A Towson University startup that aims to be the "Waze" for bar hopping captured $12,500 in a national entrepreneurship competition.
Let's Tap In, the brainchild of Ryan Rutkowski and Conrad Brake, beat out 25 other companies to win the $10,000 top prize during the pitch slam portion of e-Fest at the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship in Minneapolis in late April. The duo won an additional $2,500 during another competition at the festival.
The two said they will use the money to help increase the number of features in the Let's Tap In app and expand its event business. The app compiles information about bars' drink specials, line waits, music selection and more. Let's Tap In currently generates around $4,000 a week in revenue mostly from events at venues such as Charles Village Pub in Towson. Around 15-20 bars in uptown Towson currently use the software and there are around 2,700 users, they said.
The earnings from e-Fest also will be used to expand the app to create events such as bar crawls, enable the upload of photos and videos, and add a geolocation feature so the app will be able to recognize when people are inside a certain bar.
Rutkowski and Brake were inspired by their own lackluster experience going to bars in Towson, and realized that they could help make the nightlife experience better. Rutkowski graduated from Towson in December, while Brake is set to graduate with a master's degree at the end of the spring semester.
"We had very little free time and when we did have free time, we were tired of doing the same things every weekend," Rutkowski said. "We would show up to the bar, and we'd be waiting in line for 20 minutes. Then when we did get into the bar, we'd be paying for overpriced drinks."
Brake compared the application to Waze, an GPS navigation app that similarly uses user data and community input to help people make decisions. The necessity for a strong user base, in order to have accurate information for a nightlife hub, is partially why the company has focused so strongly on events. Longer term, the company is hoping to use customer data to gain insights into people’s bar preferences, which can be converted into a revenue source.
"We'll be able to give businesses personalized insights about their bar and their community,” Brake said.
The company plans to expand to the Fells Point and Federal Hill area, the University of Maryland, College Park and other college towns. On Friday, Tap In will have an event at The Charles in Federal Hill. The company currently hasfreelance employees, and the two co-founders have committed to the business full time.
Another Towson University student, Michael Wyman, also participated in the e-Fest competition with his company, Renndvous. Let's Tap In and Renndvous were among 25 finalists selected out of 100's of applications from over 60 colleges and universities across the country.
