Fail fast, Fail Often

After a brief hiatus, I am back to writing. There was no specific reason for the break, except that I had no new content to share with the world as I was conceptualising what to do next for V-All.

During the pause period for V-All in June (The reason for a pause Blogpost: Questions are the Answer ), I asked tough questions of myself, my team, and our advisors, including whether we should continue with our current fundraising platform. Given the substantial amount of money, time, and resources I have invested in this platform, I needed to consider whether a different approach was necessary.

We encountered some obstacles while attempting to gather funds, despite our best efforts. We discovered that, in the short term, our concept and platform could generate some interest, but eventually, it would become just another fundraising platform in a crowded market. We were determined not to create something that already existed. Our goal was to establish an ecosystem that would foster long-term collaboration between non-profits and individuals, encouraging them to return and participate in numerous endeavours.

After gathering feedback from various stakeholders who engaged with V-All, we identified clear gaps and insights.

• Young people will fundraise if they care about the organisation and not just the cause. In V-All, while they found the causes they cared about, the connection to the organisation was missing. There were no stories, no incentives to push them to give.
• The people who were fundraising had a prior connection and deeply cared about the organisations they raised money for or had heard about them from their friends or on social media.
• Non-profits did not know how to tell their stories. They were sitting on a lot of data but did not have the resources and skills to tie it all together.
• There are a lot of youth who have skills, are looking for experiential learning and want to create impact but have no clear opportunities

As I conversed with individuals from Delhi, the North East, and other regions in India, a recurring theme emerged. The common thread was the nonexistent narrative for non-profits and existing skillsets for youth. The requirement was for a bridge to connect the two dots and create something new. There was a need to step back and re-evaluate the solution for V-All.

What has emerged is a couple of pilots to create two straightforward journeys which will eventually lead to creating an ecosystem solution of a comprehensive platform. One for the young person through life and another one for the non-profit. I will write more about each one of the pilots as we start conceptualising and launching them. The first one is being executed as I speak. Over the last two months, with the help of a team comprising Pallavi Kaushal and Divya Bansal , we created an entirely new design to engage non-profits and youth.

A design where we worked to leverage the storytelling, social media and research skills existing in youth to build the stories for non-profits. The design was to identify youth from specific colleges who otherwise would not consider this option of working with non-profits and sell this new internship to them to build their portfolio while creating impact. An internship which was on their time using their talent.

The first one was the North East in the states of Assam (Guwahati & Jorhat) and Meghalaya (Shillong), clear college towns with a diverse student population. We identified diverse non-profits and created a cohort and then went to eight different colleges with backgrounds in Journalism, Mass Communications, English Literature and Social Work. Over the last month, we went through a selection process to identify students and create a short internship. An internship to test a hypothesis that if we match these students with organisations who need to tell a story, we can create a journey for both to create a start for the narrative of the organisation. An online internship with students from a different background.

And now starts the fun ….

Has this been done before? Do you think these students have skills? How can they create value in three months? Do we need another platform? This is not how volunteering is done.

A plethora of Questions and honestly not many Answers

This is a hypothesis, a pilot that we are testing. Are we crazy to do something with so many variables?

ABSOLUTELY. But isn’t that the whole point of a pilot?

We have an idea that has been done in pieces by different organisations. We don’t have the answers but we do have a plan and we intend to execute it over the next couple of months. Students have signed up and non-profits think this will generate value. So yes while our hair turns further grey, the team and I are executing this for the next couple of months. So look forward to some exciting stories from V-All and all the different students and non-profits.

Wait while you think we are crazy and already have enough on our hands, a little more to add to the pile. I thought we needed more geographies so that we could test the model correctly. Different locations with very varied youth and diverse types of non-profits so we started Delhi too. Still debating if we should start the third one, so let’s see if we can do that before the team throws me out of the startup for trying to conquer the world.

If you think this is not enough and you want updates daily because we are so cool. Follow us on Instagram where the Canva ninja Divya Bansal posts funny memes and videos for your enlightenment.

#startup #entrepreneurship #pivot #theroadahead