Myself, Alice (founder) and Iva (music specialist) happened to find ourselves sharing a room during our time at UWC Adriatic. It was my second year and Iva’s first. We were accompanied by Lara and Pegi, and together we were the best room! It is safe to say that we instantly became really close friends and did everything from eating a lot of pasta and pizza, crying over Italian homework and of course starting a business adventure together! 

But somehow the idea of starting AutiMelody with the help of UWC started before I met Iva. I remember so clearly in my first year, when three of my friends from the year above went to India and helped rural farmers implement a drip irrigation system through the help of the Go Make a Difference grant, that I wanted to apply for it too! A little under a year later the grant application opened again, and I roped Iva into it. My dream to build AutiMelody needed music skills, and programming skills none of which I had, but thankfully Iva’s music skills and my determination to learn or find programming skills were sufficient to convince the panelle to award us the grant! 

In July of 2023 we met in the Netherlands, and spent a week getting AutiMelody off the ground, we made 24 Autigrams, and drew pictograms to accompany them – translated everything we wanted on the app from English into French, Croatian and Dutch. Admittedly, we also did other things, like eat crêpes, drink spritz and dream big! We aimed to have the app launched and in use by LATEST December 2023. It is safe to say we did not accomplish that goal, because 3 developers later in March 2024, we met our 3rd team member and welcomed Erik to the team. Since then, it has been up and down, we have won and we have lost, but we are always there for each other as friends and as a team.