The Creation of Spondooli

Spondooli was born out of a simple idea that everyone should have access to the stock market and the benefits it may offer them. Driven by this idea, for over two years the Spondooli team has worked hard to collect market data, work with high-schools prioritizing financial literacy, and, of course, develop the product itself.

Part One - The Idea

The first step in the creation of any product is to form a strong foundation to build upon, this is in the form of a bulletproof idea. When creating a product or service, businesses usually chose between two strategies: pull or push. A pull strategy is where a business analyzes the market and sees what products it wants and creates accordingly, while a push strategy is where a business comes up with a new idea and sees if consumers bite. For us, we chose pull.

Spondooli was not our first idea, however, ideas of research programs, headphones that dim the volume when someone calls your name, or even a financial manager were on the table. But above all, the idea of a stock market education game flourished as the clear winner in our eyes. But our eyes aren’t what matters, it is the eyes of the consumers.

First description of the Spondooli idea (September 2019)

Part Two - Verifying Market Need

After understanding what idea we wanted to go with, initially based on what we observed the market to desire, it was our next step to see if our target demographic (high school students and teachers) would be as receptive as we expected. So, we launched a small survey to students and teachers alike with some simple questions to not only give us the general understanding of if the product was a good idea but also for which direction we should go with.

Our First Survey

Despite the small number of respondents, the overwhelmingly positive response we received made it clear we should pursue the idea.

Part Three - Development and Early Marketing

Now that we had both a promising idea and a proven market need, it was only up to us to put said idea into action.

Spondooli is built on Unreal Engine 4, a software development tool that allows for the creation of visual-based, cross-platform applications. All stock information is handled proprietorially through our servers, which fetch, process, and deliver real-time stock market data to our app. Because of this, Unreal Engine can focus on creating the best user interface and experience possible, while the servers work hard under the hood, creating a seamless development environment in which every line of code is played to its strengths, and no app reliability is lost to external dependencies.

While constructing the app, we made sure to attend fairs, presentations, and other marketing ventures to muster hype for our app, which at the time was unknown to nearly anyone. This included making over 20 presentations and pitches, attending the Harvard Computer Science 50 fair, and creating advertisements, with our product not even out the door yet. This made sure that when we would launch, Spondooli would have the audience that it deserved.

Part Three Sub-Section 1 - Examples of our marketing and outreach

Marketing with Personality

Just after we returned from the Harvard CS50 Fair, we quickly learned that a large part of the reason that the public was responding well to us was our personality. Unlike other stock market simulators or even other startups, we had a charm that was not from the same cookie-cutter factory as the others. We all have an immense passion for our product, and this is crystal clear in all of the videos we produced. When asked a question from the audience, we all bounce off each other and succinctly answer the question while reflecting on each of our roles in the team perfectly. Our goal with Spondooli was not only to create the new way to learn the stock market, but it was also to have fun and follow our passion. I know it sounds cheesy, but it seems to have worked.

Part Three Sub-Section Two - Our Development Process

But marketing is not everything, of course. Without a strong product to show for it, all the marketing effort would be for nothing. That’s why we spent two long years and thousands of hours sculping the best product we could make. Just because our team is made of high-school students, doesn’t mean we can’t also work on a programming project that takes two years, right? Well, balancing both school and Spondooli was a challenge, so we took great advantage of the Coronavirus quarantine to speed-run the development process, without sacrificing quality. Spondooli has gone through many iterations, which are clearly shown in each of the marketing videos above, and each one of them has combined into the best way to learn the stock market, Spondooli.

Part Four - Release

Finally, after two long years and thousands of hours of work, we made it. Spondooli’s release. We knew that we must ride this spike of popularity from launch to the top, but we also knew how short this spike could be. So we launched an all-out marketing venture. We contacted both the Computer Science and Business divisions at Gulliver Prep High School and the Investment club at the Gulliver Prep Middle school, giving us the user base and footing to grow. We also made frequent updates to Spondooli based on feedback and suggestions. But this is only the beginning.

CURRENT SPONDOOLI SCREENSHOTS

Spondooli Concept Art

Below is a gallery of some of the concept art for Spondooli that we thought interesting enough to archive here. Everything from team sketches to prototype character designs, it’s all here.