Yakka.
ROLE
Managing Director / Product, Brand
DATE
July 2018 - Current
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Yakka is a student-run platform that connects high school students to quality work experience opportunities.
It was founded by 3 students from Chatswood High School with the belief that Australia's education was not properly equipping young people with the necessary skills and experience to confidently enter the workforce.
The Problem.
OUR STORY
In Year 10, I undertook work experience at a software company. I expected to walk into a place where I would learn new things, be in an exciting environment and meet really cool people.
But... instead, for the entire week, I was tucked away in a corner, copying code to build a Pong game. My co-founder Bagavathy underwent something similar at work experience where she went a financial services firm and bought crumpets for the CEO the whole week. Crumpets! Read more on ABC news.
Needlessly, we were at work experience,
hardly working.
CURRENT CONTEXT
With the world of work rapidly changing, classroom education is becoming less relevant in offering the necessary skills and experiences for young people to enter and succeed in the workforce. Yet high school careers and work experience programs are increasingly becoming under-resourced, under-utilised and over-dismissed.
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In fact, when we interviewed 60 high school students, they all said they had a poor work experience. So, work experiences like Bagavathy's and mine are common.
Not only that, because work experience is so hard to find without access to personal connections to people willing to offer it, it further discourages students to take work experience and creates inequality. Hence, only 1 in 5 students took it up at our school, and only 1 in 3 students took it up nationwide.
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This has had consequential flow-on effects in our labour market as young people are massively unprepared when they enter the work force.
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We knew we had to do something about it. The system was broken.
The Solution.
OUR MATCHMAKING PLATFORM
To solve this pressing issue we decided to be the matchmakers allowing students to access quality opportunities.
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How did we ensure quality experiences while adding meaning to a business?
Initially, this was our biggest struggle. We had to iterate many times till we came with a work experience model that was:
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1. Quality and easy to access for students.
2. Not a waste of time and value-adding for businesses.
3. Scalable.
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From brainstorming we devised a model where students undertake a project or problem statement for the business throughout the week. Throughout the week there would have to be a minimum of 3 workshops and or feedback sessions to support the student and set them up for success. By the end of the week the students would then pitch their findings back to a board of directors in the form of a 5-minute slide presentation.
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That way students could feel like they're doing meaningful work, learn skills on the job and gain greater confidence while businesses gain valuable insights at the end of the week.
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Brand.
BRAND DESIGN
Due to my level of design background relative to my co-founders, I whipped up the brand behind Yakka as follows:
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We wanted something that was simple, yet memorable. We thought that those elements came through our name, logo icon and colour. Like, who doesn’t love yaks?
The Journey
So Far.
Since launch, we built a community to see who’d be onboard with our idea (this was part of our market validation).
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From this, we saw a student base of 300, partnered with 9 businesses from Sydney School of Entrepreneurship to Opportunity International to Spark Festival which is the largest startup festival in Australia, and provided over 490 hours of work experience to 14 students.
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We have also been featured on ABC News, Triple j radio and The Educator Australia.
Img: We launched the HS Work Experience Finder Group
SINCE JULY 2017
Reflections.
LOOKING BACK...
Launching a startup isn’t easy. Particularly, when you are…
a) Studying at school from 9am-3pm,
b) Have various co-curricular commitments and activities outside of school
c) Don’t have a single clue of what you’re doing
It was hard. Nonetheless, running Yakka was an invaluable experience for myself. It allowed me to better learn how to pitch, hold meetings with prospective partners, cold-contact people, design a product, sell that product, craft a brand, time manage a massive to-do list, problem solve, work in a team, and contribute to something meaningful.
I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything in the world and it has simply made me fall more in love with the challenges, excitement, constant grind, and the highs and lows of working in startup.
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Img: Meet the founding team (L - R: Bagavathy Menon, Hannah Ahn, Evie Griffiths)
What's Next.
Seen enough? Let's connect.
I’d love to collaborate or spend some time catching up.
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Alternatively, learn more about what I’ve done by checking out this fancy sheet of paper - Résumé.
