5 Questions Startups Should Consider When Reaching Out to College Students
What role do you see students playing in your company?
Are there any specific projects your company needs completed that will benefit the most from the feedback students can provide?
How is your startup going to create a mutually beneficial learning environment for the students you engage?
Have you identified your local universities and do you have a plan for engaging and cultivating a relationship with them?
Are there ways you can get involved in your local universities beyond just engaging students in your startups projects?
As a highly influential, trend setting demographic with strong opinions and unbridled imagination, students provide a unique opportunity for startup growth. But how does a startup go about engaging them? “With limited resources as an early-stage startup, students help to provide a lot of data, information, and products,” says Juan Juan, Founder and CEO of Nex Cubed portfolio company Fanalyze. Through university outreach and networking, Juan and his team at Fanalyze have not only figured out how to engage the student population but also cultivated a community that allows both for growth of the startup and growth for the students themselves.
Fanalyze is a fantasy sports betting analysis platform that introduces a better and more straightforward approach to sports search results by speeding up your fantasy sports and sports betting analysis. They have teamed up with a number of universities, including UC Davis, Santa Clara University, USC, UC Berkeley and Sacramento State to engage students in projects for their company. Fanalyze was able to develop these relationships by using tools such as Handshake, directly reaching out to the university internship and career centers and networking directly with the students.
Fanalyze has also engaged students by submitting projects directly to university computer science departments. Last year they submitted a project to UC Davis for an NFL voice app that allows you to ask sports queries in voice or text conversations. The students built the app from scratch allowing Fanalyze to then test it with users and potential customers. In another project with Sacramento State, the startup had eight students working on their Olympics app. “It's funny because after giving the assignment to the first group of students to develop, there were maybe seven more that came to us asking to participate,” said Juan.
This form of student referral has not only been beneficial in increasing student participation but also providing feedback for the company. “The students will refer the product to friends and get feedback from them which helps us improve the product and tells us how we're doing as well,” shared Juan. “Growing up in a digital age, students have a lot of experience with social media and apps nowadays so it's good to get feedback from them because they're the market that's coming up and the market that we eventually are targeting. They have a unique perspective on the user experience, platform design and so forth, which creates a beneficial feedback mechanism as we work with interns at the college level”.
However, in working with students, Juan pointed out the importance of creating a space where they have the opportunity to grow as well. “We try to work with them to see what it is that they want to learn and what skills they are looking to improve on, which is a strategy that has proven to be beneficial to the company and more enjoyable for the students.” Juan also shared that he is extra mindful of the students academic schedules, “I don't force too much on deadlines because I always confirm to them that school comes first.”
Looking forward, Juan and his team see students playing a big role in the future of the company. He expressed the importance of the research some of their current interns are conducting on ways the startup can grow and become more competitive in the SportsTech landscape. He also shared that the products that have been worked on by interns in the past ranging from different algorithms to platform features are all tools that Fanalyze will be able to capitalize on to inform future app development.
To learn more about Fanalyze, click here to visit their website.