FutureFunder

FutureFunder

Introduction

Our application gives small businesses, creators, and self-employed individuals an intuitive UI to reach funding. A struggling entrepreneur can register their business on the platform and provide a financial goal they need to achieve. Concerned citizens, or even other businesses willing to support a cause can buy vouchers or put funds towards a product or service. The team is also developing an API to allow third party systems to create projects, vouchers, or buy them on the platform.

Inspiration

Small and medium enterprises, self-employed workers, and creators are losing the ability to reach customers, sell goods and services, and are at risk of losing their livelihood. Many small neighbourhood businesses have been delivering value to their customers, and by doing so, they have developed a substantial fan-base. However, this fan-base currently feels helpless to support the local community, even if they have a surplus of funds, due to all shops closing down and fear of never opening again. Local shops provide a sense of community. They bring people together and help make memories. During these trying times people rise up and act to help each other. By joining our platform, communities will continue to function and we will help conserve our local culture and history of trade and crafts.

What it does

FutureFunder is a scalable crowdfunding platform, designed to support businesses and individuals during the current COVID-19 crisis and beyond. Let us take you through the journey:

Companies can enroll in our system by creating a project. One of the main aspects of a project is the goal. Goals are financial targets a business needs to achieve, but there is more to it. Reaching this target means that people stay employed and continue to receive income. A goal can be reached by selling vouchers listed in the project. Vouchers consist of two parts - initial and final payment. In the case of a hotel business, for example, a customer can purchase a voucher for visiting the hotel by paying an initial price. When the crisis is over, the customer can visit the hotel and pay the rest of the price mentioned in the voucher. This means of collecting funds brings a sense of security to the hotel owner since he has a guarantee that customers would return. The customers, on the other side, would receive a voucher for a discounted good, but would only pay the final amount when they can get what they have paid for. Thus, the customer is able to immediately help the hotel, but also gets a service or a good at a good price.

The API in more detail

Another important aspect of the FutureFunder platform is the API available to third-parties. There are well-established voucher and discount web platforms, such as Groupon or Grabo (Bulgaria). Such solutions ought not to be our competition, but rather allies in supporting the local communities. Companies listed on our platform would be able to sell vouchers on other websites as well and still raise funds towards their goals. Once they create a voucher elsewhere, provided the website has API integration with us, FutureFunder would receive a notification to add the coupon to the project of the customer. In the purchase event of an external voucher, FutureFunder would receive an API call to update the existing goals.

How we built it

We did a kick-off sprint planning session on Friday, where we laid out all of the user stories we wanted to complete. We kept the stories saturated and specific. On the technical side, we split our project to front-end and back-end. All team members are full-stack developers, which enabled us to work on both the front and the back-end.

Occasionally, one team member would work on documentation, while keeping in touch with the stakeholders. We were constantly on-call, pairing, and making sure that we spread information to every team member. Platforms such as Miro made it easy to communicate ideas and visualize them.

The front-end of the application is in React. We used Firebase's database for storing the project, voucher, and goal information. We used Firebase's lambda functionality to build the API.

Challenges we ran into

Crystallising the idea and hammering down the business plan; Grooming the tasks and defining the Minimum Viable Product; Brainstorming on how can we prevent the occurrence of tax evasion by employing an algorithm; Considering further legal issues that might arise from the use of our product; Getting business validation, due to the lock-down online campaigns might be needed to get feedback from business owners; Choosing the most appropriate tech stack to deliver results fast why utilising the team expertise to the fullest;

Accomplishments that we're proud of

All team members have never worked together, and we still managed to deliver results;
Most team members worked with tools they have no previous experience with, hence learned a lot;
Defining a well-rounded realistic idea;
Managed to build a platform for less than 48 hours;
Speaking with experienced mentors and incorporating the valuable feedback into the project;
Providing an opportunity for struggling business to recover some funds with the help of their loyal customers;
Thinking a scale and creating a system that can handle heavy workload early on;

What we learned

Innovation is achieved through hard work and covering many trivial tasks;
Well shaped and coherent idea is what is appreciated by users. Too many concepts gathered into one are a source of confusion;
It is essential to think about how the product would function during the COVID-19 crisis, but it is equally important to think about what would be the future of the product be;
The will to help can go a long way;
The European Community is strong and willing to support bright ideas;

What's next for FutureFunder

Execution of the Business Plan - https://canvanizer.com/canvas/rLLEHwHwAwtB4

Developing a fully-operational prototype with basic functionalities: Create a business project, add vouchers, payment methods integration, setting up a support team.

Developing the API

Start looking for businesses in need and reach out to local government agencies to establish working relationships.

Ultimately we want to build a one-stop-shop for the EU community to support their favorite local businesses, brands, creators.

Obtaining insight into human psychology, study groups, and A/B testing should be done;