P.H.D. : Young Startupers x Audio & Radio Innovation
A story about a Startup idea on Audio & Radio Innovation edited by “The Ogilvies”.
Every year, AD&PR Lab’s Start Up Lab has it’s young innovators become a part of the “startuping fever” by setting some challenges for them which are meant to be solved by creating a Startup. This year’s Start Up Lab, conducted in cooperation with Antenna Music Partners, had no other challenge for us rather than a radio and audio innovation one.
So, being a part of this lab, we had to make a team and find an innovative idea which would answer to questions like “ Is radio considered to be cool ?”, “ What are the gaps that should be filled in the audio and radio business?”, “What are the needs of our audiences now and what can we do about them?”. All in all, what we had to do was find an innovative and fresh idea that would apply in the audio and radio industry and develop it step by step, session by session, in coordination with miss Betty Tsakarestou and the precious mentoring of the Antenna Music Partners.
To begin with our story, my team ( which we named by “The Ogilvies”) and I, begun to discuss about how we could bring coolness back to the radio. This brainstorming session took us ages to finish with but it was one of the times when the idea that we came up with was unanimously agreed. Since all of the team members had been at least once in their lives Spam Radio producers, we all agreed that we should build an idea that would allow and give the opportunity to every university student become a Web Radio producer. To get you into the mood, Spam Radio is Panteion University’s web radio which allows students from the Communication, Media & Culture Department volunteerly become web radio producers.
On top of that, we believed that if we could make a web radio and podcast with young podcasters, we could reach young people, a target group that we’d know what they want and what they don’t in terms of radio. So, if coolness is … applicable to our generation as a term, then we could give it to our chosen audience and make radio cool again.
In detail, young podcasters would podcast under the supervision of set mentors, experts in the field of radio. These podcasters would come from and each represent their own university in their own podcast. Concerning the podcasting station, this would be a common space for all the podcasters. But as a new business we would definitely need some partners to support us in our first steps. This partner would ostensibly be Antenna Music concerning the venue and mentoring part.
Our final product would be an application and a counterpart website. Both would be enriched with features such as personal profiles for the users, the ability to save some of the podcasts and replay them as many times as one wishes to etc.
The Value Proposition Canvas
Besides presenting our idea to our fellow students and mentors, the very first step was the creation of a Value Proposition Canvas, a tool useful for design thinking and organizing ideas. We found Strategyzer’s template very useful to work with. So we created our very own Value Proposition Canvas, analyzing in detail what are the needs of our customers and what services and product we offer to them in order to eliminate their “pains” and maximize the gains. And here is our hand-made Value Proposition Canvas :
We have our Value Proposition Canvas fully analyzed here
The Business Model Canvas
The very next step in the progress of our idea was the creation of a Business Model Canvas, using again the template provided by the Strategyzer. There, we would analyze in detail how we would make the whole business work. Finding our partners, detecting all the activities we would have to do and all the key resources we would need to have at our disposal. Some other aspects such as the communication and channels of our product as well as our target groups specified, needed to be addressed too. Finally, we had to calculate all of our costs and make a plan of our revenue streams.
Here is our Business Model Canvas which we have also discussed in detail and you can find it by clicking here
All of the aspects mentioned above were addressed based on our value proposition. These two steps, the Value Proposition Canvas and the Business Model one, are essential and interdependent in the begining of the development of an idea into a business. The design of a product and a service depends highly on these two models which is why we had to focus on them in the first place.
The Startup Weekend Experience
In the framework of the Start up lab, we had the opportunity to gain a special experience of how a start up idea is developed and becomes real through the Athens Startup Weekend 2018: Entrepreneurial Journalism event: Audio & Radio Innovation. Through an original collaboration between #ADandPR Lab and Antenna Music, the event was held on April 27–29, 2018, at Impact Hub Athens
The character of the contest matched with the character of Impact Hub Athens, being a global local social entrepreneurial network that contributes to the development of innovative business structures such as start-ups.
The contest included a series of activities that lasted for 3 whole days while the teams were working for 40 hours on 12 ideas.
The first day started with an introduction to the contest and a talk about Audio & Radio Innovation. After that, a series of activities followed ; a game of a start up story in which we had an object as a product and an animal as a potential costumer. This was just a warm-up for the pitching that followed, the voting and the creation of the teams with the ideas chosen.
The next day was a day full of hard work on our ideas. After an introduction to the Business Model Canvas ( which we had already worked on during our Startup Lab sessions), we started working on our ideas methodically. We were also given precious advice from our mentors during the whole day and had the chance to attend two workshops, one on Comic’s Storytelling by Lida Tsene and one on pitching techniques.
Finally, the last day we had to complete our ideas based on the Business Model Canvas, prepare our presentations and receive some last-minute mentoring. The contest wrapped up with the winners announcement and a wonderful after-party
During the contest, the 12 teams had a series of Workshops on how to create a good storytelling, how to build a catchy pitching and a right Business Model Canvas, the guide that you need in order to build a complete start up idea. At the same time, we had the guidance of experienced mentors and coaches, who contributed through the feedback they were constantly giving us, the concerns they had and the solutions they could offer.
Despite the fatigue, time pressure and stress of the deadlines, all the teams responded successfully as a result of the whole experience being exciting. Under the three-day escort of Spam Radio and Antenna Media Lab Radio, we listened to 24 hours of music that raised our mood during activities or breaks, all the participants and mentors gave interviews, we had a lot of food, we took photos, we laughed and we were all together more and all within 3 days.
More than 100 people, including the organizing team and the volunteers, who contributed to the event, with all the contestants and the mentors involved, all together we brought a festive mood, with a big finale, the after party at the end of the competition. We all danced, sang, giving meaning to this whole event, not only through the character of the contest, but also through the youthful and team spirit of all these people, who constituted the heart of Start Up Weekend.
The Idea: P.H.D Radio: Podcast Hub Doors
The idea that our team came up with and evolved through the Start Up Lab, continued through the Start Up Weekend, by creating the first podcast community from university students to students! Our idea was to create a national university podcast and radio network towards the lack of radio and podcast infrastructure and mentors in Greek universities for students to develop their talents and interests. Core of our solutions, is the foundation of the university radio hubs all over the country through the cooperation with coffee shops and Antenna Music, where podcasters and content creators will be university students. With this idea we make Radio cool again and we give voice to young people to express, spread and exchange their ideas while they are developing their talents.
The final idea
The Startup Weekend experience has been very insightful and helpful in terms of our idea development. Due to our lack of experience in the real world of the startups and businesses in general, there were some gaps in our idea proccess that we wouldn’t be able to detect if it weren’t for the mentorship we received during our academic sessions and the contest. We left the contest by taking a more developed idea and some useful tools and tips to develop it further.
It is worth mentioning the fact that during the whole semester, not only did we receive advices from our mentors, but also we did come in touch with our potential users since our fellow students belong to our target group and gave us their feedback. Of course, this feedback wouldn’t be enough alone so we conducted a survey on potential users and customers in order to learn more about them. What we wanted to know was whether they know what a podcast is or no, if they listen to podcasts, if they would like to participate either as podcasters or simply audience and if they would pay for premium services.
The results were encouraging except from the fact that they wouldn’t pay for premium services, which was not unforeseen. During our user experience mapping process we also did some interviews in order to understand our target group. Together with the survey results, these interviews would help us not only design our product and services but also define our revenue streams. As an initial revenue stream we had defined one based on premium subscriptions but it turned out that our customers were not willing to pay for premium features. This led us to reconsider our revenue streams and define an ad-based one together with gamification.
Since we had our revenue streams ready, we also had our final product. We kept all the essential feedback we received during the whole semester and we presented our final idea in front of our Start up Lab and Antenna Music mentors.
To summarize our final idea; We wish to make a common infrastructure for university students in order to become podcasters. These podcasts will be delivered to our target group which is again students and young people in general , through the P.h.d application and website. They could also “find” us in coffeehouses with which we will team up and make partnerships. The content of these podcasts will be scientific, youth matters , speeches from experts or professors and of course music! As far as we’re concerned, these services will be free for everyone, so we will have to put some ads. Finally, we also wish to team up with the Antenna Music team in order to provide our “starting up” podcasters and our Startup with mentoring.
Bellow you can view our final pitching presentation.
As a team, we would like to thank both miss Betty Tsakarestou and the Antenna Music Mentors team for an insightful semester, their systematic guidance and the knowledge we gained. As graduate students, we feel that we are entering the “real world” with invaluable reserves of knowledge and a more mature way of thinking.
The Ogilvies team : Danai Lyratzi, Xenia Ntavranoglou, Stavroula Pollatou, Ioanna Thanasi, Katerina Tsigarida
Startup Lab coordinator & Athens Startup Weekend co-organizer : Betty Tsakarestou
