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AI tutoring, Second-hand shopping, and Sports fan engagement

Meet Whiteboard, Swoop, and Thumbo

Author

Josh @ unistart
September 20, 2023

Happy Wednesday!

Welcome to the latest edition of unistart, where we feature the hottest early stage startups, job opportunities, and valuable resources, all in one newsletter.

Now let’s dive straight into what’s on 🔥 this week.

🤟 What Your Classmates Are Building

What? - An AI-powered learning tool that lets you chat with videos, ask questions to an AI tutor, extract key information from PDFs, and generate flashcards.

Why? - Most AI EdTech tools give you the answers to online tests or write entire essays for you. What happens when you take an exam in person? Whiteboard helps you actually learn.

  • 📍Industries: AI, EdTech, SaaS

  • 🚀 Stage: Pre-Seed

  • 🛠 Founded: 2023

  • 😎 Founders: Daniel He (USC), Oliver Johansson (UC Berkeley)

Bonus Insight: Daniel and Oliver previously worked on Rizz together which became product of the day on ProductHunt and reached over 100k users!

They have a crazy TikTok strategy and they are looking for a head of growth to hyperscale the platform. Reply to this email if you are interested or know someone who would be a good fit.

What? - An AI second-hand shopping tool that lets you take a picture, upload a screenshot, or search for a clothing piece you’re looking for and find the exact product or alternatives.

Why? - You wanna get with the trends but don’t have a budget, or you’re environmentally conscious. Second-hand is the way, but it’s hard to scroll multiple websites for hours.

  • 📍Industries: App, AI, Consumer

  • 🚀 Stage: Pre-seed

  • 🛠 Founded: 2023

  • 😎 Founders: Aryan Raigangar (University of Exeter), Olivia Todd (University of Exeter)

Our first group of founders submitting to unistart.io from the UK!

What? - Thumbo is a fan engagement software that gamifies a live venue’s video board to entertain fans and gather valuable data for venues and sports teams.

Why? - Leveraging a venue’s video board during breaks is low-hanging fruit. Fans get to engage more and win rewards. Venues and sports teams can use that data to make better decisions to increase their revenue.

  • 📍Industries: SaaS, B2B, Sports

  • 🚀 Stage: Bootstrapped

  • 🛠 Founded: 2022

  • 😎 Founders: Todd Levy (USC), Veronica Falzone (USC)

Bonus Insight: They won 1st Place for Best Concept in Marshall's New Venture Seed Competition. Fight on! ✌️

Know of a startup that we should feature in this newsletter Send us a reply!

🚨 NEW FEATURE: Investor Outreach (Closed Beta)

We’re launching an investor outreach feature on our website. We streamline your path to securing funding by serving as your initial point of contact, avoiding your deck to be lost in associate inboxes.

We are launching this feature on a closed beta round of 20 founders. If you’re interested in testing this out, reply to this email!

🎥 Founder Series

We interviewed Jai Bhavnani, who grew a DeFi protocol to $1.5 billion. Now he’s building the future of crypto self-custody.

Check out what he has to say:

📃 New Job Openings

Interested in any of these jobs? Send us a reply for more info.

None of these a fit? Check our job board for more.

Want your job to be featured like those startups? Send us a reply by replying to this email.

📣 We want to hear from you!

If you are job hunting or hiring for roles in startups & VC, searching for deal flow, or just want to grow your college's startup ecosystem, we want to help.

Schedule a 30-min call with us so we can understand your needs.

🔗 Important Links

  • Founders 👨‍🔧: Fill out this quick 2-min form to be featured on unistart.io and the newsletter

  • Job seekers 👩🏼‍💻 - Sign-up for our alerts to be matched with tailored opportunities

  • Investors 🧙🏻‍♀️ - Join our private deal flow to see the hottest startups from top universities and their alumni base

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