When Canada’s Business Model Competition was held at Dalhousie University in March, the leading Atlantic Canadian entry was a team from Memorial University that had only been working together for two months.

StudentFresh is a platform designed to link up businesses needing contract work with students that have the skills to provide the work. And it is working toward a product that will tell businesses instantly how other employers have rated the student’s work.

“From talking to businesses, we found that they wanted to hire based on talent that’s validated by previous work,” Co-Founder SahandSeifi told the judges at the competition. “What’s great about StudentFresh is the talent in our database is validated with real work experience.”

StudentFresh began in the last few months when Co-Founder Joseph Teo returned to MUN from a work term and wanted to do more contract work in his area of expertise. Looking around the university, he noticed most of his friends were working part-time at fast-food joints, despite the talent they were gaining in technology and other disciplines.

He teamed up with fellow students Seifi and Anthony Sartor and they used lean startup methodology to try to find a profitable solution to the problem.

Once they talked to business people – especially in the tech sector in St. John’s – they realized that companies were having problems finding people who could complete contract work. So they began to work on a platform that would link the two parties.

They learned that a key component in the product would be for the ability for students and employers to rate one another once the job is finished. As students build up a body of work, it would allow potential employers to view their references and find the best people.

The development started off as a project, but the team decided to enter the Business Model Competition, and placed fourth amid teams from across Canada.

After returning to St. John’s, the team continued to work on the project and they are considering adjusting the model so students end up proposal projects.  The idea is that an employer could post a problem and students would propose a solution. If both sides agree, the student would be hired to complete the project.

The trio has launched the beta-test on their existing product and will see how students and employers like it over the next few months.

“We want to know what features are good for them,” said Teo. “We know they [employers] want quality and credibility. We want to achieve the quality and credibility part of it.”

They are graduating this spring and intend to continue to work on the project through the summer so they could have a full launch in September, when the new school year begins. They have been accepted into Launchpad, an incubator for student businesses at MUN, and are looking for some seed funding.  It’s doubtful they’ll need a lot of capital as they’ve proven their frugality.

“So far on this journey,” Seifi told the judges at the competition, “we have taken 60 days to get this far and we have spent 25 bucks.”