The Mission

Every international student deserves a clear first step into a new city. Student Compass exists to make international student relocation more structured, reliable, and human. Moving to a new country is not only an administrative process. It is the beginning of a new life: finding housing, avoiding scams, registering with local authorities, setting up essential services, understanding local systems, and building a social and academic routine without an existing network. Today, students are expected to navigate this process through fragmented university pages, government websites, housing platforms, agencies, social media groups, and informal advice. Student Compass brings this journey into one mobile-first platform. The app gives international students a single, personalised starting point for housing, official procedures, essential services, local discovery, student life, and community. It adapts to each student’s situation, including nationality, university, arrival timeline, housing status, and city, so that students see what is relevant to them at the right moment. Our mission is to close the gap between arrival and belonging. We help international students save time, reduce stress, avoid costly mistakes, and start calling their new city home in a matter of days, not months. By improving the arrival experience, Student Compass contributes to: ✓ Better student wellbeing and quality of life ✓ Faster integration into the city ✓ Higher student retention for institutions ✓ Stronger engagement with the local economy ✓ Better long-term talent retention for regions such as Limburg Student Compass is currently available in open beta at student-compass.app. More information is available at studentcompass.nl. The App Store and Google Play launch is planned for August 2026, ahead of INKOM orientation week.

The Challenge

Each year, more than 1.7 million international students enrol in higher education across the EU. Despite this scale, student onboarding remains fragmented, informal, and inconsistent. International students often arrive in a new country without knowing which procedures apply to them, which deadlines matter, which sources to trust, where to find safe housing, or how to build a real life in the city. Critical information about residence permits, registration, healthcare, banking, housing, work regulations, and daily-life services is spread across disconnected platforms. As a result, students frequently: • Miss important deadlines or legal requirements • Spend weeks searching, comparing, waiting, and correcting mistakes • Face higher exposure to housing scams and unsafe rental decisions • Struggle to build a local social network • Experience stress, isolation, and slower academic engagement What should be a structured transition becomes a trial-and-error process. In Maastricht, this challenge is especially acute, even if it is often treated as a series of separate student problems rather than one structural onboarding gap. We conducted research among international students in the city and found that the average student loses around 10 weeks before they can fully focus on studying, daily life, and integration. Most of this time is lost to housing: searching across platforms, contacting landlords, comparing options, avoiding scams, and trying to secure a reliable place to live. Administrative setup adds another layer of friction. Registration, residence permits, DigiD, banking, insurance, and healthcare are often sequential and confusing. As a result, the full setup process can stretch across 3–4 months before a student is properly settled. This is not just inconvenience. It is lost time, stress, and delayed integration at the exact moment when students should be building routines, friendships, and academic focus. This does not only affect students. It also creates pressure for universities, municipalities, housing operators, and support services that repeatedly answer the same questions. For local businesses, the current system makes it difficult to reach students at the moment when they are actively forming new routines and choosing the places, services, and communities they will return to throughout their time in the city. The core challenge is clear: international student relocation lacks a structured onboarding system.

The solution

Student Compass is an Onboarding-as-a-Service platform for international student relocation and daily life. The app transforms a fragmented arrival process into one structured, city-integrated journey. Instead of leaving students to piece everything together alone, Student Compass guides them from pre-arrival to settled student life. The platform is built around three connected layers. 1. Structured Student Onboarding Student Compass gives students a clear sequence for the essential steps they need to complete when moving to Maastricht and, later, other student cities. This includes BSN registration, IND and residence procedures for non-EU students, DigiD, banking, health insurance, GP registration, address registration, work regulations, tax basics, and university-specific onboarding information. Instead of sending students across disconnected websites and unclear advice, the platform organises these steps around the student’s profile, timeline, and situation. Students can see what applies to them, what needs to be done first, which documents are required, and where to continue through the official channel. Student Compass does not replace universities, municipalities, or public authorities. It makes their processes easier to understand and easier to navigate, reducing avoidable mistakes, repeated questions, and unnecessary stress during the first weeks. 2. Housing, Local Services, and Community Integration Student Compass connects students to a structured local ecosystem covering the most important and high-risk parts of relocation: housing, essential services, local discovery, and social connection. For housing, the platform helps students understand Dutch rental basics, recognise scam risks, compare options more carefully, verify listings, explore available rooms, and find potential roommates based on lifestyle, budget, timing, and preferences. For daily life, students can discover relevant local services such as banking, insurance, mobile plans, mobility, cafés, study spots, sports, and other student-oriented places. For community, Student Compass helps students connect with peers through features such as Find Buddies and roommate matching. Students can discover people with shared interests, similar study contexts, or compatible lifestyles, helping them build a local network earlier and reduce the isolation that often comes with moving abroad. The goal is not to overwhelm students with random information, but to present the right options at the right time. A student who has just arrived does not need another endless list of links. They need clarity, trusted guidance, practical housing support, and a way to feel connected to the city sooner. For local businesses, this creates structured access to international students at the moment when they are forming habits and routines. For students, it makes the city easier to navigate, more familiar, and less anonymous. 3. Scout and Compass Intelligence Scout is the personal guide inside Student Compass. It helps students navigate the platform, understand what still needs to be done, and ask practical questions based on their situation. Scout is connected to the student’s profile, timeline, and verified content, making it more useful than generic search. It helps reduce cognitive load by giving students practical, context-aware answers when they need them. After the first arrival phase, Student Compass shifts from relocation support to routine formation. The platform helps students discover local places, services, events, peers, and communities, supporting integration beyond paperwork. On the partner side, Student Compass is developing Compass Intelligence: an aggregated, GDPR-safe insight layer that helps businesses and institutions understand student engagement, arrival behaviour, and routine formation. Individual student data is never shared with partners. The purpose is to help partners improve their offer, timing, and relevance while keeping student privacy protected. Target Groups: Student Compass serves three connected groups. International students Students relocating to or within Europe who need a clear, reliable, and human way to settle into a new city. We are starting with Maastricht, where international students form a major part of the university population and local economy. Local businesses Cafés, restaurants, service providers, housing operators, mobility providers, banks, insurers, and other local partners that want to reach students at the moment they are forming new habits and routines. Institutions and cities Universities, municipalities, student organisations, housing operators, and regional stakeholders that want to improve student wellbeing, integration, retention, and long-term talent attraction. Traction and Validation: Student Compass has already moved beyond the idea stage. So far, we have: • Won the Brightlands Startup Challenge Ideation Award • Launched an open beta web app accessible to students • Tested the platform concept and open beta with 150+ international students in Maastricht • Found that around 85% of tested students would see clear value in using Student Compass on arrival • Onboarded 20+ local businesses in Maastricht • Built an operational MVP and partner-onboarding flow • Established active regional ecosystem and financial partner relationships • Started building institutional channels with universities, student organisations, housing operators, and local stakeholders Business Model: Student Compass uses a three-sided model. For students, the platform offers a generous free core that includes essential arrival guidance, housing support, scam-prevention tools, local discovery, community features, and basic Scout support. Optional premium features can provide more personalised guidance, advanced housing tools, smart reminders, and deeper Scout usage. For local businesses, Student Compass offers a partner model that helps them reach international students during the crucial first weeks of arrival, when routines and local preferences are still forming. For institutions and larger partners, Student Compass can support sponsored access, cohort onboarding, and city-level integration initiatives. This structure allows Student Compass to remain accessible to students while building a sustainable commercial model through B2B and institutional partnerships. What Makes Student Compass Different: Student Compass is more than a listing platform. Most existing tools solve one isolated part of the student journey. University websites provide information, housing platforms focus on listings, social media groups offer informal advice, and lifestyle apps help students discover places after routines have already formed. Student Compass brings these layers together into one structured journey, starting before arrival and continuing into daily life. Our advantage comes from: • A student-first onboarding experience • Housing support, listing verification, and roommate matching • Community features such as Find Buddies and peer discovery • Verified and locally relevant content • A partner ecosystem built around real student needs • A context-aware personal guide through Scout • Aggregated, GDPR-safe insight potential for partners and institutions • A city-portable model that can scale from Maastricht to other student hubs This makes Student Compass not only a relocation tool, but a practical city-entry system: helping students understand what to do, where to go, who to trust, and who to connect with. Next Steps: Launch in Maastricht in August 2026, fully operational for INKOM orientation week, with verified housing partners, local businesses, and institutional channels active from day one. Collect and analyse data on student engagement, satisfaction, and outcomes to guide continuous improvements to the platform. Once Maastricht demonstrates clear impact, expand methodically to other Dutch student cities, applying lessons learned to optimise onboarding, partnerships, and service delivery. Scale strategically to major student hubs across the EU, ensuring each expansion is data-driven, context-aware, and focused on delivering measurable benefits to students, businesses, and institutions. Vision: Student Compass exists to make international student relocation structured, reliable, and human. Starting in Maastricht, our ambition is to become the default onboarding system for international students across Europe, helping them settle faster, feel connected earlier, and navigate their new city with more confidence from day one.