pursuit was created for the purpose of fostering connections between creatives, entrepreneurs, manufacturers and investors, to aid in bringing innovative ideas to life.
The Challenge
The objective was to discover an opportunity space in the social networking market through research, concept creation and business development. Create a social networking platform that meets an unmet need and plan for all stages of implementation and scaling.
Roles + Responsibilities
A rag tag group of design students paired together to develop a social network based on the sharing economy. The "dream team" included various design backgrounds and nationalities, creating an extremely diverse set of skills and knowledge. I mainly served as the project manager, coordinating, planning and facilitating meetings. I also contributed my skills as a graphic designer, copywriter and editor.
Process Overview
The project began by first defining the scope of the project, creating a research guide and gaining a better understanding of what it means to be a 'social network'. We then performed extensive secondary research which examined existing platforms and social networks. We also created detailed evaluations of selected networks in order to identify their potential strengths, weaknesses and any unique qualities. The next phase involved identifying a target audience and performing ethnographic research including surveys, interviews and cultural probes. Our goal was to gather first-hand information about our target group's needs, desires and frustrations with existing offerings. We then proceeded to affinitize our plethora of data from all sources...from which insights and opportunities were derived.
Problem + Opportunity Statement
There are an abundance of crowdfunding and information networks designed for entrepreneurs, however, there is not a platform that holistically supports entrepreneurs looking to launch their ideas into the market.
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There is an opportunity to create a platform for entrepreneurs that not only offers advice and/or funding but a holistic system including a business development framework, an advisor network, and bidding system that forges partnerships with investors, manufacturers, suppliers, and other professionals needed to actualize ideas.
Process: Target User Personas
In order to better understand the various groups of people our platform would be serving, we categorized our interview participants (and other relevant data) into six distinct personas. Each persona is a fictional person that represents several REAL people that we interviewed and gathered data from.
Process: Competitor Analysis
We spent a lot of time carefully analyzing and evaluating our potential competitors in the the social network space. We paid close attention to platforms that were already in the crowdfunding and entrepreneurial spaces (such as Kickstarter), and analyzed their strengths and weaknesses. This is what allowed us to be confident that Pursuit truly served an area (and target group) that was currently an unmet need. Later in the process, we revisited this portion of our research and made notes on each competitor's business model canvas and how it compares to Pursuit.
Process: Implementation Strategy
One of the last phases of our process was to determine the implementation plan for Pursuit, as well as a budget for each stage. We divided our implementation plan into four stages: Stage One - Share Ideas, Stage Two - Zero In, Stage Three - Pitch Ready, and Stage Four - Pursuit.
Pursuit Branding
Now that our Pursuit concept was in the development phase, we created corporate branding to bring the idea to life. Below is the Pursuit logo (created by Andrew Marco), as well as various branded items including the home page of the Pursuit website, corporate office, clothing, and business cards.
Process Book
Want to learn more? The Pursuit process book includes a detailed narrative of the process and methodology of the project.
The book also includes models and synthesis of data, resulting in insights.