Case Study

Start Alberta

Social platform for the startup ecosystem in Alberta

Client

Start Alberta

Type

Custom application

Social network

Business

Services

Software development

User Experience Design

Alberta's thriving economy, involving 4.3 million residents, almost 20 thousand new businesses a year and billions of dollars in investment, is full of diverse projects.

This Canadian province has a rich, varied and promising ecosystem. However, although thousands of companies are born each month, it remains difficult to identify all the details and specific projects of these entrepreneurs. There is no single, public platform that provides all of this data, specific to Alberta.

Complete eco-system

Approach

In collaboration with the client, the Witify team had to initiate a first pilot phase aimed at bringing together all entrepreneurs, investors and organizations involved in the startups' world in Alberta. The team looked at the Ecosystem and Open Community Vision to conceptualize the product and incorporate all the features that would allow as much to communicate relevant content, to integrate new data and engage its users.

It was decided to go in several successive phases in order to gauge the interest of the community and to continually adapt to the feedback of the users.

Complete eco-system

Start Alberta is a publicly available resource, enabling sharing stories of success, innovation and determination in the world of entrepreneurship in Alberta.

Create and manages profiles

Phase 1 : Minimal viable product

StartAlberta's "Minimum Viable Product" version had to be able to quickly integrate a flexible and relatively complex structure of data between the various entities of the ecosystem: individuals, organizations, investors, companies. In addition, it should be possible to record and communicate information in a simple way for each of these entities.

The team has developed flexible models to accomplish its goals, and allows them to connect with each other like a social network. Every user can register easily and a reliable and secure process has been implemented to support this need. Administrator tools have also been built to provide standalone management of the platform. Thanks to this one, the administrator can manage the blogs, the various data and ensure the viability of the information.

Start Alberta minimal viable product

Phase 2 : Refinement

Although the pilot version fulfilled the basic objectives at the "information" level, this was mainly used to validate the relevance of the platform. Thus, during the development of version 1.0, the design team was able to refine the visual presentation and how to graphically communicate the various pieces of information.

By dedicating themselves to perfecting the user experience, the team has improved the page structure, the registration process and added several features to easily navigate through the platform and increase user engagement. In addition, several tools have been added for the administration, such as comprehensive information reports, mass communication tools and more, in order to facilitate its management of the platform.

Start Alberta first release v1

Results

Start Alberta released its first pilot version on December 4, 2017, limited to a select list of beta testers, and its first full version, dedicated to the general public, on June 10, 2018. The association between "Alberta Enterprise" and "Venture Capital Association of Alberta" allowed to quickly create a diverse community on the web platform.

250+
News
400+
Companies
200 000+
Visits
100+
Investors and organizations
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