Team Members
Imanuel Udofia, Herish Tripathi, Griffin Hon
What did you build?
We built Academic Index, an AI-powered content engine that mass-produces viral, college-themed comedy videos for Gen Z audiences on social media. Our product automates the entire content pipeline—from idea generation to scripting and editing, leveraging Dobby’s meme-savvy humor to create culturally resonant reels at scale.
The problem: EdTech and college-adjacent brands often rely on social media to gain traction with Gen Z, but struggle to post consistently due to the time-intensive nature of content creation. Gen Z engagement thrives on trends—slang, sounds, audios, captions—but keeping up with all of it manually is inefficient and hard to scale.
Our inspiration: We noticed our own feeds were filled with niche, highly relatable college meme content. Yet most of these accounts posted inconsistently or failed to break out beyond niche communities. We realized there was a gap for consistent, high-volume, and deeply engaging content tailored for students, especially around college admissions.
Check out the video demo walkthrough
Our differentiation:
First is speed and scale. **By automating content generation through Dobby mass-generating funny ideas, we posted 5–6 reels per day—outpacing other accounts that struggled to post a few times per week.
Second is our performance. Our videos reached an average of 200k+ views by the end of the 3-week Real Revenue Hackathon, compared to 5k+ or less on competitor accounts.
Third is our community-driven strategy. We read our comments section like data. Every post was a feedback loop—tracking which colleges people joked about, what trends resonated, and what viewers asked to see next. This allowed us to tailor content dynamically and dominate the space within 3 weeks.
How did you improve over the operating period?
We started with a narrow but high-potential format: automated “Top 10” college ranking videos that tapped into school rivalries and audience curiosity. These performed well out the gate, giving us a clear signal that fast, list-based content had strong traction with Gen Z.
Our initial content was purely automated “Top 10” style videos
From there, we began to diversify and iterate rapidly:
We began testing new formats featuring different college logos on screen with a “What would you do?”
- style prompt, layered over trending audio. This increased comment engagement and share ability, and also massively increased our average viewership.
About one week in to the Hackathon, we began diversifying our content
We fine-tuned our automation pipeline to generate and schedule multiple content types daily, giving us flexibility and speed as we adapted to trends.
On the marketing side, we initially focused solely on growing our own account. But as our views and follower count skyrocketed, we recognized an opportunity to monetize our pipeline. We began reaching out to EdTech companies and secured several brand deals—creating sponsored content for their pages using the same AI-driven approach. This marked a key transition from growth mode to revenue generation.
Business deals
Sups AI: AI-powered college application coach that helps students brainstorm, outline, and refine their essays based on their unique backgrounds.
Deal: Affiliate link deal to receive commission for each paid plan purchase on Sups that comes through AcademicIndex link.
Kollegio: AI-powered college counseling platform that helps students discover best-fit colleges, plan applications, brainstorm essays, and find scholarships.
Deal: Contracted to produce numerous videos per month expanding brand awareness for the company.
StudyPal: AI-powered study assistant that transforms lectures and course materials into notes, flashcards, and quizzes, helping students learn more efficiently and stay organized.
Deal: Contracted to produce numerous videos per month expanding brand awareness for the company.
Metrics
- Over 22 million total views
- Top viewed video: 2.6 million views
- Over 3k followers
- Over 1 million interactions (likes, comments, saves, shares)
- Organic growth: account started from 0 at the start of the Princeton Real Revenue Hackathon