The excitement continues as five student teams develop their business ideas to make their pitches in front of a panel of investors for seed money at the tenth annual Fairfield StartUp Showcase on Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts. A team of five computer science majors, Present Pass, has developed a recommendation engine that helps shoppers buy the perfect gift by matching preferences with a carefully curated selection of products.

“A common issue our team recognized with college-age students is shopping for gifts,” said team leader Daniel Reisman ’23. “Students struggle with knowing the right time to buy someone a gift, how often to buy, or they forget to buy a gift altogether.”

The team’s vision is to innovate online gift shopping with a quick and easy way for people to find personalized gifts for every occasion. Team Present Pass is working to develop an algorithm that can find reliable and affordable gifts for each user from an unlimited number of options available online. The goal is for Present Pass to remove the time-consuming search process for users and to make gift buying easy. Users will fill out a profile for the person they are buying a gift for and the app will allow the user to find and purchase the gift in the same transaction. Present Pass differs from competitors because it finds meaningful gift options for a specific person in mind.

“Subscription boxes are very popular, but what we found is usually people only like one to two items in the box, and many times will discard the rest,” said Reisman. “Present Pass is the alternative to Amazon. Our customers will save time picking from a short list of high-quality gifts that match the criteria they’ve selected for the person they are buying for.”

To learn more about Present Pass’ business plan, and to see four other student teams pitch live in front of a panel of investors for seed funding, register for the tenth annual Fairfield StartUp Showcase on Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at the Quick Center.