About PeerUp

My whole life, I was inspired by those around me to try to do something new. A project, a hobby, and from my parents but mostly my dad – a business. The first initiative I was encouraged to take was at my amazing primary school, The Grove, where I tried to buy and sell “handballs,” large rubber bouncing balls we used to play “handball” or “hand tennis” with. I managed to buy and sell 3 or 4, making R25 bucks off each. It seemed like a real hassle at the time, and although I had somewhat succeeded, I didn’t know where to go next. So I ended up forgetting about it.

A few years later, I found myself walking through the gates to my new high school, Wynberg Boys. But there was something about being there that changed something in me, or more so, brought something back. I became invested. Tried out the different sports, met new people, joined cool interesting societies such as chess and debating, and found genuine interest in all my subjects. I also joined committees gradually over the next year or two, taking part in our school’s house meetings, academic meetings, grade meetings, and RCL meetings. This choice would likely shape a lot of what I did going forward.

During this time, I was still being somewhat inspired to start something of my own, seeing my dad create and run his own businesses, and my mom start her own company. But this power to want to make a difference came from those around me, and my random lucky timing. My grade (Grade 9 at the time) had been vaguely informed that, unlike all previous years, we would not be able to get those awesome looking academic ties for getting above 70/80%. For me personally, this was something I was really looking forward to finally getting, and noticed the same of many people around me. So I asked around, and found that the reason was that they wanted to change the qualification requirements, and decided to just skip a year while they do that – rather than just using the old system for another year in the meantime. So I went to the highest-up teacher I knew at the time, who happened to be in the same room as me at the time during chess practice, and he seemed friendly. I spoke to him about it, understanding why the decision was made, and almost going “ahh okay”. But for some reason, this little me decided to stand my ground, and I stood there respectfully debating with the head of discipline as a grade 9 to try get a cool tie.

And somehow, it worked. And a few weeks later, everyone was walking around with the ties they never thought they would get.

This seems like an unnecessary ramble, but it actually meant a lot. It proved two things to me: I can be the person who does more than just complain about it – and that these teachers really aren’t that scary. At least most of them…

From there I kept going. Some little things, some bigger. But at the same time, I was experiencing a little issue. I was getting good marks for my grade, and the school had this system that the students created and ran called “Bridging the Gap”.

For a little bit of context, this was essentially a system made for students at Wynberg to tutor other students at Wynberg. Usually a grade above helping out a grade below. It was chill, free, and completely run by students and one teacher who kind of looked over it.

I felt like as someone who liked to contribute, was curious about new things, and had good marks, I should join. I became a tutor for maths and English. I filled out a form or two, joined a WhatsApp group, spoke to a teacher, downloaded an app so I could track my hours tutored (there was a tuckshop voucher reward for every 5 hours), and I was in. I tutored an hour or two every week. We had to all be in the one teachers class, and it was after school on schools days (except Fridays for some reason). It was fine, and the premise was great, but I found it quite irritating. We were sent this bad quality screenshot each week of an excel doc that some poor guy had to make up every weekend. And for over a month, I was set on this excel doc for a Thursday session I couldn’t make – despite filling out 2 forms and messaging the guy who makes the doc three times.

So, I spoke to him, and in one of the meetings I went to during breaks, I brought up the idea: couldn’t we make this better?

For weeks, we sat at our own little meeting during Wednesday second breaks, brainstorming how to fix the form, or the excel doc, or maybe even trying something new? One day I stumbled upon a way of using ChatGPT to code some google script thing that takes Google Form responses and organises them into a Google Sheet. Now I was getting pretty invested. I managed to make this thing create sessions on a button click – completely by itself. It was a bit iffy, but it proved the idea. I then got it to send Google Calendar invites, which made it feel more official. But it kept breaking, and causing issues. And the coding with AI thing just really didn’t work too great. Especially since I had no idea what I was doing, and was using the free version, which was not very giving at the time.

One evening, something changed however. I honestly cannot remember what. No clue what made me change my mind, but I know that I was set in what I was going to do. I was going to build an app for this. Because why not, right? Should be simple. (it wasn’t)

I’m not going to dive too deep into this part, because honestly it’s not exciting to anyone, even me at the time. Essentially, I started on some AI app builder. I realised it was way too expensive, and then tried again somewhere else. Then again. Then again. Then I had an issue with someone trying being able to copy my work, and tried again somewhere else. Then finally, I found out that the only way to do this properly, was to do it myself.

My dad was really happy that I was coming up with something cool. To me, I was just trying to help out the people at my school to try to make this tutoring system work a little better. But to him, I was starting a business. And he was, thankfully, more than willing to help me out. He ended up finding himself willing to pay for me to get Claude Pro, which was around R380 a month. This would be the tool I’d use to bring all my ideas to life. Most people think that using AI to code stuff is fake or low quality. Some believe that I just send a few messages, and it makes me a whole app. I promise you – it is not that simple. I spent the next 6 months working on the app, and called it “PeerUp”. It took over 460 code submissions, and 18,100 messages with Claude to make it, as of writing this. I am still adding and changing stuff as I write. I would work on it in the mornings, during boring classes, at break, after school, late into the night. Finally, I was sat with something made and designed entirely by me. Every feature, text box, button, colour. Something I did, with my own initiative, just to maybe help some people out.

I got this thing running at Wynberg in term 3 of 2026, after dropping all fear I had – presenting a PowerPoint in a meeting at 7am with all the big scary teachers and principals of the school. To my surprise, they all seemed to love the idea, and actually “laughed” at me for being brave enough to go up. One of them even joking “If I were you, there is no chance I would willingly be sitting in a meeting with all of us,” commending me for my bravery to step into the scariest place a student could really be at the school. Or maybe they were just surprised, because I was one of the only students to have ever sat in that meeting.

From there, it only went well. Still scary, but well. I spoke in assembly in front of 1200 people by myself just to promote it. Which went great thanks to my speaking skills I attained from debating all those years (seriously suggest joining if you can, without it, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to where I have). The students started signing up, sessions being made properly by the auto-matching engine each week. People were using it, starting and ending their sessions. And each week, more and more people were signing up and showing up. I received many compliments from teachers and students alike for the change I made. I had solved the convenience issues, the trust issues, the accessibility issues, the time tracking issues, and much more.

In just 5 weeks of my app being used, the students did the same hours of tutoring as what was being done the whole year of 2025. Just over 70 hours. And it’s still growing.

I decided – if this is making such a positive difference, and it is so simple for the school and students, why not spread it? I mean, nobody else has done anything like this from what I can find…

And that brings me to today. As I write this, I am rushing to finish off the rest of the PeerUp setup behind the scenes so that I can try spread PeerUp, its support, and its success to students around the country. And I am really hoping it works.