BYP Network

Idea

Introduction

We were created in Autumn 2016 after a culmination of black lives matter movement and Kike’s (founder of BYP Network) personal experiences. Alongside this, the UK was struggling with the highest rates of knife crime epidemic, the lack of black people in companies let alone senior positions and an inability to find positive role models outside of the entertainment industry.

From this BYP Network was created to ‘change the black narrative’ by bringing the black professional global community together to solve our own problems through economic empowerment and connectivity.

Substantial accomplishments to date

In just under 4 years BYP Network has grown from a side hustle to a 6-figure revenue generating company with over 40,000 members.

We provide services for both our members and corporate partners including: A social networking app, webinars/events, podcasts, newsletters, blogs, and a job board.

We have worked with over 60 corporate partners including Facebook, Accenture and Soho House and have been featured in publications including Forbes, BBC and Roc Nation. We have over 60,000 social media followers, 18,000 job applications through our platform and we have hosted over 5,000 members at our online/offline events.

BYP Network has won the Maserati Top 100 Most Innovative Companies and a place on The Mayor of London’s International Business Programme and London Stock Exchange Elite Program.

You can trust us:

Kike Oniwinde, is a BSc graduate from The University of Nottingham, University of Florida MSc scholar, and an ex-Great Britain junior javelin thrower. She previously worked in investment banking and a financial technology start-up before quitting to focus on BYP full-time. Kike is a Forbes 30 under 30 and World Economic Forum Global Shaper. She won three national pitch competitions including F Factor, New Entrepreneurs Foundation and Sky Women in Technology Scholarship. She credits her growth mindset for BYP’s early success.

Meera Raikundalia, is a BSc graduate from Cardiff University and alumni from the New Entrepreneurs Foundation. She has had over 6 years sales and commercial experience across different start-ups. Most notably, she was one of the first employees at Maddox Events, the UK’s fastest-growing events company which focuses on increasing diversity across several industries. Having grown up in both Kenya and North London, the BYP mission is something very close to her heart and in a short period of time Meera has been instrumental in raising £300k worth of revenue for the organisation

Monetisation strategy

Our revenue model focuses predominantly on corporate partnerships and premium memberships.

Corporations:

We charge a monthly fee of £1k - £5k for 6 months or 12 months contracts. These packages consist of pick and mix from job postings, webinars, content, and candidate shortlisting.

The monthly subscription allows us to focus on monthly recurring revenue, whereas our previous model generated £300k+ but in one-off payments. We have signed over five companies on this recent model including BNY Mellon, Morgan Stanley, Cisco, and Checkout.

Memberships:

We currently operate a freemium model on our app. This means users can download the app for free, join groups, browse & add events, and post their business.

We will be offering a £5 premium member and £10 premium business member fee that allows users to 1. Browse other users 2. Amplify their posts and 3. Post opportunities. We will also look to add extra benefits and play around with pricing.

We estimate that roughly 2% of free members will be paid (based on our own experiments). In the future, we will also include full recruitment services and advertising.

Use of proceeds

In the next 18 months, through marketing, we aim to have a user base of over 500,000 black professionals with 2% on our premium model.

With the money raised, we'll be scaling our leadership, sales, and content teams in order to better serve our community. The funds will also be spent on improving our current tech stack and cementing our place as the number one go-to platform for all things black professionals.

With tens of millions of black professionals online and over $200bn spending in the recruitment market. The potential for BYP Network to grow is undeniable and we want you to invest in order to be part of this growth.