After having returned from her study period abroad with Erasmus+ Alejandra Dorado was full of energy and motivated to start something new. During her university career, Alejandra had not received specific entrepreneurial training, but together with a group of friends, she decided to participate in the competition Blue BBVA challenge. As an experiential learning workshop, they started to work on a challenge and learnt, through different techniques how to use their creativity to tackle a problem, communicate their idea and how to mobilise resources. This is where the idea for MODUM was born and shaped: MODUM is a web application designed to make life easier for the student, in terms of academic orientation, internship search and job placement.
Having studied “translation and Interpretation”, Alejandra and her founding partners tackled a problem that they themselves and many of their co-students were facing: not knowing what to study or which career path to choose. Or even selecting a career path while having unrealistic expectations of what an average working day in the selected sector would look like or what opportunities different study focusses can or cannot open.
Facing low job satisfaction rates and high change rates of educational careers during the first years, the idea for MODUM was further defined- through the platform, students will be able to register and seek advice from senior students or mentors active in different careers who can provide up to date first hand and practical real-life insight, guidance and advice. This is achieved through a simple search through filters, which will direct the student to people who can answer their questions and even generate new aspirations.
The team of 5 founding partners was selected as the winning team of the Blue BBVA challenge 2017. As part of the prize, they spent one week in the incubator “Impact Hub Berlin” where Alejandra learnt about the European Union exchange programme “Erasmus for young entrepreneurs”. She decided to engage in a 6 month exchange with Matthias Reisinger, an experienced host entrepreneur running an incubator in Vienna (Austria), to improve her marketing strategy and create community around the pilot version of MODUM. The experience has enriched and deeply motivated her. “We live in a society in which they show you how to look for jobs but they do not show you how to create your own job”. During her exchange, she learnt a lot from her host entrepreneur, exchanged ideas and lessons learnt and met many other entrepreneurs. “You see that it can be done and you keep on working on your idea”. According to her, spending 6 months surrounded daily by entrepreneurs really encouraged her to go on working on the project. She also noticed that the idea can be scaled up and can have a positive impact on many other countries, not only in Spain.
While the concrete future of the initial founding team of MODUM is not clear, Alejandra is very motivated to keep on working to soon turn the project into reality giving response to a very up to date need.
Access the beta version here: experiencemodum.com
Facebook: Modum; Twitter: @Modum5