RushLink, an app founded in 2023 by Kinesiology junior Zachary Joelson and Business and Engineering junior Gavin Schwartz aims to give students a space to voice and view others’ opinions about Fraternity & Sorority Life on campus.
Joelson said he and Schwartz came up with the idea for the app as freshmen after going through fraternity recruitment and noticing disorganization in the process.
“It was designed to streamline the recruitment process for student clubs,” Joelson said. “We started by testing it with just social fraternities at University of Michigan. So the the main idea was that you could download this app, make a personal profile with your hometown, your major, things that you would normally come up in conversation when you’re rushing a fraternity, but you’d be able to digitally put yourself in the rush book from this app across all the frats on campus.”
Following their initial launch, Schwartz and Joelson realized the app was only useful for the two-week period in which recruitment occurs. After rush ended, there was a six-month period where there was no use for the app at all. Observing this trend, Schwartz said he and Joelson decided to shift their business model.
“So there was just this six-month dead period in between,” Schwartz said. “We were looking and figuring out ‘How can we create a stickier product where people come back every single day?’”
Joelson said they gathered feedback from peers before their August relaunch to ensure they captured what students wanted in an app.
“We tested (the original app) out, got a lot of good feedback, learned a lot from it and then started building (the new version) based on what people really wanted us to build,” Joelson said.
The app now includes multiple other universities, including Michigan State University and Purdue University. Since relaunching the app, Schwartz and Joelson said they have seen high retention rates, including among their friends who are not involved in Fraternity & Sorority Life.
