Guest Blog by Mike Stone (@studyabroad101) Co-Founder, President, and Chief Marketing Officer of 2010 MassChallenge Winner, Abroad101

Abroad101 came out of my own experience as a student searching for the perfect study abroad program. At Tufts, I knew a lot of people who either didn’t go abroad at all (“I’m an Engineer, so it’s impossible.”) or went on the wrong type of program (“I wanted to pick up Spanish, but my classes were with all Americans!”) because there was so little access to student program reviews. I remember sifting through paper evaluations, reading reviews from 5, 10 years ago, thinking, “There has to be a more efficient way to share this information across schools.”

After identifying our problem, we quickly realized that we couldn’t simply plug the holes with a single solution. Instead, Abroad101 has been flexible – we listen to feedback, tweak our plans, and repeat as we face new challenges.

Listen

Our first step was conducting as much research as possible on the study abroad industry, where we identified four major stakeholders: students, parents, university study abroad advisors, and program providers. By organizing focus groups with these key stakeholders, we were able to collect insights and deepen our understanding of the frustrations people face when selecting study abroad options.

We were also able to recruit Tufts as our first university partner, which was a huge asset given that they helped us cultivate our concept, giving us more access to all four of those stakeholders.

Tweak

Through all of our conversations and research, we were able to tweak the business model and finesse our strategy over time. As much as we would have loved to have funding out of the gate, bootstrapping required us to be that much more innovative and thoughtful in our allocation of resources.  This ended up being a blessing, as our business changed dramatically in the first year and a half, as we developed a prototype to address the new insights we were receiving. Abroad101 wasn’t how I had originally dreamed it up, but our prototype addressed the problem much better than I could have imagined.

Repeat

I think one of our greatest challenges was continuing to be patient and permeable around the needs of our potential customers in the early stages of the product development.  While we were incredibly passionate about the innovation we were bringing to the study abroad space through our technology, we needed to actually create demand for our product by continuing to listen to our partners’ needs. Then it was a matter of educating and collaborating with our partners to demonstrate more the efficient alternatives Abroad101 offers.

It took several years for the international education space to warm up to a review platform for study abroad programs, but the persistence required to overcome such initial resistance has resulted in an even more dynamic product, as well as significantly greater support from our customers.

Listening and tweaking also went beyond our customers as we’ve grown our team and learned to invest in them as well.  I recommend doing some serious reflecting to figure out what skills and resources you bring to the table, as well as areas in which you lack experience, so you can recruit complementary team members that fill the gaps. When seeking advice, we aimed big and pursued leaders in our space, such as the co-founders of TripAdvisor. Now we are thrilled to have them on board, providing invaluable guidance as we take on new challenges.

See Abroad101's blog on how they found MassChallenge, their goals for next year and more!