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The Indiana Daily Student

IU business student launches mobile app

Senior David Alchalel-Capuano said he was sweaty, tired and overheated when he came up with the idea for a company that would consume the rest of his college career.

It was 7 a.m. on the second day of the second weekend of Coachella 2014.

Alchalel-Capuano sat in his neighbor’s tent in the festival’s campgrounds, exchanging hypothetical business proposals. He tossed out a concept: a combination of Craiglist and Tinder.

Instead of swiping through potential romantic partners, users would swipe through different pictures of items they wanted to buy.

The idea stuck.

During summer break, Alcahel-Capuano shared his idea with his friend Dylan Saffer, a junior at Claremont McKenna 
College.

Saffer told his friend, Sameer Jaffri, a junior at the University of California at Los Angeles, who reached out to his family friend Amir Shah, a University of Maryland 
graduate.

The four men created twazer, a mobile app that allows college students to buy and sell items.

Alcahel-Capuano serves as chief marketing officer, Saffer is twazer’s chief financial officer, Jaffri is chief executive officer and Shah is the chief 
financial officer.

It can be overwhelming to run a business and be a student at the same time, Alchalel-Capuano said. Just this month he’s had to balance five classes for his finance major with launching twazer to the general public.

Still, he and his colleagues said they believe running a business while in college has particular advantages.

When you approach people about an app for college students, they’re much more open if you’re a student yourself and you know what students want, Jaffri said.

“The idea came from personal experience,” Jaffri said. “There wasn’t a marketplace for students that was easy and safe to use.”

Alchalel-Capuano said he wished he had a similar tool when he moved into the Kelley Living-Learning Center in McNutt 
Quadrangle.

Buying dorm supplies new, from a microwave to a mini-fridge, was too expensive, but Alcahel-Capuono didn’t know who to contact to buy anything secondhand.

He said he remembers seeing futons and televisions in the dumpster, thrown away because people didn’t know to whom they could sell their 
belongings.

“Twazer addresses a real problem that students have,” Alchahel-Capuano said.

The app found support quickly.

Investors donated $150,000 to the business before the app’s launch, and students from different schools across the country offered to market twazer as official representatives of the app following this release.

“It was crazy how much people were invested in an app that hadn’t even launched yet,” Shah said.

Anyone with an ”.edu” email address can use twazer, but the advertising so far has mostly been focused on IU and UCLA students.

Shah said the company plans to expand marketing to the Claremont Colleges, University of Arizona and Chapman University in the near future.

At IU, twazer is collaborating with IU Dance Marathon to connect with students.

Twazer will sponsor the IU Dance Marathon rave and sell massages during the event itself through the app.

Before the dance, 10 percent of transactions made through twazer by IUDM members will go to efforts involving event 
fundraising.

“The students here have definitely been responsive,” Alchalel-Capuano said. “Now we’re just working on getting the word out.”

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