SheInvests | Devpost

Inspiration

Our interest in finance and desire to invest in ethical companies led us to create SheInvests. We wanted to create an app that would immediately address the difficulty of finding investable companies whose corporate values match one's personal beliefs. Diversity in particular was emphasized as we assessed how companies are valued by the public. With varying definitions of corporate social responsibility, we wanted to allow users to define sustainability on their own terms.

What it does

Users can create an account and save stocks they are interested in. The filter feature allows users to select specific criteria that a prospective investment should fulfill, such as gender diversity. They can also read the latest news pertaining to a particular company and view up-to-date market data.

How we built it

We chose Flask as our framework and used various extensions, including SQLAlchemy and WTForm, to create a database. The Alpha Vantage API and News API were used to retrieve financial market data, and JQuery was essential to building many functions of the website.

Challenges we ran into

None of us had worked with Flask and databases before, so we had to learn exclusively from tutorials and example code. Finding appropriate APIs was another challenge, since accessing financial data was essential to our app's functionality.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We learned to create a database, connect APIs to JavaScript, and parse and download JSON. We also were able to add additional information about socially responsible investing and even create a page with pictures and bios of our team!

What we learned

We became more familiar with Python and learned about some of its frameworks and extensions, such as Flask and Flask-SQLAlchemy. We learned how to integrate a database with a web application and connect various APIs. We also gained experience with structuring a project through GitHub.

What's next for SheInvests

We would like to add more search filters to further customize the user's experience. We would also like to analyze search data about the most popular companies and companies that are considered exceptionally responsible.