Ever wish you could measure the events that happened in your life with some sort of grading system? Well, hold onto your hats, kids. The grading scale isn’t limited to just school anymore. With Colluide, a school-based social media platform, your everyday experiences, achievements, memes, and other posts can now be evaluated and graded in a new social network.
Year/Date Founded:
2012
Number of Employees:
2
Founders/Execs :
Shakar Atlan
Funding or bootstrapped:
Bootstrapped
Your Pitch:
Colluide provides a fun and easy way to grade life experiences and achievements posted on social networks. Its main focus is to define people with a new type of grade and measure how well they live their lives. The beginning product is a school-based platform for public grading of posts (memes, pictures & videos) to introduce the idea of social network and grading. It will then evolve into a creation of a college guide to increase college awareness for students. The grading feature will be used to measure academic aptitude to aid the development of a successful college recruiting and hunting social network.
How’d You Get The Idea For It:
During my freshman year in college at Georgia State University, I felt that there should be a one stop place for all college resources and college guides. In addition to that, I felt there should also be a social network that helps students to prepare and find colleges. Hence the name Coll-uide, college and guide put together.
Revenue Model:
This social utility will have revenue streams of advertising and account upgrade fees. Similar to most social networks, monetization is generated from the main assets of the website and mobile app. The anticipated revenue from advertising will be the main source of income due to the high traffic from the users. Upgraded account users will be subjected to a monthly or annual fee for their respective premium accounts.
Who are your competitors and how do you stand out?:
Currently, competition is lacking within this niche as no other company provides social networking for neither grading nor college recruiting. However, Facebook, LinkedIn, College Board, and beRecruited operate within the same social networking industry and market. Therefore, Colluide will brand itself as an official network for the younger and school-based markets, in order to differentiate itself. Colluide’s intention is to be the transcendent social media tool that comes to mind for grading, college searching, recruiting, networking, and guides on college.
How does ATL weave into your story?
Not only is Atlanta the current city that I am living in, but I owe the many networks and organizations involved with startups in reaching this far. Furthermore, in doing my independent research on colleges, Georgia State University was the foundation for the grading and social networking idea. With Georgia State being in the heart of Atlanta, I had all the resources that I needed to make this idea happen.
If you could have one mulligan in the process of launching and running this startup what would it be?
In order to finally get the product and business where it is today I had to make a lot of mistakes. With each lesson I was given more motivation, which pushed me towards a solution. If I could have one mulligan, I would have started pursuing my idea for a startup sooner.
What kind of mentor could you use the most right now:
An entrepreneur that has successfully built a startup.
Is there anything else you need (that money can’t buy)?
Loyal and willing employees