My Summer Internship - Bootstrapping Mindful Businesses

For my 2022 summer internship, I joined Jumanji Studio on a journey to build a platform that would connect people working and interested in the impact space.

Jumanji Studio is a venture builder in Paris. They ideate and build companies that are centred around sustainability. This summer, they were working on a new idea for a mentoring platform that connects people in the impact space. The idea of the platform is to encourage the brain drain towards the impact space and to provide people all the resources and network they need to know more about the opportunities and skills required to pursue those. I joined to help take this from an idea to a business.

I did all that one needs to in the first two months of starting up a business.

I started with benchmarking already existing mentoring platforms in the market, only to find out that one solely for the purpose of impact was yet to be established. The belief in our idea was further solidified with this research.

I then started to think about the business model we could have for this platform, for it to offer the right services to all prospective users. We launched a user survey to gauge interest and to use data to proof our thoughts for who the users of the platform would be and what features we would offer to them.

I used the extensive results from the user survey to narrow it down for four types of users and then to finalise the offerings for this platform. It will be targeted towards students, early-career professionals, social entrepreneurs and of course mentors who are willing to provide time to share their expertise and advice. The platform will allow all users access to mentors registered on the platform to book 1:1 mentoring sessions. It will also have added features to allow mentors to learn and gain from the all the exchanges as well.

The next step was to think of a monetisation strategy for the platform and the user survey was used again to determine how much and for what features would the users be willing to pay. While the exact features remain confidential till the launch of the platform, we have ensured that this would be a one-stop destination for all mentoring needs.

The final leg of my internship was to help with the branding exercise and make sure we have a name and MVP that builds a connect with all users.

It was an amazing experience to work with Jumanji Studio. I had great autonomy and the chance to build several connections with people having direct positive impact on the world through their work.

This internship experience was supported by the INSEAD Hoffmann Institute Impact Internship Stipend and gifts from alumni.