Between 11th and 13th of May 2016 20 young people from Kosovo have participated at Podim, an international conference in Maribor, as part of the training for young entrepreneurs. Participants were selected based on an application in which they presented their start-up, while a group of experts has assessed the originality of the idea and its presentation; 8 teams from Kosovo were chosen to participate. Podim has concluded by selection of a start-up of the year and one of our young teams, HUM – Zag App did a great job and has made it to the semi-finals. We conducted a short interview with one of its members.
Please, introduce yourself and explain your idea shortly.
We are a team humming with questions and curiosity, but without a solution to address our questions quickly and effectively. We call ourselves the HUM team. HUM is a sports Q&A and tipping app for sports fans who have questions while watching the games. Questions can be anything from where should we go to watch the game tonight, to who will be the game’s MVP, to tipping friends on who will be the game’s winner.
The team is made up of eclectic individuals coming from different backgrounds who enjoy working together. We are based in Prishtina, Kosovo and Detroit, United States. Gentrit Gojani and Zell Bakalli have developed over 30 successful apps with millions of users to date; Leart Zogjani has built brand identities for companies globally; Janine Mehmeti is the Licensee of the premier TEDxPrishtina event; as per our U.S. members, while not active on the day to day errands, Edi and Etrit Demaj make sure that the market is ready for our product and brands expect our solution.
How did you come across idea that you would develop something on your own, not trying to just ‘find a job’?
We, the HUM team, all have other incredible jobs. We were never out for just trying to “find a job”, we were out to develop a great product for our users.
Our team had one major problem; we all spent too much time on planning simple activities together. In attempt to avoid long chats of conversations, threads and continuous chat notifications, we had the idea that voting posed an easier way to make plans. As we begun to explore this idea we began to learn more about it and the right demographic fit for this product.
Did you attend any entrepreneurship programs before?
Before being selected as one of the Top 10 start-ups at PODIM, we had previously attended the Pioneers of the Balkans, where we were also selected in the Top 50 start-ups after vigorous pitching and selection process. After PODIM however, we were once more selected as one of the Top 10 start-ups at the Spark.me conference.
Where did you learn about our course? What got your attention?
We learned about your course through social media. We came across the opportunity you were offering to Kosovar start-ups to participate at the course on a pre-selection basis. However, what really got our attention is the line-up of the program and speakers of the conference.
What was most useful and beneficial for you attending the course?
The main benefit of attending the course was that we learned a lot from our pitch experience and one-to –one conversation with investors and mentors who were present. After challenging and introspective conversations with mentors and investor we got a better sense of our market niche, our positioning in this market and our next steps. We have considered looking for investors abroad even before attending the course, however, we are not interested to do so prior to launch and initial user acquisition. In order to grow our product exponentially we will need investors from abroad to make this the number one app for real-time sports Q&A; however, at this time we are focused on launching and improving our product as we grow along with our users.
What kind of support would you now most need?
Our product launch is on June 15, 2016. Our first target users are the European Championship 2016 fans. As such, we would most need strategic support to get our product across to the targeted users in Europe who are fanatically watching and living every moment of the Euro 2016.
