When he was in school, Gabriel Amodu said it was tough for him to find other peers outside of his class that were taking the courses he was.
At one point, there was a question he wanted answered and it was something that hadn’t been taught by a professor in class. He was told to find someone else in his discipline to try and source the answer from there.
That was a lot easier said than done.
He identified a gap that existed; most of the people he went to school with were in the same classes and therefore studied from the same body of knowledge provided to them by professors.
“This is probably a gap that a lot of people see,” said Amodu.
“I wanted to provide a solution for people that have this kind of thing – they want to ask questions.”
That’s when the seed of Peersview was planted. It’s a social network that’s specifically geared towards students and employers in a certain field. They can ask and answer questions sharing a information among the contributors.
Further, Amodu said that it’s an opportunity for peers in a certain field to begin networking early – not only with people already in the field, but those entering it. It’s a support system geared toward students studying in the same faculty.
“It’s a mixture of LinkedIn and Quora,” Amodu said.
He believes there’s an opportunity to link like-fielded professionals and students together.
“I want to know how this solution can fit and we can build and business model around it,” he said.
The idea is to start small. Create a local network at one university with professionals in one city and begin to branch out from there. Eventually there’s an opportunity to link students from around the world studying in the same field.
Questions in Canada can be answered in Brazil, Russia, the US – and the reverse.
Amodu is an economics major, with a master’s in information system management, and that background has helped propel the heavy lifting in the startup.
The business and information side come natural to him. It’s helped him design the product with the user experience in mind – and get it to market.
What the Junction program has provided him is a launch pad to help him understand how to create a business model around this niche that he’s identified.
“How can we sustain this in the long run while also providing the services to people that are using it,” he said.
