We’re celebrating Indiana University student innovators and entrepreneurs who are clients of the Shoebox, the university’s student-startup incubator. Located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center in Luddy Hall on the Bloomington campus, the Shoebox provides 24/7 office space to help student entrepreneurs build, launch and sustain their businesses.
Meet ShuffleMe
Britain Taylor is founder and CEO of ShuffleMe, a digital platform. Taylor is a Ph.D. student in intelligent systems engineering from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
ShuffleMe’s prospective clients are young adult social media users interested in self-managing their mood and increasing their emotional well-being.
“There is a lack of tools to provide data so these young adults can reflect on what has contributed to changes in their well-being,” Taylor said. “This problem impacts their mental health, which can lead to stress, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideations.”
ShuffleMe provides clients with an automatic mood tracker that estimates their happiness, sadness and other related emotions while they engage on social media.
“It’s difficult for people to track their mood throughout the day, which leads to the inability to manage emotional states. ShuffleMe does this automatically,” Taylor said. “Our software detects people’s emotions using artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms. The clients receive individual analytics that provide hidden patterns of behavior and a happiness score that reflects their overall mood.”
ShuffleMe’s present and future
Taylor and her colleagues have created an MVP, or minimally viable product, fully coded version of ShuffleMe, which won business pitch competitions and secured funding. They already have a waiting list for the closed beta version of the app. Taylor and her colleagues have conducted more than 60 customer-discovery interviews, and ShuffleMe has gained traction by participating in five pre-accelerators, including Firestarter, Elevate Origins Q3 and B-Start.
“We want to continue raising capital, refining our MVP and building a viable product,” Taylor said. “We have applied for accelerator programs to establish our business model and prepare to launch. We hope to seal partnerships and continue to gain traction as we generate revenue.”
Praise for the Shoebox
“We have been a client at the Shoebox going on two years now, and we’ve benefited from the community,” Taylor said. “Speakers provide us with a great deal of resources on how to execute getting our product to market and funding opportunities to work on our startups. It’s encouraging to be around like-minded entrepreneurs and innovators who share a common passion to bring a product to market that will make a positive impact in our nation.”
Student startups can apply for 24/7 access to the Shoebox’s office space, which is located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center, Luddy Hall 2150. The Shoebox also collaborates with the Hoosier Hatchery pre-incubator at the Kelley School of Business as well as Bloomington’s Dimension Mill startup accelerator. To apply for coworking space, write to luddysic@indiana.edu.
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