For Baruch senior Carlos Vazquez, entrepreneurship and serving others go hand in hand.
Like many first-generation college students, Vazquez entered the world of higher education without much guidance from family or friends. As a result, Vazquez decided to create an app to help fellow students in the same situation.
His idea pivoted a few times, evolving from a virtual guidance counselor to an SAT test-prep app. Eventually, Vazquez landed on a winning idea: Acadu, which gamifies the learning process to make studying easier and more engaging for Baruch students. Users simply search for a concept or upload class notes to generate quizzes that help them study and learn. Additional features allow students to quiz themselves at various difficulty levels and study with other users through multiplayer games and leaderboards.
The app even won Vazquez some notable recognition—and money. At the May 2024 CUNY Clash, Vazquez took first place for Acadu and earned a $10,000 cash prize from Amazon. Launched in 2022, CUNY Clash is an annual entrepreneurial competition open to all CUNY students to promote problem-solving ideation and innovation.
In the months after winning CUNY Clash, Acadu more than doubled its user base. As for what’s next, Vazquez plans to use the prize money to grow and scale Acadu potentially for use across all of CUNY, beginning with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“We’re taking a bottom-up approach, trying to get as many users as possible to tinker with the product before we think about monetizing,” Vazquez says. “After that, who knows? If we can replicate it across all of CUNY, maybe that’ll be next.”
— Molly Turner