Alec Boyd is a fall 2025 entrepreneurship grad with a minor in professional selling and sales management and a familiar face in the Venture Development Center. When he tried to transfer a few community college courses back to the University of Delaware to save time and tuition, he hit a wall of PDFs, emails, and outdated processes. Alec leveraged his coursework plus VentureOn, Pitch Party, and Hen Hatch to turn a personal frustration into a tool that can save students real time and real money: Equivly.
What is Equivly?
Equivly is an all-in-one platform helping college and high school students navigate course equivalencies, credit transfers, and degree planning. We make it easy to see what courses count for credit across institutions so students can save time and money on their degrees.
What inspired your startup idea?
My startup idea started with my own frustration. I wanted to take some of my UD courses at community colleges as asynchronous courses and transfer them back to UD once completed — partly to lighten my course schedule, but mostly to save money on tuition.
But the process was incredibly difficult. Finding course equivalencies, figuring out what would actually count for credit at UD, registering at another institution, completing the course, and transferring the credits back was confusing, outdated and completely manual. I spent hours digging through PDFs, emailing advisors, and piecing together information that should have been simple to find.
Once I figured it out and took several outside community college courses, people constantly asked me how I did it. That's when it became clear this wasn't just my problem — it was a problem facing many students.
And it wasn't just this one scenario. College students everywhere are trying to find replacement courses, see where their credits transfer, or figure out what counts at different schools. High schoolers are trying to understand how their AP, IB, and dual enrollment credits will apply to the colleges they're considering. The whole system is unclear, manual, and gives students little guidance.
I saw all these issues on the consumer side — the lack of automation, the confusion, the wasted time and money — and I wanted to build a platform that solved all of it. A place where students could handle any credit or course scenario seamlessly and plan their entire academic journey from start to finish.
Tell us about your startup journey so far — the highs, the pivots, the learning curves.
I started by building a solution to my own problem. I'm not technical, so I used Lovable, an AI coding tool, to build the MVP myself. The first version was pretty narrow — it was focused on helping students find course equivalencies at community colleges that UD accepted credits from. The idea was that you could take some of your courses at community colleges instead of UD, where the courses were way lighter, mostly asynchronous, and you'd save thousands. Then you'd just transfer the credits back.
I soft-launched it and got 55 users in the first week, which felt like a huge win. But after talking to those early users, I realized I was thinking way too small.
The pivot happened when I noticed the problem was way bigger and completely unsolved on the consumer side — for both college students and high school students. College students were dealing with transfers between schools, finding replacement courses, understanding what counts where. High schoolers were confused about AP/IB credit and dual enrollment. There were 18+ different scenarios where students had the same frustration, and nobody was solving it. If I expanded the platform to handle all of those use cases, the market would be way bigger.
The hardest part has been teaching myself how to build a technical product when I have no technical background. I had to learn how to use different coding tools, work with APIs, set up databases, and figure out how the backend actually functions. A lot of trial and error, a lot of things breaking. But I learned enough to know what we need to build properly and that Equivly needed someone with advanced technical skills, which I then brought on Kshitij Kochhar as our technical co-founder to build and scale the platform properly.
What has been your proudest moment as a founder?
My proudest moment was when the problem I identified was validated by potential users. I reached out to a bunch of students to see if they had the same frustrations I did, and they confirmed it was a real issue. Then when I launched the MVP and got 55 users in the first week, it solidified that this wasn't just my problem. Identifying a problem and validating that people actually have it has always been the hardest part for me. A lot of ideas sound good but fall apart when you talk to your customer archetype.
How did UD and Horn Entrepreneurship shape your path?
Horn Entrepreneurship gave me the environment and people I needed throughout my four years at UD. The VDC is open to everyone, has dedicated workspace rooms, and is my favorite place to get work done on campus. Being there and involved in their programs means you're constantly around people who are building things and willing to help. That access to feedback and other founders made a big difference.
VentureOn taught me the early stage fundamentals: how to identify a problem, validate it, and not waste time building something nobody wants. Hen Hatch helped me understand how to pitch and what people actually want to see in a pitch deck.
Horn also offers financial support for student ventures through the VentureOn $275 fund per semester, Hen Hatch awards, Pitch Party prizes, and other funding opportunities. That support made it possible to test ideas and build without worrying about upfront costs.
The ENTR classes and professors have been really valuable and I learned a lot from them and their courses. Vince DiFelice has helped me a lot throughout my four years, and I learned a ton from him and his courses. Startup Experience 1 and 2 were especially useful because we formed our own teams and worked through the beginning stages of actual startups, which showed me how real ventures operate. All the ENTR professors were always willing to help with feedback, connections, or advice.
The VentureOn advisors on Fridays were also extremely helpful. I got to learn from professionals with real experience, and I still keep in touch with some of them from freshman year. Horn Entrepreneurship has been a consistent resource throughout college, and that support has been really important.
What advice would you give to current students who are thinking about launching a startup?
Make sure your problem is actually validated before you build anything. Talk to people, run surveys, confirm that other people genuinely have this issue. The worst thing you can do is spend months building something nobody wants.
There's going to be a lot of trial and error. You're going to mess up a ton, and your startup might not even work out. But it's all a learning process. Every failure teaches you what to do next time, so you go into your next venture with way more experience and knowledge. Don't get discouraged when things don't go your way — there are always ways around obstacles, and you're only in college with limited experience and knowledge.
Take things day by day. Your vision might seem far away, but if you break everything down into small tasks and just do what's in front of you, you make progress faster than you think. Use the resources around you while you're at UD — Horn Entrepreneurship, professors, other founders, people in your network who can help or connect you with someone who can.
Don't stretch yourself too thin. You can't do everything in a startup, especially if you're not an expert in certain areas. Get a co-founder or hire people for the roles you can't fill. The most important thing when finding a co-founder is that they're entrepreneurial and passionate about the startup. For example, I'm non-technical and I built the MVP of Equivly myself, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to scale it properly. I then met my technical co-founder Kshitij Kochhar who had both the technical abilities and entrepreneurial mindset.
What’s next — for you or your venture?
We're currently building a complete revamp of the platform that works for all course and credit scenarios — for college students and high schoolers to plan their courses and use throughout their entire academic journey through high school and college.
Right now, we have a waitlist live at https://www.equivly.com where college & high school students, parents, and advisors can sign up. We're keeping everyone in the loop with platform progress and updates, and we're planning to launch around April.
We're also building out an affiliate program for students and content creators who want to promote Equivly. The application to apply as an affiliate is currently live at https://www.equivly.com/affiliates.
Right now, we're focused on getting the platform into the hands of as many students as possible and continuing to build out features based on their feedback.
For Alec Boyd, entrepreneurship was more than just a major. It was an environment that pushed him to spot real problems, test solutions, and keep building. He found the feedback, fundamentals, and momentum to turn a frustrating process into a venture with real impact. Now, with Equivly, he’s taking what he learned at UD and putting it to work for students everywhere, helping them save time, save money, and move through their degrees with way less guesswork.
About Horn Entrepreneurship
Horn Entrepreneurship is the driving force behind entrepreneurship education and innovation at the University of Delaware. Consistently ranked as one of the top entrepreneurship programs in the United States, it was founded and continues to be supported by accomplished entrepreneurs. The program empowers aspiring innovators, equipping them with the skills and resources needed to bring their ideas to life and create positive change in the world.
