Hosted by Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts University

Welcome to the event site for the Cross-University FinTech Mini-Hackathon at Tufts! This event aims to convene students across the greater Boston area who are interested in using AI to solve real-life financial challenges for college students. In just three hours, students will meet fellow innovators and entrepreneurs, learn about the problem prompt, form teams, brainstorm ideas for problems to solve, and select one to develop and pitch. They will be guided throughout this process by our entrepreneurs-in-residence as well as subject matter experts.

AI can accelerate this process but cannot take the place of customer interviews. Good news! For primary market research, your target customers are right there in the room with you - undergraduate and graduate students and recent alumni who have unique needs and goals around financial products and services from budgeting to banking, access to credit, investment products and more.

At the end of the event, teams will be delivering a 2 minute pitch of the problem you chose, the solution you developed, the benefits to the end customer, and recommended next steps for further exploration. There will be an audience vote for the favorite team of the day. Winners will take home cool snacks and swag.

Location

Tsungming Tu Complex (TTC) Atrium, 200 College Avenue, Medford, MA 02155. See map.

Fintech hackathon wayfinding.jpg

Event format

The event will have three main segments:

Challenge prompt: We will launch the challenge prompt around the financial literacy and financial products and services needs for college students.
Team formation: We will guide you through the process of brainstorming approaches to address the challenge prompt and help you form teams based on shared interest.
Primary market research: Teams will ****formulate their problem statement, define hypotheses, then interview each other (within and across teams) to build knowledge.
Solution development: Teams will use AI to help them explore and mock up a solution concept.
Pitch development: Teams will use AI to help them develop and practice their pitches.
Final pitches: Teams will deliver their 2 minute pitches. Participants will get to vote for their favorite team. Members of the winning team will take home cool snacks and swag.

Intellectual Property Policy: “Open by default”

Any intellectual property developed during and within the scope of the hackathon must be open source and licensed under one of the licenses referenced in **https://opensource.org/licenses”.**

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