New Student-Developed App Fosters Small Business Recovery

“Think of it like Tinder for Yelp”

With the closing of countless small businesses during the pandemic, two Santa Clara students have started creating the app Tripplar as a way to fight back. Justin Chan ‘22 demonstrated the prototype of the app by swiping through small businesses’ profiles on a Tinder-like-format. While the app is still in the process of development for release, Chan and his partner Cat Dinh ‘21 have a clear idea on what they want the product to accomplish. 

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, everyone has become more aware of how small businesses are struggling and it’s really sad to see,’ said Dinh. 

Chan and Dinh, who major in Marketing and Computer Science and Accounting Information Systems, started working on a way to connect consumers to the small businesses of their community. The app includes  a database of small local businesses and seeks to include the things that make the businesses personal, like photos of the owners and their stories

The app has an important distinction from Yelp and Google. Instead of searching and finding a plethora of search results, the app shows one business at a time and allows users to swipe right to save it or move to the next one. Chan and Dinh argue this both simplifies the experience of getting to know local businesses for the consumer and allows them to discover experiences outside of their comfort zone.

“In order for small businesses to survive we really want to highlight what makes them special and that's the fact they’re community-minded and customer-focused,” said Chan. “Every trip to a small business is an experience and we want to highlight that through our app.”

Eventually, Chan and Dinh hope to add a social aspect to the app where users can send each other recommendations and plan trips to the business together over the app. 

Though the app’s mission is intended to ease the epidemic of small business closures across the country, Chan developed the idea for Tripplar long before coronavirus. Two years ago, he and his friends unsuccessfully tried to code the app, an experience that made Chan realize he needed a bigger team to achieve this goal. 

Today, Chan and Dinh lead a team of over 25-students who focus on engineering, business development and user experience. Both co-founders commented on the culture of tackling new challenges at Tripplar, with some students having no experience in their current role.  

“I think there’s a lot of respect going both ways,” Chan said of leading these students through the learning curve. “Having respect for their time, their effort and their willingness to learn. Because a lot of them are first years, they do kind of look to us, like ‘how do we navigate this?’”

Alongside managing the schedule and path of Tripplar’s team, Chan and Dinh are back to school as they get closer to the app’s launch and subsequent updates. 

“It’s kind of fun to see how the classes I’m working on are teaching and building the skills I directly need with Tripplar,” said Chan.

Similarly, Dinh sees Tripplar as a stress reliever and continues to carve out time outside of classes to get the app further along.

“All the students at Santa Clara are so hardworking, and ever since I was a freshman, I have been pushed to the limits by these people,” said Dinh fondly of Santa Clara’s influence on her work ethic. “Looking around like wow everyone is doing these things, I need to be doing more’ or everyone is so motivated, on both ends professionally and the social justice end.”

Chan and Dinh’s path is unique in their endeavor to enter as a player in the world of technology companies before graduating in the industry’s hub. Though Tripplar will be launched in the same area as Santa Clara’s neighbors Facebook and Twitter, Tripplar’s mission has its eyes set on a much more regional focus of helping San Jose. 

“I don’t know if I can pinpoint a specific class [at Santa Clara] that made me want this app to be socially impactful, but I think it was just the experience as a whole that has crafted me in a way to build this business right,” said Chan. “If we can’t build a socially good, socially impactful business from scratch without having to compromise my values, then it’s not worth building a business at all.”

Though the values and core aspects of the app are set, Chan also acknowledges the ethical dilemmas which lie ahead for Tripplar. He plans for Tripplar to continually find the intersection between technology and social impact while navigating questions like their responsibility to San Jose business owners and how to capitalize on the conscious consumer culture of younger generations today.

Students can expect to see the app launched before the start of Spring quarter.