This Student-Run Startup Is Made For and By Content Creators

In the hit Korean drama Start Up, you might recall that it takes Seo Dalmi and her co-founders at Samsan Tech five episodes to prepare for Sandbox’s momentous demo day. That’s roughly five weeks of preparation in TV time: congregating at co-working spaces, poring over lines of code in a cruel game of trial and error, and practicing her product pitch to a room full of investors that hold her future in their hands.

The team behind the startup Murch found themselves in a similar situation, when they qualified as the only Filipino participant in the ASEAN Business Youth Association (ABYA)’s Leaps Demo Day. Except, they only had 12 days to prepare before the competition proper. 

Most of Murch’s founding members are still students in Ateneo de Manila University, all working towards a degree in Information Technology Entrepreneurship, with the exception of their chief product officer Polly Baterna, a fresh graduate from the same course and currently a faculty member at the university’s John Gokongwei School of Management. The challenge of leafing through several documents and putting together an award-winning deck may have seemed like too big a task for the little venture that could.

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But in spite of the odds, they were declared Innovation Champion: yet another addition to their existing roster of awards. In their first year of operations alone, the team has bagged gold medals in contests held by Smart, QBO, and Ideaspace and was even deemed the best student venture by their university’s program.

Our country’s startup industry may be moving at lightning speeds, powered by the razor sharp ideas of the best and brightest in the Philippines but these kids are obviously ready to take their future into their hands.

Young people today are intrinsically bound by anything from common interests to shared goals: these can manifest in typical college clubs and even creator cliques in the fields of music, film, and e-sports. Members regularly go through rounds of fundraising to sustain their operations, usually by offering subscription tiers, accepting donations, and of course, selling merchandise. Murch chose to fill in these existing gaps present in the age of content creation and online communities. 

“Aside from being an effective way to meet financial targets, [our team learned] that merchandise helps teams and brands embody and concretize their passion and mission,” chief executive officer Arvin Martin Santos explained. “You can turn what you believe in into something you can hold in your hands, that you can wear.” However, the process of doing so requires the usage of multiple apps at the same time, making it hard to keep track of orders and complete transactions.

This is where Murch comes in: the easy-to-use, end-to-end merchandise platform seeks to streamline the entire process of design and production, all the way to e-commerce and distribution. Sellers get personalized store layouts with hands-off inventory management and delivery services; buyers, on the other hand, can enjoy seamless transactions from a variety of payment channels and a familiar add-to-cart procedure. No more typing the same details over and over again or scrolling through one’s camera roll to find proof of payment.

Like many other bright ideas, the idea for Murch came about sometime during the pandemic. Santos was inspired by the journey of a good friend, who had tried out being a content creator for fun and managed to grow her YouTube base to half a million followers, as of this writing. “What we learned from our previous conversations with this friend of mine, as well as other creators with the same journey, is that they struggle a lot with the process of raising funds to support their careers,” Santos shared. “[Content creation] is proving to be a lucrative field, so the team felt that maybe we could do something that could help people like her make their vision a reality.”

In their beta phase alone, Murch has been able to do just that by securing several youth-led partners across multiple universities in the Philippines. Now, they’re quickly expanding to accommodate big clients. Some projects they’re excited about include partnerships with the Climate Reality Project, a global nonprofit committed to climate education; the Indiependent Collective, a media group for and by the youth that is centered on socially engaged conversations; and the ever-exciting annual Metro Manila Pride celebration.

Murch’s impressive growth in such a short span of time makes it even harder to believe that the startup originally began as a requirement for school. 

But all members of the team concur that the “wholesome and supportive” environment provided by the ITE program was the perfect conditions for Murch to flourish. “Each day in our program, we were introduced to people with experience in relevant fields who were all willing to guide us through every step of the journey,” shared chief operating officer Joshua Taningco. “The ITE department was able to introduce deeper perspectives to us while also helping us gain the necessary experience in the start up scene. You could really sense that they were invested in our growth.”

Recently, Ateneo’s school of management appointed a new dean who has since been vocal about the need for “more disruptive entrepreneurs” to tackle complex social challenges on a global scale. “As a result, the university is coming up with other funds to help students create both tech- and non-tech driven ventures,” Santos said. “We’re just as excited to see that everything we’re working on is contributing to a new dawn, a new beginning in the academe.” 

The country’s newly-crowned top university is not wrong to devote as much attention to innovation. While we’re relatively modest in comparison to Silicon Valley or even India, the local startup industry has shown much promise since the advent of remote work and has cemented its position as an emerging startup destination. Last year, the ecosystem raised over a billion U.S. dollars in funding, with Mynt notably achieving “double unicorn” status in November 2021.

“It wouldn’t be a lie to say that some people have also been influenced by programs like Start Up or Silicon Valley,” Taningco explained. But other notable factors that have resulted in our highly competitive startup scene include increased government support through the implementation of key policies as well as a surge in private investments and foreign assistance. “Founders from abroad have started seeing the potential in the local community and it’s nice to see their commitment in mentoring us, helping us grow.”

Much more seasoned entrepreneurs with a high risk appetite don’t always navigate these conditions with ease—what more student founders firmly situated in the era of hustle culture. “Until now, we constantly face challenges like impostor syndrome and self-doubt; there are also a lot of things that we’re still not familiar with because of our lack of experience,” Taningco admitted. 

But their team happens to be big fans of questions they don’t know the answers to: they enjoy listening to older and more experienced peers who can sharpen their legal and financial acumen. He adds: “We also practice maintaining that balance with thinking for ourselves and trusting our own instincts.”

Aside from the government, many other social actors are hard at work to cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit that’s somewhat inherent to Filipinos. Baterna noted the spike in high school or university events, case competitions, and school requirements that often serve as the genesis of student ventures. But after these events are over, there are barely any guarantees that these promising founders will continue to build on what they have.

“The problem of most high-potential concepts out there is not just exactly how to get these ideas off the ground: it’s really receiving consistent mentorship and getting introduced to the networks that can get them far ahead,” she expounded. “We need to learn the kind of things that we never could have possibly known until we have already gotten our feet in the proverbial water: how do we prepare for different rounds of funding? How do we pool the necessary resources? You know, things like that.”

Baterna—and the rest of Murch—swear by providing communities with the tools and time and resources they need; they know through firsthand experience that this is the only way they can flourish. This is why they’re committed to helping even those outside their customer base by mentoring (and employing) succeeding batches of ITE students and strengthening the startup network within Ateneo. 

Head of operations Jason Reyes says that the team is also dedicating much energy to improving and diversifying existing features for this reason: “We realize that different communities have different needs and so we’re continuously trying to see how we can best serve them the way they deserve to be served.”

It’s easy to see that Murch is not only true to their word but also true to their name. “We don’t just spell Murch with a ‘u’ because it’s cute or quirky or easy to remember: it’s because we really put you at the heart of what we do,” Santos shared. “We really care about what you’re passionate about and what you’re interested in as an organization. If there’s anything we can do to help immortalize it, we’ll definitely do our best to make it a reality.” 

Murch is on a mission to build the best, most efficient way for communities to fundraise through merchandise. Contact them via their Facebook page or website.