Remembering how awful the community platforms were when I was in college, I was really excited for the Uniyo team when I got to see their product for the first time. It's awesome to see platforms like Uniyo and http://islands.im/ tackle the college community space, which is ripe for innovation since Facebook took over it back in my college days. I'm a big fan of platforms that use gamification/reputation as a way to encourage their ideal community culture rather than just fueling ego and competition. The donut system speaks to the vibe they're trying to create, which seems lighthearted and focused on helping each other. Donuts are a sort of "thank you" to someone that has helped you. When you see someone with a lot of donuts, you don't think "wow they're really influential" - you think "wow, they're really helpful". The slack interface is becoming more common in community spaces, but seems to be especially fitting for a college network which has a range of different needs and topics. History has shown that the social platforms that can capture the college market can become the social platforms that capture all markets. Of course, getting even one college to be fully bought in to a platform is extremely difficult. Hope the Uniyo team can figure it out!

Thanks @DavidSpinks for hunting us! We are super happy to be on PH today! Hi guys! We're the co-founders of Uniyo, hoping to catch some quality feedback on what we're doing. We just came out of the Refiners Fleet 2, an accelerator program based in San Francisco. We're on a mission to reinvent college campuses by creating meaningful student communities. A couple of years ago, we launched Uniyu which was a note-sharing app for students. It did well in terms of sign up in universities in the Montreal region but it wasn't that great in terms of retention. Students are downloading notes only before the midterms and finals exams... So, we spent more than a year reinventing what could be the best app to allow students to share all kinds of information: ask questions, get answer, find campus tips, and more. Uniyo is the front page of your campus. It's a powerful messaging app to reach the entire campus and to know instantly what's going on. You can share anything that matters with the rest of your campus. We launched a first pilot in HEC Montreal during the last 3 weeks of the semester. 20% of the campus signed up and that was a solid proof of our concept. We also received tons of feedback to build Uniyo. What's the difference with Slack? Slack is for smaller teams (20 coworkers, maybe 200 max) but you can't chat with 25k students in your school. Uniyo is built for large numbers through a smart newsfeed system and strong gamification. What's the difference with WhatsApp or GroupMe? Just like Slack, try to direct chat with your entire campus and you'll feel the pain. What's the difference with Facebook groups? You never know which Facebook groups to join on campus and if you join all of them, it'll simply ruin your newsfeed. Uniyo works more like a Twitter feed where you organize your information following hashtags that are relevant to you. We are still a boostrapped team and we still have a lot to learn from your feedback. We're looking forward to hearing from you all! Ask us anything! 🍩 Team Uniyo 🍩

David Spinks

CMX

Hunter