Aryn Sanderson
arynsanderson.md@gmail.com
“Whose turn was it to buy toilet paper this month? Did you already pay me for rent? And why did you leave a sink full of dirty dishes for me to wash … again? You owe me!”
Living with other people can be stressful, but a team of four Cal Poly entrepreneurs is looking to make unnecessary roommate conflict a thing of the past. Enter HomeSlice, a smart phone application that will help users divide rent, utilities and IOU’s, and aid communication about household matters.
Co-founders Shea Brucker, Patrick Montejano, Jeremy Moyers and Caine Fair hope the app will help roommates organize finances and household matters in a stress-free way.
The idea originally came to Moyers, computer science engineering senior, in the summer of 2012.
“I had just moved into a new house with a different group of new roommates, and I wanted a way to communicate and keep the house less messy,” Moyers said. “So originally, I was just going to make it for my house, just to use, and I kept the idea going from there.”
Moyers pitched it to a class full of entrepreneurs in Business 464, a senior project class focusing on collaborating between engineering and entrepreneurship, and Brucker and Montejano jumped on the project.
“After the pitch was over, I was just gung-ho on meeting with him (Moyers) and solidifying our relationship,” said Brucker, a business administration senior. “I walked out of there, saying ‘This is going to be a huge.’ Patrick (Montejano) and I left knowing we could turn this into a business.”
The app targets college-aged housemates who are looking for a “non-confrontational” means of communication and conflict resolution, he said.
“If a certain person needs to be paid by a certain time, there will be a notification so people know to take care of it,” Brucker said. “The innovative part of that is it’s giving you a feed of what’s going on, not just communication-wise, but what’s going on in the house, like what’s in supply, what’s out of supply. It keeps people accountable.”
In January, Brucker and Montejano reached out to Fair, a business administration senior, to design the visual aspects of the app.
“From there, we’ve all been together,” said Fair, who uses his skills as a graphic communication minor. “We’re all really positive and encouraging of each other. The whole business side is passionate about making this become a reality, Jeremy (Moyers) is sitting behind his computer plugging away code, and we’re all just working together to make this hit the market.”
Their collaborative effort has pushed HomeSlice from concept to creation — the app is currently moving into the beta stage in the next week or two. There will be ten households of beta testers, with around four to five roommates in each house.
“During the summer, we should be able to get a lot done on the development side and branding,” said Montejano, a business administration senior. “So I think by the end of the summer we should have a solid app.”
At the latest, HomeSlice should hit the app store by fall, he said. Still, the team is looking for a back-end developer to quicken the process.
HomeSlice will be at the Spectacle showcase on May 14 in Chumash Auditorium.