A 19-year-old serial tech entrepreneur has developed a mobile app, to boost interaction between university students within halls of residence.
Lydia Jones has been developing apps since she was 15 and HallHang has been created to work across the Liverpool city region.
She’s been supported by the Activate programme, which is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
“Before I approached Activate, a big problem I had was investors wouldn’t take me seriously due to my age, regardless of having founded start-ups previously,” she explained.
“The support from Activate has provided me with a much better idea of how much potential the market has to offer, and a clear product roadmap to scale. HallHang is now in a position to strengthen our offering as a stable tech company and have the key findings to back where we want to go, and how we will get there.”
The app uses GPS technology to guide users to hosted events around their halls, such as movies and games nights.
Through Activate, Jones enlisted delivery partners, the Faculty of Engineering and Technology (FET) and Liverpool Business School (LBS) to gather market research data.
Using data mining techniques developed within FET, they gathered real time market research, which is now being used as part of investment pitching and the commercialisation of the product.
LBS then looked at the student demographic across the city’s 3 universities to examine behaviour.
“Launching a new product business can be extremely hard for SME’s in the creative and digital sector. There are so many young entrepreneurs, like Lydia, who have the skills and ideas but lack the resources to examine the feasibility of the product – and that’s exactly why we saw a need for the Activate project,” said Jonathon Clark, business and technology manager, LCR Activate.
The app is now undergoing updates to incorporate flat verification, geolocation and group chats to expand to more universities across the north.
