Ones to Watch: Lizzie Fane, ThirdYearAbroad.com

Name: Lizzie Fane
Company: ThirdYearAbroad.com
Date established: Founded November 2006, launched January 2010
Website: www.ThirdYearAbroad.com
Twitter: @thirdyearabroad
 
1. Describe your business in one sentence
ThirdYearAbroad.com is a network which helps and supports university students before, during and after their year abroad as part of their degree.

2. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
I arrived in Florence for the third year of my Italian degree, and midway through a quick succession of Italian bureaucracy nightmares, homesickness and culture shock I realised that all I needed was to speak to someone who had been through the whole process already. I couldn't find anyone on or offline, or even a useful resource of year abroad information, advice and case studies, so after some market research and conferring with friends I entered a student business plan competition with the idea – and here we are!

3. What have been your key challenges and how have you overcome them?
The most important aspect of the whole business is the website, and coming from an Arts and Languages background, I didn't really know where to start when it came to building a social networking site! Eventually after an expensive 'miss', I finally scored a 'hit' when I discovered the amazing 3B Digital - thanks to Twitter! They created the complex, multi-functional platform that is ThirdYearAbroad.com, and have taught me absolutely everything I need to run it without their help or any further expense; exactly what I needed as a startup business, and I'm very lucky

4. How have you funded your start-up?
As I started the business at university, I was able to channel my student loan into my Third Year Abroad website fund. I then received some angel investment which has really helped me kick off the business; creating marketing materials, bringing our wonderful editor Natacha on board and travelling around the UK to exhibit at university Study Abroad Fairs and Pre-Departure talks.

5. How do you market your business? 
The real value of ThirdYearAbroad.com comes from the testimonials, reviews and advice shared by our users, which helps students who are researching and preparing for their year abroad, and accounts for the fact that 48% of our traffic comes from search engines. We have put a lot of effort into our search engine optimisation, but we also have an engaged audience on Twitter which we use to find and help students who are worried about their year abroad. We are invited to speak and exhibit at universities at key times of year, and our wordplay postcards are displayed in dtudy abroad offices so that we can reach as many students as possible.

6. What are your plans for the future?
Now the new site has launched, we are working towards solving all the main problems for year abroad students; finding safe accommodation, buying reliable insurance, banking abroad without astronomical charges and getting work experience or a job that makes use of newly-acquired language skills. Our collaborative project, YearAbroadInsurance.com, launched last month, we're developing an idea with our sponsor, Collins Language, and we have many other projects in the pipeline. Our principal aim, however, is to encourage as many students as possible to study modern languages at university and take a year abroad; the UK risks losing its influence in Europe because of poor language skills and a lack of cultural understanding, so we want to play our part in turning this around

7. If you started again, is there anything you’d do differently?
If I started again, I would place more emphasis on working with student-run year abroad societies within universities so as to introduce ThirdYearAbroad.com to the staff through recommendations from their students, not vice versa.

More generally speaking, as I was building a multi-sided platform I initially believed that sponsors and advertisers would only be interested in my site if I had a significant number of users. I have since discovered that the value of a very targeted audience for marketers is focus, not numbers – quality not quantity - so I should have been more balanced in my approach.

8. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs based on your business experience so far?

• If a percentage of your market use Twitter, then you should too! Use software like Tweetdeck.com to communicate with your followers and to find business opportunities (and web developers!)
• Get a mentor in your field of business who can advise you in times of panic and make trusted introductions to helpful, influential people in your sector
• If you work from home, you need to spice up your routine once in a while; download the WorkSnug iPhone app to find the comfiest places with homemade cakes, Italian coffee and free wi-fi near you!
• Pay attention to detail: all of our parcels leave TYA Towers in blue envelopes with our white rubber-stamped logo on them and a handwritten card inside – the recipients really get a sense of the brand and appreciate the effort
• There are so many students and graduates currently looking for work experience – they bring fresh eyes to projects and can lighten your workload for free, while you can teach them new skills and make them more employable by giving their CV a boost. Try inspiringinterns.com, enternships.com and wexo.co.uk

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