How We Scooped Up Spoon

One of the main ways our brand ambassadors contribute to SquadUP is by helping us identify the organizations on campus that host events and would benefit from using our platform. So far they’ve connected us with a wide variety of students groups from sports teams to sororities to the Chinese Student Club at Columbia University. But as big as our brand ambassador army is- topping 400 students on almost 100 campuses- we were recently reminded that it’s a small world, after all.

One of our Wisconsin students, Hallie Rosenblum, just put us in touch with a campus group called Spoon University. Spoon is an online food publication, powered by a network of food-oriented student communities on college campuses nationwide. Each Spoon campus chapter delivers recipes, restaurant reviews, food news, events and resources created by students, for students.

Here’s where the small world part comes in: we had just met the Spoon University editor-in-chief Mackenzie Barth a few weeks back via Startup Battles at AlleyNYC. We admit that our first thought when we heard about their awesome idea for a startup wasn’t that campus food blogs would be a great potential partner for SquadUP. But because we have smart, dedicated boots on the ground like Hallie, we were able to form a relationship with a 20+ campus organization that throws events from launch parties to food expos. Their UT- Austin chapter has already set up their first event! They also focus on one of our key demographics, opening up the possibility for some co-marketing on college campuses.

There are a few takeaways from this anecdote. The key one is the importance of having brand ambassadors that are essentially a team of specialists, each one constantly researching their school just by living it everyday. Students don’t even realize how valuable their campus understanding is… or that we’re willing to reward them for sharing it with us. Are you familiar with the social scene on your campus? Have connections to one or more campus organization? Then you’re exactly who we need to continue to grow our college presence across the country!