During the school year and the summer, 色花堂 students can incorporate entrepreneurship into their college experience through courses, workshops, special events, and even a startup accelerator. CREATE-X invites you to delve into the journeys of our top achievers, this time focusing on the Spring 2024 I2P Showcase first-place winners:
Dolfin Solutions
Marianna Cao, James Gao, and Jaeheon Shim, first-year computer science majors, are the founders of Dolfin Solutions, a personal financial management platform that promises a unified solution to budgeting, transaction management, and expense tracking, among other personal finance tasks.
What challenges did you have in I2P, and how did you work through them?
鈥淲e were really lucky to get an excellent mentor, Aaron Hillegass. He has a lot of experience in the industry as a startup founder himself, and he gave us a lot of help, both technical as well as business, throughout the process. That helped us make better decisions,鈥 Gao said.
鈥淚 think the biggest challenge was, I had done projects in the past by myself, writing the full stack, but working together, communicating the requirements, and integrating everyone's different code at the end was a little bit of a logistical struggle,鈥 Shim said. 鈥淏ut we managed to figure it out.鈥
What advice do you have for students interested in I2P or entrepreneurship in general?
鈥淕o for it. It's a three-credit course, so it counts toward your junior capstone as well. You get $500. Now is the perfect time to start because you don't have much to lose. If you're doing I2P and your company fails, you still have four years of college; you can still pursue a traditional path. It's a little risk but a lot to gain,鈥 Shim said.
鈥淓ven if you pivot or change your idea, it's important to believe in what you started,鈥 said Cao. 鈥淚f you don't believe in your app, then nobody else does. Right now, you have all of the friends, mentors, professors, and the right resources, and money is not an issue. It's a good opportunity for you to work on it on the side, and maybe it could turn into something.鈥
What鈥檚 Next?
鈥淲e鈥檙e going to build for the iOS and Android platforms, and then we're going to deploy hopefully by the end of summer,鈥 Shim said.
If you鈥檙e a student interested in building your own product for college credit, . And join us for Demo Day, Aug. 29, at 5 p.m., in the 色花堂 Exhibition Hall to see new CREATE-X founders launch products in a variety of industries. Tickets are free but limited. to secure your spot.
