Inspiration
In the United States, nearly have of the population is employed by a small business. Micro-businesses have less than 10 employees and require less than $50,000 to start. Usually this funding comes out of the business owner's pocket or they secure funding from friends and family. This usually ends up harming minorities who have less resources leading to minority owned business owners struggling to raise capital. To make matters worse, it is more difficult for a minority to take a loan from the bank. Oyster hopes to solve this problem by making the fundraising process around small and micro businesses easier. By reducing the barrier that business owners face, we hope that this will help level the playing field and help minority owned business owners raise capital for their dreams!
What it does
Matches potential investors with small businesses looking for investment.
How we built it
React frontend which makes calls to a FastAPI backend, using MongoDB Atlas as the database.
Challenges we ran into
Minor troubles integrating the backend with the frontend, making sure that datatypes and names of elements in dictionaries was consistent.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Having a functional website, as both of our past experiences at hackathons have been far from successful.
What we learned
Connecting the frontend and backend of a website, integrating with MongoDB Atlas, using FastAPI
What's next for #63 Oyster
Implementation of more tools to help small business owners pitch themselves to investors
Links:
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/gaps-in-small-business-financing/ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/what-is-micro-enterprise https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/small-business-statistics/
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