Citonhub

PROBLEM:  94% of people learning how to code give up. We believe newbies get overwhelmed by the amount of resources on the internet for their learning paths, without direction, they give up. 

 Solution: We are building a platform where more experienced developers can curate tailored resources and merge with their communities. Curated resources give newbies direction while community is there for support.

How can it be scaled: People are always searching the internet to advance their careers or get into a new one. We are going to scale this solution by merging tailored resources to what people are searching. Also, as we grow, we would have physical  hubs in several locations with the aim of helping learn how to code.

Developers spend a huge chunk of time searching for the right resources to accomplish their tasks.  This happens because they are sorting through a vast library of information on the internet to  get what they need. 

This makes a good number of people give up on learning. We are working to include everyone in the digital economy. Being able to code is one of the highest paying skills in the world. According to a research in 2019, the median pay of software developer in the US is $107,510. 94% of people quit coding, and the total number of people with this skill fall under just 6%. Many people are excluded from this benefit because of this time barrier to learning.

Solution: Citonhub.com. Our platform enables experienced developers curate tailored resources for their communities. They can aggregate these resources from YouTube, dev.to, and other content creation platforms, and merge to the chatting interface on the platform.

Technology: We used technologies such as webRTC, Websockets for real-time chat communication, and APIs from content platforms. Right now, we are building a browser extension to make it easy for devlepers to curate resources on the fly as they are combing through the web.

Our solution is serving experienced developers and newbies just getting into tech or learning a new technology and need direction. Our platform would enable them get focus to their learning. We are currently testing some curated resources with people and the responses have been largely positive.  

Challenge category: Digital inclusion.

Alignment to Challenge: Our mission is to bring more people into tech.  Our approach to helping developers merge curated resources with community brings down the barrier to getting in. The internet is the first step on this mission. We have plans of establishing decentralized physical hubs all around the world where people can visit to learn how to code and connect with other developers.

We are in the prototype stage because we have an MVP and are currently testing our product with Developer student club Unilag (DSCUNILAG). It is a community of developers with over 400 members. Lastly, we have not raised any institutional investment.

           For the first time on the internet, people can curate resources and merge with their various private communities. Previously, people learn from various content creation platforms then move to separate platforms to get support.

           On Citonhub, developers have the space to curate resources and features such as screen sharing, voice chat, sharing and running code directly in the chat. We also provided a place for them to organize hackathons to engage their communities. The impact of this is for people learning from the community, organization and efficiency in getting help when they need it. We are by extension, opening up a new market for content curators. 

           This is a big shift from the current trend of people actually creating content before they can earn. With our platform, people can earn by curating quality resources to help others. 

We have 500 monthly returning users.

We estimate that in a year’s time when we carry out our marketing plans, we would have a monthly returning user of 1 million. In a five years’ time, this number would have grown up to 20 million.

We have organized three free mentorship programs with a total number of 150 applicants. We got feedbacks from these programs and iterated on our product. This has taken us closer to our goal of helping more people get into tech. 

  We are two co-founders working full-time on the idea. In the past, we’d hired the help three contractors to complete certain parts of the project.

  Akinola Ayomide Raymond is the technical co-founder and he is a determined mentor to five junior developers. Being a self-taught developer, he has faced, first-hand, the tenuous and time-consuming process it takes to learn new technologies. He is skilled in PHP for building backend applications and Vue.js for building front-end applications. He is passionate about design and efficiency, and believes that good technology should make people better versions of themselves. 

Olutola Owolabi is a digital marketer and business developer. He has a passion for creativity and has been an active curator of contents he’d found interesting on the web. He loves speaking with people and has an ever-growing curiosity towards other people. These passions have come in handy in conducting user interviews and crafting messages that meets the user pain points. 

We are open to diversity and are advocates for this. Although we are two male co-founders, one of the first interns we hired was a Muslim Female and we did our best to make sure her skill improved dramatically than when she joined us. We believe in giving underrepresented people a chance to thrive as we are underrepresented ourselves and we understand how invaluable access to opportunities could change lives. 

We are applying to Solve to overcome the barriers impeding our growth.  These include access to finance and mentorship.

If we get into Solve, the $10,000 grant is enough for us to hire more hands to gain traction while access to mentorship would guide us on the right path to success. 

    First, we have undergone two iterations of the product but we have not achieved product market fit yet. We are close, but we believe there are some details we are not getting right and by joining Solve, we believe we can get guidance on some of the necessary steps we need to take.

  Second, we have tried to grow a community around our product twice but failed. We are first time entrepreneurs, but we have the determination to make things work, so we are not deterred. We could use  Solve's help in learning the prerequisites of growing a community. 

 We would like to partner with Google Developer student Club worldwide, CodeNewbie, Womenwhocode, Bradtravesymedia, Webdev simplified, and Shecodeafrica. Our partnership would be based on a two-way relationship. We provide a platform carry out trainings, grow their communities, organize hackathons. In return, we take 10% commission on what that they earn.

HP believes in bridging the digital divide across economically disadvantaged locations around the world. I live in one. I understand what it means to wake up every day thinking I can achieve more if I had just the basic resources like constant electricity, affordable internet connection, and just enough budget to buy a laptop to learn a skill or purchase an online course. 

Winning the HP grant would help us accelerate our growth plans on Citonhub. Our overall mission is to help more people get into tech and this aligns with HP's goal of achieving digital equity.