Working for a startup incubator at Skema Business School in Paris, Julia Kotulska met countless students with incredible ideas for businesses. But the students often felt that they couldn’t start these businesses on their own due to time and skill constraints.
“I started getting these comments so often that I realized that there’s definitely something missing in this entrepreneurial community,” Kotulska said.
So, she began developing Synergize: a matchmaking platform for students, connecting young entrepreneurs with potential business partners.
Kotulska described Synergize as “Tinder for young entrepreneurs,” complete with a swipe-like application. The platform’s algorithm will consider many factors to maximize compatibility between founders and potential partners.
Profiles will include features such as a personality assessment, a score based on completion of a case study, and hours per week students are willing to commit to a business. There will also be an AI system that will verify the truthfulness of the profiles.
“Finding a business partner, it’s as challenging as finding your husband,” Kotulska said.
After growing up in Poland, achieving a bachelor’s degree in the Netherlands and working toward her Master’s degree in France, Kotulska found her way to North Carolina by joining an incubator offered by the Raleigh campus of Skema Business School.
At the conclusion of the program, Kotulska said RIoT Program Director Rachel Newberry approached her with an offer to join this summer’s RIoT Accelerator Program, aka RAP. (We have previously written about other members of the latest RAP cohort, including Baby Bumps, Social Cascade, CSPM Zero, and Soffos.)
RAP is a 12-week program for early-stage startups. Kotulska, who is 22 years old, said the program has offered a welcoming and supportive environment – a change from her experience in Poland where, as a young entrepreneur, she said she felt discouraged from starting a business so young.
Reaching Student Entrepreneurs
During her time with RAP, Kotulska is focusing on customer discovery. She is contacting academic institutions and startup incubators to gain a deeper understanding of the pain points aspiring entrepreneurs face.
Prior to the launch of the platform, Kotulska plans to orchestrate a series of in-person “speed-dating” sessions for entrepreneurs to help her understand what factors are most important in the algorithms.
She said RAP has given her a vivid sense of how to structure her business, which she felt she lacked before. She hopes to launch Synergize by the end of the program.
Synergize’s target market will be comprised of university venture offices, which are designed to help students commercialize intellectual property. Through Kotulska’s customer discovery efforts, she has already found that students are often unable to accomplish this commercialization without licensing their IP to other companies. She said while many students have great business ideas, they lack the business background to get those ideas off the ground.
Universities’ venture offices will purchase a subscriptions to Synergize and then provide students with access to the platform. Students using the platform can then connect with peers at their own university or at other academic institutions.
Kotulska also hopes to implement a mentorship system, whereby students who find a compatible match can work with a mentor to facilitate the initial conversations. Her target students are those pursuing graduate and postgraduate degrees.
“That’s my goal: to create compatible synergies across academia,” she said.
