Fountainhop
A live map of everything happening on campus, and where your friends are. Built over winter break of my senior year at Stanford.
See whatâs going on. Right now.
Whatâs going on tonight?
Senior year at Stanford, there was always something happening: talks, concerts, parties, free food. But it was scattered across flyers, dorm mailing lists, and Facebook invites, and you usually heard about the best thing the morning after.
So over winter break, Paloma Ochi, Salik Syed, and I built the thing we wanted: one map of everything happening on campus, right now. We named it after fountain hopping, the Stanford tradition of running through every fountain on campus. It went live on January 5, 2010. The iPhone app was in the App Store a few weeks later.
Everything happening at Stanford.
A map and a list. Every event on campus pinned to its building, sorted by time, one tap to see whatâs next. Anyone could post. The iPhone app followed less than a month after the site went up.
fountainhop.com at Stanford: every event pinned to its building, the dayâs list on the right, and âIâm Hereâ on every event.
Then Stanford started using it.
No ad budget, just word of mouth. Within a quarter it became the biggest events platform on campus, and the universityâs own offices asked to put their events on it.
Embedded our live map on the official admit schedule page.
Listed Fountainhop on its homepage and shared its menus.
Posted the NSO schedule and pointed freshmen to it.
Parents used it to find their way around campus.
Ceremonies and events, on the map.
From service clubs to frats to Greek rush calendars.
Admit Weekend, April 2010: the banner on Stanfordâs admitted student site, with our live map embedded below it, and our flyer for the weekend.
âI want some macaroni and cheese. Open Fountainhop, see that itâs offered at Wilbur tonight at 6pm.â
Where your friends are. Right now.
How you spend your time depends on where you are, where your friends are, and whatâs going on around you. After graduation we rebuilt Fountainhop from scratch around all three.
Hop
Check in to an event with one tap. Everyone can see how many people are there.
Friends on the map
Connect Facebook and your friends who use Fountainhop show up where they are, in real time.
Streams
Every event and every place has its own stream. âBill Clinton is an awesome speaker!!! So glad I skipped ECON.â
Augmented reality
Hold up your phone and it points you to the event. Stanford Stadium, 162 meters.
Every campus
Each school gets its own map, its own buildings, and its own login. Post with your .edu address.
Web and iPhone
The site uses browser geolocation so it works just like the app.
Coast to coast.
Built for every campus. We turned Fountainhop into a platform any college could run on: its own map, its own buildings, its own login, and a team of student interns to launch it. Five top universities went live in a month, timed to orientation and activities fairs.
Live at Harvard, Friday, September 10, 2010. Every pin is an event happening that day.
A poster from the Princeton team, and the fall 2010 login page: âfind and discover campus events and nearby friends.â
How it happened.
- Dec 2009
Winter break of senior year. Paloma Ochi, Salik Syed, and I start building a map of everything happening at Stanford.
- Jan 5, 2010
fountainhopping.com goes up. Paloma starts loading every event she can find.
- Jan 29, 2010
The iPhone app goes to Apple for review. It ships as âFountainHop,â because the App Store truncated FountainHopping to âFou...pping.â
- Feb 10, 2010
We buy fountainhop.com. Shorter, same vibe, and it matched the app.
- Feb 15, 2010
The app is live. Downloads show up from Hong Kong, Spain, Sweden, India, and Australia. Version 1.1 adds a GPS âyou are hereâ pin.
- Apr 2010
Admit Weekend runs on Fountainhop. Stanford Dining puts it on their homepage.
- Jun 2010
Graduation. New Student Orientation posts its whole schedule on the site.
- Summer 2010
Salik, Zavain Dar, Stellios Leventis, and I rebuild everything in SSE Labs and incorporate Fountainhop, Inc.
- Aug 22, 2010
Fountainhop 2.0 launches at Berkeley.
- Sep 2010
Harvard on day one of the activities fair, then Cornell, Princeton, and a Stanford relaunch for NSO.
- Oct 1, 2011
Demoed at StartX Campus Demo Day.
The team.
Plus the campus interns who launched it at their schools, and every student group that posted an event.
Press and the archive.
Build it. Release it. See what happens.
Fountainhop was the first thing I built that thousands of people used. Three college seniors, one winter break, no plan beyond making something we wanted. Within a few months, the admissions office, the dining halls, and orientation were running on it.
We wound down the company in 2011, but the lesson stuck: start, ship it, and let people show you what itâs for. Thatâs how every project since has started.