Popple
Boston University, Questrom School of Business
Industry: Social Media
Founding Student Name(s): Prianna Sharan, Remi Chester
Brief Description of Solution: Popple is an app that connects users with similar interests via AI to attend events together. The goal is to foster real world connections that enable students to get out there, explore their passions, and try new things without fear of being alone.
Funding Dollars: $25,000
What led you to launch this venture? As college students, Remi and Prianna both observed and experienced the growing loneliness epidemic amongst young people. In 2023, loneliness and excessive social media use was declared as a national public health crisis by Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Loneliness hurts our minds and bodies and can lead to negative health outcomes comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
At BU, they saw the rapid digitization of the college experience firsthand. Students don’t have practice connecting with each other in person, and sometimes spend days straight in their dorm. When they asked their friends “why?”, the problem was twofold: they don’t know where to go to engage with people similar to them, and they are too afraid to go to in-person events alone.
Prianna and Remi’s goal was to bridge that gap. Two years ago, they conceptualized Popple and have been working on it ever since. Popple is an app all about making it less scary for people to leave their house and get out into the real world. But it is more than that – it is how over 2,500 students at BU make their friends. Popple is an app that connects users with similar interests via AI to attend events together, whether it be club meetings, concerts, museum exhibits or parties. Popple is a platform to foster real world connections in a safe space, enabling students to get out there, explore their passions, and try new things, without fear of being alone.
What has been your biggest accomplishment so far with venture? The amount of impact Remi and Prianna have been able to have in just two years has been incredibly rewarding for them. Over 2,500 college students have downloaded Popple, and they have spent a total of 10,000 hours over the past 5 months meeting new people, connecting with their community, and building lasting friendships. On any given day, you can log into Popple and see users going to karaoke, meeting up for lunch, and volunteering at local nonprofits together.
Prianna and Remi’s have also been able to have an international impact. Popple was among 900 out of 20,000 student startups that made it to the global summits of the 2024 Hult Prize, dubbed “the Nobel Prize for Students,” and they pitched our platform in Lisbon. Users across Europe tried it out at the conference and told them Popple has made them less lonely and more likely to follow their passions.
How has your business-related major helped you further this startup venture? As a marketing student, Remi understood the critical role of testing in uncovering consumer insights. While it can be tedious, she recognized that customer surveys and A/B testing were essential to Popple’s growth. After conducting 300 interviews with students, she and Prianna gained a much clearer understanding of what users would value in the platform. With this clarity, they launched multiple beta versions, experimenting with various features, user flows, and interfaces. Each iteration brought them closer to addressing consumer needs. Following extensive testing, they finally launched the app on the App Store. However, Remi knows that stagnation in marketing, including internal research, halts progress and growth. She and Prianna continue to analyze user feedback, regularly updating Popple to ensure it remains the ideal solution to the problems those first 300 students helped them identify.
Which business class has been most valuable in building your startup and what was the biggest lesson you gained from it? The most valuable class, or rather classes, that aided Remi’s startup strategy was the Core program. This curriculum involved conceptualizing a product start-to-finish, and engaging in all the steps to actually launch the business. This tied together marketing, data analytics, finance, and operation in a way a real startup would operate, providing her a crash course in venture building. The biggest lesson was that the big picture is crucial for strategic decisions. As an early-stage startup, Prianna and Remi’s biggest concern was – and still is – marketing Popple. However, this course made it clear that no big marketing decisions should be made without studying the data and crunching the numbers. Thus, they didn’t rush to spend funding on marketing, and sharpened their strategies using the frameworks Remi learned in Core.
What business professor made a significant contribution to your plans and why? Professor Ian Mashiter has been Remi and Prianna’s mentor since they first entered Innovate@BU’s innovation pathway, and has helped them so much along their journey. Remi and Prianna worked with him on their very first pitches and business plans, followed his guidance while A/B testing and prototyping, and leveraged his network to scale and market the app. As first-time entrepreneurs, they needed all the help they could get. Ss a master lecturer and director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship major at Questrom, Professor Mashiter made for an amazing mentor. He invited them to speak in his class, connected them with fellow entrepreneurs and mentors, and continues to advise them on our journey.
What founder or entrepreneur inspired you to start your own entrepreneurial journey? How did he or she prove motivational to you? Prianna and Remi get compared to Mark Zuckerberg a lot, as fellow students in Boston looking to redefine social media. They definitely take a lot of inspiration from leaders in social media like him and Nikita Bier, and their strategies for virality, such as starting with the college market.
More than that, they are inspired by the female founders who have paved the way for women like them. Only 2% of venture capital investment is given to female founders. Melanie Perkins, the founder of Canva, is one of these women they look up to. She raised $3 million at 19, and now her startup is valued over $1 billion. Remi and Prianna are inspired by her leadership and managerial skills, as well as her first Canva pitch.
Lastly, Remi and Prianna are key members in Boston University’s entrepreneurship scene, and are constantly in awe of the amazing founders at their school. The tight-knit community serves as inspiration to continue innovating, and supporting the student community with Popple.
What is your long-term goal with your startup? Remi and Prianna’s long-term vision is to expand Popple to universities across the U.S., with plans to raise a seed round next year and take the company full-time. Their next focus is New York, followed by major college towns nationwide. By recruiting brand ambassadors and early adopters at universities across the northeast, they anticipate $1.7 million in revenue and nearly 300,000 users by the end of 2026.
However, beyond the numbers, their true mission is to reduce college loneliness and depression. They aim for Popple to become the go-to platform for young people seeking meaningful connections and shared experiences.
How has your local startup ecosystem contributed to your venture’s development and success? Prianna and Remi have been active in their local startup ecosystem and have reaped many benefits. They were the youngest members of MassChallenges 2024 cohort, the largest startup accelerator in Boston. There, they had access to consultants, branding experts, and investors who helped with our growth. As first-time entrepreneurs and students, the advice and mentorship they got through MassChallenge has been invaluable.
At Boston University, Prianna and Remi are very active at Innovate@BU, the hub for entrepreneurship on campus. They won second place at their premier innovation competition in 2023, and received 15k in funding. The Innovate@BU staff are fantastic and have been a huge part of their journey. Particularly when Prianna and Remi were looking to expand our team, Innovate@BU helped them with recruiting and management strategies. Now, they have a team of 12 Boston University students who are interested in entrepreneurship and technology working on Popple.
Prianna and Remi also give back to the ecosystem by speaking frequently at local entrepreneurship conferences and meetups. Prianna was a featured speaker at IDEAcon, the largest intercollegiate entrepreneurship conference in the country, and Remi has been a panelist at numerous Boston events on innovation and marketing.
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