Study Smarter With studiis

Two students, one shared mission: with studiis, Philip and Fynn want to rethink everyday student life. What started as their own struggle with staying organized has grown into a platform that intelligently connects structure, motivation, and mental well-being. Instead of tool overload and constant overwhelm, the two focus on a single, intuitive solution that helps students plan, study, and take a breath. In the interview, they talk about how the challenges of university life turned into a start-up, the obstacles they’ve overcome along the way, and why mental health is an essential part of modern learning organization. The following interview was translated into English by WORLDFACTORY.

Please introduce yourselves briefly as a founding team. What are your strengths?

We’re Philip and Fynn, and we both study at Ruhr University Bochum and TH Köln. What connects us is not only our studies, but also our passion for building and developing things that create real value. While Philip mainly focuses on product ideas, marketing, and organization, my focus is more on the technical implementation. Together, we complement each other really well and learn from each other every day.

Describe your start-up idea:

With our platform, we want to help students to better cope with two of the biggest challenges of college life: organization and motivation. Our idea was to bring all the essential tools together in one place without making the platform feel cluttered. Specifically, this means students can centralize the management of assignments, exams, and deadlines, track study time, and visually monitor their progress. With features like an integrated focus timer, personalized to-do recommendations, and study statistics, we support not only organization but also motivation in everyday life.

We’ve also noticed that mental health is often overlooked in the education system, even though it has a major impact on academic success. That’s why we prioritize creating an environment that not only supports learning and organization but also takes students’ well-being into account. Additionally, we’ve integrated a “State of Mind” tracker that allows students to regularly reflect on how they’re doing. Based on this, we provide inspiration, motivational content, or tailor suggestions to their current energy level. Our goal is not only to boost productivity but also to actively prevent burnout. Looking ahead, we want to expand this area further and integrate additional mental wellness features into everyday student life.

In short, we want to make it easy for students to manage their time, support them in their studies, and ensure their mental health isn’t neglected in the process.

How did you first come up with the idea of founding a start-up? 

The idea actually came from our own daily lives. We realized that we were using an incredible number of different tools for college, studying, and staying organized, and that it was often confusing and annoying. In addition, we’d been interested for a long time in doing more than just building projects for school. We wanted to create something of our own that had real users. That’s how the idea for studiis grew, step by step.

How did you balance starting the company with your studies/career?

Starting the company alongside our studies wasn’t always easy, and it meant that our progress wasn’t necessarily linear. Still, we never lost our motivation and kept each other going even during exam periods. At the same time, we learned a great deal beyond what we covered in class and picked up many useful skills through workshops and lectures.

For us, the WORLDFACTORY means... 

… a huge help along the way. We found the opportunity to connect with other founders, as well as the workshops and mentoring, to be particularly valuable. It really helps to know you’re not alone in facing these challenges, and you constantly gain new inspiration and motivation.

What are the biggest challenges you can face and how do you deal with them?

Focus and uncertainty have been our biggest challenges so far. We’re always brimming with ideas and plans for new features. Especially in the beginning, one of our biggest challenges was finding a clear focus and not immediately implementing everything that came to mind. On top of that, there was the uncertainty of building something that stemmed from a problem we faced ourselves, without receiving direct feedback from outside—feedback that might have helped us a lot early on. What helped us was initial feedback from external testers, as well as creating roadmaps and internal plans. This allowed us to grasp our idea more clearly and put it into better context. In general, we believe it’s not a bad idea to just build something first. But as soon as a product starts to grow, plans become essential—they eliminate uncertainty and help sharpen the focus.

What is special about your start-up?

We develop studiis with a strong focus on students’ needs because we are part of the target audience ourselves. Many features stem directly from our own challenges or from feedback from our users. We also combine organization, learning, and motivation into a single platform, which is a concept that is rarely found in this form.

What is your current situation and what are the next steps?

We are currently busy evaluating user feedback and incorporating it into the further development of studiis. Most recently, with the Social Update, we took another step toward making the platform more vibrant and connected. Next on our roadmap is an app for mobile devices and a major mental wellness update. It’s important to us not only to further develop studiis functionally, but also to better support students’ mental well-being in their daily lives—and we’re currently working on several other ideas as well.

Your tip for all those interested in founding a company:

Just start by solving a problem you’re facing yourself, and don’t wait too long until everything is perfect. Many things won’t become clear until you try them out. You should also be open to feedback and not be afraid of making mistakes—they’re definitely part of the process. And most importantly: keep having fun with it.