What does Protopia do?
In short, we get questions from students, alumni, and staff, and ask the best, available alumni if they can help. Until we’ve got one or more responses.
How do you get questions?
Your graduates have a lot of questions – all the way from admissions to career development. So we start by making it easy to ask for advice via web forms, email, Slack, etc. Wherever your alumni and students already are, we invite them to tap the expertise of the most powerful network they will ever be a part of. Oh, and we have a lot of best practices and tools that we’ll deploy together with you and your team to drive awareness and adoption. And then we learn + iterate together with you.
Can anybody ask a question?
That is up to you. You may choose to let only students and alumni ask, or also staff, parents, and supporters of the institution. We’ll work with you to customize Protopia to your community.
How do alumni respond?
No alumni has ever asked you for “another app”. Which is why we let them engage right from the tools they already use: email and SMS. Our AI finds a small number of the very best, available alumni and sends them an email, asking if they can help with a relevant request. The alum can respond with advice, call, or a meeting. If they’re not available to help, then our AI simply asks the next alum in the queue. Until we’ve got a response (guaranteed).
Can alumni share the question with their network?
Yes. In fact, we encourage alumni – if they can’t help – to share the question with a friend or a colleague who may be able to assist. When they do, you’ll get a “referral alert” and will have an opportunity to approve the referral’s response before it is shared.
What data do you collect?
We collect data from the alum (such as updated profile information) and data on the alum (for example, what time they are more likely to help). We use this data to optimize our algorithms to create better matches and better experiences. Any data we collect from alumni is your data and can be accessed 24/7 via our dashboard.
Do you collect feedback from the alum?
Yes. A few days after an alum responds we ask her and the students how happy they were with the experience (we ask for both a rating and optionally comments). We only share this feedback with you via alerts and via our real-time dashboard.