Student Loop Forges Forwards After Winning Brentford Dragons’ Den
At the moment, there is not an easy way to get in contact with students on different courses even within the same faculty. This makes recruiting people with specialist skills, especially for complicated projects, very difficult.
Student Loop can offer a solution. We want to create a communication hub, that’s central in connecting students from course to course for the purpose of networking, collaboration, sharing information and any other pursuits they want to follow and share.
Employing each individual skill-set and the specific area knowledge that is brought to the table, students can reach out and make the most of creating their own connections as easily as clicking a button.
Since then, the team have managed to secure funding to start their business from The Start Up Loans Company, who’s current chairman is the one and only James Caan; a real Dragon.
“The Start Up Loans Company is a government funded initiative that provides start up support in the form of a repayable loan together with a business mentor for entrepreneurs across England and Northern Ireland.”
Source: http://www.startuploans.co.uk/about-us/
The Start Up Loans Company have worked very hard to find Student Loop a mentor and the team are due to meet them over the next few weeks.
With the help of SilverbackIS, Student Loop have managed to put together a working BETA version of the social networking website presented at the Dragons Den event.
“The website required a completely bespoke design because we didn’t want it to look or feel like Facebook or Twitter as these are all open to the public. As Student Loop is a closed network, our website can be tailored exactly towards our audience rather than adding so many things to please a large amount of people. It can end up feeling very cluttered. The aim of our website is to encourage users to reach out and make new connections at University; Facebook is a way to keep in contact with your existing friends. We don’t aim to replace these open social networking sites, we want to improve the communication potential within these establishments at a formative point in many people’s lives. We are so pleased with the feedback we have been getting about our product and everything seems to be moving on schedule, which is unusual!” – Jay W Shin (Co-Founder of Student Loop, 3rd year Music Management student)
After a successful BETA launch at the Fresher’s Fair on 17th September at the University of West London and armed with a very very full mailing list, it seems like Student Loop is something that the students at this University really want. Now it’s just a matter of letting everyone know about it when it is 100% ready!