Valyu

 

Name: Natalie Hollier NYU affiliation: Stern NYU status: Alumni

Did you enter last year?: No Do you have any teammates?: Yes How many, including yourself?: 3

 

Concept Name

Valyu

 

High Concept Statement

Yelp for conscious consumers, investors and job-seekers

 

Status Quo

“Every dollar we spend is a vote for the kind of world we want”. Valyu is founded on the belief that people want to choose ethical products & companies, but convenience is a key driving factor. It’s currently too difficult for conscious consumers to make informed choices aligning with their values.

 

Competition

Currently consumers either have to do manual time-consuming research on companies’ sustainable practices or shop limited options on ethical marketplaces (Good Guide, Shop Ethical). In the financial sector some companies provide sustainability data (Sustainalytics, Open Invest, Arabesque S-Ray) but this is often not transparent, only accessible to investors, and limited to stock-market listed companies. Valyu’s broader market is more focused on mainstream consumers that want to use, invest, or work with ethical companies day-to-day.  

 

Solution

Valyu gives consumers and job-seekers instant visibility into companies’ performance on issues like diversity, workers conditions, environment, animal rights, etc. Ratings and reviews are crowd-sourced from citizens who have first-hand information and supplemented with sustainability data. Conscious citizens will prefer Valyu’s one-stop application that is tailored to their specific values.

 

Revenue Model

There are multiple options for monetizing this app. Similar to Yelp, Tripadvisor or Glassdoor, information is free to consumers.Companies provide revenue by paying for advertisements (promoted listings), managing their profile (premium features), and accessing analytics (eg. consumer demographics and sentiment).   On the social impact side, we offer features for consumers to give feedback, boycott brands, and find alternative companies. We will be able to track the use of these features and track changes to company sustainability scores over time to show how consumer choices are having an impact. By bringing sustainability scores to the forefront and making them easily accessible to consumers, Valyu will push companies (that have not already done so) to make sustainable practices a priority in order to keep up with changing consumer expectations.

 

Which platform would you like to launch your app on?

iPhone

 

Which category best describes your app?

Lifestyle