Dane, Justin, and Rob's Yapper journey began in DC in August 2012 at orientation for the MBA Program at George Washington University. Whether it was in class, on campus, at networking or recruiting events, sporting events, concerts, bars and restaurants, business conferences, or just walking around DC, the three classmates were always interested in who, what, and where people and events were in their community.

 

Being GWU students provided them many media outlets to answer these questions including emails from the school, from Club members and classmates, school Facebook groups, group friend texts, mobile apps, word of mouth, or just in person networking, but none really answered the question of "what is going on right here, right now, and who is participating in it?" The three friends realized that they received thousands of social media notifications, emails, and texts that were never truly relevant to the here and now. They quickly realized classmates were experiencing similar frustration and pain points, which are excerpted in this slideshow along with some others who need Yapper .

 

In May 2013, after discussing these pain points on Rob's roof overlooking the monuments and GWU's campus, the three friends wondered why there wasn't a technology that could tell them what was going on in their immediate viewpoint at that exact time. After a lengthy discussion and during an orange sunset, Yapper was born!

 

With Dane's technology background, Rob's entrepreneurship and consulting background, and Justin's entrepreneurship and media background, the three friends decided to invent a new, creative location-based chat application.

 

After diving into school resources, attending tech meet-ups, visiting incubators, and networking in DC, the Yapper team met Anthony Agby. Anthony is an iOS specialist and mobile app developer who was welcomed as the team's fourth partner and is currently working on the development of the app.

 

To date, the Yapper team has individually bootstrapped the new venture including the creation of an LLC, hiring a mobile app developer, launch of an iOS APP with over 1,000 downloads in our 1st couple of weeks, integration of Facebook, and development of a back-end databases and plug ins. Further, the team has organized several focus groups and market research experiments, built a website and social media pages, pitched their idea to multiple investors, been featured in several articles, advanced in several business plan competitions, and have plans to launch in new markets throughout 2014. Download YAPPER so you don't miss out on the next mobile trend.