iSource

isource is a platform for Nigeria detailed business startup information where individuals can acquire information or invest.

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Inspiration

According to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, about 16 million in Nigeria are unemployed with the rate standing at 23.1% of the workforce in the third quarter as of 2018. This alarming rate of unemployment has led to economic hardship and suffering for millions of Nigerians. These are major as a result of lack of information to start basic business activities that individual youths need to take care of themselves and family. We believe access to detailed business information will give these individuals the leap needed for success.

What it does

iSource is a platform for Nigerians (individuals) (Unemployed, potential retirees, gainfully employed, Nigerians in Diaspora) where these individuals can acquire detailed business startup information or invest in a business. We are creating a platform that generates detailed business information:

  1. Connects this information to individuals who are willing to implement the business in their locality.
  2. Raise fund for implementation of the business information.
  3. Connect existing business startups to investors. iSource allows qualified individuals to upload business information to the platform while they get paid as business start-ups can access and download that information within a short period of time and at an affordable price.

The platform simply works for individuals by allowing the following operations;

  1. Individual visits the platform.
  2. Search for a business by sector, location, and desired budget.
  3. View details of the desired result.
  4. Signup/Sign in
  5. Proceed to purchase information or invest in the business. Also, as an individual interested to contribute, they will simply signup as a vendor and upload business information.

How we built it

The application was built using Laravel a PHP framework for the application backend and VueJS for the front end,
The database used is MySQL and it was Hosted on Linode - Thanks to Linode for the wonderful coupon and making provisioning server a sweat-less effort.

Challenges we ran into

  1. Channel for communication was our first challenge
  2. Unable to use the .xyz domain,
  3. Fluctuating internet connectivity
  4. Power failure.
  5. Validating the business idea from the primary target audience
  6. getting individuals to provide business information.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of bringing a set of individuals with different knowledge and background together to work from problem discovery to a working minimum viable product with quality business information within this short period.

What we learned

We learnt teamwork, working remotely with great individuals we have never met before, starting from the ideation stage where we had to agree and disagree as a team over the idea to work on, and later on having to collaborate as a team to ensure we have a working MVP. For some of the team members that came from a different field entirely, they learnt basic of web development and most importantly they had to get familiar with GitHub.

What's next for Isource

  1. iSource team will focus to achieve a mobile responsive experience then proceed to validate this product with the primary target audience for feedback to improve the MVP.
  2. Integrations of the admin level (our business and finance expert) module on the system to verify authenticity and feasibility of business information before they become visible.
  3. Acquisition of individuals (young graduates, serving corps members, and tertiary institution students) to provide information from their localities.

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