The Work & Start Model

Blending Work, Education, and Company Creation

Created by ChatGPT.

This article is a part of the book “How to Build Thriving Start-up Ecosystems: Five Information Patterns for Success.”

Throughout our conversation Umar seemed not at all curious about the systems of urban planning or economics at play that made affordable housing and fresh food unavailable on campus. Neither was he curious to understand how the system of poverty in which he was locked generated a stress response that caused him to seek out coping mechanisms like vaping. He seemed to simply want to be the “Vape King” (his words) that distributed vape supplies quickly to students on campus.

But here is the funny thing about wants. They have a stealthy way of being shaped by a person’s potential achievable action map. If a person believes they can only achieve the level of an associate manager of a retail store, they will often tell themselves they do not want the responsibility of a Manager role. If they can only afford to become a nurse’s assistant, they will convince themselves that they do not want the responsibility involved to be a doctor. In the face of increasing inaccessibility of the same type of lifestyle as one’s parents and grandparents, some people become angry, some depressed. Others grow content with smaller potential achievable action maps.

As traditional universities need to stay relevant in a world with declining numbers of students that can enroll, co-op models like that of Northeastern University, University of Cincinnati, and Drexel University have risen in popularity. The co-op model enables real-world experience, job readiness, and pivotally, a chance to learn about systemic problems that organizations face. For students like Umar, this means being able to learn deeply about problems he himself might not have faced, which helps him to widen the types of companies he might pursue.

Everyone Gains with the Work & Start Model

The basis of the Work and Start Model is that students are paired with companies for internships or co-ops with the goal of the student presenting a new feature or solution to the company at the end of the program. The first portion of the engagement the student learns about the company and industry through interviews with various people in the organization, the wider market, and with customers. In the second portion the students develops a potential business opportunity to present to the board or owners of this company. The expected time of this engagement is a semester or summer.

Students gain through this experience an understanding of interlinked systems within a company. Throughout their interviews students can begin to see a company not as a monolithic entity but a constantly shifting set of relationships that respond to outside influences from markets, supply chains, and customers. It is this kind of thinking that shapes what scale founders decide to tackle problems at, and could help people like Umar who have a passion for entrepreneurship but have a small potential achievable action maps widen the kinds of problems he thinks to solve.

Through this program companies gain new insight into their markets and customers. Especially for smaller businesses that cannot afford the expertise of consulting firms or “traditional” businesses that might be unaware of emerging consumer trends, the new insights student founders bring to the table might prove highly valuable.

Universities gain one of the last ways that students can be tested on their skills in a way that ChatGPT cannot copy because they are conducting primary research by speaking with company employees and customers. The movement to real-world data collection will likely become an ever more prevalent component of university education with the growing rise of ChatGPT usage amongst university students.

Payment as Essential Component to Entrepreneurial Equity

It is an essential part of the Work and Start Model that the students are paid for their engagements with companies. The mindset that entrepreneurs should “hustle” and “grind” with low wages and late nights without pay makes entrepreneurship inaccessible to people who need to work to survive.

A good ratio of general work to start-up work is 2:1 — for every 2 hours students work they are paid 1 hour of time to work on interviewing stakeholders within the company and generating their project proposals. A standard ratio is 4:1 — every 4 hours worked students have 1 hour to work on their company. A low ratio is 8:1 — -for every 8 hours a student works they get 1 paid hour to work on their own projects. Universities should not allow engagements with companies that want to offer a lower than an 8:1 ratio.

Preparations for Engagement

To start a Work & Start program, CIDs should send out an email to companies in their network asking them to fill out a Google form asking if they would be interested in having an intern for the summer or semester to focus on developing internal entrepreneurship for their organization.

The CID should host a list of interested companies on a website or spreadsheet that students can look through. To begin the engagement the business simply needs to sign off on a form that outlines the payment ratio, time of engagement, and define whether the work generated by the student throughout the engagement can be used by the student after the engagement.

Students need to agree that they will submit at minimum five interviews within each of the three question sections (Company, Customer, and Market Exploration) for a total of 15 interviews as well as a final project presentation at the end of the engagement. The final project will take the form of a twenty minute presentation to stakeholders within the company on their findings and proposed solution as well as a presentation to their cohort.

Communications within the Engagement

CIDs should seek to have all internships start around at the same time in the semester so that students have a cohort of people to go through this experience with. Discussions with students working on adjacent problems can generate new potential insights and lines of inquiry. These students can serve as a support for any problems, and might one day serve as potential co-founders.

Before the Work & Start internships start, after each interview section, and before and after the final presentations students should meet, for a total of six meetings. Meetings will be more productive for the development of social ties if they occur in-person. The format of each meeting should include an intro, debrief, team work, and social time.

The first meeting should include students introducing themselves and the organization they will work with. Following meetings should begin with a debrief of each student on their progress and any problems they have faced. Then the CID will introduce the next section (How to conduct interviews with employees, customers, and suppliers/competitors). Students in groups of two should then spend ten minutes developing an initial outline of their questions for the next section. Students can use these sessions to ask questions or suggestions of their other colleagues and get feedback on their proposed plan of action. The final ten to fifteen minutes of any session should be open for questions and socialization.

The last session should have each student give an abbreviated (5–10 minute) version of the presentation presented to the company to their wider cohort. This is done so students can learn about a range of different problem areas across a wide array of industries.

CIDs should create a Slack channel for students to talk to each other and ask questions of the CID in between in-person sessions. This Slack channel should remain open even after the internship has ended, as this can be a valuable community for these students long after university graduation.

Questions for Part 1, Company Exploration:

Students should engage in a minimum of five interviews with people at the company within five primary areas. Their goal should be to understand the role of each individual, how their role interacts with the larger organization, and pain points within their role. Below are some suggested questions to get students started:

For Advertising/Marketing Roles:

1. Who are your customers? What pain points do they have?
2. Where do you advertise? Why do you advertise there?
3. What is your annual marketing budget?
4. If you have multiple ways that you advertise, what is the most effective channel?
5. How is success measured for you?
6. Do you have any problems connecting with your potential customers?

For Finance Roles:

1. How many customers who reach your company end up converting to sales?
2. What is your revenue model?
3. Do you have different types of revenue streams?
4. What are the most costly parts of running the company?
5. What is your conversion ratio of people interested in your product to those who buy?

For Product Roles:

1. What are the different components of the product or service that you sell?
2. Do you have suppliers? Who are they? What is your relationship with these suppliers?
3. What is the typical timeline for making changes to your product or services?
4. How are product decisions made? How do you decide to pursue an idea?
5. What are the various pieces at work in designing, testing, and selling a product or service?
6. What is the most costly piece of product design? Which part takes the longest?

For Customer Success Roles:

1. How do you stay in touch with your customers?
2. How do you re-engage customers that leave without purchasing your product or service again?
3. Who are the types of customers that come back to your company?
4. Have you set up any sort of loyalty program or up-selling/cross-selling?
5. How do you measure whether you have done your job successfully?

For CEO/Manager:

1. What inspired you to start/run this business?
2. How has this industry changed while you have been working here?
3. How has the company evolved while you have been working here?
4. What is the largest threat facing your business today?
5. What is the largest limiter of how much product or service you can sell?
6. Who is your biggest competition?
7. What is your five year vision for the company?

These questions are simply a start, and students should be encouraged to add their own questions. After all interviews are done, students should create a one-page summary of their findings, including a summary of each individual interview as well as their new insights in total on problem areas they have found within the company.

Questions for Part 2, Market Exploration:

Students should seek out a minimum of five other people within the market to interview to understand the wider context of the industry ecosystem outside of the company. The questions below can also be adjusted for competitors, regulators, suppliers, or any other organizations the company interacts with that can help the student better understand how their client company operates.

1. Who are your customers? What pain points do they have?
2. What is your revenue model? How do you make money? Do you have different types of revenue streams?
3. What is the rate of customers that interact with your company that ultimately purchase something from you?
4. What are the different components of the product or service that you sell?
5. Do you have suppliers? Who are they? What is your relationship with these suppliers?
6. What are the various costs of delivering your product or service? What is the most costly aspect of running your company?
7. How do you stay in touch with your customers? How do you re-engage customers that leave without purchasing your product or service again?
8. What is the largest threat facing your business today?
9. What is the largest limiter of how much product or service you can sell?
10. Who is your biggest competition?

Once students have answered these questions from various people outide of the company they should write a one-page summary of a few sentences summarizing each interview as well as a few final sentences that sum up any new insights they learned about suppliers or other competitors within the market.

Questions for Part 3, Customer Exploration:

To understand the full scope of a company’s system students should also speak with five customers that purchase the company’s products or services. Some suggested questions are below:

1. What need is the company solving for you?
2. What convinced you to choose this company over others?
3. How often do you use this company’s product or service?
4. Do you also use other products/services like theirs?
5. When you use this company’s product or service, are there any place that causes frustration?
6. What product feature or additional service would you like to see the company offer?

Once students have finished interviewing customers, they should write up a one-page summary that includes major highlights of each individual interview as well as a summary of insights in total from across the five interviews.

Part 4: Presenting a New Solution

Students need to make two big decisions after they have finish their interviews and before they progress to their presentation. First is, what is a problem within the market that is both urgent and important to solve?

Once they have decided what specific problem they want to tackle, they need to decide: should they structure their proposal as a new product or method within the company, or propose a potential start-up for their client to become the first customer?

After students choose their problem focus and positioning, they should begin to develop their final presentation. This presentation should be around twenty minutes, and is directed towards major stakeholders in the company. It should cover:

1. A Title Slide with a one-sentence summary of the proposed solution and the value it will provide to the company.
2. An Intro Slide on themselves and their background, specifically background that explains why they decided to pursue this problem area.
3. A Summary Slide of the Company Interviews that highlights major insights found.
4. A Summary Slide of the Market Interviews and insights found from interviews.
5. A Summary Slide of the Customer Interviews and insights gleaned from them.
6. Introducing the Problem or Potential. Based on all three groups of interviews, what is the most important problem for the company to solve or new product or service that it should deliver?
7. Potential Size. How much could solving this problem or bringing this new offering to market offer to the company in terms of money and market share?
8. A Slide of Potential Problems. What are the potential pitfalls of solving this problem or bringing this new offering to market in terms of time, money, risk, and organizational bandwidth?
9. A Slide on Competitors. What are other companies doing in this space?
10. Steps to Solution. What steps would need to be taken to address this problem or provide this new offering?
11. Timeline. Lay out a clear timeline of steps needed to address this problem or roll out this new offering.
12. Summary. In the last slide remind the company of the problem/offering, and why you should be involved in helping them in this journey or be a part of building the solution.

Out of this experience, the students will gain many skills to take forward with them. They will gain an understanding of how to pitch to prospective clients, develop a market analysis, and how to do customer research. They might land a job, or find their first customer through this experience. Within the context of their potential achievable action maps, students will have a whole new industry of problems that they now can explore. This extension of what problem areas they think to tackle they will carry with them throughout their life.

Too often internships or co-ops programs provide simply low-cost work for companies and provide no freedom for students to present their own thoughts. Business plan competitions often stress polished slide decks rather than a deep understanding of the customer and market. Competitions also do not provide funding for students who go through them, but only money for those who win. This excludes many low-income students who do not have the bandwidth to participate in competitions and not get paid for it.

The goal of the Work & Start Model is to position students to do the deep, complex customer and market research that competitions often do not enable, and to do so in a way that makes entrepreneurship accessible to a wider socioeconomic bracket of students. It should be noted that this program is also useful for even higher income students. High income students might have larger achievable action maps, but might get caught thinking of problems that are either “on trend” in the start-up space or that have high relevance to their own wants. For all CIDs that have found a glut of students in their programs that want to create food trucks, rental services for sorority and fraternity parties, food or laundry delivery services, social Web3 apps, or a new kind of blockchain, these founders can also be helped by a Work & Start program.