Happy Sunday!
Welcome back to Founders Feature, a weekly newsletter all about the journeys of young startup founders.
For this week's edition, I interviewed Charlie Rogers, Co-Founder of House Hack, a graduate talent accelerator based in the UK.
House Hack decided to close down in December 2021.
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Here’s what House Hack was all about:
🏠 The Basics
The Problem:
It is very difficult for students to get hands-on, practical experience at university, helping them build confidence and skills. Unfortunately, gaining experience usually requires existing experience. Online learning sites such as Coursera are great but mostly very theoretical.
The Solution:
House Hack was created to empower students and graduates with the opportunity to work on real-life business problems for companies, giving them the skills and confidence to find their dream job after graduating.
The Team:
We were two co-founders, and we were housemates and had previously run a student society, Enactus Loughborough, together. We both wanted to work on something that would have an impact on young people post-graduation and we knew we worked well together. By the end, around 40 people were working on House Hack, including all volunteers and student leaders.
🚀 The Journey
How did you come up with your startup/solution?
House Hack started as a Lockdown Project in April 2020. My housemates and I got together a team of people we knew and some businesses and organised a day, a hackathon, where we would solve some of the businesses' problems. Both sides really loved it, and the businesses, as well as the students, felt like they gained a lot of value from the experience.
So, we decided to organise more of these events, and throughout the summer it evolved into a business, focused on giving students skills for the workplace through project-based learning. As the company grew we had many participants involved in the organisation of future hackathons. Essentially, if you had participated in a hackathon, you could join the next time as team leaders, then as hosts, then as event managers. So we were upskilling them in this regard, too.
Why is this the right time for this problem to be solved?
Starting during Covid, the difficulty for students to gain experience became even more pronounced when many companies cancelled their internships that year, so many students were left with no work experience, despite having gone through the rigorous interview processes.
House Hack came at the time to give students an internship-worthy experience that is practical and can be added to their CV.
What is a recent success you are proud of?
A major success was when a large paid event we organised for one of our clients ran completely without me. The fact that the model worked, and there were people running it, former participants, whom I trusted to deliver above expectations was great to see. It proved to me that the model could work in action.
What is a recent challenge you have faced?
The greatest challenge we faced was finding a revenue model that allowed us to stay true to our mission. This involved carefully balancing our priorities between the students whom we wanted to provide value to and the clients who were paying us.
Bonus: Why did you decide to close the business?
A big part of the reason we closed the business was the business model. Our two biggest customers were students and startups, neither of which should be paying for a service like this. We looked to the recruiting industry for revenue, organising a hackathon with an assessment framework, so the companies could assess the participants while they were working on real-life business problems. To make the business model more commercial, we would have had to focus more and more on the recruitment aspect, moving us further and further away from the initial intention of helping students.
Another reason was that each event involved four variables, event managers, team leaders, participants, and clients. All of which are people and therefore made scaling systems and processes challenging and risk management incredibly difficult.
🧠 The Lessons
What is the best advice you have been given recently?
For businesses working with a community where so many stakeholders are actively involved in the business, learn to make decisions on your own, or in a smaller group first, before telling others and getting other people's input. Involve the community on how to implement the decisions later. If you let a large community shape decisions too early things can become very difficult to manage.
What advice would you give to other young founders?
Don't restrict yourself by what is out there and what has been done before. Push the boat in terms of what's possible. If you do the simple things right, you'll often see great results.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned so far?
People are the most important asset in any business. Without them, it doesn't work. The modern-day company needs to deliver for all its stakeholders: Its employees, its customers, and its shareholders. Right now, people care a lot about their development journey and learnings, so giving them benefits that aren't just salary can be essential to their career.
✨ The Inspiration
Who inspires you?
The most inspirational people in my life are my friends, for the people they are and how they behave. I also look to past versions of myself and the achievements I have had for inspiration.
What book do you think everyone should read?
The Untethered Soul - Michael Alan Singer
Unscripted - M.J. DeMarco
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu