KeyUp explores business models

Over this past week, team KeyUp met with key stakeholders that have helped us to flesh out potential sources of revenue. As members of the Impact Hub Workforce Accelerator, team KeyUp is getting a fast on-boarding to the workforce ecosystem, finding champions of our product, and learning about how to develop several potential business models.

In this blogpost, we will explain what we learned about how Austin employers, educational programs, government agencies, and service providers might fund KeyUp. We will conclude with a reflection on what this means to KeyUp for now.

Employers

Through interviews with our stakeholders, we have learned how integral a role a system like KeyUp can play with Austin employers. Currently, middle-skill employers have roles to fill within their businesses but they can’t find the talent to fill them. KeyUp can help employers through several services. First, KeyUp will facilitate greater attendance in the appropriate training programs that lead to middle-skill careers. Second, as KeyUp continues to mature, it will provide employers with a bird’s eye view of how many people are training, in what programs they are training, and connect to the trainers to get the very best graduates to work for them. Essentially, KeyUp would be a recruiting service for companies looking to fill middle-skill positions.

Educational Programs

We also learned that educational programs would pay for recruiting on the other side of their programs. While employers want the best graduates, training programs want to be able to engage a wider range of potential local raw talent. They currently spend funds on trying to recruit students. KeyUp would therefore charge for a listing within the app and for each referred client.

Government

Zooming out from employers and educational programs, we find that entities within local capital area government agencies are very interested in supporting KeyUp. It is imperative for local and regional governmental bodies to ensure that their residents are fully employed and that businesses can find the employees they need. There are economic and public health boards that are looking to allocate funds for KeyUp. KeyUp could also help local government and the associated institutions that focus on workforce development keep tabs on how well training programs do in getting students jobs.

Service Providers

Though these stakeholders are the most strapped for cash within the Austin workforce ecosystem, they have been our greatest champions. They are helping to mobilize the other stakeholders to figure out how to initially fund building out our app. We believe that we will ultimately provide the most value to clients of service providers. Ultimately, though our customers may be employers, educational programs and the government, we are here to serve the young people who work with the service providers.

Reflection

Before entering into the Workforce Accelerator, we did not have a clear sense of where we may find funding for our product. In a very short amount of time, we have found that there is great interest within the Austin community to make sure that KeyUp gets built. So now, we need to build a working demo so that the whole community can get behind KeyUp to be able to support its future success.