Everything starts with an idea….
Everything starts with an idea and every idea deserves a chance to grow. IdeaSquares is a platform to crowdsource feedback and support for early stage business ideas. We bring business ideas to the crowd.
We provide a centralised platform upon which users can showcase their business ideas and open them up to the crowd, (be it global or within their niche community) & receive important, early stage, feedback and support.
This added value is great for funders and professional services because it has the potential to increase the quality of business propositions approaching their services and in turn means they can see more projects successfully supported via their service.
Supporting the grouping of ideas and hosting idea challenges and corporate innovation challenges upon our platform makes our brand central to all aspects of innovation. We’re building towards corporate sponsored/led innovation challenges and have identified key partners to move this forward. We are ideally placed to bring value to the players in this ecosystem by bridging our strong entrepreneurial crowdsourced idea portfolio with brands looking to leverage this ever growing community.
To reach the market IdeaSquares aims to partner with global innovation intermediaries and networks to build strong local presence on a global platform.
One of the first 10 WebStart Bristol companies, we subsequently completed a 2nd and 3rd round of investment last year via Seedrs. Both rounds completed in days.
Launched in February 2014 we’ve seen over 3000 IdeaSquares from across the globe, 3500+ users and approaching 8000 social media followers, all on a £0 marketing budget.
Membership to SETsquared Bristol, rated Europe’s number 1 university business incubator. We are now based full time within SETsquared, rated number 1 for supporting high tech/high growth businesses.
1) IdeaSquares upgrades
– Basic Promotional Upgrade.
Additional promotion for individual IdeaSquares. This includes featuring ideas in our newsletter, on our homepage and via social media. ///
– Idea Development Upgrade
Additional functionality to allow users to launch development challenges in order to generate ‘ideas for their ideas’ from the crowd.
2) Association Group Pages
Ability to host groups of ideas within single squares. This is particularly useful for groups to showcase ideas and can be used by competitions, incubators, entrepreneurship groups and the likes.
3) Innovation Challenges
Further feature integration to allow individuals, groups and corporates to run and launch innovation challenges upon the IdeaSquares platform. This will be formed in a way that allows the tech to be white labelled for corporate sponsored innovation challenges.
We recognise that there are other revenue options to be considered with re-sellers, advertisement etc
IdeaSquares intends to use the proceeds of this fundraising round as follows:
– 20% platform development (automation and internationalisation)
– 20% marketing and sales
– 20% legal and professional
– 40% team salaries.
Aspiring entrepreneurs with early stage business ideas.
Startup ‘enthusiasts’ to support/generate ideas and feedback for ideas.
Startup teams wishing to use the crowd for ideation around current business activities.
Association groups such as ‘MassChallenge’ (worlds largest startup competition), Entrepreneurial Spark, and business incubators).
Corporates – to host and run corporate led/sponsored innovation challenges.
The Entrepreneurs
The online startup community continues to grow rapidly, with crowd funding platforms alone taking over $5 billion in 2013 (compared to $1.5 billion in 2011).
Associate groups/partners
Global startup competitions offering corporate funded cash prizes are an increasingly attractive option of entrepreneurs and see thousands of applicants. Entrepreneurial Spark, Mass Challenge and Pitch To Rich are all examples of current competitions. Unsuccessful applicants are perfect for IdeaSquares.
Corporate innovation
There is increased pressure for corporates to innovate and stay competitive in fast changing markets. Brands are seeking new ways to engage with their customers and this means that they are increasingly looking to startups and the crowd for opportunities and sources of innovation.
Ecosystems and intiatives such as Open Innovation, Crowdsourcing, Corporate Venturing and brand competitions have created a burgeoning industry.
The Entrepreneurs
Social media – We are engaged in a plethora of marketing activities to reach our target entrepreneurial market.
Blog posts – guest blogs and ‘spotlight on’ blog series allow us to provide relevant, credible information.
Affiliate referrals. Establish further partnerships with key entrepreneurship groups and networks to encourage users to submit their ideas to our platform and increase our audience. The future of IdeaSquares’ global outlook is based upon the development of further partnerships to continually increase incoming seed-stage business ideas. We believe that the reputation of a global IdeaSquares brand through this expansion will perpetuate organic growth.
Corporate innovation
IdeaSquares is ideally placed to bring value to the players in this ecosystem by bridging its strong entrepreneurial crowdsourced idea portfolio with brands looking to leverage this ever growing community.
To reach the market IdeaSquares aims to partner with global innovation intermediaries and networks to build strong local presence on a global platform.
As a crowdsourced feedback platform targeting early stage ideas in any business sector, we believe IdeaSquares remains wholly unchallenged.
We have developed a strong brand and identity that we feel is modern, bold and consistent with current popular social platforms. It is professional, clean, simple and reliable in design and colour. We consistently receive positive feedback concerning both the layout and user interface of ideasquares.com.
We believe that credibility for successfully crowdsourcing feedback for thousands of ideas, plus our strong brand image and identity make us well placed to penetrate other markets. We recognise that there is space for further innovation in many avenues.
We are ideally placed to bring value to the players in the innovation ecosystem by bridging our strong entrepreneurial crowdsourced idea portfolio with brands looking to leverage this ever growing community.