Internship innovators help firms harness the potential of students

What is your business called?

Udrafter.

Where is it based?

Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

What services does it offer?

We are a platform which connects employers with degree-relevant student talent through paid projects. We call ourselves The Home of Micro-Internships.

Lots of businesses have numerous projects which need to be done but either don’t have the necessary skills within the workforce or don’t want to tie up a member of staff.

Udrafter empowers employers of any size to engage talented students and graduates in projects from as little as two hours in length with payment facilitated through the platform. They can then fill permanent roles with graduating students who have completed projects for them.

Students can get relevant, paid work that is flexible around their studies.

To whom does it sell?

Recent clients have come from industries as diverse as North Sea oil, gin distilling, restaurants and satellite communications. Projects can cover anything from logo design to videography to book-keeping to marketing to more complicated architectural or engineering projects.

What is its turnover?

We’ve spent the past year proving our concept by onboarding clients and students, and delivering projects. We’ve shown that the platform and the model work really well and our focus now is to start driving up revenue.

How many employees?

Four.

When was it formed?

2016.

Why did you take the plunge?

We had always wanted to start a business and had been looking for a unique, new idea. As recent graduates ourselves we recognised that there was a disconnect between employers and people leaving education to enter the workplace. Many employers want graduates to have previous work experience, which many people struggle to find. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but it became apparent to us that there was a need for students to find new ways of gaining career-relevant work experience while allowing businesses to access a talented workforce for project work. In short, we identified a need which was lacking an appropriate solution.

What were you doing before you took the plunge?

I was working as an IT Recruiter Partner with Computershare in Edinburgh. I worked on a range of Tech roles and also helped to establish their first Graduate Programme.

Daryll worked as an IT recruiter for Harvey Nash.

How did you raise the start-up funding?

Our first seed round was from two Aberdeen-based Angel investors, one of whom was in the audience during a pitch we made on the Elevator UK accelerator. The other was introduced to us through a friend. Both investors shared our values and vision for Udrafter as well as bringing a wealth of experience to the team. Our second seed round was facilitated by the equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs.com.

What was your biggest break?

When we launched our crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs the goal was to reach £235,000. We hit that in a week and a week later we had to close the campaign at £300,000. That was huge for us and really demonstrated the belief people have in Udrafter.

What was your worst moment?

Covid-19 disruptions have been pretty tough recently but we are adapting and will come out stronger as a result. The uncertainty around the impact on the economy and how long it’s likely to last is causing difficulties for businesses across all sectors so we are adapting our service to try to assist. For instance, we’ve extended a free trial offer for companies and we’re also looking at ways to help them fill short-term staff shortages due to the coronavirus with a student workforce which has lost its traditional part-time jobs of bar staff, waiting tables and working in non-essential shops overnight.

What do you most enjoy about running the business?

It is pretty cool as brothers being able to build something that can make a difference to many people’s lives at scale. We like to keep things fun and this makes a difference when going through more difficult times.

What is your biggest bugbear?

Unpaid internships. The model of bringing in graduates to work for free to supposedly gain experience is hugely discriminatory as many simply cannot afford to do that. It puts the less well-off at a huge disadvantage in the job market.

What are your ambitions for the firm?

We want to create micro-internship opportunities at scale. We started up in Aberdeen and proved our concept in the North-east of Scotland last year and recently opened an office in Edinburgh as we moved into the Central Belt. The next step is to grow across the rest of the UK and to scale up on an international level.

What could the Westminster and/or Scottish governments do that would help?

The government is doing their best to offer support to businesses during an unprecedented situation. The difficulty is where do they draw the line? There are companies that genuinely need support and others that were not in good health before Covid-19. One area I think they need to address immediately is extending the furlough restrictions that prevent new start employees - that don’t make the 28th of Feb cut off - from being furloughed.

What was the most valuable lesson that you learned?

Take expert advice. When it’s your own start-up it really is your baby and sometimes it can be hard to be told things you don’t want to hear, but really need to. We’re very lucky in that we have some highly knowledgeable and experienced investors and advisers and we quickly realised how important it is to tap into that expertise. We couldn’t have got where we are by now without them.

How do you relax?

Getting outdoors in the fresh air really helps me relax. I also find not being on my phone helps me switch off. Socialising, playing sport or games and watching Netflix also helps take my mind off work.

Daryll enjoys going to the gym, reading and getting out into the country.

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