MIT Solve

Step 2

Our Solution

Lyfe.Business

Our solution's stage of development:

Pre-Seed

Our solution:

In our 3-year pre-product survey, respondents identified access to finance as the major obstacle to enterprise among young people in Africa. So we built a product rooted in young peoples' preferences for acquiring financial knowledge and services. LYFE.Buisness is an online finance hub for entrepreneurs, businesses and financial service providers.

Our pitch:

Our Solution

Via Lyfe.business -

1. We aggregate the latest finance news across multiple finance sectors, institutions, and financiers.

2. We collect and publish finance data for the use of entrepreneurs and businesses.

3. Our users have finance and related questions, we provide or link them to answers.

4. We are the go-to place for locally-relevant business documents like pitch decks, cap tables, audits, business plans, NDAs etc.

5. We profile financial service providers, provide expert advisory on their services and process applications on their behalf when possible.

6. We work with educators to democratize financial education using trendy tools like memes, videos, gifs, games etc.

Relevance to challenge question as posed

How can disadvantaged youth learn the skills they need to prepare them for the workforce of the future and thrive in the 21st century? The entrepreneurs among them think (from our extensive survey) and we believe it is by equipping them with enough financial skills and knowledge to access both local and foreign finance, through innovative, digital channels. While funding available to startups led by young people is increasing, too few are gaining access. Entrepreneurship is the toughest job of all, and when youth lack the core skills, the economy suffers jobs that could have been created for the entrepreneurs themselves and other young people.

How Lyfe.Business will effect change across the world, if scaled

Our vision is to be the world's leading source of Africa-focused financial content on the web. We want to put in the hand of every African youth the financial resources needed to achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. We want to stop brain drain and even convince talents to return and build enterprises that create jobs.

The problem:

Access to finance is hard for young people in Africa. But this 'hardness' is not simply a result of lack of finance opportunities. With the exponential digital growth Africa is experiencing and the resultant uptick in noteworthy tech entrepreneurship, many local financial institutions are increasingly creating new financial products while foreign ones are setting up offices on the continent. But majority of young entrepreneurs remain unable to take advantage of these finance opportunities due to lack of core skills.

Why our solution will solve the problem:

In 2013, our 3 co-founders (a Nigerian and 2 Nigerian-Americans) met at Stanford University as part of the 2013 Stanford Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. After the camp, we talked about doing something similar in Nigeria. We immediately started Lyfecamp (www.lyfecamp.com), which remains the leading student/early stage entrepreneurship bootcamp in Nigeria. Lyfecampers lead several startups in Nigeria today.

We understand the demographic. One of our co-founders has a PhD in entrepreneurship while another has led multiple entrepreneurship research projects for organizations in Africa.

We think we understand the problem. Understanding the problem is our theory of change.

Who recommended you to Solve - or - how did you find Solve?

opportunitydesk.org

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The technologies we employ:

Consumer-facing software (mobile applications, cloud services)
Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data)

Why our solution is unique:

Our finance news feature is powered by an automated aggregator. Users are updated with up-to-date news even while our team is asleep.
You can use our platform to track equity investors, their investments and the latest news about them, as well as find lenders by their lending terms and locations.
Our Q&A feature is the first of its kind dedicated to helping entrepreneurs get the right answers on finance issues.
We are working on board and digital game concepts that deliver finance education in a fun way.

Why our solution is human-centered:

Firstly, we had no idea we were going to focus on finance products. Since 2014, we have organized an entrepreneurship bootcamp and we have used the platform to collect data on entrepreneurship challenges young people face. We also commissioned an independent survey to collect data across different businesses in Nigeria.

The focus on finance and the manner we are using to deliver our services is a direct result of that survey. Lyfe.business as a technology, is the result of that survey.

How people will access our solution:

Use of our website or app is 100% free. We will introduce premium features in the future but they will be priced reasonably.

Anyone with access to a computer or phone and internet can access lyfe.business. The digital penetration in Africa has never been better.

We are putting finishing touches to our android app and it will be accessible on the Google playstore.

Technology-Readiness Level:

6-8 (Demonstration)

Our website

https://lyfe.business

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