Archives: 14 September 2011

College Students Pitch Mobile App at DEMO

September 14, 2011 at 4:48 pmCategory:News

On Wednesday, Eva Sasson and Justin Mardjuki will present their mobile app at the DEMO conference in Silicon Valley. Unlike most of the other entrepreneurs pitching products at the conference, Sasson, 19, and Mardjuki, 18, are full-time college students. The pair started TappMob this summer while on break from school. They’re one of the ten presentation slots that DEMO is giving to college students during the conference, which began on September 12.

TappMob’s mobile app lets people check in at a location and notify just one person or small groups of people with a single touch of a button as opposed to publicly checking in on a service such as Foursquare. They developed the application for young people like them whose parents asked them to check in when driving. “Everytime I would drive somewhere my mom would be calling to check in but I couldn’t pick up the phone to talk while I was driving,” says Sasson, co-founder and CEO of the company. Now, with a touch of a button, she can send her mother her location on a map to let her know where she is.

The app started out as a summertime project but developed quickly into a full-blown company. Sasson and Mardjuki have received seed funding from Accretive, a private investment firm based in New York City. The amount wasn’t disclosed. On September 11, TappMob submitted its first app to the Apple App Store. The company is now developing three more mobile apps based on the idea of one-touch simplicity.

TappMob will be comprised completely of college students. Sasson is studying at Columbia University and Mardjuki is an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. They met in eighth grade, while taking the Spanish placement test for The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California. Sasson lent Mardjuki a pencil for the exam.

The pair is part of a new wave of entrepreneurs under the age of 20. In May, Peter Thiel announced the members of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowships, giving young people a two-year stint and 0,000 grant to turn their ideas into companies. A number of those fellowship winners dropped out of college to accept the fellowship.

Sasson and Mardjuki did not receive grants from Peter Thiel and they plan to stay in school. Says Sasson, “We’re not going to drop out, our education comes first.”