Last Spring, Jonathan Katz had an idea for an app.
He envisioned an app that would allow students to post and complete simple jobs — an app he began designing with his roommate, Alex Schepps, soon after.
One year later, the two men and two other students, Ben Horowitz and Ben Devore, are looking to raise $15,000 to launch Qwerk at UF this March. Katz, 21, said the app’s name is a combination of “quick” and “work.”
Students can post jobs to the free app for other students to pick up. The job could be as small as getting a cup of coffee.
Students write how much they are willing to pay for delivery and also pay the cost of the item, said Horowitz, a Washington University in St. Louis entrepreneurship and marketing junior.
Horowitz is helping with the app’s launch.
When students want to take a job, they click a button that reads “put me to work.”
“If you’re on your way to the coffee shop, you can just scroll through,” the 21-year-old said. “Our big thing is, why not get paid for something you’re already doing?”
To use the app, students must sign up with a UF email, said Devore, a computer science and political science sophomore at George Washington University.
After a job is completed, both students have to say it was on the app before money is transferred by credit.
Students who take a job can also take pictures of receipts if the price of an item was more than expected, the 19-year-old said.
The app cost about $5,000 to build over the last nine months, said Schepps, a UF accounting junior. They are still programming the app, but hope to make it available by March.
The group is trying to raise the money to cover marketing expenses for the app, the 21-year-old said.
So far they have raised about $1,500, with most of that coming from family and friends.
Currently the four are the only undergraduates at UF’s Innovation Hub, Katz said. The Hub gives them an office space and mentors as they try to find investors in their app.
UF’s size and location makes it the perfect place to launch the app, Horowitz said.
In the future, they hope to expand the app to other Florida universities.
“It really is one of the best universities to do it,” he said.
Katz said he thinks students will use the app. Their video about the app has had more than 20,000 views.
“We want it to be used as a common phrase – ‘Why don’t you just Qwerk it?’” he said.
Contact Caitlin Ostroff at costroff@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @ceostroff.
