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What is Dosoc app?

Dosoc app teaches entrepreneurial skills (online) and builds a strong supportive international network as a base for an independent future for refugee.

The application has two parts. The first is an educational part that teaches en-trepreneurial skills and the second part is the live matchmaking between inter-national experts and refugees that connects refugees in various places in the world to experts.

The user gets basic education when she starts up the application; downloadable videos, infographs, simple lecture notes, accessible and easily applicable resour-ces to provide basic knowledge.

The application is accessible through various internet enabled devices as pc’s, laptops, tablets and Smartphone’s. We will build the app so that it accounts for flaky internet connections and make downloadable most parts so that one can use it offline.

The app would allow users to complete exercises, and worksheets on their pro-jects and following that match them to experts for personal advice and feedback on their project.

The app as well allows users to find and connect with likeminded individual in their community to meet together, brainstorm and start the project off ground. W then coennect them to potential investors, and startup competitions both inside and outside the refugee community.

Users continually get business coaching from experts based on the peculiar business challenges they face themselves.

Why Dosoc is effective

The reason for this idea is that we believe refugees can bring along any kind of education from their past and still not always find work in his or her field when he or she enters a new place to live.

But he or she can always set up a business of some kind. So having good skills in this field betters the chances of success anywhere you go. It will enlarge the chances of building up an independent and sustainable living in many diffe-rent places (as it is unsure where his or her future settlement will be).

Hence, we are challenging the status quo of saving refugees passively, the way we challenge the status quo is by empowering refugees to help themselves in a creative way by providing the basic knowledge and the support network to experiment with entrepreneurship and innovation in a fun and welcoming at-mosphere (stress free environment).

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Example of Current User Scenario

Chris has been displaced by conflict in his country and needed to move to a new place. He holds a bachelor degree and is unable to find job in his new place. He had an idea to set up a small business to earn a living but has no support network, expect advice and the relevant information about capital to start his business. He gave up and is still being unemployed.

Example solution offered by Dosoc

Alex is a graduate and has been displaced by civil war. He finds it difficult to get a job but he is very curious and has a brilliant startup idea. He needs expert ad-vice and a support network. But based in the refugee camp there are currently no opportunities to find help. Just as Chris in the example before, this may be a hindrance to move on with the idea...

But a social worker in the refugee camp points him to our app. From there he goes through some basic educational steps and completes a series of assign-ments and worksheets to work out his startup idea. He then goes on to use the app to find an international expert for feedback concerning a specific question he has about his startup. The expert appraises his project, advises him to conti-nue on the road he had chosen and he quickly decides to find likeminded peop-le to also start using the Dosoc app in his community.

They meet and brainstorm and off ground they start the project. When they have worked out the idea they can use the Dosoc app to find international start up competitions and the matchmaking part to find potential investors and within and outside the refugee community. Through Dosoc the get in touch with potential angel investors who are interested in their project and they also receive a call from several startup competitions to enter!

So as Alex at first got stuck on how to set up his business, the basic education and worksheets helped him to organize his actions better. From there on they got in contact with international experts that get involved in the project and help Alex to pull it off the ground. Getting the right connections has accelerated their chances of success

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The key pillars of Dosoc app for building an entre-preneurial ecosystem

Tools, strategy and structure of the Dosoc Applica-tion

The app provides young entrepreneurs within the refugee communities, both seasoned and novice, the opportunity to experience a specialized curriculum derived from the most competitive business schools through MOOC on Course-ra, Novo Ed and ASU startup school.

We acknowledge the fact that the education provided by most MOOC online are time bound, but we create a stress free environment where users are not time bound to assignment and other commitment.

Users are guided in completing assignments and worksheets on their specific projects by experts and thought leaders within the startup domain.

While we follow a lot of the strategies used at Stanford and other leading busi-ness school (MOOC), we also incorporate ideas from other leading professionals practicing lean startup. The main tools we use come from several key books.

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From Steve Blank we use some ideas from customer development that he lays out in the Four Steps to the Epiphany. Also, like in lean Launchpad, we use the business model canvas from business model generation.

Lean Startup by Eric Ries explains the overall principles of merging customer development with agile development principles, adding key concepts like the build-measure-learn cycle, minimum viable product, and innovation accoun-ting.

Following Getting to Plan B, we have the Users/team identify analogs, anti-log, and leaps of faith, and create dashboards to test their leaps of faith.

And while Steve Blank and Eric Ries have identified the overriding principles of lean startup, Ash Maurya does a great job of describing key tactics in Running Lean.

One area where we tend to spend more time that the “typical” entrepreneur-ship class is in the identification of opportunities. There are a few reasons for this:

One is that this is a required class, so while there are always a few young peop-le with a burning desire to realize their startup vision; this tends to be more the exception than the rule.

The majority of people within the refugee community will need some guidan-ce to find potential opportunities. In fact, it’s our experience that even among people with a burning desire to start their own business; many if not most need help searching for good ideas.

So while many entrepreneurship classes go straight to the business model, we start the class with sessions on inspiration and ideation, referencing IDEO’s methodology. Experts guide the Users/team towards identifying the opportu-nity space where they’d like to focus their efforts based on the confluence of four areas: personal environment (and challenges within their personal en-vironment), sectors, technologies, and consumer trends. They explore the opportunity space looking for insights on which to base their enterprise.

We also reference the effectuation approach to opportunity identification based on the “bird in hand” principle: who you are, what you know, and who you know.

Users/Teams (within refugee communities) are encouraged to find real pro-blems that they or someone they know experiences in everyday life; they’re told to focus on their passions – sectors or activities where they spend their free time or where they’d like to work in the future. Once they’ve identified the general space they’d like to focus on, teams are asked to analyze the opportuni-ty and iterate using the following basic framework:

Once they have some basic hypotheses about the customer problems and how they can solve them, we send them out to do problem interviews. Ash Maurya has a nice schematic for identifying the main problems you’re solving and for whom you’re solving them:

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As a first step to analyzing the context of use and the competitive environ-ment, we follow Getting to Plan B and ask them to analyze analogs, antilog, and leaps of faith.

The objective is to find inspiring examples which have proven the success of some aspect of their business concept (analogs); to analyze competitors or exi-sting alternatives and show how they plan to be different/better (antilog); and to identify the 1 to 3 main risks which exist for their business concept (leaps of faith).

Once the teams have explored their business concepts using these basic tools, they move from opportunity to business model using the business model can-vas. Here we follow Steve Blank’s guide to identifying initial hypotheses and capturing them on the canvas.

To guide the testing of the hypotheses we add another tool, also following Getting to Plan B, which we call the startup dashboard. The dashboard is used to record main leaps of faith and related hypotheses, identify how the team will test these hypotheses, summarize the main findings, and show their insight/response based on the data they’ve collected.

All of this information is recorded in the database of the Dosoc Application, which Users/team are encouraged to update frequently. By the time we they reach acceleration stage, the user should have available the following informa-tion:

At validation stage, users/ team are also asked not to do a traditional pitch, but rather to create a visual story which explains the elements of their busi-ness model canvas. Also, much time is devoted to testing hypotheses through problem interviews and through iterating on MVP’s. We will ask experts to sha-re their own experiences as an entrepreneur, and the different pivots they’ve gone through in the search for a viable market for their products.

To test potential solutions, user/team will create paper prototypes; low-fidelity prototypes to test with real users. In this way, they get feedback both on the problem they’re solving, and they make some progress in the definition of the solution.

Those with technology ideas will have usability expert guiding them in the

• A summary of the Actors, Needs, Solutions, and Con-text of Use

• Analogs, antilogs, and leaps of faith• Pictures and descriptions of the research into the

ideas• The business model canvas (at least one version)• The startup dashboard (leaps of faith and how the

team plans to research them).• Summaries of interviews, questionnaire results,

etc. Summarize these in the “findings” column on the dashboard. In the “insight/response” column, describe how your business model canvas changes.

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creation of their experiments, the measurement and analysis of the results. Our objective is to make this as “real” as possible, and to give those users/ teams who actually want to start a company the opportunity to do so.

All teams send an entry to the business ideas contest conducted within and outside the refugee community. Finally, there’s the possibility of submitting projects to crowd sourcing platforms. By the end of the process, we help Users/team create actual businesses.

Programm Curriculum

Whilst we follow the curriculum of competitive business schools (MOOC onli-ne). We shall organize the curriculum into a step by step approach in achieving our objective.

The course is thus, organized in three (3) stages, namely;Stage 1 Ideation stage: Active learning modules and expert advice to help users/ team come up with startup ideas (refine initial problem/solution) and learn how to effectively navigate potentially viable markets.Stage 2 Validation Stage: Active learning modules and expert advice to help users/ team experiment and develop prototypes, minimum viable products and launch a solution.Stage 3 Acceleration Stage: Active learning modules and expert advice to help users/ team that have successfully demonstrated product-market fit and reve-nue generation and are ready to scale, expand or optimize their commercializa-tion activities.

Format of education

Internet connected refugees would get basic education when the start up the application; downloadable videos, infographs, lecture notes simple, accessible and easily applicable resources to provide basic knowledge. The application is accessible through various internet enabled devices as pc’s, laptops, tablets and Smartphone’s (multiplatform web based format). For matchmaking, internet user gets access to live connection.

Non Internet Connected refugees get access to card Decks (paper) of some sort and a workbook with worksheet which is used to self guide them to develop their startup plan. For the matchmaking we need a connection. It can also be "slower" as in asking the question and receiving feedback through e-mail or linked in in stead of realtime connections to experts

Impact of the Program

Our most ambitious goal is to create a new generation of entrepreneurs within refugee communities

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The Dosoc Team

Selassie Amenorhu Teamlead Ghana

Role: User testing and development

Selassie is Disaster Manager at NADMO in Ghana He is part of YALI Young African Leader Initiative

Monique de Haas Teamlead Europe

Role: Technical Development

Monique is an experienced media entrepreneur

Arne Hulstein Advisor to the team

Role: Experienced with diverse social work projects advising team on setup and finding sources

Arne is an experienced internet entrpreneur

Shary Kock UX/UI interaction designer

Role: UI/UX for the Dosoc Application