Rice startups talk tech challenges, time concerns

By Noa Berz     3/25/25 10:13pm

It seems like everyone at Rice is creating an app these days. Some might remember Bonfire and Diagnos, or perhaps the more recent Nudge, but with many of these services now off the app store, one has to ask — Is Rice really an ideal environment for student-led startups? 

Lucy Han, co-president of RiceApps, said app and website ideas are often abandoned soon after the prototype phase due to founders’ busy schedules. Her recent project Bunkmate, launched Feb. 23, is an exception to that rule, she said.

“It is a little bit tough when it comes to Rice, because everyone’s just on the grind mindset,” said Han, a McMurtry College junior. “They keep on moving, but they don’t actually deploy the projects, which obviously doesn’t make as much of an impact.” 

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Han said the mission of RiceApps is to create software for social good, which means partnering with Houston organizations as well as creating services for Rice students. Despite the difficulties Rice presents, she said she’s been satisfied with how Bunkmate, an off-campus housing search site, has fared. 

“We already have over 500 users a day [and] 50-plus listings despite it being recently deployed, so I’m super proud of it,” Han said. 

Bunkmate requires users to sign in with their Rice email address and displays the full name, email address and phone number of each user, which Nomin Ganzorig, a junior at Sid Richardson College, said she finds the most useful. 

“On other platforms, like GroupMe or Facebook, people post with their personal social media accounts, so you can’t really see their full name, email or phone number directly,” Ganzorig said. “All the necessary information will be there [on Bunkmate], and that’s pretty convenient.”

Owldine, a centralized platform for servery menus and other on-campus dining information, is another website recently launched by students Danny Kardhashi and Tate Bregman. It was released at the beginning of this semester in response to the many changes in dining schedules. Bregman said the idea originated as a website for rating on-campus food options during the fall semester. 

“Being a freshman, I would often call Danny and be like, ‘Where should I go for dinner?’” said Bregman, a Duncan College freshman. “Once the schedule got changed, it felt like the perfect time to get started and make something.” 

As they are both studying computer science, Bregman said he and Kardhashi were able to realize their idea quickly despite their busy schedules. 

“We sat down in the O’Connor basement at the whiteboard, and we drew out some mock-ups of what we wanted the website to look like,” Bregman said. “It was pretty easy to whip up the front end, but [we] didn’t have that much experience … connecting the back end, posting and scraping the data from the existing Rice websites.” 

Kardhashi said he was able to apply the skills he learned in his classes to Owldine. 

“I was taking a database SQL [programming language] management class … at the same time as I was building it, and that’s the database we ended up using,” said Kardhashi, a Martel College sophomore. “That was pretty helpful for me.” 

Nudge is a social media app that promotes in-person social interactions. Co-founder Ben Rubin studies computer science as well, but said he prioritizes Nudge over his classes. He said he thinks the Rice student environment is ideal for growing projects like Nudge. 

“We feel very lucky to be on Rice campus because it’s a very small but also very interconnected and tightly woven campus,” said Rubin, a McMurtry College sophomore. “People have [made] friends that they wouldn’t typically be with … which we’re hoping would allow our app to grow.” 

Rubin said they received funding and support from the Lilie Lab’s Launchpad program, which provides financial resources and mentorship to students looking to realize venture ideas. 

“The Lilie Launchpad program has been helpful in terms of mentorship and helping us to establish the timeline goals for ourselves,” Rubin said. “They’ve worked with other Rice-led startups, so they have experience with that, which is very helpful.”

Despite Lilie funding, Nudge co-founder Yining Zhang said he and Rubin still have to spend some of their own money on server costs. 

“They provided some funding, which is not a lot, but enough to get a momentum going,” said Zhang, a McMurtry College sophomore.

Han said RiceApps receives funding from the Student Activities/President’s Programming fund as well as some from the computer science department. Still, she said they are often stretched thin financially since their projects do not bring in any revenue. 

“We're not building these products to get money ourselves, or for clout — it's to give it to these huge nonprofits who need the help,” Han said.

“I'm currently paying [for] Bunkmate out of pocket,” Han continued. “It’s bad stuff.” 

Kardhashi said he and Bregman did not receive any funding for their passion project, Owldine. He said one of the main challenges of creating the website was launching it before students became familiar with the new dining schedules.  

“We wanted to get it out as fast as possible because it would be the most useful as soon as possible,” Kardhashi said. “If we pushed it out a few months later, people are already going to know the schedule.” 

Kardhashi also said he and Bregman implemented suggestions from users they talked to in person or over Instagram, such as on-campus food vendors that accept Tetra. 

“When I posted it on my [Instagram] story, I remember a lot of people swiping up and being like, ‘Dude, this is so great,’” Kardhashi said. “It’s very fulfilling to see people actually get behind something you built.” 

Aaron Huang, a Duncan College freshman, said Owldine is the most useful app he has seen come from Rice students. He said he appreciated seeing all of the Rice dining information in one place, including vendors like Rice Coffeehouse and Dandelion Cafe.

“If you looked at the Rice [dining] website … it was kind of difficult to interpret what was open,” Huang said. “When you opened up Owldine, it was super quick. You could see which serveries were open, if your favorite dishes were out.” 

Zhang said Nudge’s Feb. 24 launch exceeded his expectations. Originally released to accommodate 50 users, the app went through several iterations and implemented user feedback before he and Rubin opened it up to all of Rice. 

“The product was a lot better than what we set it out to be,” Zhang said. “Now we're in the marketing stage, pushing it out to the whole school, and that's challenging.”

Rubin said seeing both his friends and students he doesn’t know use Nudge has been rewarding, and that positive feedback has encouraged him and Zhang to keep working on it. 

“It feels really rewarding when I talk to users, especially people that I didn't ask to get the app,” Rubin said. “Seeing that people actually understand what we intended when we built the app just from using it themselves … is very rewarding and affirming.” 

Despite the positive feedback RiceApps has gotten for their projects, such as Bunkmate and Carpool, Han said the club has also gained a bad reputation for their exclusive application process. Although she thinks about the negative feedback frequently, she said the claims are largely unsubstantiated. 

“Aside from the fact that it's not true, it also paints us in a light that we don't build applications for students and do social good, which is basically the point of RiceApps,” Han said. “It's [saying we are] exclusive and seem overly prestigious, and I promise that's not the case.”

Perhaps for many Rice students, creating projects like these is not feasible considering their coursework and other extracurricular activities, but Han said there’s something for everyone. 

“Entrepreneurship comes in different forms … it doesn't mean quit your job and start a startup,” Han said. “It could also just be like, pursue a project on the side, or start a small business, stuff like that.”

Kardhashi and Bregman both said they hope to continue with entrepreneurship after they graduate, and they see Owldine as a good first step in that direction. 

“[Owldine] is a good little stepping stone, and it's a good little experience or story to have to reference when talking to people about entrepreneurship things,” Kardhashi said. 

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