Demi Yang is a senior majoring in supply chain management and co-founder and COO of Zonder: Collect the World.
Together with my team of six — including my brother, alumnus Harry Yang (BA Supply Chain Management ‘10), who is CEO of Zonder, the company we co-founded — I have been working for over 18 months on the creation of this app.
Zonder helps users of the free app track their travels locally and abroad. Users gain experience by visiting places like parks, restaurants, craft breweries, etc., and can earn badges based on the types of places they visit, as well as compare and compete with friends by using the app’s leaderboard.
We wanted to give people virtual experiences for going to different places. With each experience, Zonder creates a unique profile for each user that shows the type of traveler they are and their accomplishments. They can also check up on their timeline, which records previous locations that they’ve been to, and see new places to go to on the map.
To create this app, I searched for resources on MSU’s campus that would help me achieve my business goals and found the Hatch, an MSU organization that has resources for, and supports, student entrepreneurs. I am now a member of the Hatch, and I’ve participated in various pitch competitions. I received second with Zonder in the WE Innovate Pitch Competition in 2017.
I applied to the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization pitch competition last year, and I was chosen to pitch during their conference. The Hatch even offered to fly all contestants from MSU to the conference because the trip was rather expensive. They were incredibly supportive in these endeavors.
For the spring semester, I plan to work with the interns at the Hatch more and find out what other resources they have that could help progress my business. They have interns for areas like design and business development. I’ve reached out to them recently to have them work with us on different marketing material and our marketing campaign. There are a ton of resources that I have yet to discover, so I really need to sit down with their leadership to talk about what they have for a tech company like mine.
In addition, entrepreneurs at the Hatch often help each other and share their experiences. I can’t count the number of times other members have given me valuable advice. Since I’ve worked on Zonder for over a year and turned it into a functioning app, I would also love to help other startups with their tech ideas.
For students at the freshman level and beyond, here’s some advice: You should definitely utilize the resources we have on campus to support you. I think that the entrepreneurship program and the Hatch do enough for the students to make sure that they don’t have to worry about financial issues, resource issues and finding talent – at least while they’re at MSU. So, there really is no excuse to not just go for it.
I’m really aiming to create an impact at MSU and beyond with my B2C business. We really want to have our beta release spread throughout the MSU campus so that millennials, which are a target market, can give feedback on it. I really want this app to start from MSU. I want it to be known that this started on MSU’s campus so when it gets big, it’s something MSU can be proud of.
To encourage the origin of this app at MSU, I would like to extend the key “GoGreen” to those who would like to join the beta testing of the app. The key is good for the first 50 signups and available on the App Store and Google Play. The official release of the app is planned for late spring 2019.