By now, you’ve probably heard of Wigo, the social media app that focuses on uniting college students in real time for parties, sports games or other events. But what you probably don’t know is the way the company works behind the scenes – three of its four full-time employees were college students when they left school to run it.
The idea for the app came to founder and CEO Ben Kaplan in his dorm room at College of the Holy Cross his freshman year. After spending the summer working on the app with a hired programmer, he launched it in January 2014. He left school shortly after to devote himself to Wigo full-time.
MIT graduate Giuliano Giacaglia joined Kaplan to become Wigo’s co-founder and CTO. The University of Maryland’s Tyler Swartz and Claire Uhar left school this year to join the company as director of business development and director of outreach, respectively.
“We’re four people who wouldn’t ever be brought together in our lives,” Uhar said. “And that’s kind of what the app is – bringing people who wouldn’t normally be connected to an event … and just have a good time. It’s all about having fun.”
Thirteen months after its initial launch, Wigo is worth $14 million. Its usage has grown exponentially in the past few months, with just under 100,000 active users so far at about 1,300 schools.
To download Wigo, you need a .edu email address, ensuring college students are the only ones using the app. So long, Grandma Rose’s comments about “what a group” you and your friends are!
“Posting to social media can be really dangerous,” Uhar said. “What we want to do is really protect that aspect of life, and have people feel safe posting stuff about going out. But at the same time, we want to make sure that it’s all in good fun, nothing offensive or inappropriate. We want to embrace the fun — embrace that part of college and the memories.”
Wigo, like many other businesses, has a college ambassador program where students are paid to promote the company. Unlike most others, however, Wigo’s ambassadors are actually paid to party. Ambassadors receive a certain amount of money, usually 50 cents, for every person who “attends” a party or event they post to the app.
“I think right now, we value our ambassadors and our culture above anything else,” Uhar said. “Because we want to make sure we have people that want to grow with us, and want to contribute to it, and want to give us suggestions.”
You can download Wigo in the App Store, and if you’re interested in joining the ambassadors program, email hello@wigo.us.
