The Road to Innovation Expo 2025: Prospr

With their large marketing budgets and ubiquitous television ads, it’s hard not to notice the rise of personal finance apps like Rocket Money and Experian. While these platforms are undoubtedly efficient and helpful in monitoring bills and canceling unwanted subscriptions to Netflix, who is tracking and alerting you to those six Starbucks purchases this week?

That question inspired a team of Stevens School of Business students to choose the entrepreneurial track for their senior design project and develop Prospr, a fintech app designed to help individuals, especially young people, identify wasteful spending habits.

“Everyone in our group realized that we’re spending so much money per month on unnecessary stuff like buying a coffee or energy drink every day,” said Jake Connelly. “When you're on a tight budget in college, it's definitely something you need to keep an eye out for because all those transactions fly under the radar for almost 100% of the people our age. We thought it was a big issue that all the other personal finance apps gloss over.”

With the help of a classmate from the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering and Science to handle coding for the website and app, the group went to work on market research, business modeling and finding the right artificial intelligence integration.

“We used a ChatGPT wrapper to break down the spending into different categories,” said Quinton Smith. “It analyzes your recurring cost, and the user can add budgeting goals. The app breaks it down, giving you insights on where you could save money, if you're meeting your budgeting goals or exceeding those limits you set for yourself.”

The Team

• Jake Connelly | Charlottesville, Virginia | Finance

• Richard Ens | Monmouth County, New Jersey | Business & Technology

• Keegan Hughes | North Andover, Massachusetts | Business & Technology

• Jackson Nieman | Canandaigua, New York | Finance

• Quinton Smith | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | Business & Technology

Faculty Advisor: Jay Woodruff

Q&A with the Prospr Team

Why did you choose to build a product instead of a consulting or research project?

Keegan Hughes: “I've always liked the entrepreneurial route, thinking of new ideas, problem-solving, innovating and seeing what I can come up with. With the entrepreneurial project, even if you don't have an idea when you start, you have endless chances and brainpower to make anything you want. I really like the trial and error. It’s exciting to have all the possibilities in front of you and just go for it.”

Richard Ens: “I'm very passionate about entrepreneurship. I love the idea of building something from the ground up and the process of developing an idea. We didn't identify what we wanted to do until December, so we spent a couple of months thinking about exactly what we wanted to accomplish and what kind of product we wanted to bring. That idea of building something and working with a team to think of something that hasn’t been done before is exciting and something that I enjoy.”

How does Prospr decide what expenses to track and alert the user about?

Richard Ens: “In the beginning of developing the product, we knew that we wanted to leverage AI. It's a very popular trend, and there are a lot of resources available. When we first established our idea in December is when I developed the first like MVP (minimum viable product) of the AI. I did a lot of prompting for the AI to customize it to the user. For example, here are certain users who are going to be going to 7-Eleven or Starbucks every day. Each user spends different amounts of money that they could be investing instead. When I first developed it, the AI was more focused on identifying those patterns. It identifies exactly what the user spends and gives feedback based off their spending trends.”

Jake Connelly: “The user indicates their preferences when they sign up. We ask questions like how much money do you want to save? How much do you want to spend on these little items, and what types of items do you want to track? Where do you think you're overspending right now? Then, when they do end up going to a convenience store to buy $3 or $4 things, maybe 5 or 6 times a week, the AI integration within Prospr will identify that and let them know they spent $15 this week, and it's been for four weeks of similar purchases. That’s $60 that just went down the drain on stuff that probably wasn't necessary to get through your day-to-day. It’s the AI that can recognize patterns like small transactions reoccurring.”

How has your academic experience prepared you to take on this project?

Jackson Nieman: “The biggest thing is that when we started with our group, we didn't really know what we wanted to do. Stevens helps you solve problems, find that idea and persevere, knowing you'll get it eventually. It's just a matter of time if you keep working together and collaborating with the people you've met. I think that's one of those things that's helped me with this project

Quinton Smith: “I think it's a prime example of the networking that Stevens brings you. We're all business and finance guys, and we created an app. We used our network that we've gained through Stevens to find a software developer that's built our app. For us, it's kind of like the school’s bread and butter, if you will. Everyone comes to Stevens for the ROI, the access to the city and the networking opportunities, and we're a prime example of that.”

Keegan Hughes: “There are a couple of sides to being a business and technology major, and I’m concentrating on finance and data analytics. On the finance side, you get a lot of experience in market research, business modeling and understanding how business has to work. On the more technical side, I'm not a coder, and I didn't really want to learn to code for this, but seeing what tech stacks are out there, what the possibilities are, and just having the base knowledge of why things need to happen, was helpful in building our business. Balancing the finance and technology gave me two good outlets to help build this as we went.”

What are some of the lessons you learned that you will carry with you in your professional journey?

Quinton Smith: “Resilience is the main lesson we learned as a team. We kept having ideas, and our senior design professor would play devil's advocate and ask a lot of questions that we didn't really want to hear. That taught us to think things through deeply and in a more long-term way. As college students, we're so focused on the right now, and we don't often see a future past the problem in front of us.”

Richard Ens: “I think the lesson that I gained was resilience. For example, in September, we thought we knew exactly what we were doing, but by the time December came around, it was completely different. We changed what we wanted to do and our goals. The progression through that taught us how to push through tough times so that during the spring, we could develop it and make it to what it is today.”