Jumping in: Week 3 of Berkeley StEP

This week…

Berkeley StEP heard from the founders of Xendit, a startup that provides services to accept and detect online payments and transfer funds instantly in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Founder and CEO Moses Lo relayed his journey of building Xendit, and students had the opportunity to field questions with the rest of the team (Juan, Hwee, and Tessa).

Following, Elizabeth Kovats, professor at Berkeley Haas and Director of the Berkeley Roundtable on Applied Innovation and Design (BRAID), shared with us her experience in innovative design-thinking. In a short exercise on prototyping, students paired up to create a product that answered, “How might we improve small-team collaboration?”. They listened to each others’ needs and had five minutes to brainstorm a simple, low-cost product.

What have we been up to?

Our teams have been working through their checklist of weekly milestones. (If you missed our article on how StEP works, read it here.) Each week, we’ll spotlight a few teams. Follow our publication to get the insider lowdown on all 25 developing companies.

Invoys

Invoys revolutionizes the in-store shopping experience: through the mobile app, customers will be able to scan the item they are interested in, find more info, or skip the cash register and make their purchase! On the seller’s end, store owners will be able to track item-by-item traffic, tailor suggestions, and process returns instantly.

This team began their startup creation in January, and completed their prototype this week! Now, they are seeking stores to collaborate with, continuing to receive user feedback and tweaking their product along the way.

Crunch

Crunch- for time crunch- is a location based rental service that will facilitate speedy lending and borrowing of items. This startup (Labanya Mukhopadhyay, Swathi Ramaprasad, Tanya Krishan, and Ji Yoo Jeong) is an all-female team in their first year of college. They have been conducting customer interviews to find out what individuals need, what they are willing to rent out, and how trust can be managed through this process. Labanya Mukhopadhyay shared that their MVP development is well underway, and they are simultaneously building Crunch’s mobile app through user feedback on their MVP.

Get ready for the Showcase

Berkeley StEP will culminate in a Showcase in early May. Details will be announced soon.

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If you are interested in being involved in StEP or want to reach out to our startups, please email at berkeleystep@berkeley.edu 👣

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