HiveShare

Inspiration

As college students, we noticed how much money we waste on things we could easily share - rides to the airport, shipping costs for textbooks, food delivery minimums, and phone plan family slots. Existing solutions were fragmented across GroupMe chats, Facebook groups, and word-of-mouth. We wanted to create a unified platform where students could easily find sharing opportunities and build trust through a credit score system.

What it does

HiveShare is a comprehensive campus sharing platform supporting 7 categories:

🚗 Carpool - Share rides to airports, train stations, or nearby cities
📦 Split Shipping - Pool orders to reach free shipping thresholds
🍕 Food Orders - Meet restaurant minimums for delivery
🛒 Group Buying - Bulk purchases at wholesale prices
📱 Phone Plans - Fill family plan slots to reduce monthly costs
🏠 Find Roommates - Match with compatible living partners
📚 Study Buddies - Find partners for difficult courses

Key Features:

Simple category-based browsing with filtering
Two-step post creation (select category → fill details)
Real-time progress tracking (slots filled/total)
Credit score system to build trust (displayed on every post)
Clean, mobile-responsive interface

How we built it

Frontend:

React 18 with TypeScript for type safety
Vite for lightning-fast development
React Router for seamless navigation
Inline styling for rapid prototyping
Axios for API integration

Backend:

Java Spring Boot for robust REST APIs
PostgreSQL for relational data storage
In-memory mock data for rapid development

Architecture:

Monorepo structure with separate frontend/backend folders
RESTful API design
Component-based UI architecture
Git for version control and team collaboration

Challenges we ran into

Tight timeline - With only 24 hours, we had to prioritize ruthlessly. We focused on core features (browse, filter, post) and deferred nice-to-haves (chat, map view).
Type safety - Ensuring TypeScript types matched across components, especially with the dynamic category system and metadata fields.
Team coordination - Syncing between frontend and backend teams required clear API contracts and frequent check-ins.
Git conflicts - Initially had merge conflicts when organizing the monorepo structure. Solved by clearly separating frontend/ and backend/ folders.