AI Mentor matching software

[IMPACT]

• Mentorship is a proven method for sharing knowledge and networks to support the growth
• Universities and businesses have untapped value within their network which can be realized with an effective mentorship program. 
• One of the significant challenges networks face when trying to deploy a mentorship program is the time required to make and manage high-quality matches. 
• Another challenge is recruiting and maintaining mentors by ensuring the value exchange for the mentor's time balances the value they provide. 

OneUpOneDown has a proven method for facilitating high-quality matches in a form that is scalable and builds trusted relationships. 

OUOD’s mentor-matching solution solves the problem of being able to efficiently make matches within a network. Organisations can sign up and use the software by creating a matching pool for their organisation. Matches are then made within this pool, and can also be made between other aligning pools. For example a University-based pool may be connected with selected corporate or ecosystem pools (such as a Cardano or Catalyst pool). This allows cross mentoring to occur which is mutually beneficial for both groups. 

OneUpOneDown is a tool for organisations to effectively leverage their internal network of people to support learning and growth across their organisation, and/or within their industry, through mentorship.

To solve the challenge of providing sufficient value to mentors so they remain engaged and are incentivised to provide the mentee with maximum value, we propose building a Mentorship DAO. This will be built upon the Cardano blockchain using existing protocols including ATALA Prism, SingularityNET and CNFT.IO.

Through the DAO, mentors will be incentivised with native tokens and NFTs, whereby mentors can gain credibility for delivering extraordinary mentorship experience.

While we work on developing the infrastructure to support the creation of the DAO, we will continue to improve our matching model, user experience and grow our revenue. We will do this by running paid matching pools for organisations. Revenue generated from organisations will support DAO token holder rewards.

This proposal is to support the development of OneUpOneDown for Organisations. Specifically, the requested budget covers the cost to recruit and onboard 2-3 organisations to run pilot projects. 

1. Ability to scale OUOD platform to manage multiple pools. We are a growing startup with resource constraints. We have one developer dedicated to the project. We plan to hire an additional developer within the next 3-6 months to support this project.
2. Recognition of the importance of mentorship by organisations. Mentorship is increasingly become recognised as a highly valuable learning and development tool for organisations and is a growing segment within the Learning and Development market.

[FEASIBILITY]

Action plan:

• Step 1: Outreach to potential partners to secure early partnerships. We will use our existing networks and sales collateral to support this outreach. 
• Step 2: Onboard organisation leads to support the role out of the programme within the organisation/network
• Step 3: Onboard mentors and mentees using OUOD dashboard
• Step 4: Propose matches
• Step 5: Matching begins
• Step 6: Monthly check-ins to assess match quality and progress 
• Step 7: Match finishes
• Step 8: Report learnings

Mentor matching logic: We have developed a successful matching algorithm for our target demographic and have a platform with over 650 users signed up as mentors, mentees or both. Users currently can log in, create a profile, manage their match preferences and accept/reject proposals. We have made over 200 mentor matches to date and our NPS score is over 80%.

Milestones:

One month: Outreach to organisations

• Prepare marketing materials
• Leverage existing network to facilitate introductions
• Short list 10 organisations that are warm leads

Three month: Confirm two aligned organisations as partners and onboard key stakeholders within organisation

• Confirm partnership with Services Agreement
• Onboard stakeholders 

Six month: Onboard organisations and complete first round of matching

• Recruit and onboard mentors and mentees
• Make matches using matching algorithm plus validator
• Check-in and collect feedback from users

Budget:

Total: $30,000

• Marketing & Comms resource (creating leads) - 3 months x $1,000 = $3,000
• Sales & Partnerships (converting leads) - 3 months x $2,000 = $6,000
• Product development & technical support - 4 months x $3000 = $12,000
• Match validation & customer support - 3 months x $2,000 = $6,000
• Project management and administration = $3,000

Relevant experience:

• Program design expert - Natalie Robinson, Co-founder and CEO at OneUpOneDown.
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliecrobinson/ 
• 10+ years in sales, marketing, finance and startup
• business development experience
• 5+ years experience mentoring entrepreneurs in
• early stage business development
• 5+ years experience learning & development
• programme design
• Member of Catalyst Leadership Academy and Cardano Creatives. 
• Technical lead - Dzhuliana Nikolova, Co-founder and CTO at OneUpOneDown.
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/dzhuliana-nikolova-b6805714a/ 
• 7+ years experience in UX/UI design & product development
• 5+ years experience in software development
• 5+ years experience in self-development, education and mentoring
• Software engineer - Dimitar Sodev, Software Engineer at OneUpOneDown
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitar-sodev-451808a7/ 
• 20+ years of experience in Python, AWS, Java, SQL, AI/ML, TensorFlow, Linux, JavaScript, PHP, LAMP, Pandas, Apache.
• Open Standards Advisor who has 25 years experience with Capital raising and "hands-on" involvement in drafting the S-1 for an Initial Public Offering (IPO.)

[AUDITABILITY]

Proposal goals:

We aim to achieve the following goals over six months:

• Goal #1 - Secure at least2 new partnerships to run a mentor-matching programme. 
• Goal #2 - Onboard new organisations to recruit mentors and mentees from within their networks.
• Goal #3 - complete matching and launch the first matching program within the organisations.

What does success looks like and KPIs:

We will consider this pilot project successful if we can onboard and deliver a OUOD mentoring programme for 2 paying organisations.

Key Performance Metrics

• Number of organisations signed up
• Number of users within organisations
• High-quality mentor matches
• Mentor Match Impact Score (0-10)
• # of matches with at least 2 meetings

This proposal is not a continuation of a previously funded proposal.

We have submitted another Fund 8proposal to fund the development of a white paper for the

Mentorship Incentivization DAO:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/404785

SDG Rating

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