When I started this journey with Hacker Exchange, despite my enthusiasm for this course I had minimal idea of what I wanted to spend my two weeks, day and night, working on. There were so many ideas I would have been excited to work on. I had tossed up looking into ways to incorporate renewable energy into a startup, ways to improve youth employability, solutions to manage the abundance of homelessness in the Bay Area… In the end, I was deciding between two ideas, renovating vans as an alternative to low income housing and building a platform that that bridges the gap between girls in STEM and the numerous female-oriented initiatives. The reason why I chose the latter was mainly because upon preliminary research, it was clear that there was already a lot in the market for renovating vans and at the same time it was not a clear solution to the problem I was looking to solve. Additionally, the latter idea was something much more personal to myself and I knew I would have no trouble diving into this start up.
As a university student studying engineering, who is actively involved in university activities, extracurriculars and has a support network of other fantastic women in STEM, great opportunities still manage to slip my radar. I could not imagine what this would be like for those who do not have that network and how disconnected they must be to all their opportunities. This is why I founded gather, a platform that effectively connects young women involved or interested in STEM with their opportunities and resources.
At its peak, 74% of middle school girls express an interest in STEM. This interest drops in high school and 35% of women make up the cohort in STEM fields at a collegiate level. This number drops again upon graduation and it is only 22% women in the STEM workforce. To combat this decline, many organisations have formed women-oriented STEM programs. From my market research, I was able to find that out of over ten women-oriented outreach programs in Canberra, my target market could could only recognise two of these programs. The problem that gather aims to solve is to bridge this disconnect.
Gather is a centralised website for opportunities dedicated to girls in STEM, it acts as a single contact point that provides information and allows you to apply for opportunities including bootcamps, courses, programs, scholarships, conferences, events, job opportunities and volunteer opportunities. To tailor to my market, the platform uses more attractive channels, language, advertisements and is easy and efficient to use. All you have to do is input your age, area of interest and area then you can find all the opportunities picked out for you. I am extremely proud and confident in this startup. Through working on this start up, doing my market research, interviewing other females in STEM, I believe that this platform has the potential to become such an essential and useful tool for many young women everywhere.
The Hacker Exchange 1.8 