My name is Will Andrews and I am a Junior Finance and Marketing student at the University of Pittsburgh. I enjoy finance and understanding money and financial markets in particular. I am interested in the banking industry, crypto space, and financial advisory/wealth management. However, I also have a great passion for marketing and the creativeness that businesses can display to attract customers and grow their brands. I love startups and the excitement that they bring, which is why I was so enticed to apply for the College Decisionator App.
As the Commercialization Plan Manager for the College Decisionator App, I am tasked with creating and tailoring our marketing approach which includes who we target and how we target them. Furthermore, I will be developing our monetization plan. This project will give me great startup experience and business lessons that I can carry with me into future endeavors. However, I honestly want the College Decisionator App to succeed more than just get my feet wet and learn a couple of things. At this point, I feel fully invested in the project and have developed a passion for the idea in which we seek to bring to market. My goal is to give as much effort as I can to help the College Decisionator succeed and live on well beyond this semester. Additionally, if the College Decisionator can succeed, the world will too. The college decision process is a mess that has been growing for a while now and few solutions have come to market. If the CD app can help students make the right college choice, the amount of money, stress, and time that will be saved and avoided is astronomical. I think the rest of the team would agree that the fulfillment we could gain from helping students holds more value than a handful of startup lessons. A couple of statistics to show just how great this issue is:
37% of college students transfer at least once.
33% of college students drop out before completing their degree.
Total student debt sits at $1.59 trillion.
In terms of my professional future. I do not necessarily have everything mapped out. I know that I want to work for a company right out of college, preferably in a finance role. Currently, I am looking at many banking internships and financial positions, but I would be thrilled to join a startup as well. At some point, working for myself and having a little more freedom in my work would be great. With that being said, I understand that being my own boss might be years away and I do not feel the need to rush into that lifestyle.
I titled this “Chicken or Egg” because as I write this the CD app team is trying to figure out where to start. With so many ideas, so much work, and little time, we needed to find a starting point quickly. We feel that starting with marketing research and brainstorming is best before we start building the actual software. Most of the marketing research falls on my desk, meaning I should get back to work.
