Kommonly
Matching event organizers with local brands and business for sponsorship.
Note: This project is now called Kommonly. We changed from Fundedd because our service was about more than just seeking funds – it was about all the ways people can deliver value to an event organizer.
The Team: Me, Nuseir Yassin (now at NasDaily), Amy Yin.
This idea grew out of the need to create an idea for our Founder’s Journey final project. Nuseir, one of my class partners, proposed the idea as a solution to a problem he had encountered himself. He was seeking a sponsor for his project to launch a balloon into near space. After much cold-calling and cold-emailing, B Good, an organic Boston-based fast food chain, agreed, under the condition that he take a photo of a B Good burger from near space.
It got us thinking:
Q: Why is it so hard to find a sponsor? A lot of projects go unfunded.
A: You have to cold-call and cold-email people and firms, or reach out through your network. Especially for less experienced networkers and those out of school, this is difficult to accomplish.
Q: Could sponsors be missing out on good marketing opportunities?
A: Big companies often have a large outreach program, with the goals of promoting their brand, and for tech companies, recruiting.
But we realized there must be a better way. Cold-calling and emailing seemed decidedly 20th century. What if we could create a platform to match these two parties? That’s where the idea of Fundedd came up.
People questioned this idea though. It is basically a local peer to peer marketplace, the kind that had really failed to take root on the internet. But this service seemed different – we had one side that was very motivated – the event organizers, who were already putting in substantial time and effort seeking sponsorships. Once we had this side of the marketplace, getting sponsors onboard would be a lot easier.
The name: It was an available URL with a name that seemed to match our type of product.
The status: ongoing, developing the prototype. We’ve contracted a designer for our work.
The Homepage Design.