Startup Spotlight #214: The Abbey
The Abbey is a social news platform exclusively for reading and sharing high quality articles.
Introduction:
Nelson Bellows is a student at Wesleyan University who’s entirely involved in the club and society networks across the NESCAC and Ivy League. He has also completed two summer internships in finance at a hedge fund and a foundation, respectively.
The Abbey was an idea he had while interning at a distressed debt Hedge Fund. He and his friends started sharing articles relevant to their various internships when he realized how clumsy the process of news sharing and aggregation is. He set out to build The Abbey to fix this process.
Enter Your Email Below To Receive Startup Spotlights:
Startup Spotlight: The Abbey
Problem: Like many other students, I have been disillusioned by the hyper-engagement algorithms seen on traditional social media platforms. These mediums make sharing and aggregating news articles impossible and distracting, a particularly disheartening problem for students with free access to many high-quality publications.
Market: We’re targeting clubs and societies at universities, spanning from pre-professional organizations in which news is critical for interview prep to political clubs where policy research will be aided by The Abbey’s aggregation functionality to affinity groups that will benefit from the sharing and discussing of identity-relevant news.
Solution: The Abbey works to centralize news reading, sharing, and aggregation for students, providing a free, easily accessible platform exclusively for interacting with and discussing high-quality news. The Abbey also incentivizes students to activate their free news subscriptions, resulting in a platform with a library of relevant, accessible, high-quality articles free from the distractions of traditional social media posts.
Team: Nelson Bellows (CEO) and Tanay Kommareddi (CTO) are both undergraduate students who encountered the problems that The Abbey is working to address. They’ve used the app in beta to connect with internship colleagues, discuss and share news in club and society settings, and to activate their free, university-provided news subscriptions.
Founder Advice:
Bellows: The most helpful advice that’s been offered to me is quite simple, but has been instrumental in guiding The Abbey’s development process and timeline. “Move fast but don’t rush.”
One Cool Founder You Should Know About:
Bellows: Here is one founder you should check out next!
Paul Davis, Founder of Monark: Monark is a technology-enabled network that creates efficiency and democratizes access to private market investments.
Previous Startup Spotlights:
Startup Spotlight #213: Redbird - Redbird is an AI-powered data analytics platform that helps enterprises automate their data, analytics, data science and reporting workflows.
Startup Spotlight #212: TruePlayers - TruePlayers takes the best experiences on PC/Console and build mobile first titles inspired by them.
Startup Spotlight #211: Regression Gaming - Regression Games, backed by NEA and a16z, is building the platform for useful and practical AI agents in games.
Startup Spotlight #210: Candidate.fyi - candidate.fyi is the missing candidate experience layer that integrates with 40+ ATS’s. We believe every candidate deserves an excellent experience, hired or not.
Startup Spotlight #209: Founder's Cupid - Founder's Cupid is a growing, in-person community for 350+ student entrepreneurs between Michigan’s and Stanford’s campuses to support the top student founders.
If you enjoyed this article, feel free to check out my other work on LinkedIn. Follow me on Twitter @fredsoda, on Medium @fredsoda, and on Instagram @fred_soda.