By Samantha Cart
In the Fall 2017 issue of West Virginia Executive (WVE), we highlighted six successful Mountain State entrepreneurs who are affecting change and living out their dreams in their home state. Entrepreneurs have tremendous potential for growing West Virginia’s economy and creating quality jobs, which is why the staff at WVE wanted to continue the celebration of our state’s most valuable assets.
Andrew Van Deusen is a student at the University of Charleston’s School of Pharmacy and the creator of StudyLex, a voice-powered phone application for students. Learn more about him in this entrepreneur spotlight.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and moved to Charleston in 2014 in order to pursue my doctor of pharmacy degree at the University of Charleston’s School of Pharmacy. While I am very passionate about pharmaceutical technologies, I have always had a knack for everything tech-related.
Tell us about Studylex. How did you get started creating this technology?
StudyLex is a voice-interactive application for your phone that helps you study. StudyLex works by verbally quizzing you on class material, asking you questions and waiting for you to speak your response. It keeps track of your performance and can even offer you hints and more information on study topics to help perfect your knowledge before your next big exam.
Being in the Rho Chi Academic Honor Society at school, I am required to tutor graduate students and even sometimes my own classmates. After discussing study strategies with some students, I was informed that my unique study technique was working wonders for my classmates. The funny thing is, it’s actually a very simple study strategy, and that’s when it clicked. Because I have a very simple structure for mastering class material, why can’t it be automated? I took my idea to a hackathon, which is basically a 24-hour competition where you meet up with fellow programmers and compete against other teams to make a functional app to pitch to a panel of judges. My team ended up winning with StudyLex, and things took off from there.
What were the challenges of creating the application?
Voice-interactive applications like Siri or the Amazon Echo are still considered a cutting-edge technology. Not everyone understands its utility, so there are still challenges in developing it into a commercial product. It was and still is challenging to find investors in West Virginia who are willing to take a leap of faith and trust a young tech-enthusiast with such an ambitious vision. However, with enough time and persistence, I was able to find several mentors willing to help me further develop my business.
How does StudyLex benefit students?
StudyLex benefits students by augmenting their study sessions through a much more engaging experience than what traditional studying used to allow and giving them the ability to study conveniently in spurts throughout the day. Because StudyLex is a completely hands-free application, you can now study while in the car on the way to work or at home doing the dishes. You can even have StudyLex wake you up in the morning with a couple quiz questions.
What inspired you to create StudyLex?
Being in the Rho Chi Academic Honor Society has put me in direct contact with students who are struggling with graduate-level course material. I was and still am happy to help my peers learn to study effectively, but being human and a student myself, I can only help one student at a time and only after I have studied my own class material. Being able to develop an app that anyone can use around the world, any time of the day, means that I can help a virtually unlimited amount of students. That sounds like a win-win to me.
How did being a West Virginia resident and specifically a University of Charleston student help you get to this point in your education/entrepreneurial career?
West Virginia has given me more support than I expected. I originally started off by attending some small start-up conventions in the area, and while many investors were skeptical of tossing money at a young tech-enthused student, they were more than happy to introduce me to the connections they believed could be of help. The University of Charleston has been very supportive of my ambitions, especially with their new innovation center, which has provided me non-stop support on developing a detailed business plan and financial forecast.
Amazon is investing in your idea. Will you make your technology into a legitimate company? If so, what does your timelines look like? Will you finish pharmacy school first?
Amazon has taken special attention to my product, especially since my team is currently experimenting with their voice-interactive platform. I do plan to turn this project into a full-fledged commercial operation, but I have promised myself that I will put priority on graduating first, since I have less than a year left of school. After that, I plan to put major emphasis on completing StudyLex and making it accessible to students everywhere.
What are your goals moving forward?
One thing that has surprised me about developing a cutting-edge application is the amount of funding required. My goals moving forward are to get more investors involved so I can not only perfect StudyLex before release but also make it affordable for all students.
Is there anything I haven’t asked that you’d like to include?
My intentions with StudyLex are to create a study platform that is perfect for today’s students. Because of this, I am always open to people’s thoughts, opinions and ideas on how to make StudyLex better. I would love to encourage anyone with a thought, opinion or idea to email me at wvstudylex@gmail.com. I read every email I get to find out how I can make StudyLex the greatest study platform out there.
To learn more about successful entrepreneurs in West Virginia, check out “Advice from the Experts” in West Virginia Executive’s Fall 2017 issue.
