With launch of tech company Spur, recent grads discuss the hectic, exciting startup life

During their senior year, Sneha Sivakumar and Anushka Nijhawan built from scratch a no-code testing automation tool, powered by artificial intelligence web agents - that is, software components that interact with a web browser. So, if you have a web-based application, you can use their tool to make sure your application works, without ever having to write any code. “A lot of companies spend a lot of time writing tests for their web applications, and our entire company is about automating that process and making it really easy,” Sivakumar said.

Nijhawan and Sivakumar, who both graduated in May with degrees in Computer Science, have founded Spur, a startup based on their technology. Officially launched this week, the company started as a project in a course taught by Prof. Arman Cohan, received a $500 grant from Tsai CITY, and has now been accepted into the prestigious business accelerator Y Combinator with $500,000 in funding. We spoke with them about their experiences in the startup world. 

So how did all this get started?

Sneha Sivakumar: Anushka and I, we've always worked on many different projects. This isn't the first idea that we worked on. We first met freshman spring at Yale. We built a social planning application location for fun. 

Anushka Nijhawan: At some point, we realized that we really liked working on our own projects, and that's where we got motivated to start working on a startup. From there, we went on to work on a user experience research application. That side of tech companies is typically very underserved. We thought we could come up with a solution that would fix that problem. We worked for three months during the fall semester in 2023 on that. Part of that was because we were taking this class at Yale called Software Engineering, which allowed us very dedicated, focused time throughout the semester to actually build it out in tandem with our other classes.

Sivakumar: Then we applied to Y Combinator at the end of the semester, got in early, and then the rest is history.

How does Y Combinator work?

Sivakumar: Basically, they give you $500,000 and they take about 7.5 % of the company. And it's a three-month program that starts in July. It kicks off with an in-person retreat over one of the weekends. You're assigned to a specific group partner who's been a founder - someone who's gone through years and years of startup and has a lot of experience, and you meet with them every single week. 

You'll also meet bi-weekly with your group. In YC, there's about 200 to 300 companies every single batch and they break these companies into different groups. And within that group, you meet a set of companies regularly on Fridays. So it builds a community in which everybody is working on all of their startups together.

At the end, in September, you have a demo day where the official fundraising happens. That's when you pitch to investors and raise your seed round.

How did Arman Cohan, assistant professor of computer science, help?

Nijhawan: We took the AI Foundation Models class, which Professor Cohan was teaching. It was a really interesting, really cool class, which further motivated us to work with him on our senior thesis. In the last semester, Professor Cohan heavily advised us throughout the entire process and connected us with other people who were working in the space. He was a great resource. 

You also received a $500 Student Exploration Fund from Tsai City.

Nijhawan: Yes. We loved working in Tsai CITY's office. Over the last two months of Yale, when we were really working hard on the product, we completely capitalized the Tsai CITY space and used it almost every day. Oftentimes it is hard to find non-library or non-silent spaces where you can do collaborative work. And Tsai CITY was a huge help in that sense for us.

Any nervousness about going out on your own with a startup?

Nijhawan: It’s hard to classify what is nervousness and what’s excitement, but I think we're very excited. I'm very driven right now. I think it's an exciting time to work on a startup.

Sivakumar: Yeah. I think until we made the decision to do it, there was a lot of nervousness. But once we did make the decision, things became very clear. I think we're both really enjoying just day by day working. But I’m not going to lie, it is stressful. They are long hours. I think the interesting thing here is we're not just doing engineering anymore. We're doing marketing, we're doing sales, we're doing accounting, we're doing HR, tax management - all sorts of things.

That's a wide array of skills. Where did you pick those up?

Nijhawan: We're just picking them up as we go.