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Elevate
Challenge
Davao City’s startup and innovation ecosystem is growing, but one of its biggest challenges is the lack of visibility. Founders struggle to find the right partners, investors, or support to help them grow, while investors and enablers find it difficult to discover promising startups to back or collaborate with. Without a centralized and organized way to see who’s building what, the ecosystem remains fragmented and disconnected. As a result, opportunities for growth, funding, and collaboration are often missed — not because they don’t exist, but because people simply don’t know where to find each other.
Solution
Elevate, built in partnership with IDEAS Davao, makes the city’s startup ecosystem visible, connected, and easy to explore. Through an interactive map and curated directory, Elevate helps startups, enablers, and investors quickly discover and connect with each other.
Startups can showcase who they are, what they do, and key milestones, while enablers highlight how they support startups, their focus areas, and past projects—making connections more meaningful and aligned.
To ensure trust and accuracy, Elevate features an admin dashboard for reviewing profiles, managing name changes, and controlling visibility. With tailored onboarding and purpose-built profiles, Elevate helps every entity share the right information to spark opportunities.
By bringing everyone together in one place, Elevate removes the guesswork in building connections, helping the ecosystem grow stronger and more collaborative.
Features
Startups and enablers play distinct roles in the ecosystem, and Elevate’s onboarding process is designed to accommodate their unique needs. Startups provide details about their stage, industry, business model, and key milestones, while enablers specify their areas of support, investment criteria, and available programs. This structured approach ensures that profiles are informative, relevant, and actionable. Additionally, the data collected enhances Elevate’s AI chatbot, enabling it to offer personalized recommendations and insights that facilitate more meaningful connections.
Elevate structures profiles to emphasize critical information that drives collaboration. Startup profiles highlight their mission, team, and key milestones, providing investors and enablers with a clear understanding of their growth and potential. Enabler profiles outline their focus areas, support mechanisms, and past projects, making it easier for startups to identify the right partners. By tailoring profile layouts to each entity’s needs, Elevate enhances discoverability and streamlines the connection process.
Elevate integrates an AI-powered chatbot designed to assist users in navigating the platform and discovering relevant opportunities. The chatbot leverages onboarding data to provide personalized guidance, helping startups find potential investors, enablers connect with promising ventures, and users explore the ecosystem efficiently. By offering real-time assistance and intelligent recommendations, the AI chatbot enhances engagement and ensures users maximize the value of their interactions within Elevate.
The Design Process
To understand Davao’s startup ecosystem, our team engaged with IDEAS Davao and spoke directly with founders, investors, and enablers. We learned that many struggle to find each other—founders don’t know where to seek support, and enablers aren’t sure which startups are active. There was a clear gap in visibility and connection, limiting growth and collaboration.
From these conversations, we defined the core problem as a fragmented ecosystem with no centralized way to connect. Founders needed a space to showcase their work, milestones, and needs, while enablers needed to explain how and who they support. We realized both groups required different ways to represent themselves, which meant we had to design separate yet connected experiences. At the same time, we needed to ensure that all profiles were accurate and verified to maintain trust within the platform.
In response, we explored ways to simplify discovery and connection through customized onboarding that asks only relevant questions based on user type. We brainstormed modular profiles that highlight what matters most—like founders and milestones for startups, and preferences and portfolios for enablers. We also identified the need for admin tools to review and approve profiles, manage name changes, and handle sensitive updates. Throughout ideation, we focused on how to make the platform intuitive and easy to navigate, even for first-time users.
With these solutions in mind, we designed a flexible, user-friendly system that adapts to both startups and enablers. We prioritized clear navigation, accessible layouts, and responsive components to ensure usability across devices. For startups, we created profiles that showcase milestones, founders, and focus areas, while enabler profiles emphasize support preferences and portfolios. We also designed a clean admin dashboard where admins can review entities, manage visibility, and approve requests. Throughout the design process, we made sure everything felt seamless, approachable, and focused on helping people connect.
Coming back to Elevate after more than a year now with better UX skills and real-world exposure through IDEAS Davao completely changed my perspective. Seeing how much the platform grew from a simple prototype to a dynamic, user-centered tool was a huge leap. This experience reminded me how crucial user validation, iteration, and collaboration are in creating meaningful solutions. More than a design update, this was about learning to design for real people with real needs. Ultimately, Elevate taught me that great UX is not just about good visuals, but about creating real value and connections in a community.
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