Conrad Brake and Ryan Rutkowski
Titles: Co-founders of Let's Tap In
Ages: 24
Let’s Tap In, a Towson University startup that hopes to take the guesswork out of a night on the town, has already begun to make an impact on Towson's bar scene.
Founders Ryan Rutkowski and Conrad Brake were inspired by their own mediocre experiences going out in Towson and felt they could use technology to give future generations of college students and bar-goers the chance to know what to expect from a bar before they walk in the door.
Let's Tap In aims to be the Waze for bars, providing information on drink specials, crowd size and more to help save time when choosing between different options on a Friday night. The company recently won $12,500 in a national startup competition, giving the startup an opportunity to increase the number of features in its app.
Was it difficult to balance your life as college students, including your participation in the Towson University football team, with your work building Let’s Tap In? We started working on Let’s Tap In during the Covid-19 pandemic. As teammates and college neighbors we had built a great friendship over the years leading into the pandemic. When we first started we would walk over to each other's houses and sit down with all of our friends to see what they thought of our ideas. This was truly how we developed our initial idea for Let’s Tap In.
We launched our social media pages in October of 2021 juggling football and school. Once we saw interest in our social media we took the mutual step of starting our business. Ryan was completing his second bachelor's degree and Conrad was starting his master's degree. At this point in our careers, we knew how to distribute our time and energy evenly throughout our days. Looking back at the discipline and work ethic that Towson football developed in us over the years paid back dividends in our business adventures.
It can be difficult for free apps to earn revenue. What strategies have you used to make money? This is a question we asked ourselves often leading up to this point. It is very difficult to make money with any free application, and there are only a couple of ways companies do this. Subscription fees, advertisement space and selling data. Of course, as a startup company, you can't exactly start with these options — at least not until you have a massive community behind you. After what we experienced in college with the same bars, the same nights and the same experiences we figured we would hold college events. But not just any college events, we had to make an environment and events for students to look forward to.
Hosting events was not part of our original business plan in any sense, but during our UX research we were able to survey over 500 Towson students. The results showed us where the main pain points for college students were with nightlife establishments. We carefully curated events that were a breath of fresh air to the Towson community. We were able to expand our events to the Federal Hill area (in Baltimore City) and even a small college town, Winona, Minnesota.
Cash flow is a make-or-break thing for any startup, and understanding that our idea won't sustain if you can't create strong cash flows is something we take very seriously. Even though the event tickets are sold through our app, being a ticketing service is not part of our core business model. As a startup, you have to be agile enough to make decisions that have longevity in mind.
What has been the most challenging part of building your business? What has been the most rewarding? Some of the most challenging parts have been hiring staff that has experience, problem-solving every and any problem quickly, development team communication, maintaining healthy partnerships and staying creative.
Some of the most rewarding parts of the business have been the relationships we have built inside the nightlife community and the growth of our team. We started with three of us in a living room and now have a weekly staff meeting with 10-15 people. We enjoy the people part of our business, we are outgoing guys and enjoy connecting and working with others. Guess some of the football teamwork rubbed off on us.
Building a business comes with a lot of challenges and problems but the enjoyment of seeing this entire company go from an idea inside our head to becoming a thriving successful business is the most rewarding thing in the world. This is just the start for Let’s Tap In, we believe we have one of the best young teams in the country and will ride this train until the wheels fall off.
To read about the rest of our Inno Under 25 class, click here.
