Teenager Startups - Nick founded StudentSide to help students

Getting into Ivy League Schools is a dream for every student but, not everyone can get a chance to attend them. That's when Nick Dahlborg thought to start a platform to help studentsget into their dream school or university. With his startup StudentSide, he aims to help students connect with enrolled college students for one-on-one mentoring to learn about their dream university.

Nick is currently pursuing a major in Economics and Computer Science with a minor in Psychology from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. In 2019, he finished his high school diploma at Brookline High School, where hewas an active member of the Superfans Club. Also, He acted as a counselor for Summer Dreams Leadership Organization for more than three years. In June 2019, he became a member of the National Honor Society is a nationwide organization that recognizes outstanding achievement amongst high schoolers. Nick speaks well in Swedish and English with native proficiency also uses Spanish to communicate whenever possible.

Nick found that his fellow high schoolers struggled to gather information about their dream schools. In April 2020, He decided to create a platform to help high school students to get admitted into their dream universities and founded "StudentSide" with its headquarters in Delaware, United States. With the help of the internet, Students can tour the campus, research online, or talk to a tour guide, but nothing comes close to learning about the school directly from a student that goes there. In order To truly understand how it feels to attend a certain college, it's critical to gain real insight from a real student. The most typical form of college search is a tour, which, depending on where the students live and the college’s location, can be cost-prohibitive. However, because of the importance of picking a good college and the limited resources for what colleges are like, many families feel forced to pay these fees to tour schools they aren't even sure they will like. StudentSide can help avoid fees like these by determining if a visit is even worth it in the first place.

For the first time ever, high school students planning on applying to college can learn about the social aspect of their favorite schools, whether it's the social scene, activities, classes, or even essay advice. StudentSide helps make this process easier, more affordable and helps you get these answers and more from a college student with a similar background and set of interests.

With $850as a seed investment from his co-founders, Nick is completely bootstrapping his startup without funding from venture capitalists or investments firms. Although his idea is unique, it was very difficult to implement. His team was frustrated with the current process to lead to the idea. It was too hard for them to find out what schools were like and instead, they based decisions simply on rankings.

There have been many technical challenges faced by Nick and his team while building their platform. As StudentSide is a completely SaaS product, building a robust web app with fast enough response times and enough memory to successfully schedule and manage our database is the biggest challenge they have ever faced. He said that his biggest mistake while founding StudentSide is building a product from scratch without iteration. After many hours of hard work, Nick and his team already worked on a business plan with the expectation to break even by 2023. He states that their biggest achievement iswas making over 200 pilot calls and registering over 1,200 student mentors across 150 colleges.

When we asked Nick how else students can benefit from StudentSide, he said, "They will gain a real and personal understanding of their future investment of over $300,000 and 4 years of their life. With us, they will make real, well-informed decisions."