Name: Danny Freed
Hometown: Bloomfield Hills, MI
Year: Senior
Major: Business
Her Campus: Can you tell us about some of the things that you’re involved in?
Danny Freed: I started a company last year called Gadole and we build apps and websites for people who have startup ideas. We’ve worked on about 10 apps/websites for other people, and recently decided to build one of our own ideas, Companion, which we started working on in August.
HC: Do you have a team that you work with?
DF: Gadole is primarily my friend Nathan Pilcowitz and I, and then we brought on three more people (Lexie Ernst, Katie Reiner, and Jake Wayne) to help out with Companion. With Gadole we have a pool of developers we work with to assist with backend development, while we focus on the design and frontend development ourselves.
HC: What can you tell us about Companion?
DF: Companion is a personal safety service. Let’s say you’re at the library until two in the morning. None of your friends are there and you want to walk home. You can open the app, plug in where you’re going and then it lets you choose anyone on your contact list. If your friends have the app, it sends them a notification and if they don’t have the app it sends them a text message with a link to a map. The app knows how long it’s gonna take to get to your destination, so if it has been ten minutes and your walk is only supposed to take five minutes then the app will ask if you’re okay. If you don’t respond within a certain time period, it will send an alert to your Companions asking them to check in on you. We began working on the app this summer and are currently waiting on App Store approval. Learn more here: http://www.companionapp.io, you should be able to download it soon!
HC: So will this be available for only U of M students?
DF: No. We’re currently in private beta and are starting at the University of Michigan, but it’s meant to be used anywhere and everywhere. One of my favorite parts of the app is that you can use it with any of your contacts, regardless of if they have downloaded Companion on their phone or not. We also have some pretty cool ideas on integrating with local campus police in the future, but for now we are just focused on acquiring users. Our plan is to expand outwards from U of M as we definitely see use cases for Companion all around the country and even the world.
HC: What do you hope to achieve through the creation of this app?
DF: We ultimately want to solve a problem and keep people safe. Our goal right now is to get a massive userbase and if we can do that, the sky is the limit.
HC: What is something that you wanted to get out of this app?
DF: We worked on Gadole for about year, which was all doing other people’s things while making money in return. That was nice, but we were at the point in August where we were wrapping up a ton of projects that we did over the summer and we were ready to do our own thing. We did this to make something big, not for a resume or for the money, just to make something that anyone can use and hopefully get some value out of.
HC: What is some advice you have for underclassmen who aspire to create and market their own app?
DF: One, reach out to us, Gadole, and we can help out. But more importantly, just do it. Just dive into it. Try and do something that’s truly unique, because it is way easier to get discovered and get people excited about your idea if it’s new versus an Instagram clone.