AKIVA - AI Business Support Platform for Shareit Biz

At a Glance

• Client: Shareit Biz
• Sector: Startup community platform for business support
• Scope: Automated support/event discovery plus a member-facing AI assistant platform
• Key capabilities: Daily internet scanning for new supports and events, automated daily briefing emails, chatbot recommendations for businesses across NI and ROI
• Delivery: End-to-end design, build, and deployment of an AI data pipeline and SaaS product

Who Shareit Biz Are

Shareit Biz is a startup focused on helping businesses find relevant supports, funding opportunities, and events across Northern Ireland (NI) and the Republic of Ireland (ROI).

Background

Before this project, founders Derek and Grainne were spending hours each day manually searching for new opportunities, then sharing those updates with their community.

The value to members was clear, but the process depended heavily on founder time and was difficult to scale. At that stage, the community was also free to access, so there was no clear product offering in place to monetise the work.

The Problem

Shareit Biz faced two connected challenges:

1. Operational bottleneck: Finding and distributing new supports and events was a manual, repetitive process that consumed hours every day.
2. No packaged product: Without a defined platform offering, it was difficult to turn the service into recurring revenue.

The Objective

Reduce the time founders spent on manual research and create a clear, monetisable product that businesses could subscribe to.

What I Delivered

I delivered two core systems:

1. Automated daily discovery and briefing system: I designed and deployed an AI workflow that searched online sources each day for newly published business supports and events across NI and ROI, then stored the results in a central database. Every morning, Derek and Grainne received an email digest containing new items detected in the previous 24 hours, ready to review and share with their community.

2. AKIVA - member-facing AI platform: We built AKIVA, a SaaS platform where businesses could create a profile and ask a chatbot what supports and events were relevant to them. The platform was also structured so it could also be white-labelled for other organisations in future.

How I Approached It

I led the project from design to deployment, focusing on both internal operations and external product delivery.

The first stream automated the back-office workflow so new opportunities could be surfaced consistently without relying on manual searching. The second stream turned that capability into a customer-facing product, giving Shareit Biz a practical route to monetisation.

Outcome

The project gave Shareit Biz both operational leverage and a commercial product:

• Founders significantly reduced time spent on manual daily research.
• Their community received more consistent, timely support and event intelligence.
• Shareit Biz launched AKIVA as a working SaaS platform with a clear monetisation strategy.
• The product architecture also supports future white-label deployments.

“Liam played a key role as the prototype developer for AKIVA, and it was a genuine pleasure working with him throughout this phase of our journey.

He consistently delivered to agreed timelines, remained accessible whenever needed, and brought a warm, collaborative approach that made the entire process both productive and enjoyable. Beyond his technical capability, Liam demonstrated a sincere interest in helping us succeed. He contributed valuable ideas and proactively suggested enhancements based not only on his experience as a developer, but also from his understanding of the startup support ecosystem.

We were so impressed with Liam’s knowledge, commitment, and delivery that we explored the possibility of him joining the company. While this ultimately did not materialise due to Liam’s decision to continue pursuing a diverse portfolio of freelance projects, our experience working with him was overwhelmingly positive.

We would highly recommend Liam to any organisation seeking a capable, thoughtful, and solutions-focused developer.”

— Grainne Bannon

Co-Founder, AKIVA