Rise To

Market

Target market

UK employers recognise the value that young people provide:

• Of those hiring, 64% hired young people last year
• 44% of all businesses were involved in some kind of work experience programme
• 18% involved in inspiration programmes (e.g. mock interviews, open days, mentoring and challenges)

These figures include larger businesses who are more likely to hire young people, and are more visible throughout their education, most likely because they have the resources to do so. We believe if you make it easy and low (or no) cost to provide the same kind of facilities to smaller businesses, then they too can benefit from access to great potential recruits.

In 2011 when Duncan co-founded StartUp Britain he emailed The Supper Club’s members asking who would be open to mentoring young entrepreneurs. He had an exceptionally positive response, the best response to an email in the Club’s history! It was also the most popular initiative that StartUp Britain ran in its first year. Proving that the older generation are keen to pay it forward and support the new, they just need the right management platform - this thinking is the essence of Rise To.

In recent years there has also been a trend amongst larger businesses to engage and hire school leavers where previously they would have only hired graduates. There seems to be an increased desire from larger companies to recruit from a broader range of backgrounds to improve the diversity of their workforce. PwC recently announced in the Sunday Times that they will no longer be using A-levels as a selection measure as they feel it’s more an indicator of background than potential.

Characteristics of target market

• The UK recruitment market is currently worth around £28.7bn - an increase of 8.2%
• UK employers spend an estimated £3bn a year on graduate recruitment with 44% of all employers hiring young people
• There are 5.2m SMEs in the UK representing 60% of all private sector jobs. Within this we are focussing on the 226,000 businesses with 10 staff or more

Young People: Key Facts
• There are 7.5m UK based 16-24 year olds, which is 11.9% of the population
• Unemployment rates in this demographic are currently around 15.9%
• Half of grads from the top 30 universities want to work in London

Marketing strategy

Initially we are employing a 3-pronged route-to-market strategy:

1) Soft and Hard Launches – While in beta we are focusing our efforts online, what we’re calling our ‘soft launch’. We’ve tested this approach and can instantly turn on relevant web traffic using social and web advertising channels. Later this year we will activate our hard launch, with on-the-ground ambassadors as well as putting on a big launch event for press, partners and customers.

2) Distribution – We plan to set up strategic partnerships with education and youth organisations as well as various targeted business groups. These partners will have the potential to release mutually beneficial PR via their networks when we are ready to push go. For example: our affiliation with The Supper Club means we have unique access to around 350 of Britain’s fastest growing entrepreneurial businesses.

3) Direct Sales – For any start-up, the key is on-boarding the right users in the right volume, quickly and cost effectively. We plan to set up a direct salesforce to hit the inbox and phones at the same time as we ‘hard launch’.

Competition strategy

We are in the favourable position of being familiar in concept i.e. a jobs board, but executed like an online dating platform, again an understood concept. With our learning, sharing, and CV verification functionality we can save users time, stress and money. Not forgetting our matching algorithm that we believe accelerates the entire process, giving us a competitive advantage, as well as valuable IP.

Our thinking is that if you can do everything your competitors already do, but in a smarter, more authentic and transparent way, then we believe we can dominate this market. We believe the recruitment process is ripe for this kind of innovation. None of our competitors (as far as we know) is offering a combined recruitment and learning platform with two-way matching on hard and soft data points.