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4. The IMPCT Story
Forming the IMPCT team
It is in September 2013, within the walls of the Commerce Building of National Chengchi University (NCCU), Taipei, Taiwan, that the four IMPCT co-founders met. An-nung Chen, Andres Escobar, Juan-Diego Prudot and Taylor Scobbie all used to be International MBA (IMBA) students of the Taiwanese institution.
An-nung Chen (30) is both the only female and the only Taiwanese member of the IMPCT team.
She has multiple degrees, including an MFA obtained in San Francisco. When she registered in NCCU’s IMBA program, Chen had been working for three years in the food industry as the COO of her family-owned business. She was well-paid and a promising professional career was awaiting her. As a matter of fact, the food industry was growing and Chen was the one designated to take over the family business once her father retired. This is the reason why Chen registered for NCCU’s IMBA program in 2013. When she joined IMPCT, Chen was still working full-time for her family-business.
Andres Escobar (30) is originally from El Salvador and has a diverse background. After graduating high school in El Salvador, Escobar studied hotel management in Argentina but he did not like it and quit. Then he studied business as his undergrad in France and in Louisiana, USA. Escobar came back to El Salvador and worked in the manufacturing industry for two years. He didn’t like it and switched to work in the telecom industry, for which he was sent to work to Senegal where he stayed during one year. Then the IMBA opportunity in Taiwan showed-up in 2013 and Escobar took it.
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Juan-Diego Prudot (30) is originally from Honduras. He used to occupy a software engineer manager position in his family-owned business, in Honduras. Like Chen, Prudot was designated to take over the family-business after his parents retired. When the IMBA opportunity showed-up in 2013, Prudot’s plan was to go to Taiwan and come back to manage the family business.
Taylor Scobbie (30) is originally from Canada and has degrees in both business and philosophy.
Before joining the IMBA program at NCCU, Scobbie used to work as a business consultant in Canada.
Figure 3: The IMPCT Team
(From left to right: Prudot, Chen, Escobar, Scobbie)
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Although the four co-founders met during their first year of IMBA in 2013, it is during the fall of 2014 that the IMPTC team was formed. Prudot, who always wanted to participate in a business case competition, initiated the whole project by selecting the competition and by forming the team. When researching business case competition, the Hult Prize stood-up for Prudot who was attracted by the focus on social enterprises, the prize of one million dollars and the opportunity of meeting former USA President Bill Clinton. The previous year, a team from NCCU had already made it to the Hult Prize’s regional round, in Dubai.
It was a clear choice for Prudot to sign-up for the Hult Prize. Prudot knew that he could provide for technological skills but obviously, he needed a team. Prudot exactly knew who he wanted in his team and already pictured how all the teammates could get along in their different skill sets.
Since he used to hold a managing position in his family business, Prudot developed a sense of feeling people and learned how to work with people, understand their motivations and expectations.
Prudot firstly reached out to Escobar, who was his roommate and good friend. During the first year of IMBA, they worked on a few group projects together, and Escobar had always made great presentations. He was known for his designing and presenting skills among his classmates.
Escobar immediately accepted Prudot’s invitation. For him, opportunities to travel and to meet people were great rewards.
Prudot wanted Scobbie in his team for his strength in finance. Although Prudot had never worked with him, Scobbie was very outspoken during classes and was known for his financial skills. At first, Scobbie did not seem very motivated to join Prudot’s team. He gave Prudot excuses like the project would take too much time from him. Prudot reassured Scobbie and told
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him it would only be a couple of weeks of work. Scobbie finally gave-in and told Prudot that if he wanted him, he would help him.
It was a requirement by the Hult Prize to have at least one local student from the team’s school’s country. Therefore, Prudot needed a Taiwanese person to join his team. Once again, Prudot knew exactly who he wanted to recruit. Prudot and Chen used to talk about their respective family businesses and Prudot sensed that she was able to work with people, which he considers as one of the main challenges in any company. In addition to getting a Taiwanese perspective by recruiting Chen, Prudot’s team would get a female perspective; not for the sake of being diverse but because diversity actually brings benefits. Chen who was working full-time in addition to her studies welcomed this opportunity with open arms. Her life was too stable for her and the Hult Prize opportunity sounded exciting.
Now that he had his team formed, Prudot had to make it work.
Hult Prize’s local round at NCCU
The 2015 theme of the Hult Prize was “Early Childhood Education in the Urban Slum and beyond”. The challenge was to provide quality early education to ten million children under age six in urban slums by 2020.
None of the team members had experience in education, but they had to come-up with an idea.
The team chose Roots as its name and started to research on the topic. The first assumption that Roots came-up with is that the best way to educate kids is in schools. After further research, Roots found-out that revenues are a problem for schools. Hence, Root’s idea was to build sustainable schools. Eventually, Roots came-out with the concept of building schools in El
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Salvador with a special curriculum while letting schools be Wi-Fi hubs for telecom companies so they could sell the W-Fi to the surrounding communities. Prudot, who had made the team come together, had already worked on similar projects in Honduras and initiated the idea.
The Hult Prize at NCCU took place on December 6th. Among eighteen teams, four teams made it to the final round, where twelve academic and corporate judges were responsible for electing the winning team. The academic judges were professors at NCCU and the corporate judges were holding managerial positions in international groups such as BCG, Citigroup, HPMG or Sercomm Corp.
The competition was fierce but Roots made it to the final and had to present in front of the twelve judges. One of Roots’ competitors called Sprout stood-up from the others. Team Sprout’s idea was based on vermicomposting and had very ambitious objectives. Team Roots was so impressed by team Sprout’s presentation that some of Roots team members even believed that Sprout was going to win.
However, thanks to great communication skills and a convincing presentation delivery style, Roots stood-up from the competition and convinced the judges to elect the team as the Hult Prize at NCCU winning team.
Although Roots obtained its ticket for the Hult Prize regional round in Dubai, Roots wanted to improve its social business model. There was still work to be done.
Getting ready for Dubai
When Roots was elected as the Hult Prize at NCCU winning team, one of the academic judges
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named Chester Ho came-up to offer his help to Roots. In addition of being part of NCCU academic team, Ho was the chairman of the Taipei Angels, a large Taiwanese angel investment group. Team Roots immediately accepted Ho’s invitation to the angel group’s office. All along the Hult Prize journey, the Taipei Angels acted as mentors to the team, providing them with feedback and expertise in all business areas. Indeed, the Taipei Angels count over eighty members with different backgrounds and specialties.
Roots was also inspired by the classes its members took, especially professor Sandra Liu’s course on social enterprises. Actually, Roots’ initial social business model came from one of professor Liu’s classes.
Thanks to ICDF, the organization which provided a scholarship to Escobar and Prudot for their IMBA studies, Roots reached-out to the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, which gave the team advice for the curriculum it was trying to develop. In addition to expertise, the Ministry of Education provided Roots with enough money to buy the flight tickets to Dubai.
Before the Hult Prize reginal round of competition in Dubai, Escobar went back home to El Salvador for the winter break. Escobar took advantage of his time in El Salvador to go on a research trip to a far-away community called La Cuchilla. Escobar could not go there by himself, it was too dangerous. With the help of a local NGO called Fusal, Escobar went five times to La Cuchilla and witnessed the actual living conditions of the people living in the community. During his multiple trips to La Cuchilla, Escobar took pictures, interviewed some of the mothers living in the community and did short questionnaires.
Upon his return to Taiwan, Escobar showed to his teammates the pictures that he had taken and the data that he had gathered. Chen and Scobbie, who had never been to an urban slum before,
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realized better the extent of the issues encountered in urban slums. The whole team realized that the problem it was trying to solve was more complex than what was assumed. Actually, most of the communities living in urban slums do not even have electricity. Therefore, the Wi-Fi idea was abandoned and Roots started to focus more on the financing part of building schools, capital being a huge problem for urban slums communities.
After many hours of brainstorming in NCCU meeting rooms, Roots firstly came-up with the idea of acting as a micro-lending institution so that communities could buy Roots franchise schools. The capital problem would be overcome and the schools could get revenues from tuition. However, this idea changed after many other hours of brainstorming. Roots thought that instead of acting as a micro-lending institution, Roots could connect people wanting to buy schools with lenders through a Roots platform.
One week before going to Dubai, Scobbie realized that his passport had less than six months before it expires, which meant that he could not go to Dubai. It was a bad hit for the team.
Indeed, Scobbie is very convincing in the pitches he gives and the questions he answers. After weeks of preparation, Roots had to change its plan. In order to handle the crisis, IMPCT went to the Taipei Angels’ office to ask for guidance and came out with a plan of action. Instead of Prudot and Scobbie giving the pitch, it would be Prudot and Escobar. Although the latter has good public-speaking skills, it takes time for him to learn a new pitch. Scobbie and Escobar spent time together re-writing the script in order to adapt it to Escobar’s style and facilitate the pitch learning process.
Prudot, Chen and Escobar got to Dubai on March 11th, two and a half days before the regional round kicks-off, where fifty-eight teams from the world’s top universities would be competing
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fiercely. Some of the teams were made out of PhD students, some others advised by consultants, and everybody was very well dressed. It was an intense environment.
The only thing that Roots team members saw from Dubai was a sign on the road from the airport to the hotel, saying “The answer is you”. Convinced that they were the answer to the Hult Prize’s challenge, Prudot, Escobar and Chen spent two and a half days locked in their hotel room to practice their pitch. After Scobbie’s administrative issue, there was no time to lose.
In order to be the most prepared, they improvised a theater in their hotel room and inflated balloons with angry faces drawn on them, so they seemed like angry or confused judges. Chen would also jump out of nowhere to distract Prudot and Escobar. Everything was done in order to get ready for the unexpected.
March 14th, was the day that Roots had to present. Instead of rehearsing for the last moments available, Prudot suggested to his teammates to stop practicing. He was afraid that more practice would get them confused. So instead of practicing again, the team played some music and started to dance in their hotel room and released all the negative pressure.
The first presentation took place in the morning. A video including the media recorded by Escobar during his research trip was supposed to be played at the beginning of the presentation.
Unfortunately, an informatics problem played tricks on Roots, who had to present without the video.
Roots’ presentation still made a great impression on the Hult Prize’s judges who picked Roots among other teams to answer additional questions. Prudot took advantage of the situation and convinced the judges to let him play the video, although he was not allowed to play any media
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content.
While waiting for the judges’ selection, Chen kept updating Scobbie, who was still in Taipei.
Scobbie was sad not to be able to help his team. The only way he could think of supporting his team despite the distance was to wear the suit that he was supposed to wear on that day, made out of the same fabric as his teammates’ attire.
The judges finally downsized their selection from fifty-eight to six teams, including Roots. The six selected teams would present again on the evening of the same day, in front of all of the seventeen judges and all of the other teams.
The Hult Prize judges all held executive positions in companies such as Booz & Co., Philips, McKinsey, Natixis and others.
After Roots’ presentation, the theater was buzzing with excitement. While waiting for the judges’ delivery, many teams came-up to Roots telling them how much they loved their presentation. Actually, before going to Dubai, Escobar and Prudot had promised themselves that they would try to make as many friends as possible throughout their journey. It is no wonder that Roots received so much benevolent support.
With so much support, Roots was confident about its chances to win the regional round.
However, it is the Attollo team from the University of Toronto who won the first place with the idea of talking stickers as a way to close children’s word gap. Attollo already had pre-orders placed for their products, which is what made the difference.
Roots came-in second of the competition, so close from a ticket in the Hult Prize’s final. During
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the after party, Roots asked each and every judge why they did not win and how they could enhance their social business model. The judges gave the team a lot of good feedback and encouraged Roots to pursue its effort.
Crowdfunding of the IMPCT project
It was a mixed feeling of sadness and motivation upon the team’s reunion in Taipei. Sadness because the team was so close from getting its ticket for the Hult Prize final, and motivation because there was the online round opportunity.
All the support and positive feedback that Roots got in Dubai was determinant in continuing the adventure. The team members started to realize two things. Firstly, that early childhood in urban slums is a crucial issue in the world. Secondly, that they have a true potential to help solving this issue.
The team changed its branding and model when it started the online round. The team was not called Roots anymore, but IMPCT. The new model consisted in having people co-owning a school through micro-equity. A member of the local community would run the school and the capital would come from people who would invest on entrepreneurs through the IMPCT platform. Depending on the success of the entrepreneur, the investor would receive a share of profits proportional to his or her investment and would invest in other IMPCT projects thanks to the money received.
The new micro-equity model idea came to Scobbie when he was taking a shower. On the next day, he talked about his idea to his teammates. At first, his teammates did not believe in his idea.
However, Scobbie does not take no for an answer and argued with it enough that his team
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adopted his idea as the new model.
None of the team members had any experience in crowdfunding. Therefore, the first thing IMPCT did was to research successful Indiegogo campaigns and analyze what made them successful. The Hult Prize helped in providing the competing teams with a handout about successful crowdfunding campaign. Following the research, each team member contacted personally all the people he or she knew two weeks before the launch of the campaign in order to let them know about the upcoming launch of the crowdfunding campaign and asking for money. The team knew that if a large amount of money was raised on the launch of their campaign, the project would get featured.
All the contacting was done in a personal fashion, via personal messages, personal phone calls or one-on-one discussions. Personalizing the message was key for committing people. Escobar was the one who got the most donations from its network. He would contact dozens of people every day trying to remember something about the person he was contacting and asking for only one dollar. Some of them did donate only US$1, but the others donated more, sometimes even US$500.
Escobar also did all the arts of the crowdfunding campaign, including the logo, all the charts and videos. Since he is a boy, Escobar knows how to handle basic informatics programs, such as Microsoft Paint. Escobar did many of the campaign designs using Microsoft Paint. He also used more advanced programs like Corel Paint Shop Pro, but did not know how to use Photoshop,
Escobar also did all the arts of the crowdfunding campaign, including the logo, all the charts and videos. Since he is a boy, Escobar knows how to handle basic informatics programs, such as Microsoft Paint. Escobar did many of the campaign designs using Microsoft Paint. He also used more advanced programs like Corel Paint Shop Pro, but did not know how to use Photoshop,