Travel Service Aids Planning Processes

Santa Clara alumnus cofounds startupMallory MillerTHE SANTA CLARAFebruary 13, 2014[dropcap]C[/dropcap]ollege student vacationers are getting their acts together now that spring break and music festival season are right around the corner. However, there are certain steps students must take in order to book a trip, such as organizing transportation, reserving hotel rooms and splitting up finances. This process  is tedious but necessary in order to experience that dream vacation in Cancún or those three days at Coachella with a group of best friends.JusCollege is a service company that uses technology to help college students easily plan music festival trips and spring break vacations.“Students can split payments, access all trip details and information at their fingertips, remind people to pay their payments and make their trip as seamless as possible with JusCollege,” said Allan Teruel, co-founder of JusCollege and Santa Clara alumnus.This past June, junior Roxanne Shakeri used JusCollege transportation services to get to and from Electric Daisy Carnival, in Las Vegas.“I went in going to EDC with everyone telling me to use the EDC shuttle bus services, but I took the risk and used JusCollege instead,” said Shakeri. “The wait to get my shuttle pass wristband was nothing. They had five buses and water waiting for us all three days after EDC. They are super nice, super friendly and there to help you out.”JusCollege was first established in 2011 as a service to help sell textbooks, school supplies and clothing to college students. Teruel and the other co-founders Andrew Citores and Bo Thede soon realized they needed to narrow the focus of their company to a certain market.With a strong interest in technology, Teruel helped redefine the JusCollege system to target college student travels.Teruel used the skills he learned as an operations and management information systems major to code the JusCollege application using Ruby on Ralis, a computer software coding language. Today, JusCollege provides services for thousands of college students across the United States.“Everything I learned in the Leavey School of Businesss I was able to see in the real world,” said Teruel. “Santa Clara gave me the exposure, a good high level of understanding of the different components of business. But it wasn’t until I was a part of the startup environment did it really make sense.”Teruel worked for multiple startup companies including IntruVert Networks, Vontu, Cast Iron Systems and Meraki after he graduated from Santa Clara. Teruel learned everything from engineering to business development, along with sales and accounting, through working with these companies.Teruel is happy he made the decision to work for startup companies after graduating, as opposed to working for larger corporations.“I’ve always wanted to start a startup company,” said Teruel. “In order to reduce the number of mistakes and figure out what the most important things were for these kinds of companies, was to be a part of successful startups.”Teruel lives a lifestyle of perseverance. He believes in order for a person to be successful, they cannot be afraid of failure.“If you do fail, fail fast and learn from your mistakes,” said Teruel. “With that said, don’t give up because success is the best, it’s just a matter of you taking advantage and learning from your failures.” Contact Mallory Miller at memiller@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.