VentureDash by NetWork Kansas

A subject matter expert in business plan contests and entrepreneurship fairs, NetWork Kansas developed VentureDash – a web-based SaaS product for running business competitions. As product designer, I led the research, ideation, and creation of the VentureDash platform and brand.

A Case for Codifying Processes

NetWork Kansas facilitates hundreds of business competitions across Kansas. Until recently, they had been using a no-code database tool to organize and run them all. When this existing software could no longer handle their growth they asked our team to build a custom tool.

After a few meetings and some competitive research, I saw an opportunity for NetWork Kansas to offer this custom solution to a wider audience. By leaning on their experience facilitating business competitions, they could incorporate their process into a self-serve SaaS platform. This would allow them to scale their existing program while establishing new revenue streams along the way.

Uncovering Painpoints & Needs

I kicked off the project by conducting a series of interviews. This was critical to understand the “NetWork Kansas way” of running business competitions. In these meetings we also discussed painpoints with existing software tools (both in the tools they were using and in other products on the market).

I developed several artifacts throughout – project goals, a product roadmap/backlog, feature value statements, user flows, and information architecture diagrams. These documents helped communicate the plan back to NetWork Kansas and give them confidence in the solution. Our development team used them to get the context they would need to build the platform.

A Brand to Build Upon

This software had graduated from an internal tool to a new product targeting customers nation-wide. Internally coined as “The ECMS” (short for Entrepreneurship Competition Management System), the platform would need to look, feel, and sound official to set it apart from existing options on the market.

To develop a name and brand identity, I led NetWork Kansas through several branding exercises. Together, we created VentureDash – “The best way to run a business competition.” Hiring a marketing agency for this new product was not an option for NetWork Kansas, so I delivered a set of templates and guidelines that would empower their small in-house team to implement and grow the brand over time.

A Lean Design System

Our single product team at Moonbase Labs was made up of two developers and a single designer. While a design system can help multiple product teams move quickly across a large organization, a full-blown system would have been overkill. We still needed to move quickly, though…

To kickstart the development process, I created a small-but-mighty set of components to help the development team build fast. This “Lean Design System” – as I call it – helped ensure the quality and consistency of the VentureDash UI without slowing us down.

Feature-Rich Functionality

VentureDash is a straightforward and user-friendly tool that enables anyone to create a business competition. A standardized scoring system, pre-made templates for common competition activities, dynamic competition landing pages, and a step-by-step timeline make VentureDash a “plug-and-play” experience. Thanks to NetWork Kansas’s years of first-hand knowledge baked into the product, it takes no previous background in running entrepreneurship events to get started.

Many users of VentureDash come with a need for more robust needs. To serve these customers, we built the capability to create a series of competitions which share the same format, custom templates, and best practices. Payment processing through Stripe enables competition hosts and series managers to charge participants at multiple levels. Universities, entrepreneurship ecosystems, and NetWork Kansas themselves use VentureDash to encourage entrepreneurship and fuel startup activity at scale.

“How the heck do we run this?”

Such a powerful SaaS platform would have been hard for NetWork Kansas to manage without the resources necessary to succeed. Along with delivering the VentureDash product, I facilitated the implementation of a marketing website, Stripe payment processing tools, a knowledge base/help center, a user community, and various web analytics tools. By onboarding the NetWork Kansas team to these applications, I helped deliver a holistic product they felt comfortable maintaining.

The Results

In the first year of VentureDash’s operation, 140+ competitions were created which onboarded over 2,000 participants. Several universities across the U.S. – including Kansas State University, West Virginia University, and Boise State University in Idaho – used VentureDash to host business college entrepreneurship competitions. NetWork Kansas’s own annual competition series saw a record of 898 student competitors from 46 Kansas communities. These numbers are especially impressive given the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2021; in fact, this new product was a timely solution for communities and organizations throughout the country looking to take their business competitions virtual.