Entrepreneurship : Martin Langenbacher (MBA 2008), Atawas

Martin Langenbacher (MBA 2008)

II/ Business start-up project  

ATAWAS is a global platform that allows people to trade services and share experiences with others locally. It fulfils business and social needs and allows users to focus their time and energy on activities that mean the most to them, thus, simplifying their lives. People can at anytime, anywhere, perform any service, hence the company name ATAWAS.

ATAWAS was conceived from the belief that every person has value to offer to others via their skills, knowledge or experience. The platform empowers users to share their talents for mutual benefit thus, boosting the overall value of their communities, cities and countries economically and socially. ATAWAS user may include students, retirees, professionals or unemployed individuals, but especially entrepreneurs.

We launched the ATAWAS Version1.1 the 25th of May with new features like rating, better search in general and a specific search for companies. The page is available in English, Danish, German and French (June 2009). You can have a look at www.atawas.com.

III/ What do you expect from the network ?

How the Edhec network can profit and help ATAWAS:

1)      Subscribe, post and spread the world
ATAWAS is only working when many people participate, therefore, we offer 10% of the equity to the users (point campaign): People who subscribe, post and invite a friend will get points, which will get transferred into shares in case of an ATAWAS IPO. We think that this is the best way for user participation on success.
Please, ask yourself the following questions:
I) What do I like and can I offer it?
II) What service do I need to free my time? Maybe it will help another person, too?

2)      Give friends the idea
Maybe you know somebody who starts a new business or somebody who wants to try if his idea will work, then, please tell your friends about ATAWAS, so they can try if the market likes this service or the idea. ATAWAS is free to use for standard users. Existing businesses can use of course too!

3)      Work with us:
Our core team consists at the moment of four members (from four different countries) and many people who help us. It would be great when more join. Please contact us if you like the idea and you want to commit to work with us for some hours a week. We compensate via an equity program.

4)      Investor search
So far, we only invested our own money, but to grow faster we are searching an investor. Unfortunately, we were not successful yet. What would help us is
- if you know somebody who might like the ATAWAS idea and is able to invest, please let him know about ATAWAS
- if you see an improvement in our idea, so that investors might be more willing to invest, please let us know