Shots iGot
Co-Founder & CTO
(2012 - 2013)
Founded a responsible drinking app while attending college full-time, which garnered national viral media attention.
During my senior year, a friend approached me with an idea for an iPhone app he had been developing for about a year called Shots iGot. The app aimed to help users accurately gauge their alcohol consumption by virtually filling up water bottles, a commonly used container for drinking on-the-go in college. We brought this concept to the Princeton Hackathon, built the initial prototype in 48 hours and won the Crowd-Favorite Project award.
In my spare time while pursuing my Computer Science degree, I continued developing my first app. I learned how to create a user-friendly experience, gather feedback from users and iterate, manage data effectively, implement a freemium model, and deploy to the App Store.
A Viral Sensation Across Campuses
Based on the feedback from friends, we knew we had an extremely compelling product, but we had no money for marketing, so we created fliers in Photoshop and printed as many as we could at the library and slipped them under hundreds of dorm room doors.
We immediately saw a huge influx of downloads. People were shocked when they realized how much alcohol they had been drinking every night and started using the app every time they went out to ensure they didn't over-consume. In the first two weeks, we had over a thousand downloads, with over 10% of users converting from the free version to the paid version, which offered dozens of bottles, including water bottles, soda, and sports drinks.
Eventually, the excitement around Shots iGot took on a life of its own, with users coming from schools all over the country. In just a few months, we gained nearly ten thousand users and were featured in various media outlets, including the Huffington Post. Watching this growth was incredibly exciting and made me realize that I could actually chase the entrepreneurial dream.