Frequently Asked Questions

Most of our clients come from the marketing, product, innovation, and research departments of large global companies. However, all business groups may freely engage our community. Currently, all challenges on MindSumo must be conducted in English.

The best way to think about MindSumo is as a quick, cost-effective idea engine. MindSumo offers:
- The technology to manage a co-creation campaign
- A dedicated account manager who works closely with your team to guarantee success
- The world’s largest online community of Millennials to engage as crowdsourcing participants

The MindSumo community is comprised of digital natives from over 3,000 universities. They are socially connected and not shy about sharing their perspectives. Most importantly, they approach problems with a fresh perspective, unconstrained by traditional industry thinking.

We have over 700,000 registered users -- a number that keeps steadily growing. Most users are current university students or recent graduates. You can see more demographic information on our community here.

Absolutely. MindSumo’s simple messaging system lets you contact any of the participants from your challenges. It is only natural to reach out to high performers who understand your business and offer unique insights.

Yes! Our platform has powered internal collaboration, co-creation, and open-innovation for many clients. This offering is white-labeled and adopts your branding on a custom domain.

We see a handful of challenge "types" that often succeed. They range from very specific requests for small improvements to very broad and open-ended prompts about the future. You can browse the four categories (Implementation, Insights, New Business, Moonshot) and see examples here

In total, about 3-6 weeks. Once we receive a challenge topic from you, we send a rough draft in 2-3 days. After receiving your edits and approval, we launch the challenge, which lasts for 1-4 weeks. There is then a two-week judging period after the challenge closes.

Our process has been refined for over 5 years. Learn more about it here

You get access to ALL the responses, and depending on the deliverables you requested, the community will submit a combination of text and attachments. The attachments could be PowerPoints, mockups, renderings, videos, code, etc (see examples). In addition to the submissions, you will also get the list of participants, analytics on engagement, and reports which include themes and top ideas.

We use a combination of technology and our experienced account managers to screen the responses for you. Once screened, you will rate top responses based on the criteria listed on the challenge page. These are typically meeting deliverables, clarity, and creativity.

Every customer has a dedicated account manager who, among other things, hosts a midway review call. On that call, if for any reason you are not satisfied with how submissions are going, we work with you and the students to rework the deliverables and then relaunch with the fully extended time period at no extra cost.

Yes! Our community agrees at multiple points (registration and submission) to transfer ownership rights to the host company and to keep their submissions confidential. We have never had any disputes regarding IP.

All challenge briefs (prompts) are public. This helps us to market the project and attract the best participants. Each response, however, is completely private between you and the entrant.