Keystrokes By KimberlyHow impressive is that?!? Emerson Walker was sitting in class when he realized he had forgotten his daily planner and could not write down his assignments. Daily planners are a BIG deal for students in middle and high school. They are an accountability track for students, parents and educators. So what did he do? He did what any good son of a partner at a venture firm would do. He used his iPad to create an app for that. Yes, he decided to develop it himself with minor assistance from his father. From that moment the mPlanner was created.
The idea was Walker’s mPlanner would integrate with school portals like Schoology and BlackBoard to pull assignments from teachers into the planner. It would also pull information on scheduled tests and events. Well, it was a much needed idea in today’s technology world. Emerson won first place competing against adults at the May 31st Cincinnati startup weekend.
“Yes, it felt good to beat adults at their own game!” he wrote online.
As a reward for winning, he was given a workspace at startup accelerator Cintrifuse’s Sixth Street offices. Though proximity to Cintrifuse affords him access to investors with deep pockets, Emerson decided to take a less traditional approach to funding the development of his app. Emerson choose to go the Kickstarter route. On July 15th he launched his crowd funding website, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rywalker/mplanner-0. His goal is to raise $5K to pay for coding the app. Well, as of this afternoon, twenty days into it the campaign he has raised $6,022 and has eighty six backers. Get this he still has eleven days of funding remaining!
“It feels really good actually. I was surprised we actually got to this point in half the time,” he said. “It’s cool to see that people actually want to see this idea made and there’s a community coming together around it.”
The mPlanner app will be marketed toward the parents of middle and high school students. The plan is to charge a $10 annual subscription fee.