Finding my way to entrepreneurship (Part 6)
How we built and launched the Mongo App as student founders
I have some exciting news to kick things off: Our app, Mongo, is officially live on the App Store! You can download it here! I'm so thrilled and proud to share this update with you all. For this post, I wanted to spend some time to dive into how a bunch of students, myself included, managed to pull off building an app in just a few months.
The Birth of Mongo
Mongo isn't just another app. It's a financial education and well-being platform designed for students and young adults. We want to make finance fun and accessible by teaching you about personal finance topics (investing, saving, borrowing, etc.) through bite-sized video lessons and engaging gamification. The journey began after our win at a hackathon in January. But this wasn't just a win; it was validation for our idea and it’s what really propelled us to move forward in building the idea out further.
Identifying a Gap in Financial Education
The inspiration behind Mongo stemmed from a glaring issue: the lack of accessible, reliable financial education for young people. In the US, almost 60% of young adults rely on social media for financial education. We knew we had to create something more credible and reliable. We ourselves struggled with limited access to financial education growing up so this pain point was something that was close to home for all of us.
The Early Days
After we won the hackathon, I teamed up with Yvette, our UX designer, Henrique and a few other MBAs interested in this area. When we started, we started small – a website, some homemade video content, and lots of feedback gathering. This was our testing ground. We all came from consulting or finance backgrounds so we didn’t know how to build the actual product itself but wanted to build this idea into an app format because we knew that would be the most appropriate medium to engage our target audience.
From Concept to MVP
The first MVP of Mongo was really an excel game and a website. We knew how to use excel and had a group of users interested in testing out our unique approach to applying the learnings - through a game that felt like a simulation in the real world. Our inspirations were the Life board game and even the early-2000’s online Cash Flow game made by the famous Rich Dad, Poor Dad author. The positive feedback we got in running focus groups on our game was the green light we needed. But how do we go beyond a website and an excel spreadsheet? We started networking, hitting up university events like UCL's tech meetups, pitching our idea to find the right tech talent. It wasn't straightforward, but persistence paid off.
Meeting Our Angel Investor and Accelerating Development
The turning point came when we met our angel grant investor in Summer 2023, who provided a grant to hire a developer. Finally, we could scale our vision. We found a developer shortly after. The developer, a UCL student, joined us in June, and suddenly, everything accelerated. I took charge of video production/content creation, Henrique developed the game, and Yvette designed the app. It was intense, challenging, but incredibly fulfilling and we all developed an immense amount of skills in this product development period.
The Launch
Fast forward to November 2023, and there we were, launching Mongo on the App Store. This wasn't just a milestone; it was a testament to what we, as students, could achieve with limited resources but a whole lot of determination.
But…launching Mongo is just the beginning. Our goal is to continuously evolve the app, making it the most engaging and useful financial education tool out there. We're gathering feedback, refining features, and learning every step of the way.
I can't end this post without acknowledging my team. This journey has been a collaborative effort every step of the way. We've shown that with a shared goal and relentless effort, students can create something impactful and practical.
As we keep improving Mongo, I invite you to join us in this journey. Download the app, give it a spin, and let us know what you think. Your feedback is crucial as we strive to make financial education accessible and fun.