College is a hectic time for most students. Between struggling to keep a GPA above a 3.5, keeping in contact with friends and getting more than seven hours of sleep each night, UCLA keeps the average student constantly on their toes. But for a group of ambitious students, their day includes an exciting venture: entrepreneurship.
Often celebrated as the heart of entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley may be 340 miles away, but who needs it when innovation is thriving right here on campus? UCLA is steadily building its own version of Silicon Valley, fueled by a growing community of student-led startups. Today, we’re taking a closer look at one of many exciting ventures founded by our very own Bruin entrepreneurs.
Many of us are familiar with the hassle of finding a common time to hang out with our friends. Between sharing Google Calendars or filling out countless polls, there has to be something… better. That’s exactly what these two enterprising sophomore students thought.
Enter Sync – a social app created by second-year electrical engineering student Gary Li and second-year computer science student Ishan Royyuru – designed to help users synchronize their calendars seamlessly and find common free times for hangouts. Li has always wanted to come up with an app that solved a problem, and Sync was the solution that resonated with him most. According to Li, “it’s a problem we have on a weekly basis and the solution seemed achievable and easy to solve with our current capabilities, which made us really invested”. Thus over the summer, Li came up with the idea and started building the project.
The start of the journey is always a challenge, as having the foresight to plan out the process without embarking on it is difficult. “Even with the features we want to do, it’s a lot easier when you are in the process of building compared to when you are planning it out,” Royyuru said.
Recently, Li and Royyuru were able to integrate Sync with DevX, a club at UCLA focused on tech entrepreneurship, to form a team comprised of marketers, developers and designers. Their goal this quarter is to create a basic Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, to see how many people would use the app at its core, and then, as Royyuru said, to brand it as “more of a social app so there can be more fun interactions on the app to appeal to a wider audience.”
It’s challenging in itself to start an app, let alone while in college, but for both Li and Royyuru, the community makes the challenge a blessing. “UCLA specifically,” Li said, “is a school where everyone is so passionate about what they are doing, be it through their majors or starting a project. A lot of people we both know are also passionate about startups and they were really helpful in providing feedback.” Royyuru adds that they hope to “have some campus related aspect; be it through partnering with UCLA or doing an initiative with the school.”
While most find it hard to juggle school alone, they manage by finding a balance. It also helps that this is something they are both passionate about. “While school is something we have to do, this is a project we both willingly chose to start,” Li said. It also helped that they started over the summer, spending four to five hours per week on the project. Royyuru said, “It’s about finding a balance. Once you have everything scheduled, like our weekly meetings or designated tasks per week, fitting that in isn’t as hard as you think.”
Starting an app may seem like a mammoth of a task to students, and at this age most of us lack the technical knowledge or skills to do so, but to Li and Royyuru, the most important thing one can do is to start, regardless of skill level. “There is no way you’ll know everything at the start and the best way to do it is through trial and error,” said Li. “The faster you start, the better it is.”
All great things start from somewhere. Both Li and Royyuru are testaments to this. With heart, passion and dedication, any idea can be transformed into a tangible product at UCLA and beyond.
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Featured Image Photographed by Julia Gu/BruinLife
