TWO39 MEDIA
Oct 8, 20203 min
April Caldwell, fayVen founder and TWO39 LABS participant, has partnered with the Florida Gulf Coast University U.A. Whitaker College of Engineering.
Through the TWO39 LABS accelerator program, the Veteran owned startup, FayVen, will sponsor Florida Gulf Coast University engineering students in their senior project throughout the remainder of the Fall semester and throughout the entire Spring semester. (October 2020-May 2021)
The Florida Gulf Coast University Students include:
Cameron Brien, Nicholas Hansen, Austin Nolz, and Ryan Yerge.
FayVen is a platform service which allows the vendors to connect with venues.
Its services help businesses that have venue space connect to vendors that need venue space.
FayVen curates pop-up shopping, dining, and entertainment events for mobile vendors and artisans at local venues. Small business owners that do not have a storefront can utilize the FayVen platform to connect with venues that do.
Student’s will deliver a brand new, contemporary platform based off of FayVan’s current website. The current WordPress website will be transformed into a stand alone application for FayVan’s users.
FayVen will receive valuable design documents and an evolutionary prototype that will help them towards their final goal of creating a platform to help vendors and venues connect more efficiently.
Students will experience working with a real company to create design documents, experience working with modern frameworks to create a web application and work to develop software with real clients.
“Having the opportunity to work in such an exciting atmosphere like that of the TWO39 LABS accelerator is something very special to me, personally. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial side to me. Being able to work in a team with companies like fayVen, who have so much to prove through their MVP which we will be helping them architect and construct, is a surreal experience,” stated Ryan Yerge. “They obviously are a special company and have a lot to prove. While we are young rising professionals about to be finished with our academic tenure at FGCU, we similarly have a lot to prove; and I’m ecstatic to be able to share that experience with my team, fayVen, and TWO39 LABS!”
“Before the TWO39 LABS cohort even started, Alex Allen was looking for opportunities to help out the startups; he played a huge role in advocating for us. I was surprised to hear that the opportunity even existed - in theory, I knew that there were ways to get students to help us build our website but I had no idea how that worked and who to contact. Alex reached out to all of us and asked for our website tech requirements, which I already had drafted up from previous attempts of getting a minimum viable product (MVP) built,” stated April. “When I learned that the FGCU tech team was interested in meeting me, I was ecstatic! Alex and my mentor from TWO39 LABS, Dave Comiskey were on the initial call and helped me communicate with them. After three long days of waiting for their response of whether they chose us or another business, I got the email! My husband thought I won the lottery with all the jumping and screaming that was happening in our kitchen. And I feel like I did win the lottery. This is a whole year I get these amazing web developers - it’s literally a startups’ dream come true. I know that we’ve set the stage for the future partnership of TWO39 and FGCU and I’m so thankful that Alex, Aaron and the whole TWO39 team was there to get us this incredible opportunity.”
Congratulations, FayVen. We cannot wait to continue to share TWO39 LABS startup participant’s success stories.