Logging On and Finding Love

Two Harvard students are looking to assist those undergraduates that find themselves too busy—or too shy—to bridge the gap between attraction and connection.

Daniel “Zac” Tanjeloff ’08 and David M. Galkowski ’08, and their business plan for Check My Radar, a new take on social networking Web sites, walked away with the grand prize in a competition held this semester by the newly-formed Harvard College Entrepreneurship Forum (HCEF).

HCEF will link the winners of their 2007 Startup Plan Competition and Summer Fellowship Program to an early-stage investor who will provide up to $10,000 to cover the team’s expenses while they develop their business.

Tanjeloff and Galkowski, who were honored for their win in a ceremony held last week, first met through HCEF’s online community and soon started work on the business plan they submitted in February.

The $10,000 idea, Check My Radar, seeks to connect lovelorn college students with the newly-formed acquaintances that they may want to turn into something more.

ON YOUR RADAR

Check My Radar’s say that their social networking site provides a different service than similar sites such as Facebook and MySpace by focusing the networking activities of its users on romance—a synergistic approach Tanjeloff and Galkowski say will set it apart from conventional dating Web sites.

“Dating sites are trying to find love where you have not looked,” says Tanjeloff, but Check My Radar will only facilitate relationships between people that have already met. “This site will mirror the way that people normally interact.”

Galkowski adds that the site is built upon the underlying assumption that in college, relationships are built around two pillars—“who you like and who your friends like.”

After registering with Check My Radar, users build personal profiles and join a network—features common to other social networking Web sites. The innovation comes, the founders say, in the form of “radar” and a list of “confidants.”

The radar displays possible romantic interests the user has tagged on the Web site, the creators explain. Friends given special access by users become confidants—people able to peruse that user’s radar list and leave comments and suggestions meant to help chart the course of love.

At last week’s award ceremony, Galkowski demonstrated what he projects to be the standard operating procedure of a Check My Radar user.

“I am going to look for guys,” Galkowski said to a crowded Ticknor Lounge as he browsed through the Web site. “Here is my friend James, he is looking pretty hot. I think I am going to add him to my radar...but don’t get any ideas; my girlfriend is right there,” he jokingly warned.

PLAN OF ATTACK

Check My Radar users added to radar lists are informed of their new admirers through e-mail, but the pursuer’s name remains confidential. When two users find themselves on each others’ radars, both are told of the attraction. But the Web site can only take students so far. “It is up to you how to pursue,” says Tanjeloff.

Check My Radar also includes a statistics page telling each profile owner how many views their page has gotten—both overall and from individual radar-tagged individuals.

As a beta project, the current version on the Web is not complete, but it does allow Tanjeloff and Galkowski to receive feedback and ideas for improvement.

Tanjeloff says Check My Radar is set to launch at three sites in upcoming weeks—Harvard, Wilkes University in Pennsylvania, and the University of Central Florida.

“We have a good connection to those schools and we know a lot of people that go there,” says Tanjeloff.

He says the Web site hopes to gradually expand to new campuses, mirroring Facebook’s early growth after its 2004 launch.

THE COMPETITION

Submissions to HCEF’s competition were scrutinized by three judges, who went on to issue six commendations and the grand prize at last week’s ceremony.

One judge, Beardsley Ruml ’63, says he became involved with the competition because he believes that entries into the business world at the undergraduate level go a long way toward setting up students for future success.

“If you start a small business that you can handle as a student, then when you get out, you know you can do it,” he says.

Ruml was impressed by the winners’ development strategy, particularly their willingness to put their unfinished site on the Web and accept feedback from early users.

“I think that their approach of telling everyone is exactly the right way to do it,” says Ruml. “The idea of keeping it a secret is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Another judge, Christopher A. Thorpe ’98, launched a start-up business as an undergraduate and has since returned to Harvard as a teaching fellow. Thorpe says that Check My Radar’s target market and stage in development helped their chances.

“The space they are entering is large, and they are not too far along,” he says, adding that the $10,000 investment prize should prove extremely valuable to the site’s development.

Other teams were “very impressive, but they are so far along that they need much more investment than what we would be able to provide them,” Thorpe says.

He says that the winners will be set up with invaluable contacts in the start-up investment world in addition to the $10,000 investment.

“The point of the prize is not just cash money, but awarding assistance to get to the next level.”