Vested

Picking stocks is hard, but picking stocks in companies that make the world a better place is harder. That's why Vested gives you access to data on how companies relate to the common good.

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Inspiration

Investing in stocks can make it challenging to track where your money is going and understanding how companies operate behind the scenes. We are constantly seeking ways to better resource the world and connect people to information. In today's landscape, people are increasingly concerned not only with profitability but also with a company's impact on the community and the fair treatment of its workers.

What it does

We built a platform that helps investors understand the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) impact of their investments. It provides AI-driven insights into companies, related nonprofits, and their community impact, along with news updates on relevant events.

Who it's for

Our primary audience is first-time investors who are looking to build sustainable portfolios from the ground up. Other potential users include seasoned investors looking to improve their social impact and non-investors who are curious about the differences in sustainability between various public corporations.

How we built it

We used Express, React, Node.js, and Typescript to build the website and Vercel to host the backend and frontend. After starting with Vite, we created an organized file structure in the frontend/backend with folders for controllers, assets, pages, components, etc. We incorporated the APIs of Gemini and NewsAPI along with the React libraries of yahoo-finance2, type animation, Material UI, and gagueComponent.

Artifacts

Video

Figma

GitHub

About Us Planning Document

Logo Design Planing Document

Challenges we ran into

We had some trouble figuring out how to call and integrate the external APIs. Even after looking at the documentation, it was still a hassle to get our env keys, engineer the prompt/choose fields to filter by, and store the output as a state.

We also had some challenges with merge conflicts, which although never presented a major issue, were very frequent. Additionally, we had some trouble with deployment, particularly with Guage.js and typescript. Typescript’s type safety is great for large projects, but it’s perhaps not the best in a fast-paced hackathon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re quite proud of the comprehensive functionality and excellent quality of our final product. Our user interface is designed to be clean, intuitive, and user-friendly, ensuring a seamless experience that efficiently handles and scales to thousands of data points as one’s investment portfolio grows.

Furthermore, we take pride in our ability to aggregate different functionalities even when initially unfamiliar with them. By seamlessly integrating multiple services, we provide a unified and streamlined platform that connects sustainability data, news, stock data, and nonprofit recommendations into a single educational tool..

What we learned

We gained a ton of experience in effective communication while managing a fast-paced project from inception. It was quite exciting and engaging to allocate responsibilities and collaborate on feature development. The ability to troubleshoot and resolve issues together ensured continuous progress, which is so crucial to fun software development (no one likes long debugging sessions!). Additionally, we significantly enhanced our proficiency with AI and web deployment and learned how to navigate unfamiliar libraries.

What's next for Vested

We plan to invest in Vested by providing more detailed and quantifiable metrics to support our overall scores. Additionally, we aim to refine our news recommendations, establish an online community for investors, and implement an AI-driven suggestion system to identify promising stocks for ethical investment.

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