Facebook. Napster. Microsoft, Yahoo. Reddit. Google.
The list of major corporations that were started by college students goes on. These specific companies grew to become majorly successful. While the chances are rare, it does happen.
Dropspot. That could be the next big thing.
Dropspot is an app that lets you share photos with your friends based on location, founded by Scott Fitsimones, Arizona State University, a Barrett freshman.
“Dropspot is an app that lets you leave photos or videos for friends to find,” Fitsimones says. “If you’re having an awesome Barrett dining hall experience and you leave a picture of your delicious gelato, then when your friends come to the dining hall they will get a notification, ‘Hey, Scott was just here.’ It’s more fun the more adventurous you are. You can take photos and leave them, we call them ‘drops.’”
Photo sharing apps are all too common nowadays, but Dropspot brings something new to the table.
“As you’re going around campus, going around your city, you can take photos and ‘drop’ them,” Fitsimones says. “When your friends come (to that location) they get a notification, it's like “Hey, Scott left a drop here!” and we encourage you to respond.”
Fitsimones came up with this idea fairly recently and jumped into action.
“I was France last summer and I was standing in front of the Eiffel Tower and I was on social media overload,” Fitsimones says. “I was thinking, “I could post this on Instagram, Facebook...but it didn’t feel like the right way to share the pictures. I wanted the people who had shared that moment with me to find (my picture). I want the people that care, the people who had been to the Eiffel Tower, people who were coming later that summer to the Eiffel tower. It was kind of way to share photos across different points of time."
A computer systems engineering major, Fitsimones isn’t new to coding and making apps. He has created apps in the past but says this is his first large-scale project.
“I have been learning how to develop iPhone apps for a while — probably like five years or so,” Fitsimones says. “When I got this idea, I thought ‘hey, I could probably make this a reality!’ so I coded a demo by myself in my room over the summer of 2015 and then I started trying to build a team. I got one of my best friends on board — he does graphic design so he helped me design the app and I met some people coming to ASU. We all teamed up and were passionate about the idea and saw where it could go.”
The team is a total of six students, including Cyrus Sullivan, a marketing major, who joined Dropspot purely by chance.
“I got involved with Dropspot rather accidentally,” Sullivan says. “I was a meeting early one day and the table we were at was reserved for Dropspot. The moment I was first introduced to concept I was immediately captivated by it. From then forth I joined the team.”
Of the six members, two are developers but every member contributes to the workload rather than being assigned specific roles.
“What makes Dropspot work so well is there is a lot of overlap in the roles,” Sullivan says. “No one solely has one role but we are all great resources to use for each other. I help in marketing, outreach, design, ideas, publicity... I do a lot of the odd jobs that Dropspot needs done.”
Although it’s been less than a year since Fitsimones even came up with the idea, the team has made a lot of progress.
“Our biggest thing so far is that we applied to the Ignite challenge and we won $10,000 with the potential to win even more if we demonstrate growth,” Fitsimones says. “Basically, the investors are saying, 'If you can get users, we will give you funding.’”
Dropspot is already available to download for both Android and iPhone. The team already has a few hundred downloads and is now looking at their next big step.
“We kind of developed Dropspot with the things we wanted in mind, and I think that’s a good starting spot,” Fitsimones says. “It makes a lot of sense for us but we are just trying to make Dropspot work for people who just download it on their own. Our first priority is making it easy for new users to sign up and to find value in Dropspot even if they don’t have a lot of friends using it.”
Increasing their user base seems to be the number one priority for Dropspot. With a larger number of users, Dropspot is hoping to receive more funding as well.
“Our number one priority is to get users — that's the most important thing for a consumer app. Getting active users demonstrates that people like it,” Fitsimones says. “Our goal is to get one thousand true fans. We’re ordering stickers and shirts and stuff to get people to love our app.
Although still early, the entire team has great aspirations for the project. With ASU ranked number one in innovation in the country, it’s not surprising to hear about projects like these.
“ASU is the largest university and we know that our goal is an ASU centric campaign,” Fitsimones says. “(We want to) integrate Dropspot with ASU culture. It’s so easy for apps to disappear and earning a spot on someone’s phone is harder than you think.”
Overall, it’s clear that Dropspot has a lot of potential and is on the right track to becoming the next big thing.
“The future of the Dropspot is to live up to its purpose and fill the void that is currently present in the social media role,” Sullivan says.
“The future is to have Dropspot impact people's lives and people to impact other people's lives with Dropspot. My goals are to gain even more experience in being a part of Dropspot and make it achieve the greatness it is meant for.”
