(Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles about participants in the Horn Entrepreneurship Summer Founders program.)

InvestEgg is one of six participating student teams in the University of Delaware Horn Entrepreneurship Summer Founders program.

The technology venture is searching for the best development path of a proprietary algorithm to aid potential future customers in setting up strong financial habits for long-term benefit.

The student founders – Anthony Rossi, who is working toward master’s degrees in the College of Engineering and the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, and Duanyi Wei, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, both scheduled to graduate in 2018 – will be able to utilize Horn Entrepreneurship resources and support to grow and learn about the industry and potential target customers.

The pair took advantage of their experience in robotics to develop the idea and technology.

“We started as robotics students with a strong mathematical background and we wanted to apply what we knew to the world of finance. A lot of our tech is proprietary and we are taking the engineering approach of creating stability,” said Rossi as he described the inspiration for the idea.

Rossi and Wei spend time in the Horn Entrepreneurship Venture Development Center and learn about unaddressed pain points in the financial planning industry. The venture is working to develop data driven tech to compete with robo-advisers, apps recent college graduates use to aid them in the world of finance in place of professional financial planners.

Currently, Rossi and Wei are working on refined customer discovery to present a strong unique value proposition to potential future customers.

“In the future, we see InvestEgg applicable to anybody whether it is college student, retiree, or elderly person. Everyone needs stability in their finances,” said Rossi as he described InvestEgg’s potential.

Rossi continued with his goals for the venture over the next three months: “With Summer Founders we want to attain a deeper understanding of our customer segments and know a day in the life of the recent graduates.”

About Summer Founders

Summer Founders serves as Horn Entrepreneurship’s premier startup pre-accelerator. The 12-week program provides student teams with resources and support from experienced entrepreneurs and faculty in addition to free and discounted services from the Venture Development Center.

Through participation in Summer Founders, students receive a stipend while working full time on customer discovery and idea validation.

Summer Founders concludes with Demo Day, a day to present and pitch the progress of the ideas to successful local entrepreneurs in the community.

About Horn Entrepreneurship

Horn Entrepreneurship ignites imaginations and empowers world changers through educational offerings that emphasize experiential learning, evidence-based entrepreneurship and active engagement with entrepreneurs and other members of the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Through participation in Horn Entrepreneurship offerings, students gain the knowledge, skills, personal capacities, experiences, connections and access to resources needed to successfully manifest innovation and thrive in a rapidly changing world.