He began recording the lectures but quickly discovered it took him long hours to rewatch the videos, create flashcards and review study sets.
Then Gicheru, a computer science major, came up with a solution to make life easier for himself. He created an app, Nurovant AI, to serve as an artificial study mate by creating quizzes, flashcards, summaries and other materials based on audio recordings.
“You’re able to get all those materials without having to do the work,” said Gicheru, 21, a junior at SMU.
Gicheru’s free app has now become a business venture.
For two years straight, he’s landed prizes from a campus business pitch competition to develop and grow the AI-powered app, which he said has around 200 users for the beta version. He’s managed to raise over $20,000 from bootstrapping and personal funding. When he’s not taking classes, he’s seeking more funding opportunities.
Gicheru is one of many North Texas entrepreneurs looking to leverage AI technology as the industry explodes. The Dallas AI Club, founded in 2017, has attracted more than 4,800 members on Meetup and LinkedIn.
One club member is Ronald Chichester, vice president of technology for JBB Advanced Technologies LLC, a Dallas startup. Chichester said it’s an opportune moment to be in the AI technology space.
“We’re using it mostly just to solve problems,” said Chichester, whose company works in the energy sector. “We’re using AI for doing predictions on power consumption, power production, things like that.”
As a nonprofit, the club aims to help AI professionals and others interested in the technology network with each other.
The widespread interest in AI was spurred by OpenAI’s November 2022 release of the first large-scale language model, ChatGPT. It gave the public access to the power and potential of AI.
ChatGPT-inspired AI technology products and services are expected to boost global GDP by 7 percent – or $7 trillion – in the next decade, according to aGoldman Sachs research report.
At SMU, Gicheru’s app has begun to proliferate among students.
“Without me using Trevor’s app, I don’t know if I would have gotten better grades in many classes, because my studying habits for some classes were terrible,” said Precious Onajala, an SMU student who uses the app.
After not being able to follow her professor in class, Onajala began using the app to capture points she missed. Those points were then reflected in the study guides created by the app, improving her score in the class.
Like every entrepreneur, gathering capital has been Gicheru’s focus since he launched Nurovant AI. Reaching out to other entrepreneurs on LinkedIn, he finally got a big breakthrough from a fellow graduate of Dallas’ St. Mark’s High School, who arranged to put his app on a cloud-based server for free.
When he’s not in class, working or fundraising for his app, Gicheru is on the phone with experienced startup mentors. “I talk to my parents as well, because they’re both entrepreneurs so they give me a lot of advice,” he said.
Balancing schoolwork, a job and the demands of nuturing a business have proven to be a test for Gicheru, who’s also president of SMU’s National Association of Black Engineers. “I’ll get up early or stay late, but I’ve always kind of been like that. It is hard to balance things. I just have to prioritize them.”
Although monetizing the app isn’t a priority for Gicheru, he hopes to someday offer Nurovant as a paid service. Until then, he continues to implore his peers to use his app in studying for their tests and other assessments.
Onajala, who has used Nurovant AI since the summer, said she thinks products made by students offer the best services because students understand the struggles.
“When students think out of the box and use their own perspectives, that suits to not only better themselves, but other students around them,” she said.
©2023 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
