KeyUp’s Inspiration
This week, KeyUp is returning to its origins by looking back on the research that inspired the product. As a reminder, KeyUp is a web app that helps low-income people get middle-income careers through career awareness and connection to the training services and support programs to get people to their career goals.
Last October, team KeyUp hit the streets to learn how young people without college degrees are civically participating. We spent time talking to people who work in the service industry, students taking classes at ACC, and those that were disconnected from the traditional institutions that provide support like universities, religious organizations, and professional groups. We met young people who yearned to make their way, find financial stability, and live out dreams of becoming programmers, business owners, and having the freedom to live as they so choose.
However, these young people were often thwarted from achieving their goals. For example, we met Andrea who had recently moved to Austin because her sister lives here and she had heard the city offered great opportunities. In conversations with Andrea, we learned that she had dropped out of a 4-year college because she could no longer afford it, but when we first met her, Andrea talked about how much she wanted to get training to be a programmer. She said she was frustrated with the online courses out there because it was hard to learn on her own. None of her friends were in the software world, but she knew it was the right place for her to go. She said that she would ideally get into the UT Coding Bootcamp, but couldn’t afford to right now. In the meantime, she was trying to take an online course through Udemy while working full-time as a babysitter.
We reached out to Andrea later once we had learned about the Workforce Plan and the many training services and support programs that exist to help a person just like herself. Just like many of the young people we spoke with Andrea didn’t know about the wealth of resources there are, even though she was clearly savvy and knew what she wanted. In the short time since we had spoken with her, she had lost her job and had to work full-time as an Uber driver. She had lost hope and didn’t feel like it was possible for her to achieve her dream anymore.
Andrea was one of the people that inspired KeyUp. We are building a platform that not only builds a curated list of high-demand, high-growth potential careers, but also makes it clear all the ways you can reach that career with the targeted support to get you there. We believe that if Andrea had found KeyUp in her initial search when she had moved to Austin, she would probably be nearing graduation now.
What’s Happening Now
To help Andrea and the thousands of Austinites like her who would like to move up into better careers, with the help of Austin Coding Academy and our delightful interns, we have started building out an MVP (minimum viable product) for KeyUp. We’ve also been getting some great help from PJ Christie, a social media and SEO wizard.
Next Steps
In the coming weeks, we’ll be continuing to develop our MVP KeyUp website, and we’ll also be working on our pitch for Impact Hub Showcase Night on June 25th. Come on down that night to learn more about KeyUp and the other great ventures in the Impact Hub Workforce Development Accelerator.
