You’re walking through the GSU, already arranging in your head what you are going to order at Panda Express, when suddenly you hear some students saying, “Free Insomnia cookies! Free hot, gooey cookies!”
The claim seems almost too good to be true, but you glance over and sure enough, there are a couple of students waving for you to come over. As you reach into the box of cookies, eyeing the last white chocolate macadamia nut, you’re told, “Great, take the cookie, and I can tell you about a brand new app that could change your life at school.”
Now before you roll your eyes, groan, or do anything else to shrug off downloading another iOS app, think of this moment as an opportunity. You have the chance to learn about one of the coolest new apps on the market, one that will actually—and I mean this—make your life a whole lot easier.
Hikari Senju, a recent Harvard graduate, is the CEO and co-founder of the Quickhelp app. Born in Tokyo and brought up in nearby Chappaqua, NY, he has always wanted to work as an engineer in Silicon Valley. When the idea he was working on as a senior undergrad across the Charles River started to get some traction, he decided to focus on that project full time. That project was Quickhelp.
Senju let us in on why this is the app we will be hearing more about within the coming years.
“What I love about Quickhelp is that we’re really making a difference and impact on people’s lives,” he explains. “Doing something that has impact has been a huge motivator throughout my life. At Quickhelp, we provide a service that is actually benefiting people.”
Without a doubt, Quickhelp will make your life easier. Essentially, this app is the fastest and quickest way to meet low-cost, high quality tutors. The app takes the classes you are enrolled in at BU, as well as your current location, and determines which “Quickhelper” you should be matched with. Once you are matched, you can see through the application whether you have mutual Facebook friends, making the situation all the more comfortable on both fronts.
Quickhelp brings assistance to you night and day— whether you are stuck on the last few lines of an essay at midnight, or mulling over a gruesome statistics problems in a coffee shop at 6am before class starts.
“Ultimately we exist because the university system is failing college students. College students are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, and colleges are not providing the adequate support to make sure these students are prepared for the real world,” Senju says.
As brilliant as this app is today, it is only improving. Senju reveals a few ideas about the future of this service.
“We are starting with providing academic help for college students, but ultimately the idea is to be the academic, post-graduate support system for every college student.”
While Quickhelp is currently focusing on the Boston market and providing for the needs of the communities within the immediate area, this product has the means to be successful wherever students want it to be. Eventually, it will be launched in new areas using various marketing techniques such as the campus ambassador program that many Boston University students have already become a part of.
So go to the iPhone app store, download the Quickhelp app, and when you are inevitably stopped by the students in the GSU offering free food, tell them why you chose to already be a part of this movement.