Email exchange when Tara and I decided to expand our products to other universities, and asking if Kevin and Li wanted to join us.

read more 

Joe Puccio 
Fri, Oct 17, 2014, 3:12 PM
to Li, Kevin

Hello Sirs,

I hope your first time introduction of Li to “outside” is going well.

I mentioned to Kevin the other day that Tara and I have been looking into expanding Class Finder to other universities this summer, and we’d like to include Class Checker in that expansion too (by, possibly, combining them into one service?), but I wanted to talk to you guys before doing anything official.

We’re currently looking for funding so that we can get an apartment over the summer and possibly office space in Durham, with leftover money going to other expenses like marketing and as a salary for Tara (I don’t need the money).

Is this something that either of you guys would be interested in joining in on? We’re looking at this Bryan Social Innovation Fellowship application which is due Tuesday.

Let me know what you think,

Joe





Li An 
Sun, Oct 19, 2014, 6:48 PM
to me

I don't think I'm going to have the time to commit to this, particularly not for spring set up and then I'm hoping to  not be in the area over the summer. You've got my blessings to go nuts with it though.





Kevin Anderson 
Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 5:18 PM
to Li, me

ahhhh I think talking about getting an office is thinking too far ahead. Why Durham? Why do we need an office? I don't see a problem with bringing the two under one roof (we'd have to talk about how it'd work obv), but do you know that it's possible to get the data we need from other universities? With App it is certainly possible (and indeed the code is mostly written for it already), but what universities were you thinking of?

Kev





Joe Puccio 
Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 6:42 PM
to Kevin, Li, Tara

So yeah, I just mentioned the office because it might be nice to get some space in an incubator (I know of some good ones in Durham, which is why I mentioned Durham) which would likely(?) give us legal support as well. But the office is really an amenity and it may be possible for us to get a free table at Shoeboxed (also in Durham) like I know other startups have done. Again, the choice of Durham is really just because I know a few people there but it could just as easily be in Chapel Hill at Launch, 1789, or ITS for that matter. 

The way we were imagining it sort of the reverse of how we did it at UNC: we start out by approaching IT departments at other universities and say “hey, look at these products we have. We can implement them for your school. Are you interested?” and if they are then they’ll give us backend access through an API or a dummy login (for class checker) and they’ll give us API access or static dumps (for class finder). 

We’re really looking into Duke right now, but other than that we’ve just got a list of schools that we know people at who said Class Checker/Finder are cool and could be useful for them: BYU, Georgia Tech, and RIT are a few we have info on/contacts in. 

Are you available to work on it with us?

Joe





Kevin Anderson 
Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 11:34 PM
to me, Li, Tara

I'll be honest, I'm pretty put off by the idea of us having an office and the (however likely) possibility of a legal team.  That takes it firmly away from a pet project and into the world of business.  If that's what you want then fine and great, but I don't think I want to get involved with a real startup right now.  I guess I'm not passionate enough about checking classes, hahaha.