By Shane Bowler ’22, co-founder, Night Life
Winters at Colgate are undeniably cold, but full of fun and exciting experiences. As a sophomore, I wished there was a way I could have known who was going out and where they were going before I decided to go out myself and inevitably walk home through the bone-chilling weather at the end of the night. This is where the idea for Night Life first had its roots. If there was an app that Colgate students could use that shows the different options for the night, who is going, and where people are going, the entire student community could be more informed and then make the best personal decision of where to go out on a given night.
The goal of the Night Life app is to help users achieve the best nights out possible. With this mission, we decided to conduct a survey in order to find the ingredients that make “the perfect night out.” This survey had 246 responses and yielded results that further justified the idea for Night Life. It showed that the majority of people want to be with their friends, meet new people, spend as little money as possible on drinks, spend time at more than one place, and be in crowded venues, as well as stop for food before getting home.
The survey also yielded some important insight into what key features should be included in the Night Life app. It showed that over 95% of people are motivated to go out based on a high number of people attending and over 80% of people are motivated by a drink deal to go out on a given night.
As an economics major who struggled through computer science classes at Colgate, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to make this idea into an app on my own. So I decided to find some of the most talented computer science majors on campus who would be interested to work with me on this project. In the first year of working on Night Life through TIA, we made little progress on the development of the app. While we were able to make a front-end design for the app, it proved much more challenging than anticipated to successfully get Night Life connected to servers and hosted on the App Store. After that year, the talented computer science majors graduated and moved on to start their own careers in the computer science world, leaving Night Life with a front-end design and no app development team.
As a result, I looked to find new computer science majors to join the Night Life team to finish the application. I was thrilled when three computer science majors — Rahul Daggubati ’22, Benji Ishamiru ’23, and Joey Tenner ’22 — joined the team, committed to finishing and launching the Night Life app.
This fall, we received TIA seed grant funding to help propel our growth. Since then, we have made incredible progress on the Night Life app development. We are on pace to have the app finished prior to Entrepreneur Weekend, when it will be listed on the Apple App Store and Android Marketplace for Colgate students to download. We are designing the app to launch specifically for Colgate students, due to the relatively small number of venues in Hamilton, N.Y.
The Night Life app will allow users to have their own profiles, a friends list, the ability to see nearby venues, and the ability to see where friends are going out on a given night. Night Life will also serve as a means for local businesses to market themselves directly to their target market with different drink deals, special events, and general information about their venues for users to see and make the decision of whether to attend.
With seed grant funding we received, we are able to cover the costs of a React Native course to serve as a development tool for the app and the costs of posting Night Life on the App Store and Android marketplace, as well as having funds to cover the expected costs of hosting the app through the Firebase servers.
We are so grateful for our mentors and their support as we work through the app development process, as well as creating dialogues between Night Life and the local venues. We are excited to launch the Night Life app for Colgate students in the coming weeks with constantly updated deals, events, and promotions at each venue.
If you would like to learn more about Night Life or offer input or advice, please feel free to reach out to me at sbowler@colgate.edu. In particular, if you have any experience with the legal requirements associated with mobile applications, I would love to hear your advice and recommendations. While we are just beginning the Night Life journey, we welcome all forms of input and advice you have to offer. Thank you!