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Idea Overview:
Future Gen is ai career discovery platform for Gen Z. We identify Gen Z interests by pulling in social media videos from TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube and then share these insights to parents, counselors, mentors, and employers to help guide and excite them with next comes next.
Who might use it/where it might be used?:
Current middle school, high school, post-secondary education students, and young working professionals that come across the question - what do I want to do in the future? In addition, employers are looking to hire emerging talent from the future workforce to meet their present-day to future workforce needs.
The Market (B2B, B2C or Both):
Both
Sector the idea belongs to:
Other
Is there a similar idea to be found?:
Traditional career assessment platforms are competitors in our space. The legacy assessment provider is trusted by 80% of public schools through Naviant. Other substitutes include Career Explorer, Career Scope, Career One Stop, and O*Net Online. All have a 60-180 question and answer format they require their users to answer before providing value to their users. These are online solutions. When recruiting the future workforce, some traditional sources employers identify and target potential talent could be LinkedIn, Indeed, Zip Recruiter, and traditional recruitment agencies. They provide traditional online career boards.
Why you think there is a demand for your idea?:
Existing career assessment solutions are not tailored for the current Gen Z audience. The attention span of Gen Z is short and wants immediate satisfaction, or they get bored. If the future workforce is not excited about potential career possibilities, they will continue to experience quarter-life crises and become cellar babies in their parent's homes.
Who would be the ideal customers?:
Core long term customer would be employers looking to hire emerging talent identified from our Career Compass platform. Early employers will have an emphasis towards blue-collar opportunities needing to fulfill job vacancies that require hard skills in short demand.
What ideas do you have to reach these customers?:
Through strategic partnerships with community builders such as school districts, economic development boards, workforce development boards, workforce innovation programs, labor unions, trade schools, post secondary education institutions, and state agencies.
How far have you developed this idea?:
After 1.5 years, 4 pivots, and 3 prototypes, our team finally figured out what to MVP. MVP is launching by end of June 2023. Have run a few focus groups with high schoolers, received endorsements from local community stakeholders, and have begun formalizing strategic partnerships in the Pierce/King county area.
What – if any – feedback have you had for this idea so far?:
Gen Zers have said they much rather use our tool vs what their schools are recommending them. Parents/adults relate to the problem area -what do I want to do in the future? From our business mentors, creating a long term business model will be difficult in this two sided marketplace problem.
What supporting material – if any - would you like to add to your proposal?:
PPT url: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15uuPSJVQ3T11zgF9GOJEvA9aHRAGEDze/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101791064959696110670&rtpof=true&sd=true
1-min Demo Video: https://youtu.be/IpRJihNle-E
4 comments to “Future Gen”
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Giang Nguyen - June 22, 2023 at 1:37 pm
Great idea! i love the integration of Social Media to access career interests. Can you explain how the process can procure accuracy over the traditional methods?
Eddie Mazariegos - June 23, 2023 at 1:35 pm
Of course! Several key differentiators that make our methodology more accurate than traditional career assessments are:
1. There is less context/core message lost in translation when using imagery or video versus a student answering a static question. For example, the following question is from a traditional assessment “Ideally, are you more drawn to a job that is more scrutinizing and examining or compassionate and empathic?” This question, without any additional context may make sense to some assessment takers, but may not be as clear or have a different connotation for others. Short videos demonstrating compassion and empathy in workplace scenarios is more easily understood by Gen Z.
2. Our platform tracks an individual’s interests over time and not in a singular instant. This is important as students and young professionals often experience new things around them that could influence their past perspective.
3. Short videos are more attention-grabbing than answering 200+ questions. Gen Z has the shortest attention span when compared to previous generations and seek instant gratification. Use of social media videos from provenly entertaining subject matter experts sets the stage for a more engaged Gen Z participant.
Some other feedback we have received that I would also like to highlight are the following though:
1. Another advantage to using social media videos from provenly entertaining subject matter experts is the power of storytelling
2. Social media subject matter experts can serve as potential role models for marginalized youth and young professionals looking for someone to look up to. Often times when an underserved community members sees another older, but from a related underserved community, they can more easily envision themselves a different future than what they may have grown up familiar with
Simon Krystman - June 22, 2023 at 3:27 pm
Have you figured out a commercial model yet? Who will pay you, Gen Z, employers?
Eddie Mazariegos - June 26, 2023 at 6:07 am
No, but not because our team cannot see how we can make revenue. But, because we have not decided with route to pursue. I will give an example to what our current goal is and where we think the windows of opportunity lay ahead.
This summer, we want to focus on getting the product into the hands to as many Gen Zers as possible (high schoolers, middle schoolers, post-secondary education students, and young working professionals). We need this feedback to make sure that what we are building is loved by our users and we get an effective feedback loop from our target audience. In order to do this, we will make Future Gen’s Career Compass free for the summer.
After the summer, we will then trigger a payment system as students begin to go back to school. This will be a monthly subscription model. Ideally, we will have a enough updates to make a freemium type model for users.
Our goal is to potentially win grants this summer that will fuel our next MVP adage, which would begin to prepare our platform for employers to use. If we are able to accomplish this and win a few LOI then we will make plans to transition to a SaaS model servicing employers.
If this above does not work out, we will continue focusing on Career Compass until we are able to earn enough users for a potential indirect network effect to attract employers in what we see as a 2-sided market place problem.