Founder of Camplus

I identified a three-fold issue with university life for students:

• Stress from academic pressure.
• Isolation from lack of community support.
• The struggle to balance work, life and studying.

These more abstract issues were caused by everyday annoyances that build up into big problems like having multiple places where critical academic information like schedules, assignments and updates were stored, making it hard to find what I needed when I needed it. The same was true for discovering social groups to join as they were advertised on random posters or disjointed social media posts. The biggest issue was the fact that email was the fallback for all communication meaning important updates were drowned out by badly formatted and totally irrelevant job ads I wasn't even elligible to apply for. But this issue of student experience didn't seem to be a priority for the university despite their mandates for improving student retention and experience. So began the years long journey of interviewing hundreds of students, educators, middle managers and eventually panels of executives to tie together the entire value chain of the university experience.

It became clear that to get the economic buyer (the university) to take notice, I needed to deliver them detailed analytics they couldn't get any other way to measure the impacts of their decisions, the sticking points in courses and the overall student experience. So Camplus evolved into an all in one mobile app for students to stay up to date with their academic, social and work lives and a platform for educators to interact with and understand their students in real time.

Through multiple pitches to university executives, potential investors and the startup community I honed my presentation skills and learned how to effectively communicate the value of my startup. I also got to work on my legal, financial and project management skills by drafting contracts with lawyers, developing various financial models with accountants and designing business processes with project managers. Most importantly I refined my team leadership skills managing a team of 6 people including marketers, designers and developers.