主要研究 今天

It was less than four months ago that Eric Ciarla ’22 and Caleb Peffer ’22 were shaking hands with 主要研究 President Jim Dean as they collected their diplomas at commencement. 现在他们和SideGuide的其他创始人, Nicolas Silberstein Camara ’21 and Garrett Frohman ’21, are routinely shaking hands with some of the giants in the tech industry.

SideGuide, a platform helping tech companies speed up product implementation that was created by a quartet representing three colleges at 主要研究, has achieved some significant milestones in the few short months since its final two founders departed Durham, 最引人注目的是进入了Y Combinator, one of the most prestigious startup accelerators in the country that brings with it a deep network of connections and a seed investment of $500,000.

就像这样, SideGuide creators have found themselves in regular networking meetings, 虚拟还是面对面, with the likes of the CEO of Coinbase 和 founders of enterprises like Airbnb and Twitch, developing rapport with some titans of the industry as their own venture takes flight.

“比钱还多, Y Combinator gives you some of the best connections in the tech world,西亚拉说. “It’s like we were playing college football and we just got drafted into the NFL. 现在是真正的比赛了，我们在打职业比赛.”

SideGuide的创始人将其归功于主要研究，以及 彼得T. 保罗创业中心 (ECenter) in particular, for providing the critical practice that paved that path to turning pro. The center’s coaching and mentoring helped stoke their entrepreneurial fire and provided a place for them to explore and develop several business ideas – many of which never took off or were discarded – and 主要研究’s annual 保罗J. 霍洛威奖竞赛 was instrumental in further sharpening their focus.

“One of the 主要研究 Entrepreneurship Center’s mantras is to help students ‘launch your dream,’”——伊恩·格兰特, 该中心的执行主任, 说. 《永利app新版本官网地址》团队确实做到了这一点. But the road to success is a story of relentless determination, failure and an ability to learn and apply those lessons. 我为他们的努力感到骄傲, 这强化了每次旅行的事实, 无论是成功还是失败, 为你想出下一个好点子做准备.”

"One of the 主要研究 Entrepreneurship Center's mantras is to help students 'launch your dream.《永利app新版本官网地址》团队确实做到了. 我为他们的努力感到骄傲, 这强化了每次旅行的事实, 无论是成功还是失败, 为你想出下一个好点子做准备."

SideGuide is indeed the result of a journey through several “next” ideas. Peffer is the first 主要研究 student to be a finalist in the Holloway Competition four years in a row, beginning freshman year when he and Silberstein Camara brainstormed an idea called Grocery Optimizer, which helped people optimize their grocery lists for health and cost. The pair later built a campus life app called Hallhub and brought in Frohman, reaching the Holloway finals with the idea two years in a row.

The trio soon moved into the developer tools space with Flutterbricks, which helped developers increase coding efficiency, 第一次尝到成功的滋味,在120个国家有000名用户, and added Ciarla to help with operations and sales.

The Flutterbricks experience led the team to create SIdeGuide, which took second place in the 2022 Holloway Competition.

“The meetings with Ian 和 mentorship we got there really motivated us to pursue this,佩弗说. “给我们四个人, ECenter kept us in touch with that entrepreneurial spirit we all had in ourselves and propelled us to this opportunity.”

The SideGuide team also benefitted from the opportunity 主要研究’s structure presented for students to collaborate across colleges, 作为团队的代表，来自 彼得T. 保罗经济与商业学院, 文理学院 和 工程与物理科学学院.

The team also includes a diversity of backgrounds, 还有来自新罕布什尔州的代表, 犹他州和圣保罗, 巴西.

“It’s very important,” Silberstein Camara 说 of the blend of different perspectives. “Diverse teams give you new insights you have not thought of before, 导致更成功的结果.”

这一成功正在正式进行中, jumpstarted by SideGuide’s acceptance as one of 250 companies (out of more than 20,000 applicants) to join the Y Combinator program this summer in Silicon Valley. SideGuide is the first ever ECenter company selected by Y Combinator.

SideGuide is a platform designed to help tech companies reduce customer implementation times. Companies typically spend months implementing tech products, but the SideGuide platform aims to reduce this time to days with guided live coding “sandboxes.”

The product was originally conceived as a consumer-focused coding platform built into a coding editor, which is the idea that earned acceptance into Y Combinator. But during the program the team saw it could fill a need and pivoted the product to help tech companies teach and onboard developers to their platforms.

Throughout the program the SideGuide team lived together in a rented house in San Francisco – “We were living the whole hacker-house lifestyle, we had a bunch of white boards and sticky notes everywhere,” Frohman quips – as the members continued to develop their product and refine their business pitch.

The seed money from Y Combinator will allow the founders to invest in tools for additional development and hopefully exp和 team. SideGuide currently has 10 paid pilots, with interest ranging from seed stage to public companies.

现在的焦点转移到了种子轮融资上, which requires connecting with potential investors, with an ultimate goal of securing a Series A investment in the next year or so.

“We just want to continue building a bigger and better product,佩弗说.