Pullapproach

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Pullapproach

ChileMountain View, United States
Website:
http://pullapproach.com/
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Project Summary
Elevator Pitch

Concise Summary: Help us pitch this solution! Provide an explanation within 3-4 short sentences.

Pullapproach identifies profitable business models that create social impact, analyzes what makes them successful and attracts them to other regions using advanced technology that integrates human insight. Through data mining, modeling and crowd sourcing, we develop regions and scale businesses.

About Project

Problem: What problem is this project trying to address?

Pull business models with social impact to a region Imagine that tomorrow you wake up and have been put in charge of stimulating economic and social development in Chile. How would you start? You believe that the best approach is to use business models that are both profitable and impactful. The world is full of great initiatives that solve local problems with sustainable business models. But, how will you find and implement such models in Chile in order to create jobs, activate local economies, and improve education? How could you actually align different agencies and stakeholders on the desired goals and coordinate future steps? How could you demonstrate to public and private investors beforehand how these business models would lead to measured social impact and profitable outcome?

Solution: What is the proposed solution? Please be specific!

How we identify, relate and recommend business models 1 We discover business models through our partnerships with social incubators as we help them to foster profitable social ventures. 2 We analyze current development models and recommend tailored strategies to development organizations using expert opinion in conjunction with our technology. 3 We identify opportunities to overcome development challenges that are both feasible and generate high impact for the specific challenge. 4 We tie together local challenges, feasible opportunities, and business models through our relational database to recommend a roadmap that will that will resolve specific issues in a financially sustainable way. 5 We offer an array of business development and collaboration tools to launch these businesses and to foster communication between entrepreneurs, experts and engaged citizens.
Impact: How does it Work

Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.

Case Study: Socialab Regional Innovation Problem: Before launching as Socialab, the Centro de Innovación Social struggled to manage the growth of its contests and to capitalize on synergies across offices spread throughout the continent. Solution: - It is very easy to compare what is happening in each country, even as the communities grow, because the ecosystems are centralized. - With support from Pullapproach, Socialab has run 4 competitions in 3 countries simultaneously, amassing a community of 16,000 members. P: Socialab hosts many incredible conferences and events to investigate development challenges but not all of its members can attend due to timing or geographic constraints. S: - Problem definition continues online, extending the conversation to others and maintaining an ongoing debate. P: Socialab´s communities were created based solely on the country divisions, making it difficult to test ideas or to get feedback from more homogeneous groups of people. S: - Smaller groups can be created across countries, joining people together based on similar roles, areas of interest, and other factors. P: The Socialab values of transparency and mentorship were not being honored because basic software limited them from sharing ideas and comments openly. S: - The Socialab website and platform are linked so that business proposals are instantaneously shared with the community where entrepreneurs, mentors, and community members pose questions and recommendations. More than 1,000 initiatives have been reviewed in the past 4 months.
Sustainability

Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?

Many organizations tackle pieces of the value chain: 1) identify social enterprises (UpSocial), 2) provide acceleration tools to entrepreneurs(many turn-key examples), 3) offer open innovation tools to define challenges, (Open Ideo) Frequently, efforts to classify businesses with social impact are done manually and are limited in scope in language, whereas we offer a meta solution that identifies many initiatives from around the world. We are different because we deliver the entire process thanks to the technology and business tools developed by our parent company. Ultimately, we are not competitors with these organizations because we offer to partner with them as technology specialists and implement development and entrepreneurial initiatives.
Team

Founding Story

Global Incubator was founded on a principle that I fully subscribe to: entrepreneurs can change the world. This broad scale impact that entrepreneurship can have is especially powerful when experienced firsthand. Although I did not have one specific ¨aha!¨moment, I became involved with Global Incubator because our social values are completely aligned. We have worked together for the past years to create leading software technology for entrepreneurs. Now that the technology is so advanced, it seemed the perfect opportunity to re-purpose the platform for customers specifically interested in business-driven impact. From my personal interest in social entrepreneurship, I have seen frequent attempts to publicize and promote successful social entrepreneurs. However, due to language barriers, differences in format and a range of other factors, these attempts too often cannibalize a shared purpose. Pullapproach aims to reverse that and to revolutionize regional development.
About You
About You
First Name

Nikon

Tell us about yourself/your team.

Our team brings together experts in business development, international development and technology who are passionate about creating impact.

After his 8 years of professional experience in research and industry, with a focus on Innovation, Data Mining, Entrepreneurship and Biotechnologies, Nikon is driven to combine scientific and business-oriented methodologies to innovate the enterprises of tomorrow. He completed his PhD from Cambridge University in Computational Neuroscience.

The rest of the Pullapproach team includes: Robin Rahe - MBA & Product Development, Jose Luis Arteche - Big Data and Carlos Hernandez Corbato - PhD & Data Mining, Hector Calleja and Irene Chinchilla - Design. Our advisors are Pablo de Manuel Triantafilo, Luis Gonzalez Blanch, Ester Botica and Jose Sanz.

What makes you an intrapreneur? What are the skills, capabilities, and personality traits that make you an intrapreneur?

I have been developing the Global Incubator technology for entrepreneurs since August 2010. Seeing a need for regional development agencies and other international actors to pull tailored social enterprises into their region, I co-proposed a spin-off called Pullapproach.

Since July 2012, we have been testing and developing our prototype with a large non-profit agency in Latin America. As CEO, I am responsible for establishing strategic goals and coordinating efforts between the core Pullapproach team and Global Incubator in order to co-develop technology that measures social impact and is based on complex models. Prior leadership experiences equip me to identify opportunities, establish vision for the team and to build long-term partnerships with key stake holders.

About Your Organization
Company Country

, CA, Mountain View

Primary country where this project is creating social impact
Additional countries or regions

Latin America, Europe, and U.S.

Industry

Other

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Innovation
Select the stage that best applies to your solution

Start-Up (a pilot that has just begun operating)

The Solution: Why is this solution innovative for your company and industry?

Our parent company (Global Incubator) is focused on large, profitable businesses and start-ups. We build upon this by measuring their social impact, adding new social enterprises and by using crowd sourcing and experts to analyze where initiatives can have the biggest impact. We use technology to reverse typical regional development processes by pulling in companies tailored to a region´s needs instead of pushing a generic solution to different regions.

Impact
What has been the impact of your solution to date?

We operate in 3 countries and have a database of profitable business models with a social impact for more than 10,000 companies. Through our technology more than 7 social enterprises have gotten seed funding and start-up space to further improve and scale their businesses.

What is your projected impact over the next 1 to 3 years?

We are currently developing long-term partnerships with our clients
and partners. These relationships will determine the size of our impact.
We connect regions in need of sustainable development solutions with brilliant entrepreneurs who have devised such solutions but face barriers to scaling into
those regions.
We have customized our services for the following segments:
1 Government agencies at local, regional and national levels that invest in development and
promote entrepreneurship.
2 Multinational companies who want to align their core values with regional development
opportunities and to foster social ventures.
3 Development Organizations including think-tanks, NGOs and for-profit organizations
dedicated to promoting global social and economic development.

What barriers might hinder the success of your project? How do you plan to overcome them?

Within the segment of clients interested in profit-driven impact, there are many sub-sectors. Certain clientele require a relatively longer time to approve new projects. They face internal policies that prevent fast decision making.
Luckily, these clients represent only a fraction of those interested in scaling social businesses. So, we are establishing and strengthening our relationships with clients who have immediate needs and are faster to implement our services. This approach allows us to continue talks with the clients who need more time for project approval while still acquiring new clients and enhancing our database.

Sustainability
What is the benefit or value you're creating for your business?

1. Pullapproach serves the needs of an entirely different market segment than Global Incubator´s. We focus on organizations concerned with international development, social impact, and profitability. We have identified a way to bring together all stakeholders of regional development, an untapped vertical for GI.
2. We enhance the core tools and add new functionalities for measuring impact which can be further developed for traditional business clients.
3. We fulfill the social mission of Gl to make the world better through technology.

How are you leveraging internal resources (funds, time, knowledge, etc.) to support this initiative?

The platform and tools were designed based on consultations with more than 250 leading
incubators in over 20 countries and from analysis of 1200 entrepreneurial tools. Our base technology is valued at $3.5 million.
In addition to the use of this technology, Pullapproach may use up to 80 hours of consultation per month from Global Incubator staff to adapt the platform. By developing this technology over 3 years, the staff have developed expertise in creating software tools for a many types of clients. Moreover, Pullapproach collaborates with Global Incubator´s extensive network of clients with whom we tests various service packages and delivery options. The Global Incubator board of directors also provides feedback on business development and provides introduction to potential clients.

Expand on your answer, explaining the long-term funding and support plan.

The arrangement stated above will continue for the rest of the fiscal year. At that point, we must demonstrate that future revenue from signed customer contracts will be used to offset at least half of the costs of personnel. This arrangement ensures that Pullapproach continues to co-develop its technology and product offering for our market segments.

Tell us about your partnerships across your company and externally that are key to your project's success.

Our partnership with Socialab has given us insight into the needs of social incubators. Helping our partners to scale quickly is essential to expanding our database of business models exponentially. Meanwhile, our Singularity partnership enables us to interact with leaders and adds disruptive new initiatives to our database.
We work with senior in-house developers to enhance the platform for development-oriented actors and with designers to establish our online presence.

What internal support have you gotten for your project? What kind of push-back have you received?

So far, working with Global Incubator has been an incredible asset. Pullapproach can defray high development costs and yet offer immediate access to an advanced suite of tools being used by institutions around the world. At times, our team must dedicate itself towards core technology improvements but the partnership also ensures that Pullapproach technology will continually improve as Global Incubator enhances software to meet the needs of its growing user base.