YOONIFY

MAKING STUDENTS BETTER

http://www.yoonify.co
info@yoonifyr.com

GARRETH MCGREAL
LAURENT SPENCER
BLAISE TURIKUMWE

BUSINESS PLAN
FIRST DRAFT
VERSION DECEMBER 2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 / EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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2 / E-LEARNING MARKET ANALYSIS

3/ GENERAL COMPANY DESCRIPTION
4 / MARKET TRENDS & FORECASTS
5 / PRODUCTS & SERVICES
6 / STUDY OPTIMIZATION

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6.1 / STUDY GROUPS

7 / BUSINESS STRATEGY

7.1 / VALIDATED BUSINESS APPROACH

7.2 / FOCUS GROUPS
7.3 / PIVOT OR PERSEVERE
7.4 / UNIFYING CLASSES
7.5 / VALIDATED BUSINESS APPROACH

8 / TEACHER INVOLVEMENT
9 /BELGIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENT ANALYSIS
10/ MONETIZATION
11/COMPETITION
12 /THE YOONIFYRS

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/1/ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Yoonify as a concept was born as a response to the very real difficulties students are faced with throughout university

education. The success of a student overwhelmingly depends on his or her ability to successfully complete exams. Experience has shown us that access to quality summaries and notes are key to this success. For many, a disciplined and
consistent approach to university courses is difficult at best, resting in large part to the last minute collection of summaries from fellow students combined with their own. A students ability to write his own quality notes can vary tremendously from one student to the next.

Our aim at Yoonify is to meet this important demand by unifying university students in their preparation and collection of course summaries. After graduation, summaries are occasionally passed
down to the following years inevitably disappearing from circulation over time only to be
re-written anew by students and the circle of life for these summaries repeats itself with completely arbitrary and varying levels of quality. We believe
that by creating a functional platform that not only hosts these summaries permanently but
allows students to review and improve existing summaries, what will initially be a collection of
dozens of summaries, will over time be consolidated and improved into fewer and fewer summaries of increasing quality. Through an integrated system of participation and personal improvement we expect these summaries to organically
develop into a small handful of Super Summaries catering for varying learning styles. The implications of such summaries for each course hardly need mentioning.
We plan to make these summaries free to download for all students with a verifiable university
email address, to provide interactive rating systems, the wiki-model of participation and editing as
well as an elaborate and well researched Badge/reward economy (gamification) to encourage
participation from uploaders and downloaders and to reach our long-term goal of providing
these Super Summaries. By doing so we hope to improve the overall grades of students because
at Yoonifyr our vision is to make students better and deliver better grades.
The contemporary movement towards open source, open innovation, communities and sharing is
growing and making its way into a huge range of market sectors. The education sector is currently
experiencing a massive overhaul in terms of providing free education, optimizing the process of
learning and community sharing.

/2/ E-LEARNING MARKET ANALYSIS

Post secondary is one of the key sectors of the educational market, and one of the key
characteristics of the education sector is its large base of potential users.
The recent innovations within the technology infrastructure have encouraged many new learning platforms to develop. Learning Platforms are now one of the dominant sub-sectors in the
E-learning market. Self-paced learning platforms are leading this sub-sector.
Self-paced learning is education in which learners study at their own pace, without a fixed
starting date or regularly scheduled assignment completion dates in common with other students enrolled in the same program. However, there may be a fixed overall completion timeframe.
In an annual survey on the state of U.S-based online higher education, it was reported that 6.7
million students enrolled in at least one online course during the fall 2011 term. That is nearly
one-third of all students currently enrolled in some sort of higher education in the U.S.A
This post secondary / higher education market is a key target for Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs) or similar initiatives. The first providers in this field, Coursera, Udacity and edx, cover
college or university level courses with no cost for enrollment. Nevertheless, in mature markets,
specifically in the U.S. market, online courses are delivered by Universities, or similar institutions, to their students as well as to external users.
According to surveys - Learning on demand, in the U.S. post-secondary market:
Online courses are considered critical for the long-term strategy of the institution
Institutions acceptance of the value of E-Learning is growing globally
Academic leaders are starting to believe that online training is equally effective as, or more
effective than, face-to-face training.
Online training is considered strategically beneficial for students flexibility.
So far the focus has been on the U.S given its maturity, and while its difficult to reach similar
conclusions for Western Europe, the worlds second most mature market, its safe to assume
that the growth rate in this subsector in this region is currently slower than in the U.S.
According to an E-Learning Market Trends & Forecast 2014-2016 report; the worldwide market
for selfpaced E-learning reached $35.6 billion in 2011, with revenues reaching some $51.5
billion by 2016. The E-learning market is clearly expanding year-on-year, even though its difficult to compare market data coming from different sources. For example, if you include Gamification tools within the E-learning market, then the growth numbers are even more impressive.

Gamification tools and mobile devices play a major role as market drivers for the K-12 sector
(primary & secondary). These Gamification tools are particularly appreciated by K-12 teachers
and stakeholders, notably because of the mix of skills that can be empowered by playing a
single or social serious game. Many new and established companies are taking advantage of the
opportunity to move into this expanding market which has an estimated growth rate of 37%
CAGR by 2020.
According to TechCrunch, in terms of youth and education App downloads, the time that people
spend on mobile apps has already surpassed the time spent on web browsing. Within the K-12
sector, the most used mobile device is the tablet (including both cheap and high quality tablets).
All the players in this market are now rethinking their online offerings in order to be able to offer
more on these devices.
According to IDC, the number of PCs will fall from 28.7% of the device market in 2013 to 13% in
2017. Tablets will increase from 11.8% in 2013 to 16.5% by 2017, and smartphones will increase
from 59.5% to 70.5%.
Recent research has shown, for example, that smartphone owning workers are considered more
productive on the global scale. Workers say that they frequently rely on their smartphones as
productivity tools (or performance enhancing aids) during their working week. These figures
about employees behavior correlate with smartphone sales data.
The economic crisis has resulted, on one hand, in the revision of current public expenditure on
education and, on the other, in the definition of new strategies that build on the relationship
between skill acquisition and entering the labor market. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the K-12
sector has been overrun by a wave of modernization that has led to a growing interest in the
application of new technologies for educational purposes.The governmental point of view on
the relation between K-12 and technology is summarized in this statement from the European
Commission:
Today, new technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to make learning more effective,
inclusive and engaging. Digital technologies can improve effectiveness of resources through
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economies of scale, expanding
access to a wider number of people (e.g. through MOOCs and
other Open Educational Resources (OER)) at lower costs or allowing teachers to focus on what
they do best by automating or offloading more routine tasks.
ICT can be used to foster more creative and innovative methods of learning (including personalized and collaborative learning), and it has the potential to facilitate collaboration, exchange and
access to learning resources.

Thanks to the greater technological maturity trend in 2013 in the learning technologies sector,
the significant rise in the usage rate of videos among E-learning customer bases has been
evident. Ultimately, this is also consistent with the idea that learning processes need to leverage
humanization, and reduce the amount of flat and impersonal platforms.
Western Europe is the worlds second largest buying region for e-learning products & services
after North America.
The European education and training system is starting to embed digital technologies in its
training methodologies, but full acceptance of the use of these technologies in learning still
appears to be far off. Governmental surveys show that 70% of teachers in the EU recognize the
importance of training in ICT supported pedagogies, but their role in the development of a fully
digitalized school is still weak.
According to the European Commission, only around 30% of students in the EU are in digitally
supported schools and as many as 35% of students are in schools which exhibit both weak
policy and weak support for digital technology.A different scenario seems set to emerge in the
UK. The UK Government and other institutions are playing a big role in the creation of a cultural
background that is encouraging rapid growth in the market for digital technology in education.
The UK Governments Online Learning Task Force (which includes experts from Microsoft, Apple
and Pearson) recommended an investment of 100 million in online education in order to help
the nation build its brand, develop better online educational resources and become a major
international player in the distance learning market.
Many universities entered the E-Learning marketplace using non-profit models, leveraging
their knowledge of the traditional classroom and applying this to the E-Learning environment.
In particular, the MOOC market has grown vigorously. MOOC (massive open online course) is an
online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to
traditional course materials such as videos, readings, and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for students, professors, and teaching assistants.
MOOCs are a recent development in distance education which began to emerge in 2012.
Not only is there a proliferation of courses, there is now an expansion of MOOC platform providers and tools.Today, there are more than 2 billion potential learners around the world. With the
pricing structure of contemporary products, suddenly smaller companies are realizing that
there is a very low barrier to entry for them to have enterprise grade capability in this area.
According to Josh Bersin, the Founder and Principal at Bersin by Deloitte: While this is still a
young market, the demand is there and we expect it to grow exponentially in the coming
years.This market contains different business models, encompassing a wide spectrum of
approaches.

For example, there are The Disruptive Businesses (free-open access distribution) and the Education Giants (paid distribution) models. According to Forbes, there are several disruptive players
in the education market. All these players are running MOOCs initiatives. Some are completely
free, while others charge basic fees to students.
edX is a joint venture by MIT and Harvard to offer their courses online to a worldwide audience,
for free. The courses are not for credit, but the plan is to eventually award certificates of completion to students. The site launched in 2012.
Udacity is an online education platform. The site currently offers 14 courses focusing on computer science, math, entrepreneurship and more. Over 100,000 students have enrolled on their
courses globally.
Coursera is a free online education platform that features over 200 courses from 33 universities
worldwide. The site was launched in April 2012 by 2 Stanford University computer science
professors.
Knewton is an adaptive learning company that provides personalized web-based instructions
on a variety of subjects. It was founded in 2008.
Udemy is an online learning platform where experts teach courses on a variety of subjects.
Some courses are free, while others are fee-based, with prices ranging from $5 to $250.
Khan Academy provides free online education with a wide range of courses. Launched in 2006.
The site now contains over 3,400 lectures.

MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses for free to a virtual community of learners around
the world.
2U is an education-based tech-company that partners with universities to offer online
degrees.
iTunes U launched by Apple in 2007. The app offers free lectures from universities, museums,
libraries and other educational institutions. There are currently more than
75,000 files available for download.
Code Academy: A free online site offering lessons on how to code.
eCollege, a Pearson company that delivers effective interactive learning experiences to students around the world, powers LearningStudio and OpenClass.
LearningStudio is a cloud-based SaaS LMS that is intended to help institutions achieve their
financial and organisational goals.
Pearson LearningStudio offers service and support to institutions. In particular, that
support includes strategic guidance to improve the quality and efficiency of customers
educational programs. It helps users to develop custom-built solutions involving content,
technology and services.
OpenClass is a dynamic learning environment that helps educators bring social learning and
experiences to their students. Its open to everyone and free to use. It has applications in
Higher Education (especially for Academic Executives) and in Schools, as well as in the Private Sector (for Workforce Education as well as Professional development).
It has been estimated that by 2019 Half of all college courses will be taught online. Right now,
more than 4.6 million college students are taking at least one course online. For those students already enrolled at university, these online courses serve as complimentary assistance
in their chosen faculties.
With the inflow of an estimated $6 billion of venture capital over the past five years, E-Learning is being driven not only by startup dot-com entrepreneurs but also by big
corporations, for-profit spin-off ventures, as well as big and small universities.

/3/ GENERAL COMPANY DESCRIPTION

We intend to build an online web application that serves the purposes of an educational utility.
This digital hub will cohesively compound and aggregate essentials for university work. It could
be defined as a social learning platform, on which the success is predicated on fundamental
tenets and value systems such as solidarity, mutual value exchange, unity. The goal is to make
students better by virtue of interconnectedness, optimize academic performance and reward
students for their efforts . Being a direct-to-consumer brand allows us to take advantage of the
reality of technology to build a business and scale.
Internet access has dramatically diminished the value of being information smart and turned it
into a depreciating asset. The world is moving at a whirlwind pace and ones ability to not only
keep up with a rapidly ever-changing reality but to purposefully navigate under these circumstances falls under the umbrella of becoming a linchpin as Seth Godin would call it. A person
whos able to garner knowledge, gain mastery in his or her chosen field of interest will become
an indispensable player in the socio-economical system. We want to increase the retention of
study material, assimilate it to real-life applications, reconcile practicality with the academic
dimension of university education.
Creating lifetime value is of the essence. The demographic that our service/product is tethered
to, does not necessarily allow for such dynamics given that university ends at a certain point in
time. But what were striving towards is the instilment of receptivity to lifelong learning. Inspiring the students of today to cultivate a genuine curiosity and appreciation for education,
knowledge and becoming the best versions of themselves.
Its all about providing tremendous value to the consumer. Time allocation is the number one
finite resource that not only students care about but is a concern to everyone who ventures to
become a productive member of contemporary society. By conceiving a digital hub thats specifically built to facilitate a students ability to sustain their concentration, we aim to relinquish the
likelihood of engaging in distracting activities such as the consumption of online media and
fully focus on any given task. Social networks are not designed for university work. The nativity
of those platform is centered around entertainment, keeping up with your peers, trivia,...
This is arguably the worst environment to be in if youre trying to be productive. In the same way
Apple revolutionized the music industry with Itunes , we want to provide a worthwhile alternative that enhances peoples capacity to make sustainable decisions. People downloaded music en
masse before being offered a legal alternative to buy (individual) songs through a simple and
straightforward process.

Instead of bolstering a reality in which legions of students have no real concept of the
underlying principles behind academic success, we actively engage in a process of acknowledging the situation at hand and become the initiators of positive change. We aim to develop a
sustainable model that helps students step up as allies in a co-creative system where reciprocity
is involved. We want to raise the bar for what we understand and deem to be quality education
through deliberate seed planting. By building up energy, well empower struggling students to
achieve minor victories that give a sense of capacity and encourage the willingness to change
the dynamics of their academic performance.
The educational service industry in Belgium is slowly but steadily blooming. Whether its ventures like Stuvia and Graduator providing marketplaces for the exchange of study materials or
Noteble (community based and free). These are the three main players in Belgium.
On an international scope, there are more competitors (Chegg, Sparknotes, Coursehero,
Botangle) Theres a variety of existing products that have gained some traction and in the last
few months have adapted and improved, but those platforms are still incomplete.
By assembling an exhaustive utility that comprises tools that are crucial for academic
performance, students have one go-to place: an all-encompassing hub that makes their lives
easier. The overall stance is that technology is more than ever becoming an intricate part of our
daily lives. And every utility thats predicated on tackling inefficiencies in the marketplace has a
high likelihood of implementation and get the user to buy-in.

/4/ MARKET TRENDS & FORECAST

2014 has been an important year of change for European e-Learning. Europes leading e-Learning platform
conference expects a significant increase in the level of investor activity around both the educational and
training markets. To date the level of investment as a proportion of the size of the overall e-Learning market
has lagged other industry sectors. As access to capital improves from both financial and strategic investors, we
will see European EdTech firms beginning to build scale both in their domestic markets but also internationally.
1. Big Focus on User Engagement
In 2013, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reported that the online classes it offered had failed
miserably. Only about half of the students who registered ever viewed a lecture and only 4% completed a
course. Also in 2013, Times Higher Education published an article, based on a study of 29 MOOC courses,
which highlighted completion rates were below 7%.
The highest rate of completion was Functional Programming Principles in Scala from Switzerlands Ecole
Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, offered on Coursera, with 19.2% of the 50,000 students who enrolled
completing the course. Also, 5 of the Top 6 most-completed MOOCs relied on automatic marking alone,
meaning that no peer assessment was required. Courses that relied purely on peer grading generally fared far
worse in terms of the percentage of students reaching the end.
Although there is some debate as to whether we should expect high abandonment rates in e-Learning as
people are quick to engage with an exciting and cheap new resource but slow to complete, this should not
avoid the issue of assessing whether the content is fit for the digital environment in the first place.
It is highly likely that we will see the emergence of tools, interactive content and reward systems designed to
improve completion rates. From MOOCs to specifically tailored platforms, the emphasis will likely be on how
to make more effective use of this digital learning environment.

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2. Smart phone and tablet

According to Our Mobile Planet data for 2013: Smart phone and tablet penetration has grown strongly in
Europe. Currently, in the top five European Markets (EU5), smart phone penetration has reached
approximately 45%.
If we look at the younger age groups then we find the penetration levels dramatically higher with the level
rising to over 81% in the 18-24 age group.
With the rising availability and use of mobile devices within the primary, secondary and post-secondary
market, we will start seeing e-learning platforms focus on providing mobile content that can address the
e-Learning mantra of anywhere, anytime.
It is expected that we will see an increased supply of interactive content that can work with various systems
without requiring any special adaptations, and lite so that the streaming, download and storage experiences
are maximised on mobile devices.
3. The Rise of Data and Analytics
In 2013 Big Data was the buzz word. It was being spouted as the next big thing in pretty much every facet of
our lives. Education is no exception. However, for data to be useful we need to reach a tipping point of
collected and collated data that can be fed back into the system to be of functional use.
At present the data being collected around the learning process is not sufficiently widespread or meaningful,
except for on a very personal basis. In the UK for example, only a small number of providers, including SAM
Learning, Espresso Education and Renaissance Learning, have started to publish data from studies that
demonstrate that personalised learning can enhance academic outcomes.
Big Data in education is an enabler of adaptive personalised learning. We are beginning to see the arrival of
the data analysers who will have suficient data to drive adaptive learning programmes, provide meaningful
performance measurement statistics and guide e-Learning educational and training policy.
4. Mobile Casual and Informal Learning Apps
The pervasive use of mobile technology in our day-to-day lives provides ready access to
an always on learning device. In the top 5 European markets (EU5) an individuals smart phone usage has
increased on average by over 30% in the last six months.
According to Google, the typical smart phone owner checks their device 150 times a day!

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Where learning is embedded in daily tasks, we have an ideal environment for informal and habitual learning.
For example we have seen causal learning linked simply to the access code of your smart phone; every time
you access your phone you learn something new. We expect that there will be a significant increase in the
availability and use of casual and informal learning apps in education.
This trend is expected to accelerate further, with 40% of all ICT-based learning on
educational apps by 2020, up from 28.5% in 2012.
5. Peer-to-Peer Learning Platforms
The initial disruption of e-Learning was its ability to deliver one-to-many on a completely new cost base.
Stage 2 disruption is to harness the collective power of the users and create many-to-many or peer-to-peer
learning.
Peer-to-peer can address many issues such as content curation, problem solving, reviewing and assessing
course work.
The years to come will see Social play a big part in e-Learning development. Platforms will adapt to provide
users the ability to learn from each other within an organised structure.
A good example of this trend is the University of Liverpool with its virtual degree programmes, offered in
associate with Laureate, the US for-profit operator of private universities. Small classes of MBA students
interact entirely online during the course of their studies, with a network of 70+ professors around the world
available 24/7 to contribute to live debates on the MBA forum online
6. Increased Use of Video and Immersive Learning Environments
Over 6 billion hours of video are currently being watched each month on YouTube; thats almost an hour for
every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year. Video already plays a big part in the learning process
and is an obvious part of the success of the MOOCs.
Video learning formats have been shown to accelerate the learning process and are an attractive format to the
user. With the advances in software and 3D animation engines, the link between video and immersive environments is close, as can be seen in the video games market.
It is expected that there will be strong growth in video within e-Learning as publishers seek to transition
online. It is also expected that a range of exciting new immersive learning platforms that will bring skills that
have developed from the gaming world.

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7. Emergence of Learning Record Stores (i.e. transferability of gamified rewards)

The skill requirements in labour markets are becoming more complex and are changing
rapidly. The result is that learning has increasingly become an on-going requirement,
we continually need to update our skills whether this is simply to respond to the
advances in day-to-day software programmes or to learn new types of workplace or personal skills. Learning
is now a lifelong requirement, not something we can leave behind at schools and colleges. With lifelong
learning comes a need to record an individuals experiences and progress and so the need for Learning
Record Stores.
There needs to be a range of initiatives to address the need to quantify, track and share
Individuals experiences in both informal and formal learning.
8. Large Media Corporates Actively Investing in e-Learning
The digital transformation that has occurred more generally in the media sector has
provided a roadmap for some of the key issues that are being tackled by the traditional
providers within the education market: diversification of delivery platforms, proliferation of content, need
for digital interactivity and minimal costs of distribution, to name a few.
The experience of large media corporates in this digital transition means that they will look on the education
market as a sector in which they already have some very relevant skills.
By comparison, the share of digital in the global media industry is 30%, while the share
of digital in education is only 2% of the total education industry.We are expecting a considerable rise in the
level of investment into e-Learning in Europe from a range of large domestic and international media
companies.
9. Continued Growth in Online-Enabled Private Tuition (study group)
Continued growth is expected in private tuition delivered fully or partially online.
The capacity for university students to understand the education delivered can vary greatly, this has resulted in
an increased demand for private tuition delivered outside school hours.
Traditionally, the private tuition market has taken the form of one-to-one tuition delivered in person and
often in students homes.

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New delivery models that transcend individual provision by offering standardised or technology-enabled tuition
have allowed a step-change in provider growth, including the emergence of international learning centre chains,
such as Kumon, Kip McGrath Explore Learning and TES Brightspark. Elsewhere, Tutor Vista has created a
convenient, affordable service for children, providing unlimited (24/7) tutoring online, using tutors versed in
Western education, but based in India.
The advent of new delivery models is making the private tuition market accessible to new customer groups.
The traditional one-to-one model for private tuition excluded many potential users due to high prices. The
new models of centre-based private tuition, university-based private tuition and online based private tuition
are making private tuition affordable and accessible to new customer groups thus growing the market.
In 2014, we have see an increasing shift towards online-based private tuition, sometimes by integrating it
directly into universities. This can be evidenced by the recent launch of StudyRoom in the U.S which has so far
successfully tapped into this market on a university level.
Although relatively impersonal, this model is favourable from a cost perspective, for students and is growing
rapidly.

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/5/ PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Optimized summaries and intuitive user experience for students.
Benefits
Currently the process of sharing occurs through the deliberate initiative of each individual
through email, postings on Facebook groups and messaging services like messenger. How social
you are and which social grouping you gravitate around will determine the amount and quality
of content you receive. The process of collecting is more active in the run-up to exams, effective
collection methodologies take time to hone and penalize 1st year students in their 1st semester
for example. Given that Yoonify will be centralized and will incorporate optimized summaries
over years, summary collection will be simple and available from your first day.
Suffice to say that the summaries could and probably will be used throughout the year making
the learning process easier and more effective for those who choose, allowing those who
struggle with notetaking to concentrate more in class.
Simultaneously, we aspire to unify students and their teachers. Professors are to some extent
perceived as gatekeepers, meaning that the way they distribute grades largely determines the
advancement of your academic career. More often than not, students feel that their efforts have
not been adequately reviewed and evaluated. Feelings of divergence, antagonization and disparity are not uncommon. Notwithstanding the discretionary power theyre entitled to, we esteem
that a more open communication between both parties can mitigate frequently occurring
misunderstandings with regards to exams. Via forums and virtual spaces dedicated to Q&A,
a professor can effectively elucidate unclear elements.
e or she can proof-readsummaries and add comments via the wiki-model for example. Through
a two-way dialogue, transparency improves and both constituents achieve a far greater alignment of expectations. As a result of this partnership, the professors role as a lighthouse for
educational guidance is rightfully restored. Thanks to these undertakings, we move from the
paradigm of regarding teachers as mere transmitters and vessels of information to catalysts of
intellectual cultivation.
Features
As the name implies, Yoonify wants to unify university students away from an individualistic
approach and towards a more community based approach. In our effort to encourage this behavior we will be implementing review systems that allows students to rate summaries, comment
on them and edit them.

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Creating the necessary incentive to participate will be paramount. We are still in the process of
researching the optimal way use the badge/reward system and are inspiring ourselves from
Khan Academy, FourSquare, Wikipedia, Microsoft and Mozillas ambitious open badge system
to name just a few. We are also inspiring ourselves from traditional badge systems and ranking
systems like the military, scouts, sport rankings etc.
The pursuit of badges is often an end in itself and as such we are also inspiring ourselves from
the hugely successful badge systems in online gaming like World of Warcraft and similar
games.
For us it will be important to create value for the badges on a number of levels but also make
them transferable to a students C.V. or LinkedIn for example. Stating that you are a Team player
as a very simple example, could be backed up with the level of badges you have. The movement
towards such a reward economy is only just beginning to develop and we plan to integrate
ourselves into it. Formal credentials are a tangible yet somewhat of an abstract construct in as
much as they do not adequately reflect which competencies the student has developed over
the course of his education. Badges are information-rich and contain important data on the
users skill-set and ability, which is an invaluable remedy that employers and cv-assessors could
very much appreciate.

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/6/ STUDY OPTIMIZATION

A psychologist of university always gives the following advice at the introductory speech
of BBA students: just put in more hours of work. Whilst it is true that a greater input will
eventually reap more output, theres no actual strategy or gameplan being conveyed. A
student with a limited understanding of optimal learning processes relative to their
unique context can put in as many hours as he or she is humanly capable of, and still fail.
Working harder as an isolated advice is the counterproductive equivalent of telling a
person whos overweight to eat less. Eat less of what? What constitutes a healthy and
balanced diet? Should you consume less carbohydrates and more proteins? Are you highly
sensitive to glucose? How about cardio: high intensity training or long distance running? In
the following paragraphs, we will attempt to address an aggregation of parameters that
deserve our attention.
1. discipline & consistency: gradual assimilation of the material (small chunking as opposed
to thecounterproductive cramming) <> procrastination streamlining study habits.
Discipline in and out of itself can not be classified as an independent focus area, but should
rather be understood as an overarching skillset that permeates in a multitude of fields.
Whether you're a practitioner of a musical instrument, a sportsman, a painter, a teacher, a
student: there is no line of work imaginable where discipline is excluded as a chief constituent for excellence. This rightfully raises the question "What is discipline?". Rather than
relying on a generic definition, we favour a more holistic and intuitive interpretation of this
term: discipline is the ability to consistently execute any given task despite one's emotional
state at that time. Imagine coming home from work, you're tired, hungry and the last thing
on your mind is to drag yourself to the gym. If we forsake the narrow mindedness that
would lead to overemphasize the anecdotal character of these tellings, we
are able to gain tremendous insight in the basic tenets of human nature. Being the
biological inclination to minimize time and effort and maximize the output. Homeostasis is
a very powerful
thing. We don't want to exert more energy than we have to. It is therefore extremely difficult to
changr a habit since the old behaviour allows the brain to go on autopilot, thus minimizing
expenditure of energy.
2. focus: saying no to distractions and narrowing down your concentration onto one thing
<> busy work (reading while browsing the internet, responding to messages or compulsively checking your
phone) being able to sustain a concerted effort for a given amount of time

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3. planning & self-management: Simple/effective system to coordinate study habits. Harmonize academic obligations with other activities. Prioritizing. To-do lists, deadlines, etc
4. Notetaking optimization: enhance real-time understanding by virtue of active engagement with the course material
5. Taking tests well (answering the question correctly) + good exam strategy (i.e.: starting
with an overview of the questions, classify them according to the degree of difficulty, answering the easiest questions first,...)
6. Healthy lifestyle (regular sleeping habits, spending time outdoors and absorbing
necessary vitamin D, sports, eating good food with sufficient nutrients)
7. Good relationships & socializing (friends, family, social circle, being part of an organization,
volunteering...)
8. Hobbies
9. Study Progress & performance tracking
10. Learning analytics
11. Student collaboration & teaching others:
working in group for projects or courses/online vs offline

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/7/BUSINESS STRATEGY
1. Validation-based Business Approach
The Yoonify business development approach will be validation-centric. Without hampering our ability to
progress, each potential implementation will be validated as far as possible, ensuring as little time and
resources are wasted on the development of useless services as possible. Through the process of
questioning, engaging and listening to our users, we will strike a balance between what the users think they
need, and what we see as useful that they dont. This means that frequent interaction with the students of
BBA 1 and 2 (further subdivided into focus groups) is crucial, which will be incentivized by prizes and
leveraged through each members personal network within the classes.
Strategy - prepare, analyze, apply
In order to limit any waste of time and resources on the development of certain services, the hypotheses
underlying a service we deem adds value must be tested to ensure it actually adds value to the end-user. These
hypotheses give direction to the development and assortment of tools we would offer students, under the
grand vision of making students better.
Taking a statistical research approach, research questions have been formulated. They have been devised in
such a manner that the answers not only give us an indication of whether a service is deemed useful or not,
but how to adjust the service so it would become useful. The criteria for usefulness varies for different
services, but generally depends on the proportion of users who would make use of it.
Prepare
Asking the questions and collecting the data will be conducted through online surveys, using either Google
forms or Qualtrics. Spreading these surveys among our focus group will be done through the facebook
groups of each year and email list we collected. The data will be organised in tables, which allows for
qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Analyze
The data will be analysed using statistical packages such as SPSS or Fusion Tables. This will present
correlations, patterns, absolute and relative figures, which ultimately give a sense of usefulness, based on
which decisions can be made regarding further development of a service.
Apply
Quick feedback loops are key for fast implementation of changes based on the information provided by the
validation process. Some service developments will require a weekly cycle, where feedback, adjustments and
implementations happen within a week. Other validations apply to the long term strategy, and will thus only
be tested bi-annually.

19

The validation process applies to virtually all aspects of the business, here are some examples:
Platform -Would students use a forum/discussion board instead of email for FAQs?
Study Optimization & Study Groups -Would a time-tracker app be useful?
Advertisements -How often are summaries read? At what speed?
Teacher & University Involvement -Would teachers prefer to write the summary outline? Do crowded classrooms
affect students achievements?
2. Focus Groups
In order to study the differences among students and build a comprehensive, holistic service, the classroom
will be subdivided into several strata. Each focus group will serve as a benchmark to profile these different
types of students. Some examples of focus groups are high-achievers and those who fail courses, active
contributors and free-riders, age-brackets, and more. This profiling can be done through a questionnaire, and
by the close personal relation to the students we study with. Being part of the class facilitates other students
willingness for cooperation. The size of each stratum is determined according to the least threats to internal
and external validity of the research design, with a non-probability sampling method.
3. Pivot or Persevere
The core of our methodology is heavily inspired by the lean startup approach, a term coined and made
popular to mainstream consciousness by Eric Ries. He espouses that the number one problem entrepreneurs
struggle with is building something people dont want. In order to circumvent this commonplace pitfall, the
alternative at hand is to go through the process of validated learning: by bringing out a minimum viable
product that contains sufficient features to be brought out to the marketplace and testing this product against
reality. How does pivot or persevere fit in this equation? The answer is three-fold. Firstly we must look at
the definition of a startup, which goes as follows: A startup is a human organization attempting to build a
product or service under circumstances of extreme uncertainty. The last few words of this definition are
particularly illustrative of the importance of pivoting. Because you are dealing with unpredictable situations,
blind perseverance and execution of a predetermined strategy can prove to be a losing proposition. We must
therefore rely on interaction with the customer and feedback we are getting from the marketplace. In order to
gain more insight in the practical applications of a pivot, examples are in order. One of the most
outstanding examples that comes to mind is Nokia. The company started out as a finnish paper mill in 1865
and made rubber goods, consumer electronics, aluminium, robotics and telecommunication devices
throughout the 20th century. In 1992, they brought out their first mobile phone and shortly thereafter
decided to focus solely on this branch, resulting in the end of all other business activities. The original
conception of Viagra was to manufacture a pharmaceutical to alleviate heart disabilities. YouTube started out
as a video dating site. Flickr was a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). And lastly,
Groupon was initially conceptualized as platform to raise money or organize group activities. The list goes on
and on.

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The second element that further exemplifies the importance of a pivot is related to one of the fundamental
tenets of why youre building a business in the first place: Entrepreneurs more often than not identify a
problem, a need or inefficiency in the marketplace. In this process, there are a few key assumptions that are
being made, either consciously or unconsciously: you have a solution thats better than the ones currently in
place, your idea is unique and can be monetized, acquiring customers will be effortless because of the
superiority of your product, etc As long as these assumptions have not been confirmed through validation,
they remain hypotheses. Science teaches us that a hypothesis can only be confirmed or validated through
experimentation from which conclusions can be drawn. For this reason, it is of extreme importance to
identify which assumptions are being made and to classify them accordingly.
Yoonify originated from personal frustrations: there was no single utility that comprised all the necessary
functionalities that meet a students needs anno 2014. The disparity of different communication channels is
confusing and pose a hindrance to a students ability to be more productive and achieve academic success.
Wanting to remedy this obstacle presupposes certain things: the problems we are being confronted with are
applicable to a larger group of students. Students are willing to share their summaries with no remuneration
in counterpart (Yoonifyr is based on collaborative learning and solidarity). If presented with a worthy
alternative, people will steer clear from Facebook as a means to share documents and discuss questions
related to courses. Another assumption is that well be able to involve teachers to double-check documents
and thus guarantee the accuracy of the information. University has its own forum space that garnered
mitigated results. How will we be able to overcome this feat? And perhaps the biggest assumption resides in
the fact that we aim to make students better academic performers. A struggle educational institutions and
policy makers have been faced with for the last decades.
Furthermore, if your model of acquiring customers relies on virality loops, meaning that gaining a customer
requires a previous customer to act as a catalyst to invite them (e.g.: social networks and also applicable for
Yoonify), two assumptions are being made. Number one: we, as an organization, are able to captivate the
time and attention of a large group of people. Number two: that asset of engaging the eyes and ears of
numerous individuals can be capitalized upon and is of interest for advertisers and corporate sponsors. The
first assumption is obviously the riskiest one and must be tested out in that order of importance. Number
two is more likely to happen given the sheer volume of already existing examples like Facebook or YouTube.
An example of how you can validate the first assumption is by simply making a landing page to build
anticipation while the actual product is only in its conceptual phase. If you are unable to build excitement and
sell people on a non-existing product, building the actual product wont make a difference. Groupon started
out as The Point, a platform to raise money or organize group activities. Failing to gain traction resulted in
the course correction of their business model: they started offering coupons for pizzas. After receiving 20
redemptions, they had a starting ground for building a sustainable business. This bears the question: When
should you pivot? Whenever the process of product optimization indicates a decrease in effectiveness, you
should consider a pivot. One of the most notable pivots in recent history is Instagram (previously Burbn) and
was originally conceived as a native iPhone app that allows you to check-in to places and make plans. They
put in a year of work into building the actual product and attempted to capitalize on the popular
phenomenon of geolocation, competing with established entities like Foursquare and Gowalla.

21

Coming to the realization that the user interface was cluttered and overrun with features,
they performed a zoom-in pivot: a single feature of the product became the entire product.
After 8 weeks, Instagram was born. They had 100 000 users in the first week after their launch and
sold for over 1 billion dollars after 500 days.
In another (fictive) example, you might be building a social learning platform for university students and
during that process, you learn that youve identified a pertinent problem with an adequate solution but the
end-user appears to differ from the one who was initially anticipated. The product hypothesis has only
partially been confirmed. So instead of servicing students, you might pivot to build a tool that facilitates
communication between teachers and their students. This is called a customer segment pivot. !
Your vision is your north star goal, it is not subject to change. Our goal at Yoonifyr is to make students better.
The strategy refers to how that vision will be actualized: for example by facilitating the process by which students
share and improve course materials. And the product is the tool or utility that will be used as a medium to achieve
the aforementioned endeavors. The product changes constantly through tweaks, iterations and optimization.
Up until this point, we have mainly given attention to the importance of a pivot. Pivoting in no way, shape or
form equates to throwing out everything and starting over tabula rasa. Rather, it is the process of coursecorrecting
your current strategy to the feedback loops of reality as a result of validated learning. !
In the latter part, we will briefly discuss the general principles and (potential) benefits of perseverance. An
example that comes to mind when discussing this subject matter is Apple. During the early years of the
second millenium, music labels and corporations were faced with the backlash of piracy and peer-to-peer
download. Many rose to the occasion to find a viable solution but even industry giants like Sony or Microsoft
were unable to overcome this. As history goes, Steve Jobs famously revolutionized the music industry with
iTunes. A legal alternative to online piracy.
In the context of attempting to build a sustainable business, perseverance makes complete sense. If it was
easy, everyone would be able to do it, the barrier of entry would be low and the economy would flourish
thanks to the many successful ventures out there. But reality dictates otherwise. The number of SME's that
go out of business in the first 3 to 5 years are in the upper 80 percentile. While we could dedicate an entire
book to the underlying causes (which has been done in Michael E. Gerber's book the E-myth), we'll briefly
touch on this subject matter for the purpose of these writings. Times have never been so attractive to start a
business. With the existence of the internet, the net cost of infrastructure has been substantially lowered.
Movies like the social network or success stories portray a misguided perception of entrepreneurship. But
we tend to forget that for every Instagram, there's a counterpart of a thousand failed businesses. And in the
same manner entrepreneurship is conveyed as an enticing and attainable endeavor, perseverance is equally
subject to inaccurate depictions. Perseverance is a tool amongst many others. Without vision, attunement to
one's environment and acute understanding of the reality of the marketplace, perseverance is futile. !
One could say that being an entrepreneur requires many skills and mindsets. Perseverance and patience are
perhaps the most important ones since you're dealing with circumstances of extreme uncertainty.

22

There is no preliminary way to assess whether your product or service is worthwhile until you ship and get feedback.
Conversely, your belief and conviction about what you're building might not be reflected in the customer's
initial behaviour. Or you have to deal with setbacks of losing a valuable member of the team, not being able
to raise funding, slow revenues, hiring the wrong person, etc
Where most people fold, entrepreneurs go the extra mile and thrive. It is only through challenges that one's
tenacity can be strengthened. It's about having a strong stomach and not succumb or be crippled by the first
sight of adversity and setbacks. Perseverance is about believing in the value you have to offer, kindly ignoring
the naysayers while being sensible to constructive criticism, and giving your surroundings the time to become
an outward manifestation of what you hold to be true. In team sports there are different kinds of coaches.
Some trainers prefer heavy preparation and whiteboard strategizing. While other trainers are more inclined to
minimize preparation and counteract in the moment. Startups require a bit of both. Failing to prepare is
preparing to fail, as the dictum goes. But making halftime adjustments is of equal importance. !
4. Unifying classes
The Yoonifyr spirit of collaboration and unifying students will be weaved into the classroom fabric by
bringing students in on Yoonifyr projects from the beginning. As part of the programme at different faculties,
students have to work together on yearly projects. Having been in contact with several teachers and project
coordinators, they have been willing to incorporate Yoonifyr specific projects, such as market research or
web-development, as part of the yearly projects students have to do. This means that our team will be
working closely with different teams at various faculties. Some examples follow:
BBA second year
During the yearly project Company Screening, students are tasked with analyzing the management of a company
according to McKinseys 7S model. Having the functioning of our team analysed may point out valuable
learning points, and in return, we provide them with front-seat insight into how a startup can be built up.
BBA third year
The course Research project economics and management has students set up and work out a limited quantitative
research project. This research is primarily focused on analyzing business process problems. We have already
secured eight high-performing students to accept a research project that Yoonifyr has determined for them
for its own use.
MBA & MIBEM
In the MBA programmes students have several practical projects. For the course International marketing the
students will be asked to write an international marketing plan. More specifically, the students will be asked
to randomly pick a company, analyze this company's current offerings, and analyze how this company can
enter a new market. Such research may set a useful framework for expansion across Europe.

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The Project Management course analyses the life cycle of projects, which can provide useful insights based on
which we can make informed decisions relating to the planning, execution, and time-span of various projects.
As part of the master thesis, students can opt to formulate the pricing structure of a company. This could be
discussed with the thesis coordinator, and proposed to master students.
IT-faculty
During the second year of the applied computer science programme, students undertake a project-based
approach in most courses (database and application development, and many more.) During the third year they
apply more advanced knowledge, also in a project-based capacity. Having been in touch with the programme
coordinator, we have recently offered the option of becoming a developer/intern at Yoonify to the students.
One experienced IT postgraduate student has offered to take on a mentor role for the developers who would
work as part of their yearly project. This will allow the congruent development of the platform, along with
the business side of the startup. As of yet, two interns have joined the team. The
5. External Parties
here are several people closely connected to Yoonify in various capacities. A respected business consultant
at Accenture is giving us guidance relating to our Minimum Viable Product, strategy, milestones and other
business aspects. An accredited web developer has coded the first version of our landing page and is giving us
further development recommendations. Two more professional developers, with a focus on front-end design
and ERP systems respectively, have so far given recommendations for the platform development and have
committed to continue doing so by way of three hours a week. Relating to business aspects such as legalities
or the incorporation process, some faculty teachers have expressed their willingness to provide assistance.
These people close to Yoonify may retain their advisory capacity as such, but we aim at forming a more
permanent Board of Advisors.

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/8/ TEACHER INVOLVEMENT

Professor involvement will be an important addition to Yoonify and we envisage two ways
professors could participate.
Firstly through an optimized forum that professors actively engage in and secondly through
their participation in the development of super-summaries.
We will not over-elaborate the envisaged forum in this business plan given that we are only in
the early stages of collection and research. Our plan is to implement an initial skeletal
framework at the beginning of the next academic year.
Suffice to say that we have already started compiling the huge numbers of practical questions
pertaining to coursework. Interestingly, these questions are frequently repeated on facebook
groups in each individual year i.e. BBA 1, BBA2, BBA3, MIBEM. We hope to stock them
permanently in an accessible format that will gradually reduce the need to ask these questions, storing them in such a way that they are accessible immediately and do not depend on
the often slow response from fellow students or the limited facebook search function.
When a person needs a solution can vary greatly over the semester making the systematic
storage in an easily accessible format fundamental.
Furthermore, it should be clear that students answering students has its limitations. Comment
sections to responses can often become a discussion about the correct solutions.
Some responses are plain wrong.
If professors could be encouraged to participate in this process, not only would the solutions
be vetted by professors but they would be permanently stored, over time reducing the
involvement professors would need to invest.
Efficient and optimized forums certainly have their place on Yoonifyr, but our focus in terms of
teacher involvement this academic year will be centred around summaries.
The organic process through which the summaries will in principle develop needs to be
facilitated by the integration of a Wiki model form of curation. This implies that additions or
changes that are made will be on-hold pending a moderating process. Professors could play a
central role in this moderating process.
We make the assumption that if enough students of a particular course are unified into one
space, teachers may feel compelled to encourage this innovative way of coordinating students
to improve their overall grades. The idea is to engage professors and initiate them to a disruptive model of the status quo.

25

Added value for both the teachers & students

Off course we are looking at all the different ways wikipedia facilitates this process and have
been able to glean several alternatives, however, by integrating professors not only will the
teacher/student engagement be stronger but the mere fact that improvements are vetted by
a member of faculty would instill a stamp of confidence in the summaries themselves, in turn
strengthening the process.
The impact of such a process is not perfectly clear to us yet. However, we envision a scenario
where professors automate or offload the more routine tasks allowing for a narrower focus on
certain topics, providing more case studies in class or have more open question times etc.
Yoonify could become an additional teaching tool for professors if they encourage students to
use it and participate in it themselves.
In terms of the envisaged forum, we strongly believe we can limit the amount of emails
professors receive from students, with the obvious beneficial consequences for professors.
Having already approached some professors to get a sense of what are the types of emails
students send and when are those emails at their most frequent, our feedback was consistent.
Every year professors will receive numerous emails that are similar or identical to previous
years and the process repeats itself. The emails are apparently at a peak in pre-exam periods. It
is conceivable that a well established forum that professors are a part of and that builds itself
over time will diminish a student's need to get in touch with professors. Some
professors have already agreed in principle to compile and send us the frequently asked questions from previous years.
Again though, the forum is not central to our initial MVP and as such will be more a process of
collection and insight e.g. through our large-scale research project, manual collection of
questions, teachers providing us with the faqs etc.

26

Strategy of approach
It will be important to develop a process that is both manageable and requires only modest
involvement from the professors point of view.
We understand the need for a functional process that can be seamlessly integrated into a
professors existing communication and working methods. An integrated web application that
sends notifications to professors about changes to the Super-Summary is a realistic strategy.
Existing technology has made such a process not only feasible but relatively easy.
To date we have approached only one professor about participating in the summary making
process. It may not be indicative of future attempts, but the professor in question has committed himself to help us. As such, we have already prepared what we believe is close to being a
super-summary. We will start testing workable processes by testing various two-way communication methods using traditional methods of communication to begin with.
Gradual changes to our own summary will be made to test the professors actual involvement
and utility with a view to streamlining the process as much as possible all the while minimising the time professors need to invest. Through a trial and error approach we hope to create
an overarching template for future professors.
Our timeline is to test one summary throughout the first semester, possibly longer. We have
already started making appointments with our various professors to talk about our idea. The
aim is to get a pre-validation of our assumptions with a view to committing three more professors to participate at a later stage using the methods we have learned from our initial testing
phase. Launching the programming of an integrated web application for professors is not
foreseeable before next academic year.

27

/9/ BELGIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENT ANALYSIS

Number of university students in Flanders: 92.000

Number of university students in French speaking community: 77.000

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Success rate of students in French speaking community for their first year of
Bachelor: 40%

Evolution of the number of students:

French speaking community:
60796 students in the year 2000
to 77346 students in the year 2010
With a growth of 5% between 2009 and 2010

29

Our results show us that our current market size, which is the number of students in
Belgium is growing. In 2008-2009, the number of students in Belgium was 169.000.
The current success rate for HUB and the French speaking universities is 40% or less
which shows a potentially huge interest for the 60% that fail. Equally, the 40% that
succeed want to use our services because they see the quality of it and want to
improve their grades. Finally, universities will see the potential of Yoonify to improve
their success rate as well as the level of their students.

30

/10/ MONETIZATION
In determining a way to monetize Yoonify we considered various possibilities. This included the model
where a market was created for the sale of summaries with Yoonifyr receiving a commission on every
transaction like stuvia.com. We are also currently working on a much needed market place around the
facilitation of tutoring for students. As such, we are looking at various ways to monetize it like
getstudyroom.com is doing, but given that we need to do a lot of testing we have decided to focus our
attention elsewhere in the early stages.
Inspired by ZeroCopy, we have decided that the fastest way to generate a revenue stream will be to provide
advertising on our summaries. ZeroCopys model provides free printing to students by subsidizing the
printing costs with advertisements on each page that is printed. They also implement a very rudimentary
form of ad targeting.
Whilst this model is ingenious it is fundamentally similar to Google Adsense in that is provides loosely
targeted advertising on each page like on websites. We believe this advertising model is sterile. It fails to
properly connect with potential customers, lacks vision and innovation.
We have conceived of a new and exciting way for advertisers to engage with their potential customer base on
Yoonify. Of course this needs further research and needs to be tested, but we are confident that we have hit
on something very important.
Unfortunately, we are cautious to share the specifics of our idea until we have looked into protecting it
through NDAs. Given the extreme proximity of many of our competitors, it would be extremely unwise not
to take precautions.
However,this does not necessarily alter our projections.
The numbers given here are broad, limited in their research but give a general indication of what could be expected.
We plan to make deeper research to get more precise numbers and have more detailed data for our
advertisers.

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Initial hypothesis:
75% of students from HUB will subscribe and use Yoonify
HUB has around 7000 students
Average number of courses per year at HUB: 175
Average number of times a student reads a summary: 46
Average number of pages per summary: 507
On average, 50% of students who succeed will have gone through retakes
On average, a student will have 4 retakes
From these numbers, we can calculate the number of pages that will be read by students from HUB within
one year.
7000*0,75*4*50*(17+1,8*4)10 = 25.410.000
We will continue on the basis of having 1 ad per page.
The valuation methods used for our ads will be: CPM ( Cost Per Mille )
CPM reflects the cost per 1000 estimated views of the ad
The value for CPM varies between 0,16 and 12

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New initial assumptions

- On average, 10% of students will change their purchasing behavior as a result of the ads
- 10 companies will advertise on our summaries
- Companies offer 4 CPM !
Number of students affected by ads: 7000*0,75*0,1= 525
Average number of times an ad from a company would be seen by a student per year: 417
=> 29.190.000/7000/10= 417
Number of yearly ads for each company: 29.190.000/10 = 2.919.000
Yearly cost for each company: 2.919.000/1000*5 = 14595
Yearly income for Yoonify: 14595*10 = 145.950
Amount a student needs to spend monthly as a result of the ads so that all companies break-even:
145.950/525/12 = 23,2
Given the companies we will contact would be aimed at all different aspects of a students life ( food, drinks,
sport, leisure, transport, lodging ), we would expect a much higher figure than 23,2.
If this turns out to be true, the financial incentive for companies to advertise on Yoonify will be important.
The CPM charged would be directly related to the impact the ads have on the sales of the companies.
The price therefore would need to be determined by trial and error.
We must be aware that these figures are only for HUB. Our vision is to scale up to all Belgian universities and
eventually internationally.
Very hypothetically, if we scale up our previous calculation, with all previous assumptions, from HUB, to
Belgium. The potential yearly income from ads would be:
145.950*169.000/7000 = 3.523.650
Let us mention once again that all this data needs to be improved through research, analysis and surveys.
This year, we will be following the course Business project: Business Plan given by Professor Dentchev. We hope to
be able to work on Yoonify for this project which would bring a more professional and academic approach
to all our financial projections.

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Non exhaustive list of potential companies for ads

- Exki ( healthy fast food )
- Foodmaker ( healthy fast food )
- SPA ( water company )
- Ridley ( bike company )
- Cote dor ( chocolate and other similar food company )
- Belgacom ( Telecommunication company )
- Kinepolis ( Cinema - entertainment )
- Bozar ( Theatre, exhibitions, events entertainment )
- Brik ( housing for students )
- Jetairfly ( Low cost airline )
- ING ( bank with services for students )
- VILLO ( cheap bikes subscriptions in Brussels )
- SNCB ( trains )
- STIB ( Metro tram bus in Brussels )
- Colruyt ( Cheap supermarket )
- TIFFIN ( food )
- NALU ( energy drink )
- Newtree ( chocolate and more )
- Bionina ( Fruit juices )
- Cameleon ( fashion, clothes online )
- PIZZA.BE ( food delivery service )
- KARZOO ( car pooling )

34

/11/COMPETITION
WHO WHILL BE COMPETING WITH YOONIFY?
The market for online platforms aimed specifically at university students is growing at an
impressive rate. Since we conceived of Yoonify 6 months ago we have seen many startups launch
with similar concepts. In Belgium alone there are a number of similar platforms as Yoonify
currently attempting to find their place in this new market.
The main market is for summaries, however many of these startups have gradually begun
incorporating additional functionalities to aid students. In fact, many of the weaknesses we saw
in their models two months ago have been improved through the integration of strategies and
ideas we have always planned for Yoonify.
As such, we have already had to adapt the analysis of our preliminary business plan dated 17th of
August about competition weaknesses, as well as having to add a number of new startups to our
list of competitors. The advantage of this has been to push us to further improve our initial ideas.
Although we believe the quality of content, the user experience and the overall image/brand will
be essential to ensure a sizeable proportion of the market, we are acutely aware that the platform that delivers better grades to students i.e.the end-results will clinch an important place in
the market.
As of yet most of our competitors are in a nascent stage but are developing, growing and adapting fast. Time is clearly of the essence.
Major competitors
The following is a list of those online platforms that are very similar in concept to Yoonify.
They are listed in order of geographical proximity and category. The list is not exhaustive, but
only those platforms that we feel could compete with us have been added. The level of competition varies greatly amongst this list from hubrussel which competes by virtue of its proximity to
studyroom which competes in terms of our vision.
We are also aware that our concept appears in fact to have become a movement, as such we have
probably yet to see more platforms surface from around Europe. We are now following this new
market very closely and are signing ourselves up to as many competitors as possible, gleaning as
much insight and ideas as possible. The following is what we have been able to ascertain after a
straightforward site navigation. We are currently working on a more in-depth analysis of our
competitors.

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Whilst most universities have integrated platforms that amongst other things aim to help
students organize themselves, the following are those that we deem have placed more focus and
attention on developing
student success.
HUB has a platform that allows students to upload and share summaries. It advertises itself as a
platform for students by students. This platform also has a forum that in some instances has
generated reasonable participation. As such, we are competing for exactly the same students
within HUB. hubrussel.org has the advantage of being part of the university i.e. receives funding.
They can leverage the universitys servers, offices and advice. They have recently begun placing
advertising on their site through google adsense which will start to generate a modest revenue.
However, in almost 3 years of existence they have failed to garner important user support for
their initiative. Furthermore, the quality of the forum and summaries is very limited. They recently
tried to revamp interest in the site but it remains almost empty of content and traffic.
It is also worth noting that some professors at HUB have also tried to set up similar ideas into
Toledo that would allow students to collectively write-up summaries through a Wikipedia
plugin. This initiative has been negligible at best.
Republicae is an initiative by students at ULB. The recently launched platform initially integrated
itself into ULBs servers, but at the request of ULB is now setting itself up as a stand-alone platform. Republicae is trying a new platform model which is in Beta testing at the moment. The site
provides summaries, forums and actual course documents e.g. slides, readers etc. Importantly,
they have secured sizeable support from professors. As far as we have been able to ascertain they
are not receiving any funding from ULB, nor have they developed a revenue stream.
Icheclife similarly offers summaries. They too are integrated into ichecs internal system and it
would seem, like hubrussel.org, that they are being loosely supervised and funded by ichec. There
is no apparent revenue stream that we are aware of. These platforms also provide campus news
which in our opinion distracts students from essence of their needs.
An important weakness of theirs relative to Yoonifys stand-point is that these platforms are
limited in terms of their scalability. Additionally, it would appear that the management of these
sites is transferred as and when the existing management team graduate.
These local examples serve to highlight that universities worldwide are taking similar initiatives.

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Noteble and StuDocu will in principle be our most direct competitors. Both set up by KU Leuven students, they
went live in the early summer of 2014.
Noteble are providing free downloads of summaries that students upload in return for possible prizes and
rewards. In the last few weeks they have integrated an editing procedure. Whilst it remains to be seen, we are
lead to believe that they are aiming for the organic development of summaries into one Super Summary
like Yoonify. Also in the last few weeks, Noteble introduced a simple but functional badge/reward system to
generate and encourage participation. The speed at which this method will be effective wholly depends on the
quality of the incentive system that is incorporated. As things stand though, their gamification process is in its
infancy. We have also been informed that they are considering placing advertising on their summaries similarly
to Yoonify. Noteble has the advantage of having an ICT programmer as part of the founding team. They
also have the advantage of being live for the last three months, in that time registering over 1000 students.
For the moment they are limiting themselves to students in KU Leuven and there is no indication if they are
considering scaling beyond or abroad once they have consolidated those students. We are positioning
ourselves as though they will be scaling beyond KU Leuven.
The important weaknesses we could determine from their platform appear to have been corrected over the
last month. That being said, we need to see how well they implement these new additions.
StuDocu is very similar in form and content. Also based at K.U Leuven, StuDocu is trying to scale fast by
collecting as many different summaries from as many different universities as possible. In fact, in february of
last year they scraped HUBs site for student emails in which they were asking for summaries and notes. They
were eventually blocked by HUB but this indicates that they have been on a large scale collection spree. They
are attempting to provide their services to multiple universities at once. Additionally, they are collecting a large
number of past exam question which will be at the disposal of students. Again, a big advantage they have is
that they have programmers amongst the founding team and been live for a few months now.
We are paying close attention to both these platforms because they are both directly competing on the same
campus. It will be very important for us to see how this competition develops.
The following platforms both working the Belgian market fall in a separate category by virtue of their
business model which differs from Yoonifys :
http://www.graduator.be
http://www.stuvia.com/
Stuvia and Graduator have a business model that we have excluded from our consideration. Whilst they
provide a platform to upload summaries, to download them you need to pay. The reason we quickly
dismissed this model is because it is contrary to the ethos Yoonifyr wants to create which is that of unifying
for the good of all and free for all, also allowing editing features to continually improve the summaries over
time. Furthermore we believe students will in their large part be turned off by having to pay. A further
complication is protecting the summaries from being shared after having being bought, which is next to
impossible.

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Even a cloud-based leasing model with encryption can be overcome easily. In terms of the user
experience and participation they have tried to implement a poorly conceived badge/reward system that fails
to seize on the enormous potential of the burgeoning badge economy. The platforms in themselves are
marketplaces/search engines that bundle everything together making it a somewhat sterile tool that doesnt
foster the sense of community and feel that we believe is paramount for students and their participation.
The three following startups are based in the U.S. and only cater for U.S students so far. Their platforms are
the ones that most resemble Yoonifys vision:
https://www.getstudyroom.com/
http://openstudy.com/
https://www.coursehero.com/
The three are relatively similar in scope, but we consider StudyRoom to be the closest platform to our vision
for Yoonify. They started testing their Beta site late 2012 eventually running trials of their program in six
universities reaching 40,000 students across the U.S. It advertises itself as a platform for social, peer-to-peer
learning. They launched publicly on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage at the beginning of september 2014.
Their minimum viable product is to take student study groups and tutoring online, make them more social
and receive commission on the tutored group sessions they have facilitated. They also have shared summaries
and forums as well as a number of small applications we are planning for Yoonify. They claim to have now
launched at 100 universities and supposedly have over a quarter million students signed up so far. From what
we have been able to discover, they already have $500,000 in venture capital funding. The biggest advantage
they have is that they have already introduced many of the functionalities Yoonify plans to implement. Also,
the buzz around their platform has reached a tipping point where students are flooding to their website to see
what the hype is all about. StudyRoom is also working in the U.S market which is more mature than Europes. It
was always our intention to draw student away from facebook as a tool to organise themselves with other
students. Central to this was Yoonifys professional work focused approach i.e no random conversations,
photos, parties etc. Those things have a place: Facebook. University work & studying has a place too:
Yoonify. It would seem that StudyRoom on the other hand is encouraging a new social media for students,
which has the potential to detract from the necessary focus we believe is required and can become quite
cluttered visually and practically. In our opinion the real strength they are developing is the community aspect.
We understand the importance of creating a community as a living organ and not a simple buzz word within
Yoonify. Copying ideas is easy, replicating communities is not. Moving study groups online as well as having
online tutoring is an important part of our vision. However we are only beginning to develop a strategy to
start testing methods that could function. We are clearly far behind, but we know that the distance factor will
buy us time. The next disadvantage we face because of StudyRoom is that our competition can incorporate a
lot if not all of these ideas, effectively our ideas. And they are already live.

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Whilst we are entering what will no doubt be a very competitive market, it is overwhelmingly in its nascency.
There are important aspects of our vision at Yoonifyr that have yet to manifest themselves on our
competitions platforms. We believe that most competing platforms are on the right track but are lacking
some fundamental integrations and utilities. How quickly our competition realises what these additional
opportunities are will determine how quickly we can catch up.
In terms of the initial ground work central to our MVP, we have successfully collected a huge number of
summaries for our Beta testing group i.e the BBA course for 1st, 2nd, 3rd year and Masters year.
We still need to develop a well thought out strategy for it, but we plan to begin a massive summary collection
undertaking through all the different AIESECs, MUN's, MEU's and their networks in Belgium given our
intimate ties with them. This will further include Alumni, and all the student organizations we can get into
contact with.
Any platform that tries to create a community of this sort must get the user-experience absolutely right and
offer practical and effective solutions to their needs. Success at University is not limited to summaries.
Summaries are in effect only part of a series of pains that have no existing solutions tailored specifically to
solve them.
Offering optimized summaries to students and advertising space to businesses is Yoonifys minimum viable
product. We are developing a number of vital additional features that we plan to incorporate into Yoonifyr
once we have consolidated our minimum viable product. The eventual scaling of Yoonify in terms of
functionalities will only strengthen our community making us much more than just a platform to download
summaries all the while building on our vision to make students better.
In sum, we believe that the platform that can deliver better grades to students will ultimately be in the
strongest position

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/12/ THE YOONIFYRS

Before we launch into an individual representation of Yoonifyrs constituents, we deem it necessary to give a
philosophical depiction of the values each member of the team ought to embody. Our vision is to make
students better, and the founding members are in no way, shape or form exonerated from this duty. If
anything, company culture trickles down from top to bottom, hence further intensifying the exceptional
responsibility that lays on the founders shoulders. In our aspiration for excellence, we have chosen to
surround ourselves with peers who had proven themselves in different contexts. Not only did we regard past
experiences, but we also tried to discern potential that could be actualized through Yoonifyr as a platform for
growth and a vessel for greatness.
Yoonifys core team is composed of five members. Each member was hand-picked with a view to creating an
All-Star team. The choices were heavily influenced by our professional experience with each other.
The two founders, Blaise Turikumwe and Garreth Mc Greal, have already worked very successfully together
in their capacity as Vice President and team member respectively of external relations for AIESEC. Beyond
this role they were both heavily involved in the burgeoning startup scene at their University, frequently
meeting together until an idea with genuine potential drove them to launch Yoonifyr.
Blaise Turikumwe is a law student at K.U Leuven Brussels Campus. His background in law has been a
fundamental asset to the anticipated corporate legal structure, intellectual property rights, NDAs, Articles of
Association etc. Beyond university, Blaise has consistently balanced university with professional work outside
university. He is currently working at Amplifon in the customer service department. He also successfully
concluded an internship at Ergonomic, a web agency based in Brussels, where he fortifies the team by establishing business
expansion opportunities in the Flemish marketplace.
These two previous years he successfully balanced the additional responsibilities and pressure of vice
president at AIESEC. In his role as vice president he reoriented an ineffective department into one of HUBs
success stories.
Garreth Mc Greal is a business student at K.U Leuven Brussels Campus. Last year, beyond his role at
AIESEC he co-founded the HUBs Model United Nations. In a matter of months, he was central in turning
HUBMUN into a well structured and respected organization. The status was such that HUB were happy to
provide financial aid to send HUBMUN members to the European Summit in the Hague, a privilege that is
only given to those organizations that the university deems to be a success.
During this time, Garreth was participating in as many entrepreneurship event in and around school as
possible. He was part of the winning team at Leuven startup weekend sponsored amongst others by
Microsoft Innovation Centre and has practical experience in startups.

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Laurent Spencer is a Business student at K.U leuven Brussels Campus. He completed two years of
Ingenieur Commercial at Ichec and has an uncanny ability to understand financial principles and numbers.
Laurent balances his university work with extra-curricular responsibilities. He is a certified trainer and also
volunteers for the Red Cross.
He has developed acute insight into professional management through his role as managing director for an up
and coming musician.
Leslie Heureux is a second year student of the Business Administration programme at KU Leuven
Campus Brussels. Shes recently been promoted to a Vice-president position in the local committee of AIESEC,
where her numerical expertise and financial rigour will be one of the numerous assets shell be bringing to the
table. Whats particularly impressive about this achievement is that she was able to be promoted to a leadership
position with very limited experience. Her drive, ambition and hard work inspired the confidence needed to
be elected by the members of the committee. Prior to joining Yoonify, she already took the initiative to
organize study groups, write summaries and helped her fellow students by tutoring them in mathematics. She
has not only proven to be top-notch academic performer, but her mastery of time management has enabled
her to focus on extra-curricular activities.
During the summer holidays, she has spent 6 weeks in Vietnam for humanitarian purposes. This
demonstrates social involvement, openness to diversity and a willingness to help others. Leslie is an ambitious,
goal-driven and promising individual.

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