The Bridge App

As a creative thinker and problem solver, the omnipresent question on my mind is always “How can we make this better?” This was the question a group of students and I asked ourselves during an Entrepreneurship Club meeting as we considered the community on our college campus- or the lack of it. We figured that while we couldn’t make people dislike the cafeteria food or their roommates any less, we could do something to bring more people together more often, and hopefully make memories that could live with them forever… and ever. And thus The Bridge was born.

I had never developed a product from scratch before, and this was (and is still) a learning process for me. Hint: I’m a big fan of the whole learning thing. My role on the team included market research, go-to-market strategy, UX/UI design, customer satisfaction, and fundraising. Before we started working on the product, I conducted extensive market research by obtaining customer validation from students, faculty, and administration to better understand the problems each party faced when organizing and attending events. This informed what features we added on to our first product iteration and established awareness and support for the product early on. When people feel involved in a process, they want to see it succeed! We aimed to establish this tight feedback loop by building in a feature on the app that allows users to easily give feedback which came directly to the other developers and me, allowing us to attend to issues as they came up. I also created a focus group dedicated to helping us understand the nuances of how people used the platform.

Our go-to-market strategy involved me forming a group of students to create marketing material for the app, manage and set up social media, and throw a launch party in keeping with our mission to get people out and get them together! The Bridge has acted as a catalyst for efforts by the school’s administration to foster community on campus. It has removed barriers to students planning and attending events and increased student engagement. This project gave me experience in fundraising, project management, and entrepreneurial leadership.