Greg Potter, ’16, and JJ O’Brien, ’16, the creators of Greek Pillar. They designed their web application to simplify the process of fraternity recreiutment. (Courtesy of Ryan Hulvat)
Greg Potter, ’16, and JJ O’Brien, ’16, created an app called GreekPillar a year ago to help reorganize recruitment for their Greek chapter. Today, they have a successful start-up company surrounding the app — GreekPillar, LLC.
GreekPillar is a web application designed to help Greek chapters better organize their recruitment process, as expressed by their motto: “Fraternity recruitment made simple.”
The web app provides features such as shared calendars for fraternity members, which allows for up-to-date information regarding recruitment events. There are also profiles for potential new members where active brothers can leave comments.
“It saves time and better communicates what’s needed, and when, to the chapter members,” O’Brien said.
Both Potter and O’Brien have served as president of Phi Delta Theta, giving them each insight into how the chapter operates, particularly during recruitment season.
“I originally built (the app) for our own chapter,” Potter said.
He wanted to streamline events and meetings and not deal with similar headaches O’Brien had. O’Brien approached Potter after he noticed the potential his idea had as a business.
GreekPillar has various settings and features that allow chapters to use it for their own specific needs. Some organizations use certain features more than others.
“Fraternity recruitment looks different for chapters, and they each need different things,” Potter said.
He said the app is simple — fraternities just need to able to sit down and use it.
O’Brien said they make tweaks based on feedback. There is a feedback button that allows users to make suggestions to improve the app. The pair adapt the system as needed in order to maximize its use. Feedback also helps them see whether some features aren’t needed or others should be added.
Entrepreneurship professor Josh Ehrig has seen the business grow from the beginning.
“(O’Brien) first wanted a feature-rich platform that might have been difficult to use,” he said.
Ehrig believes less is more, especially when first building a product.
GreekPillar does not have to be completely redesigned for each chapter that uses it. Their product has worked well with Lehigh fraternities as well as chapters at other institutions, such as the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Delaware.
“We want chapters to say, ’How were we not using this application before?’” O’Brien said. “Our goal is to make this thing a foundation of Greek life.”
There is no set price point for GreekPillar at this point. According to O’Brien, various price points are being tested, as chapters are like college students and don’t like to pay a lot of money.
“The price needs to be something where we can help as many people as possible,” O’Brien said.
Potter and O’Brien don’t want the price to inhibit chapters from using their product. While making money is the goal of any business, GreekPillar wants to help as many chapters streamline their recruitment process as possible.
“We’re both graduating now and have summer interns to kick this into over-gear,” O’Brien said.
The two will be fully devoted to their startup this summer, as they won’t have to deal with the distractions of daily college life.
Now that Potter is no longer his chapter’s president, he has fewer commitments and can now devote several hours a day to GreekPillar. O’Brien said he was previously a Gryphon and was in other organizations, but stopped much of his involvement to work on growing the business.
“Creating a viable business out of college is pretty impressive,” Ehrig said. “Seeing your fellow classmate create a business motivates and inspires other students to do the same.”
Potter and O’Brien recently competed in LehighHacks — the university’s first Hackathon — with two of their interns and won first place. The team developed an application called Burst, which allows clearer, more personalized communication between leadership and general members. They hope to better develop it in the future and may add some of its uses to GreekPillar.
Ehrig believes Burst could be another project for the duo.
“If they get it going,” he said, “they could potentially build a company around Burst as well.”
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