The local starter

Current focus and actions:

✏️ They do not pay much and we currently struggle to give them the hands-on support they need. Focus here on getting funding for the starthub to develop the hands-on formats like trainings and coaching to get them ready.

Action 1: Focus on starthub activities; put them on hold

Action 2: Develop starter kit: Course and toolstack that works. (Also see Pre-starter)

Action 3: Onboarding-Training for On-Medien

Action 4: Give them a lot of input in form of use cases from more successful beabee users/ inspiration of tactics of what to do.

Action 5: Develop idea of how to gain deeper understanding of who they are/what it takes to get them set up. > Group of people inside the starthub?

Who is on beabee

• On-Medien

• Wolfenbüttel Magazin

• (Du bist Rheinhausen e.V. - non media)

What they have in common

• Local

• In the making (sometimes with first legal structure, usually without)

• 1 to 5 people (mostly volunteers)

• Product and Engagement in a very early stage, haven't proven themselves yet especially around their revenue model.

How many more of those are there in Europe?

??

What they pay

🐭 0 - 120 per year

Why they come to us

• ...

Features they appreciate / use most

• Payment module

• ?? /Tobi

• Simple survey tool (away from Google Forms)

Why they choose beabee

• CORRECTIV reputation? Personal contact. Trust that we have what they will need?

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Starthub Germany value

• Get inspired from use cases

• New to developing business models: Learn how donation model works

• New to community-building: Learn how community-building works

Starthub products they use

• meetups

• webinars

• Newsletter with use cases

How they found us

• Starthub / CORRECTIV.Lokal network

• Conferences

• Personal contacts

• Referral

Key to bring them on

• Us being an advisor / trust in us / our positioning as expert in community engagement and revenue and non-profit journalism

Key to make them successful

• Time-saving features

• Quick path to revenue

• Quick path to community growth?

• free

Other thoughts

• Very high acquisition costs (done right) while they bring little to no money. Often don't get out of free plan for a long time.

• High churn so far (often these projects fail very early)

• Good to reach people while they are getting set up, bad that we need to create instance, have a lot of work and don't know if they will get started.

Open questions

• How do you make sure you find the gems in this group worth investing in?

• What do they actually need to get going?

• Do they use English-language sources to understand community journalism and business models? How do they come up with their ideas?

Hypotheses

• High potential in this segment to show how they can start a newsroom with a community-model and to move people up to the next segment (but taking a long time, around 3 years.

• High need for use cases / strategies / understanding community building and journalism but also learning more about developing business models.

• Can't make use of beabee without a full-on training/coaching