Student-led business 'thestudentnucleus.com'

Share Your Start-Up Story: thestudentnucleus.com

Student-led business ‘thestudentnucleus.com’ solves other student’s problems to make university life stress free. 

The founder, 28 years old Martin Hedley, is a current student at Manchester Business School – His innovative idea gathers information relevant to students and makes it accessible on one platform.

thestudentnucleus.com was launched in May 2015 and has over 150 student users from different universities across the country. It was awarded the ‘Best Social Enterprise 2015’ at the ‘The Grad Factor‘ – A national student entrepreneurship competition.

thestudentnucleus.com
Martin Hedley, founder of thestudentnucleus.com, at The Student Enterprise Conference 2016 hosted by The National Association of College and University Entrepreneurs (NACUE).

How does it work?

Students can use the website to save money by buying and selling textbooks between each other, finding information about accommodation, scholarships and funding, and internships. It also connects students to help them form business teams using specific skill sets.

We realised that finding information about the Scholarships & Funding available at university is extremely difficult and time consuming. We wanted to make sure every student could easily find out about all the financial support available to them.

How was it discovered?

I had the idea for thestudentnucleus.com after I completed my first year at university and had over £200 worth of textbooks I no longer needed. I wanted to sell them to the following year’s students but the only way to do this was via posters around campus or posting on Buy/Sell pages on Facebook, neither of which was an efficient way.

I set about creating a platform that made this process easy and simple, bringing students together. I had no coding ability so needed to find another student who had this skill set and could help me. This process was not as straightforward as I imagined it would be.

I then realised that a platform that allowed students to find other students with specific skill sets would be very useful, it would encourage student enterprise and entrepreneurship, which is a growing trend for university students.

It would also allow students to collaborate on projects or create their own start-up, which would allow them to gain vitally important practical experience which employers value highly.

The idea then grew to create a single platform that contained information about the central aspects of university life.

thestudentnucleus.comHow did you feel winning The Grad Factor?

We found out about The Grad Factor through our research into all the competitions we could enter to help us to gain exposure and funding. 

It was a great opportunity to get feedback, advice and input into our idea and to gain more experience pitching, which is a crucial aspect of being a start-up. 

It was a fantastic feeling for our whole team to win Best Social Enterprise and a huge boost to receive such high profile recognition. Our team works hard and winning awards like The Grad Factor just motivates us even more.   

Why entrepreneurship?

I wanted to do this because I truly believe that everyone should aim to combine their passions and work, life is too short to spend so much of your time doing something you don’t enjoy. I have worked for numerous employers myself and experienced different working environments.

This has helped me to realise the importance of creating an excellent culture within a business, one that makes sure that fellow team members are happy and want to work there. By creating my own business I can ensure this happens, offer other people this opportunity and also work in such an environment myself.

The future of thestudentnucleus.com

Although the platform was launched to work for any student at any university, we initially focused on students in Manchester as our team are all based in Manchester and our network and connections were strongest here.

We are now in the process of raising investment that will allow us gain traction at more universities across the country and continue to grow our user base.

thestudentnucleus.com are currently running a ‘Test It Award’ comp to give £500 to another student entrepreneur with a social enterprise idea – contact support@thestudentnucleus.com  

Share your Start-up story with us and get the opportunity to promote your business to a wider audience – Email editorial@iamnewgeneration.co.uk

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