Programme admissions | Case study
Ignite | UCC
Background
Igniting start-up talent
IGNITE is an international award-winning business incubation programme supporting Irish graduate entrepreneurs with the ambition to work full-time developing a scalable start-up idea.
IGNITE is a joint initiative by Cork City Council, Cork County Council, the Local Enterprise Offices of Cork City, South Cork and North & West Cork and University College Cork to encourage entrepreneurship and business creation.
Start-ups launched with IGNITE include TrustAp, Vconnecta, and AnaBio Technologies.
Ignite, and it’s Director Eamonn Curtin run several start-up initiatives to support entrepreneurs every year. Often, applicants progress through workshops before applying for IGNITE with Eamonn noting how,
“Submit provides an effective platform to capture, track, share and assess applications across all our start-up initiatives.”
“Submit provides an effective platform to capture, track, share and assess applications across all our start-up initiatives.”
Streamlining applications
Before Submit, Ignite would promote the programme online and accept applications via emailed word documents. Over time, this process became too cumbersome to manage, particularly for evaluation.
Previously, we had to trawl through the email inbox for our applications,” recalled Eamonn, we knew there must be some way to automate this process.
Ignite now use Submit to collect applications via their Expression of Interest form. “We deliberately keep the questions light not to overwhelm applicants on the first go,” noted Eamonn. Ignite makes good use of the auto-tagging feature so that once an application is submitted, they can quickly see if it’s from a quality applicant or not.
Eamonn and his team shortlist applications at which point they invite successful entrepreneurs to an interview stage with Ignite’s panellists.
Submit.com certainly makes life easier at the interview stage. We can share the applications with the panellists well in advance, and when our panel is talking with the founders, they can easily refer to the application, said Eamonn.
A feature Eamonn is beginning to explore is VideoQ, our pre-recorded video interview questions, “I can see the value, particularly for our workshops. If they can’t communicate their idea easily, I’m not sure they would be right for the programme.
Key Features Used
Secure database
Another essential consideration for Ignite was security. Ignite needed to ensure the data privacy of all their users with regularly scheduled backups.
“There is an element of pipeline management in what we do, so it’s great we have been able to build these GDPR compliant databases.”
New use cases
“I believe we’re maybe using 7% of what Submit is capable of,” said Eamon. In response, our solutions team has been collaborating on new use cases for the start-up programme.
One idea is to create another program to capture mentor details. Similar to how mentoring works for our Local Enterprise Office clients. “It would be great to point people interested in mentoring a start-up towards an online portal where they fill in their details,” said Eamonn. Approaching mentoring like this would allow Eamon better scope to match mentors with entrepreneurs.
The other is for entrepreneurs to use the platform to create a portfolio.
“I’m passionate about entrepreneurs getting the most out of Ignite. I think it would add even more value to our founders if they had a sort of online library that they could always look back on.”
“I believe we’re maybe using 7% of what Submit is capable of, so I look forward to working with the solutions team on new use cases for the start-up programme.”
Get started today
If you think it’s time to streamline your submission process or you’re interested in more ways to modernise your current workflow and review process, talk to one of our senior solutions specialists today.
