MicroMentor 2.0 is an online community connecting microentrepreneurs (low-income entrepreneurs growing very small businesses) with a network of volunteer business experts to help them build their businesses (think LinkedIn for the little guy).
The U.S. is home to nearly 10 million microentrepreneurs who operate very small or “micro” businesses, but only 200,000 have access to microenterprise development services. [http://tinyurl.com/2tr4wm] In developing nations across the globe 500 million low-income entrepreneurs are struggling to grow their businesses, yet only about 5% have access to microfinance services. [http://tinyurl.com/2qrayz; http://tinyurl.com/3a6ptb]
These microbusinesses provide critical income and economic options for entrepreneurs in the developing and developed worlds both, particularly for women, minorities, recent immigrants, individuals with disabilities, and the poor. [http://tinyurl.com/245co5] For many, entrepreneurship is one of the few avenues out of poverty. [http://tinyurl.com/yphvtd]
The three pillars of microbusiness assistance are a) access to basic business training, b) access to financial capital (microloans), and c) access to social capital (advising, consulting, networking, etc.). While many incredible innovations are working to scale up the delivery of these first two activities, scaling access to social capital has remained a challenge. Entrepreneurs have a better chance at success if they have access to insider networks, critical market information, and solid businesses know-how. Industry-based advising, in particular, is critical to microbusiness revenue growth, but is often difficult to access. [http://tinyurl.com/2e5x8n]
MicroMentor 2.0 (MM2) seeks to exponentially increase underserved entrepreneurs' access to the people, information, and expertise they need to grow their businesses. With MM2, our primary program activities -- function and industry-specific mentoring, advising, Q&A and networking – will be delivered by a highly-scalable, web-based entrepreneur support network. This network will be comprised of social entrepreneurs, volunteer business professionals, and microenterprise development program staff.
Our goal is to develop a service of true value to both individual entrepreneurs and the microenterprise development industry at large. By focusing on the scaled delivery of a targeted intervention, MM2 will eventually benefit hundreds of thousands of microentrepreneurs around the world.
MM2 will be a customer driven web-based service architected for scale and virality, bolstered by an aggressive distribution campaign, and monitored by solid evaluation mechanisms. Our aim is to move quickly towards sustainability via three main revenue streams:
Member Service Fees
By developing a service of true value for our clients, one that those with the means to do so would eagerly support, we will be able to successfully solicit subscription and/or pay-per-use fees-for-service from our member base.
Web Advertising & Sponsorships
MM2 has the opportunity to build a substantial community of growth-oriented microentrepreneurs. This is an increasingly valuable demographic for marketers and will offer us the opportunity to leverage web advertising and sponsorships, and perhaps participate in the development of more appropriate business products for our members.
Engaged Philanthropy
We will make available in real-time and for public consumption as many program performance and client impact indicators as we can. By offering transparency around the impact we are facilitating and by offering a direct engagement opportunity, we expect to successfully solicit ongoing individual, corporate, and foundation support, if needed.
Producing a complete sustainability plan is included in our near-term work plan.
Our primary challenges can be summed up in these four areas:
Usability/Functionality: How do we create the most usable service that best meets a few core needs of our consumers: microentrepreneurs, volunteer business experts, and microenterprise/microfinance development staff?
Distribution, Distribution, Distribution: How will we drive a critical mass of members to the service and put in place a partnership model that facilitates scale?
Monitoring & Evaluation: How we will measure success? How can we seamlessly integrate monitoring and evaluation into our scaled workflow? How transparent can we be?
Sustainability: How can we appropriately generate sustainable revenue?
To succeed, we need to increase our social capital. We seek collaborators, connections, advisors, expertise, and doers, especially in these areas:
- Partnership development: business groups, alumni groups, corporations
- Product management, especially consumer web services
- Usability/interaction design
- Branding/identity
- Graphic design
- Salesforce integration and development
- Developing world ICT, especially mobile and wireless communications
- Facilitating effective collaboration online; knowledge management
- Search engine optimization and web marketing, Google Adwords
- Web advertising, Google Adsense, and sponsorships
- Viral marketing campaign development
- Sustainability planning
- And, of course, funders who get it
The first 90 days of our project plan will find us focused largely on product management, prototype development, monitoring and evaluation, and strategic planning around distribution and sustainability. Specifically during this initial period we will:
- Continue gathering background/broad-based consumer and market data.
- Continue initial consumer surveys, interviews and focus groups.
- Develop guiding documentation, including a business/product requirements document, feature list/roadmap, use cases/personas, and wireframe.
- Document technical specifications and complete 2/3 of the development for a scalable, web-based prototype powering an entrepreneur support network that delivers four key program activities: mentoring, advising, Q&A, and networking (plans call for release in month 4).
- Set up a beta release program enabling us to continually gather consumer feedback and drive our iterative development process.
- Complete an Indicator Plan and a Logical Framework (LogFrame), two key program design, monitoring and evaluation tools.
- Develop program monitoring and client impact assessment mechanisms along with administrative dashboards and reports. Implement much of this using Salesforce.com.
- Develop a complete distribution plan including media and marketing campaigns targeted on our initial markets: the Pacific Northwest and the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Develop a sustainability plan.
MicroMentor is developing an online community to connect microentrepreneurs (low-income entrepreneurs growing very small businesses) with a network of volunteer business experts to help them build their businesses (think LinkedIn for the little guy).
MicroMentor 2.0 (MM2) seeks to exponentially increase underserved entrepreneurs' access to the people, information, and expertise they need to grow their businesses. With MM2, our primary program activities -- function and industry-specific mentoring, advising, Q&A and networking – will be delivered by a highly-scalable, web-based entrepreneur support network. This network will be comprised of social entrepreneurs, volunteer business professionals, and microenterprise development program staff.
Our goal is to develop a service of true value to both individual entrepreneurs and the microenterprise development industry at large. By focusing on the scaled delivery of a targeted intervention, MM2 will eventually benefit hundreds of thousands of microentrepreneurs around the world.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
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Comments
MicroMentor is Great!
Our clients, micro-entrepreneurs of South Carolina, have been able to participate in the MicroMentor program for the past three years. It is an incredible resource: we know that networking and mentoring is critical for small businesses to succeed, and this program enables our clients to receive expert, professional advice through the Internet--erasing socio-economic, racial and gender barriers. It is a valuable tool for us, provides a unique way for the mentors to volunteer, reaches globally, and produces results for the proteges!