How to Find Your Next Stop

<p>Echeruo's new venture is called <a href="https://loveandmagic.company/">Love and Magic</a>, a startup studio that helps companies of all sizes maximize their ability to innovate. </p><p>For anyone that has an idea they have been hoping to turn into a startup, Echeruo and his collaborators just introduced the <a href="https://www.startupschoolofalchemy.com/courses/practical-steps-to-transform-your-idea-into-a-startup">Startup School of Alchemy</a>. It's being taught at WeWork and Princeton University. It offers a six-week curriculum designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs find product-market fit.Apply with the code "stackoverflow" and you get $1000 off the course, a 40% discount.</p><p>Echeruo says his time working in finance and with Microsoft Excel was what gave him the ability to think of how data from maps could be optimized by an algorithm and built into a useful mobile app. </p><p>For those who don't know, our co-founder and Chairmam, Joel Spolsky, was part of the team at Microsoft that built Excel. Here is legendary 2015 talk, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c">You Suck at Excel</a>, where he organizes a spreadsheet to keep track of what he pays his Pokemon, ahem,I mean, uh, employees. <br /><br />You can take a deeper dive into the backstory of how Chinedu built HopStop below, related in his own words.</p><p><i>I've always had difficulty with directions. When I grew up in Nigeria, I remember getting lost in my own house. It wasn’t like it was a mansion, it was a four-bedroom house. </i></p><p><i>So you can imagine how I felt when I got to NYC and had to get around with the subway and bus system! I remember walking up once to one of those blown up maps in the subway station. My nose was a feet away from the dust laden map. The subway lines looked like tangled noodles. Complexity galore! </i></p><p><i>New Yorkers used to walk around with these pocket guides—Hagstrom maps. I was going on a date in the Lower East Side. It doesn’t have the grid like the rest of the city. I got lost and was