A teen tech entrepreneur is helping students socialise through a ground-breaking mobile app.
The HallHang app developed by Lydia Jones uses GPS technology to introduce users to student-hosted events around their halls of residence, such as movie nights and games nights.
It has already been incorporated by all three universities in the Liverpool city region: Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Liverpool and Edge Hill.
Jones, 19, has been developing apps since the age of 15. Her previous ventures include motivating fitness app FitFlash, which she founded when still at college.
She received support from the Liverpool City Region Activate programme, which provides support to digital SMEs in Liverpool.
“Before I approached Activate, a big problem I had was that investors wouldn’t take me seriously due to my age, regardless of having founded start-ups previously,” Jones said.
“The support from Activate has provided me with a much better idea of how much potential the market has to offer, and a clear product roadmap to scale.
“HallHang is now in a position to strengthen our offering as a stable tech company and have the key findings to back where we want to go, and how we will get there.”
The keen podcaster (see below) was able to enlist the expertise of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology and Liverpool Business School – both part of LJMU – to gather real-time market research data via data mining techniques developed by Dr Carl Chalmers (pictured above).
If she can see it she can be it – Hear @CoderCaitlin, Girls Who Code alum and former alumni fellow, on the podcast @TheLydPeriod about her experience being a woman in tech! ?????? https://t.co/fTMyPVZCms
— Girls Who Code (@GirlsWhoCode) 17 July 2018
Jonathon Clark, business and technology manager at LCR Activate, said: “Launching a new product business can be extremely hard for SME’s in the creative and digital sector.
“There are so many young entrepreneurs, like Lydia, who have the skills and ideas but lack the resources to examine the feasibility of the product – and that’s exactly why we saw a need for the Activate project.”
HallHang is available on the App Store and is currently undergoing software updates to incorporate flat verification, geolocation and group chats to expand to more universities across the North.