While working in the startup incubator at the SKEM Business School in Paris, Julia Koturska met countless students with great business ideas, but they often felt that they could not start these businesses on their own due to time or skill constraints.
“We started receiving these comments more and more frequently and it became clear to us that something was missing in this entrepreneurial community,” Koturska said.
So she began developing Synergize, a matchmaking platform for students that connects young entrepreneurs with potential business partners.
Koturska described Synergize as “Tinder for young entrepreneurs with a swipe-like application.” The platform’s algorithm takes into account a variety of factors to maximize compatibility between founders and potential partners.
The profiles will include features like a personality assessment, a score based on completing a case study, the number of hours per week the student is willing to devote to the business, etc. There will also be an AI system in place to verify the veracity of the profiles.
“Finding a business partner is as hard as finding a husband,” Koturska said.
After growing up in Poland, earning her bachelor’s degree in the Netherlands and pursuing a master’s in France, Koturska ended up in North Carolina after participating in an incubator offered by the Raleigh campus of Scema School of Business.
At the end of the program, Koturska said RIoT program director Rachel Newberry offered her to join the program this summer. The RIoT Accelerator Program, aka RAP. (We’ve previously written about other members of the latest RAP cohort, including Baby Bumps, Social Cascade, CSPM Zero, and Soffos.)
RAP is a 12-week program for early-stage startups, and Koturska, 22, said it offers a welcoming and supportive environment — a stark difference from her experience in Poland, where, as a young entrepreneur, she said, she felt discouraged about starting a business at such a young age.
Approaching student entrepreneurs
During her time at RAP, Koturska is focusing on customer discovery, reaching out to academic institutions and startup incubators to better understand the pain points faced by aspiring entrepreneurs.
Ahead of the platform’s launch, Koturska plans to organize in-person “speed dating” sessions for entrepreneurs to help them understand the most important elements of the algorithm.
She said RAP has given her a clear sense of how to build a business that she felt was previously missing, and she hopes to launch Synergize by the end of the program.
Synergize’s target market is university venture offices that help students commercialize their intellectual property. Through his customer discovery efforts, Kotulska has already found that students often can’t achieve commercialization unless they license their IP to other companies. While many students have great business ideas, Kotulska says they lack the business background to bring those ideas to life.
University venture offices purchase subscriptions to Synergize and provide students with access to the platform, which allows students to connect with peers at their own university and other academic institutions.
Koturska also wants to institute a mentoring program, where students who find a good match can work with a mentor to facilitate initial discussions, with her target audience being those pursuing graduate or postgraduate degrees.
“My goal is to create synergy across the academic world,” she said.
