Name: Wyatt Licht
Hometown: Martinez, Calif.
Major: Communication
Year: Junior
Fraternity: Sig Pi
How did you get involved with Tilt?
I heard about Tilt from a friend over at UC Santa Cruz; He’s a Sig Pi there and I’m a Sig Pi here. I tried it out, and threw a party for the World Cup and they were like, “Awesome job, you should do it again!” So I did it like four more times that summer and based on my success they actually asked me to join their ambassador team. I was one of the first 50 to 100 college ambassadors and now we’re at about 2000, so it’s been nice to see the program kind of grow and evolve from when I started. The more we used the app, the happier they would be, so they were sponsoring parties for us. So yeah the app has evolved a lot from there and now my fraternity uses it for apparel, pregames, late night, we use it to raise all the money for our philanthropy. People are using it all over the country. We’ll be using it to plan our spring Vegas trip. I’ve seen ambassadors use it to pull money in to get all their friends on a cruise. It’s a really open platform, kind of what you make of it, and I’ve found a lot of ways to use it.
(Wyatt hanging with The Chainsmokers on DP before the concert)
How did you help bring The Chainsmokers to UCSB?
Basically the Tilt Tour demonstrates to students on college campuses the huge power of crowdfunding and what can be done with an app like Tilt – what can be done when you have that many people who are willing to pitch in money on it. So the competition was the first six campuses to sell 800 tickets would earn a spot on the tour. The Chainsmokers thought it was an awesome idea, seeing how it was a very personal fan demand – this is where the kids want to see us the most so that’s where we’re gonna go. I think it’s an awesome way to do concerts; I envision a world where if you’re doing a concert you’ll just go where the people want to see you the most. Like, “I can afford to do 10 tour stops. Who wants to see my music the most?” And that’s what we showed them, we sold 800 tickets in an hour and three minutes, and then sold the next 900 in less than two hours – it went so fast. And that basically led to me being the super annoying person in every single facebook group in UCSB and IV, to bring attention to getting The Chainsmokers here. We have a team of 17 Tilt college ambassadors here, so I had them share all the posts and statuses. We got 4000 people in a group on Facebook within the time span of one hour, and I did this all the night before the competition. I actually didn’t believe we had a chance because the competition was beginning in 16 hours but I thought, “Why not?” So we had the most insane social media storm I have ever been a part of, and bam – there we go.
What is the coolest experience you’ve had as a Tilt college ambassador?
I was lucky enough to intern at Tilt HQ in the summer; and going from being on the outside and working for the college team – which is awesome – to seeing the inner workings and being a part of the environment inside of the Tilt headquarters was incredible. It’s a really fast growing company with a team of people who really, really one hundred percent believe in what they’re doing, the power of crowdfunding and the way that Tilt is going to change the world. Anything from philanthropic work to concerts, it’s going to totally change the way we view money… I found that really powerful and got really wrapped up in that experience. As a part of that summer, we had a conference for other team leads – so basically the position that I hold here – and had 35 team leads come from their campuses from all over the country and stay with us for a weekend to tour the office, get some talks from the CEO and other leaders. It was awesome to get to share with other team leads the experience of being in the office.
How do you plan to use the experience you’ve gained as a Tilt college ambassador in your future?
Working for Tilt has absolutely directed where my future has gone; not just Tilt itself, but the experience of working in a startup… it has increased my belief in technology and how these apps are gonna make our lives better and change the way we live. I was on the route to go to law school right after UCSB, I was a history major; but after working in the Tilt office I realized I was much more suited for a business environment like that. I’m much more interested in sales and marketing and brand and product development than I was in law. So I changed to a communication major, and I’ll be starting TMP (Technology Management Program) soon. Now I’m looking at the whole new set of resources that UCSB has to offer me on this route. We have an awesome student body – a very united student body; we’re lucky to all live so close and something like this can happen so fast, I have a lot of belief that Gauchos unite will make something happen. And we go really hard! Like no one’s sold tickets as fast as us – everyone was so pumped, it was awesome.
What are some of the ways UCSB students can use the Tilt app?
The best thing about Tilt is that it’s a very open platform, very broad and it becomes what you make of it. There’s a “sell something” feature so if you’re selling apparel, that’s the number one way to go. And it doesn’t stop there, you can use Tilt to directly fund a nonprofit, you can use Tilt to pool money from friends for something small. Some of my friends use it for their utilities, so they have the six of them pitching into a Tilt every month for cable or whatever. We use it for late night, pretty much three nights a week. There’s no end to what you can do with it and there are a lot of cash rewards and bonuses along the way. I’d say Tilt is the way to go for anything that you need to collect money for, from more than three people: going out with your friends, organizing a girls night out, ordering a party bus for you and your friends, going downtown for a friend’s birthday, collecting money for hotels, getting everyone together to pregame, Landshark. The accountability of Tilt is really perfect too; I was the social chair for my fraternity so I was always the one going and putting the kegs on my card… and on Tilt, there is be a list of all the people you’ve invited and there is a checkbox to see who has paid. It’s basically taking your whole clipboard and organizing it into an app, so it’s really nice. You can even send reminders to people who have been invited but haven’t paid and they’ll get a text reminding them to pay for whatever they were invited to.
Do you have any future events planned with Tilt and UCSB?
Assuming there’s a Tilt tour next year again, then we’ll have no problem getting a spot on that. People here get really riled up about concerts. In the fall, though, I want to do a mass UCSB tailgate where we all go down to the Rose Bowl at UCLA and just tailgate one of their games. I’ve done it with some of my friends and the UCLA people think it’s awesome when we come down there because we’re just this mysterious crazy party school a little bit to the north of them, that they don’t really know much about – we get down there and they’re like “Oh my gosh! UCSB kids are here!” Literally, I was wearing a UCSB shirt carrying a 30-rack and people were pointing and whispering behind their hands. So I wanna get like 100 UCSB people down there to set up our own tailgate area, have a barbecue and just make it a fat-UCSB-Gaucho-tailgate-for-no-reason since we don’t have some of their sports and we miss out on that stuff.
What song is your anthem?
My anthem… nothing that I want in print! (;
Do you know why The Chainsmokers were the ones chosen to do the tour?
The Chainsmokers were very enthusiastic about the idea when their agency connected them to Tilt. They like to be on the front line trying new things so they were very excited and enthusiastic about the idea of fans demanding concerts.
What’s your favorite Chainsmokers song?
Small Pools (Dreaming Remix)
To keep up with Wyatt and his latest adventures follow him on Instagram @wyattsteelee
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