Cordella Jones
Cordella Jones doesn’t hang out with bankers and angel investors in her everyday life, nor is she ready for a guest appearance on “Shark Tank.”
But she got support in starting her own business through one of several programs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) designed to encourage students and alumni to turn their ideas into businesses.
Jones won a year’s worth of coaching from placing in the Student Startup Challenge, a competition based not on a business plan, but on the strength of a promising idea.
It’s one component of UWM’s startup culture, which offers support, events and services to get students and alumni thinking like leaders and planning like business owners.
Jones’ proposal to develop a mobile friendly, web-based information bank to help families and teachers match students to programs to improve educational outcomes earned her a top 10 finish in the 2014 UWM Student Startup Challenge.
Her proposed program identifies resources for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
Now in her 30s, Jones enrolled in the university’s Lubar School of Business in 2013 after taking almost two decades away from college.
She works at BMO Harris Bank, and plans to use her UWM degree to advance both her banking career and her business. She wanted to do more than just improve her business skills, however.
She wanted to use her creative side.
“To know me personally is to know I’m always thinking of a business idea.
My dad was a small businessman and I grew up with that background.
When I saw UWM’s Student Startup Challenge on campus, I thought: ‘This is perfect. I can actually see if I have good ideas or if I’m just coming up with stuff.’”
Her idea, ASAPk!ds, grew directly out of her own experiences as a young black woman who was a first-generation college student.
“I feel like the reason my first time at the university wasn’t as successful was because at that time, I don’t think I was really prepared. I struggled academically and financially.
“I didn’t have that family network to help me prepare for college. When I got older, I started to realize that if you don’t have a family that works for the school administration or if you aren’t referred to local programs, your family kind of struggles to get you connected and financially supported.”
ASAPk!ds is a web-based application she has developed to help parents and teachers find resources available in the community to help them improve children’s learning and lives.
While there are many enrichment programs available, most of them are not one-size-fits-all programs. Other students, especially those who are potential first generation college students may have different challenges or different interests. In addition, she said, most households and classrooms are too busy to keep up with the full range of educational resources available and fit them to the needs of individual children.
“If you have one child interested in athletics and another interested in math and science and then another one who has some type of disability, you’re all over the place trying to find information.
I think there is a feeling of guilt in the community that many parents and teachers have for not having enough time in a day to gather the information to help their students. Control, I think, is what people need. Some way to take action now and not later.”
Jones also felt that having one comprehensive, organized site where parents and teachers can find diverse academic enrichment and support resources could be useful.
“It just made me think ‘Why doesn’t this information exist in one location?
Why should you have to go all over the place?’”
After she came up with the name, ASAPk!ds, she got so excited about it that she actually bought the domain name.
A year later, she decided to enter the grant competition. “I pitched it and they liked it.”
With the help of the seed money and support from the Startup Challenge and other entrepreneurial programs, she has developed a prototype with the UWM App Brewery, established her own limited liability corporation, started testing the ASAPk!ds app and is interested in making partnerships in the business community with more student program providers to pilot this spring.
“With Wisconsin ranking 50th in entrepreneurship among the states and the challenges that women-led technology startups face in terms of raising funds, the chances of ASAPk!ds going to market may have never happened without the early support and seed funding from the UWM community,” Jones said.
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