Triumph - The Triangle's Startup Ecosystem

Opening
Map (small)
Map (large)
Startup Overview
Startup Information - 1
Startup Information - 2

Inspiration

The Tech Triangle is a vast network of upcoming start-ups with high growth potential. Unfortunately, many of these start-ups go overlooked and undervalued by Venture Capitalists, and fail to receive early stage funding needed to be successful. Additionally, students in the area are unable to find these start-ups due to a lack of publicity. Luckily, we created Triumph!

What it does

Triumph is a centralized platform designed to connect venture capitalists, students, and startups across the Triangle area. It provides detailed insights into startups, including market potential and key economic metrics, allowing users to make informed decisions quickly.

For venture capitalists, Triumph simplifies the investment discovery process by consolidating critical startup data into one accessible platform, reducing the need to search across multiple sources. For students, it increases visibility into emerging startups they may not otherwise encounter, opening doors to internships and career opportunities. For startups, Triumph offers a space to showcase their potential, growth metrics to a broader audience of investors and talent.

Through an interactive map interface, users can click on startup markers to instantly view their market potential and economic indicators, making exploration intuitive and geographically informative.

How we built it

We began by brainstorming possible interfaces and design directions for Triumph. From there, we identified potential features we could implement, such as interactive maps and integration with the Google Gemini API. As we explored different ideas, we decided to prioritize creating a visually compelling and accessible UI/UX experience for our targeted customers. In particular, we focused on designing an interface that uses a fixed triangle to indicate the region and geographical location dots to make navigation intuitive and engaging. Our team primarily took on the hands-on work of manually building the core UI/UX workflow and basic layout. We used Generative AI as a support tool, like asking targeted questions about how to achieve specific visual effects and technical implementations. Then we adapted and refined those suggestions to match our design vision.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge we encountered was correctly connecting an API key in order to utilize Google Gemini as our primary search and chat bot. We attended the workshop for API, and learned valuable things about its functionality, but still were ultimately unable to implement it in a timely period. This led to our team deciding to pivot, and focusing on essential functions. In future projects and ventures where we have more time, we hope to utilize API. Another challenge we ran into was creating 3D graphics for each of the buildings represented on our map. We were unable to code accurate graphics of the building shapes and sizes. As a result, we ended up utilizing the same shape for each of the buildings, and just changing the color portion. In the future, we hope to iterate the code and get more accurate graphics that represent each of the start-ups.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the UI/UX of our project. We spend a lot of time brainstorming the look and user experience. In the end, the graphics reflected the sleek and techy feel we were going for. We utilized lightsaber lines in light blue, red, and dark blue on a dark black background in order to trademark the Tech Triangle. In addition, we are proud of the features we showcase for each start-up which includes the name, established date, website link, milestones, future endeavors, current backings, current open positions, current worth, and projected MRR/ARR. Overall, our project’s user interface reflects both functionality and user experience.

What we learned

We learned how to make an app that appeals to two populations at the same time, the student population and the venture capitalists population. We had to figure out how to make a website that included statistics that students and venture capitalists would care about when determining if the start-up has potential and its current status. One of the other things we learned was how difficult making a Gemini API integrated into our website is. We also learned how to integrate a 3D model into our website, which required a lot of research, but we were able to finally integrate one 3D model to improve our overall UI. And finally, we learned how to functionally build a website!

What's next for Triumph - The Triangle's Startup Ecosystem

In the future, we plan on learning how to integrate a Gemini API into our search bar so that it is actually functional. This feature would help students and venture capitalists find a specific start-up based on their specifications. Students could input their resume into the search bar to find start-ups with positions tailored for them. Venture capitalists could search up start-ups with the specific statistics they want to look into.