About Us
Students 4 Student Startups (S4SS) is a revolutionary mobile application that connects student startups looking for funding with students that are interested in entering the investment market. We match student investors with startups that align with their interests and investment preferences. This makes us a platform that meets the needs of both investors and entrepreneurs.
Inspiration
The idea of S4SS came about when we noticed the gap between the number of student startups looking for funding and the number of students looking to invest. Being interested in investing ourselves, we found that investment simulators were the closest thing to playing the stock market without investing lots of money. The problem we found with this is that investing “fake money” doesn’t truly simulate the feeling of gains and losses. We also compared this to investing in penny stocks, however they are often incredibly risky. There are students that want to invest at low risk but do not have the capital to invest in larger businesses in the exchange market. For these reasons, we chose to create S4SS and allow student investors to invest in other students’ ideas. There are many startups who’s main source of capital is personal loans or funding from family and friends. Those who can’t obtain this are stuck and unable to grow their business. This gave us the opportunity to create S4SS to connect the two parties together and create an environment where both can benefit. It’s an app built by students, for students.
How It Works
S4SS is simple and easy to use! On the app, users create an account with a verified student email.
If you are a Student Investor:
Answer questions to find interests Review matched companies Select your favorites and buy shares Voila, the first investment has been completed!
If you are a Student Startup:
Complete a company profile List your shares and price You are now ready for investors!
How We Built It
Our initial design for UI was completed using Adobe XD, then the assets were exported to recreate the design in Storyboard (within Xcode). From there, we used Swift to develop the app and integrated Firebase to authenticate users.
Challenges We ran into
Since we are all fairly new with hackathons, we ran into issues on how and where to start. There was a slight learning curve with adapting to the latest software and tools, especially with the time constraints. We ended up spending more time on certain sections than others. However, through all the challenges, we managed to preserve through the end!
Specifically in terms of development, one challenge we faced was recreating the UI in Storyboard and then ensuring that the transition from each View Controller to another matched the UX design. We also began to look into using Firebase to store company profiles, but ran into trouble with extracting this information and storing it in documents to be queried when the user specifies their preferences. We also ran into challenges with the photo picker for startups to upload their logo. With the time constraints, we decided to focus on other features, but have a good start to continue exploring these features in the future.
Accomplishments That We're Proud of
The majority of our group have never competed in a hackathon before and are excited to finish our first one! We worked collaboratively within the short amount of time given to us and created a new and exciting application that we hope can help make an impact!
What We Learned
Throughout this hackathon, every member learned a new software or developed a new skill. We tried something new that we would have never tried outside of a time-sensitive project. We all put our best effort, played along with each other's strengths, and learned the importance of communication to ensure that our ideas aligned and everything came together as a whole (especially the final product!).
What's next for Student 4 Student Startups
There are so many new possibilities and features we want to add to our app. As many students don't have basic financial literacy skills and investing knowledge, we want to include games and activities that will promote students' critical thinking and expertise. We also hope to make improvements to the app as we grow to better cater to our customers, making it more efficient and beneficial. As we grow, we look forward to helping more student startups and investors!
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