Turning a high school idea into an innovation for colour blindness
If you’re an undergrad or high school student, the idea of building your own startup can be daunting.
This week, we spoke with Emma Casolin, the 19-year-old founder of eXsight — a company that creates a colour vision aid that is portable, affordable, and effective. Emma came up with her idea in high school but did not expand on it until undergoing an incubator program in uni. Emma’s idea eventually won the prestigious Peter Farrell Cup (UNSW) and last year’s People’s Choice Award at Textbook Venture’s Student Startup Festival (our 2019 applications are open)!
Q: How did the idea for eXsight come about?
During senior year in high school, I needed to come up with a project idea that could “make a real positive impact” for my major work in Design & Technology. Colour blindness (also known as colour vision deficiency) was an issue that stuck out straight away to me. I grew up in a family that had hereditary colour blindness and both my brother and grandfather were affected by it.
The struggle in differentiating coloured objects affected my grandfather’s career as well as my brother’s learning at school. After a bit of online research, I realised that this problem was more common than it seemed:
1/12 men are colour blind and a good number of females are too. 49% struggle to differentiate rotten food from fresh and half of the affected individuals have had driving issues.
There was clearly a gap in the market for colour blindness solutions — there weren’t any products that were affordable, effective and convenient.
Q: As a young founder, what were some obstacles you faced early on?
More than anything, I think my self-belief and self-confidence held me back.
During high school and in the beginning, I designed a phone case that housed a filter — making it easier for people with colour blindness to differentiate between colours on and off of their phones. I had no idea where my product was going and what my next steps were. I didn’t think it would amount to anything.
Thankfully, my dad put me in touch with a few uni professors across Sydney. They validated my early product and urged me to look into university programs that mentored young founders. After applying and getting into the New Wave Founders program at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) — it restored my confidence in the product I was working on and the vision I was pursuing!
Q: eXsight has been in the works for over a year, what are the next steps?
We’re currently in the validation phase for our new product. Through UNSW’s Founder Start program, we’ve tested and developed prototypes for an app that will help people create colour blind friendly designs.
Right now, we’re reaching out to potential users to gauge what is needed in the market and what people are willing to use. On top of this, we’re also emailing companies to see whether our product can be delivered to a larger batch of individuals. My co-founder, Maggie, is running campaigns and conducting analysis to gather data and insight on how competitors are doing and how the market is moving.
It’s an exciting and rigorous period, and if everything goes well, we’ll look to launch the product early next year!
Q: Do you have any advice for young founders like yourself?
It may seem daunting to venture off and test your own ideas, but there’s been a surge of support for young founders over the past few years! You can find free workshops and events all across Sydney — especially at the Sydney Startup Hub and through sites like Meetup.
I personally believe that university accelerators and startup programs are the most accessible and comprehensive pathway to develop your startup idea. All the major universities in the Sydney region have at least one or two of these programs. At UNSW, we have:
- New Wave Founders — a program for female founders
- Founders Launch + Grow + Start — a pre-accelerator to fast-track a startup’s growth
- MCIC Foundations and Founder Lab — for those that are just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey
- 10x Accelerator — a 10-week intensive program followed by 6 months of incubation
Reach out to student organisations on your campus and even independent ones like Textbook Ventures — they often host a catalogue of events, have lots of student-friendly content, and you’ll be able to bounce off ideas with like-minded people and even veterans in the space!
Q: You currently study a mix of Psychology and Software Engineering. Why this combo?
I originally studied Psychology and Aerospace engineering before swapping it for Software engineering!
Back in high school, I did a bit of work experience at Qantas and was fascinated by the complexity, architecture, and physics of ‘flight’. Naturally, I thought I’d give Aerospace a shot since it captivated me. However, I chanced upon and discovered my passion for coding not long after starting Aerospace — consequently switching it out for Software (which is still fairly challenging but with much less physics and complex maths!). I also think software is much more relevant in this day and age.
As for Psychology, it was a course that I picked up since my senior year of high school. I wanted to pursue it further because it was very practical and exciting to grasp the very nature of our thoughts and ideas.
Q: What are some of your hobbies outside of university and eXsight?
There really isn’t too much free time outside of those two! However, whenever I can, I like to dabble in a few creative endeavours like drawing and artistic work. The occasional catch up with friends and family time are also up there too!
If you’re interested in learning more about eXsight, please check out their Facebook and volunteer page. They’re currently looking for helpers and volunteers (colour-blind or not) to fast-track their product launch!
This piece was written by David Zhou of Textbook Ventures— we organise startup events, write newsletters, and share tech jobs for student entrepreneurs across NSW.
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If you’ve got a STARTUP OF YOUR OWN, be sure to apply to our Student Startup Festival for 2019.
