Re - design our Access2Funding Service – Mind Mapping tool 

 Challenge 

 I am currently enrolled as Startup Programs Expert in a University of Saint Francis based in Italy . My job consists in   monitoring the evolution of our portfolio through the analysis of the business potential of each project and   the measurement of the effectiveness and quality of our service offering .   Few months ago , I was facing relevant problems concerning the Access2Funding proposition : the service   conceived to help and support incubated startups in the fundraising activities . Despite the importance and   the relevance of capital to our clients , the performances of our service were very disappointing : the rate of   adoption had never succeeded the 10 % of our entire portfolio since the launch of the service itself , and the   customer churn rate had been dangerously high ( meaning that almost nobody renewed the subscription of   the service after the first year ) . It was time for us to face the reality and to understand what was the sources   of this tremendous mismatching between our offering and our clients . 

 Selection 

 We started our re - design process taking a look at the current reality ( e.g. the incubated startups ): our team   conducted informal interviews ( “ coffee sessions ” , we called them ) with a representative subset of our   portfolio trying to understand in a better way all the challenges and the problems faced by our clients before   during and after their fundraising campaigns . We focused our attention exclusively to the “ problem - side ”   ( “ What - is ” ) and we mentioned our service only with our former subscribers to find out the pros and cons of   their experience with the Access2Funding team . After 3 - weeks sessions ( and too much coffees ) we had   amassed a huge amount of data and we needed a tool to distill all the information gathered into patterns   and insights , defining the design criteria of our new Access2Funding service . We decided to go with the Mind   mapping tool , rejecting the classic PowerPoint presentation . 

 Application 

 We booked our biggest conference room for an entire afternoon and we invited three different kind of   stakeholders to join our session : the whole Access2Funding team , some of the previously interviewed   startups , Venture Capitalists and Business Angels ( for a total of 12 people involved ) . We posted on the walls   a synthesis of our interviews in order to explain and remind them the problem and the design challenges , we   gave them approximately 30 minutes to observe the data , in silence , and then we asked them to organize   themselves in 3 “ Discussion Groups ” made of 4 people each ( diversity of the members of each group was   guaranteed by us ) . Every Discussion Group had a clipboard and some sticky notes they used to share their   opinions and group them into themed clusters on their clipboard . The second part of the session was then   dedicated to the sharing of the works done by each group , giving the possibility to every group to add and   comment the sticky notes of the others . At the end of the session I personally reviewed in front of the   audience the 3 clipboards collected , summing up in large orange sticky notes the insights and patterns of the   clusters identified by the participants . 

 Insight 

 The results of the Mind Mapping session were simply eye - opener and allowed us to rethink from scratch the   whole Access2Funding value proposition , starting from the role that incubator should have in the fundraising   activities of its startups . We were convinced that the incubator , and the Access2Funding team in particular ,   had to play a role similar to the consultant ’s one , supporting side - by - side the startup team in structuring the   materials and the documents needed to its fundraising campaign , reviewing the business strategy ( if needed ) ,   estimating the right financing need and choosing the typology of capital to raise ( equity , grant or debt ) . On   the contrary , Mind Mapping revealed us a reality that was pretty different : our startups want to be   “ independent ” during fundraising activities . Our Entrepreneurs want to have full control and continuous 

 visibility on the strategy of the companies they run , and due to the strategic impacts of fundraising choices ,   they are not willing to externalise these kind of activities to third parties ( incubators included ) , preferring to   learn on their own the notions of finance they need , being autonomous in such decisions ( quality that is very   appreciated also by investors ) . On the other hand , the session conducted , revealed us some uncovered needs   about our clients that we were not able to identify in the past : the incubator should focus on providing basic   training about finance and accounting to the incubated startups and instead of the consulting role , the   incubator should leverage on its vast network to support the startups through the exploration of the funds ,   corporates or business angels potentially interested in financing the project , speeding up the whole process . 

 Approach 

 Going back in time , I would diversify the dataset of the what - is phase , integrating the information coming   from customer interviews with visual tools and some formal quantitative data . Anyway , Mind Mapping is   really a great tool to align the organization around a common understanding of the current reality , helping   us removing our own bias and approaching the world through the eyes of the customer . Now that we have   successfully identified the insight and pains of our customers , we now possess the right criteria to start re- designing the Access2Funding service . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Re - design our Access2Funding Service – Mind Mapping tool 

 Challenge 

 I am currently enrolled as Startup Programs Expert in a University of Saint Francis based in Italy . My job consists in   monitoring the evolution of our portfolio through the analysis of the business potential of each project and   the measurement of the effectiveness and quality of our service offering .   Few months ago , I was facing relevant problems concerning the Access2Funding proposition : the service   conceived to help and support incubated startups in the fundraising activities . Despite the importance and   the relevance of capital to our clients , the performances of our service were very disappointing : the rate of   adoption had never succeeded the 10 % of our entire portfolio since the launch of the service itself , and the   customer churn rate had been dangerously high ( meaning that almost nobody renewed the subscription of   the service after the first year ) . It was time for us to face the reality and to understand what was the sources   of this tremendous mismatching between our offering and our clients . 

 Selection 

 We started our re - design process taking a look at the current reality ( e.g. the incubated startups ): our team   conducted informal interviews ( “ coffee sessions ” , we called them ) with a representative subset of our   portfolio trying to understand in a better way all the challenges and the problems faced by our clients before   during and after their fundraising campaigns . We focused our attention exclusively to the “ problem - side ”   ( “ What - is ” ) and we mentioned our service only with our former subscribers to find out the pros and cons of   their experience with the Access2Funding team . After 3 - weeks sessions ( and too much coffees ) we had   amassed a huge amount of data and we needed a tool to distill all the information gathered into patterns   and insights , defining the design criteria of our new Access2Funding service . We decided to go with the Mind   mapping tool , rejecting the classic PowerPoint presentation . 

 Application 

 We booked our biggest conference room for an entire afternoon and we invited three different kind of   stakeholders to join our session : the whole Access2Funding team , some of the previously interviewed   startups , Venture Capitalists and Business Angels ( for a total of 12 people involved ) . We posted on the walls   a synthesis of our interviews in order to explain and remind them the problem and the design challenges , we   gave them approximately 30 minutes to observe the data , in silence , and then we asked them to organize   themselves in 3 “ Discussion Groups ” made of 4 people each ( diversity of the members of each group was   guaranteed by us ) . Every Discussion Group had a clipboard and some sticky notes they used to share their   opinions and group them into themed clusters on their clipboard . The second part of the session was then   dedicated to the sharing of the works done by each group , giving the possibility to every group to add and   comment the sticky notes of the others . At the end of the session I personally reviewed in front of the   audience the 3 clipboards collected , summing up in large orange sticky notes the insights and patterns of the   clusters identified by the participants . 

 Insight 

 The results of the Mind Mapping session were simply eye - opener and allowed us to rethink from scratch the   whole Access2Funding value proposition , starting from the role that incubator should have in the fundraising   activities of its startups . We were convinced that the incubator , and the Access2Funding team in particular ,   had to play a role similar to the consultant ’s one , supporting side - by - side the startup team in structuring the   materials and the documents needed to its fundraising campaign , reviewing the business strategy ( if needed ) ,   estimating the right financing need and choosing the typology of capital to raise ( equity , grant or debt ) . On   the contrary , Mind Mapping revealed us a reality that was pretty different : our startups want to be   “ independent ” during fundraising activities . Our Entrepreneurs want to have full control and continuous 

 visibility on the strategy of the companies they run , and due to the strategic impacts of fundraising choices ,   they are not willing to externalise these kind of activities to third parties ( incubators included ) , preferring to   learn on their own the notions of finance they need , being autonomous in such decisions ( quality that is very   appreciated also by investors ) . On the other hand , the session conducted , revealed us some uncovered needs   about our clients that we were not able to identify in the past : the incubator should focus on providing basic   training about finance and accounting to the incubated startups and instead of the consulting role , the   incubator should leverage on its vast network to support the startups through the exploration of the funds ,   corporates or business angels potentially interested in financing the project , speeding up the whole process . 

 Approach 

 Going back in time , I would diversify the dataset of the what - is phase , integrating the information coming   from customer interviews with visual tools and some formal quantitative data . Anyway , Mind Mapping is   really a great tool to align the organization around a common understanding of the current reality , helping   us removing our own bias and approaching the world through the eyes of the customer . Now that we have   successfully identified the insight and pains of our customers , we now possess the right criteria to start re- designing the Access2Funding service .
### Output: 