£150,000+ in funds raised
1,000+ refugee entrepreneurs outreached
2+ years the applicant tracking portal has been active
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Before switching to Softr, Skylight Ventures used a ready-made platform for student entrepreneur applications, which didn’t provide a way to track and manage funding repayment and didn’t allow for any customization. As a result, most of the applicants found it confusing and difficult to use.
When Isobelle Ford, Head of Community Ventures at TERN, started looking for new solutions, her and the team came up with some additional needs they were looking to address, such as Typeform and VideoAsk integrations and an ability to build a scoring process that allows multiple judges to assign scores to applications.
“Our whole application process needed to be accessible remotely for both applicants and judges — and we weren’t able to find any existing software solution that did this!"
Skylight had some complex requirements for their platform, so they hired Softr expert Shane Conrad to help them customize it to their needs.
After the build was completed, the applicant tracking system allowed the application management process to happen in a single place, enabling judges and applicants to log in and view/modify info relevant to them. Submissions are evaluated by judges and move through different stages of the funnel before being approved.
With the new app, the whole funding and repayment process is automated, and the custom platform allows them to scale it as much as needed without causing any issues.
After building the platform using Airtable and Softr, Skylight moved on from the pilot stage and launched the initiative, starting to pitch funds.
They’ve now raised over £150,000, which will enable them to reach 1,000 refugee entrepreneurs and distribute up to £600,000 in micro-credit by the end of 2025.
The Skylight team plans to continue improving the portal, adding more community features such as the ability to connect with other applicants to share advice and experience.
Isobelle also wants to add a knowledge base with tools and resources on financial literacy, so that applicants can find support at every stage of their funding journey.
"The biggest benefit we’ve found with Softr is how customizable and flexible it is. We’ve been able to create a platform that is adapted to our fairly complicated needs."
