Eric Zhou, 21 and Usman Hanif, 20
Co-founders, Portals
About Eric
Title: Co-founder and CTO, Portals
Location: Stanford
Education: Studying computer science at Stanford University (class of 2022)
Resume: Built Electify, a digital canvassing app meant for running campaigns, interned at a startup called Verkada, interned at ReAmaze, worked in Botswana with the Stanford Seed Institute
Hobbies: Practicing guitar, hiking and watching Korean dramas on Netflix
About Usman
Title: Co-founder and CEO, Portals
Location: Stanford
Education: Studying computer science at Stanford University (class of 2022)
Resume: Summer software engineering internship at Netpace, interned at Mist Systems (which was acquired by Juniper Networks), completed an internship at Amazon as a software engineer.
Favorite social media app: TikTok — “It’s sort of a guilty pleasure of mine, spending too much time scrolling through that For You feed."
Using Portals, a platform started by Stanford students Usman Hanif and Eric Zhou, celebrities and influencers can reach out and engage with their fanbases. More importantly, though, the startup allows fans to interact and connect with each other.
“A lot of these fandoms call themselves a cult,” Hanif said. “Current social media is really good to display content, but it isn’t built for community.”
The service allows influencers to offer their own merchandise, along with a “master clipboard” of behind-the-scenes content, chatrooms and other features offered to fans on a subscription basis.
“We’re building less of a social media and building more of an infrastructure company,” Hanif said. “Websites are a little outdated, and also require a lot of upfront work for the influencer or celebrity, so we go ahead and make them an entire portal.”
The idea came about when Hanif took a sports management class, where he commingled with a lot of athletes who spoke about the strength and voracity of sports communities. That gave Hanif and Zhou the seed of an idea to create a content-based community for fans.
Zhou said what they see missing from existing channels is an easy way for fans to interact with each other, while also engaging with their influencer or celebrity of choice. They also wanted to create a pathway for TikTok influencers who have built up viral communities to monetize their content and their engagement.
The two founders, who been friends since middle school, are both are the children of immigrants. Hanif’s parents are from Pakistan, while Zhou’s parents are from China.
Both credit the lessons and the work ethic their families provided as key to their success, even with the understanding that their parents are unlikely to be the target users of their product.
“One of their biggest dreams was to start their own businesses… so I’m kind of living out their dreams and doing it for them by doing this myself,” Zhou said.
