Campus Hustle is a dedicated marketplace that centralizes student-run businesses from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in one platform. The app helps student entrepreneurs—ranging from hairstylists and henna artists to matcha sellers and commissioned painters—move their operations from social media and group chats to a structured, discoverable storefront. It also provides peers with a single destination to find goods and services offered by students on their own campus.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Student entrepreneurs at HBCUs currently promote and sell their products through fragmented channels like Instagram, Cash App, group chats, and word of mouth probable label. This makes their businesses hard to discover within a broader campus community organically, limits sales reach, and forces sellers to manually juggle marketing and order coordination across separate apps.
Solution
Campus Hustle provides a centralized, mobile-first marketplace where HBCU students can create a profile and list their goods and services for classmates and the local campus community to browse. The platform gives student businesses, as well as services like braiding or tutoring, a visible "home" outside scattered group chats and social media. By aggregating diverse offerings—from handmade paintings and matcha to hair styling and makeup services—it simplifies how students find and support their peers' ventures. The platform is available as a mobile app, with a browser-based fallback, making it easy for current students to join and contribute to their campus economy.
Target Audience
Primary users are student entrepreneurs attending HBCUs who want a centralized platform to grow their campus-based businesses urgent, along with fellow students and faculty seeking to discover and purchase local goods and services.
Features
- Category-spanning listings covering student-run fashion, food, tutoring, design, beauty, and personal services
- Storefront-style profiles for individual sellers (e.g., "Romias Designs," "Justlikethatmatcha") that showcase their work and brand
- Campus-specific organization, with the homepage highlighting businesses by school, such as Howard and Morgan State University
- A mobile-first experience with dedicated iOS and Android applications
- An open signup model that allows any student entrepreneur to join and list their offerings, regardless of venture type