GoodCrush.com Blog

The first of our user-submitted photos are starting to trickle in..  Check this one out from RONAK at UPenn!

Ronak is awesome.  In his free time, he enjoys para-sailing, bodybuilding, and baking.

Well, actually, I just made that up..  But - if you’re sending us photos too, feel free to include some additional information about yourself that we can post up here.

Keep the pictures coming - we’re excited to see what the rest of you guys come up with!

A recent tradition that has been going on here at the office is Pizza Wednesday.  During Pizza Wednesday, members from all 14 of the startups who work here get together and discuss a wide range of topics related to our companies.  Topics have included partnerships, the tools we use, how we stay organized, and many more.  The discussions are a lot of fun and extremely informative - we all have different backgrounds, so each us comes with a unique combination of questions we would like answered and answers we are happy to contribute.

The worst part about Pizza Wednesday?  The pizza.

The pizza sort of sucked last week, so this week’s discussion had a “Salad Wednesday” theme instead. 

I’ve suggested a “Protein Bar Wednesday”, but don’t think anybody else is interested :(

The NYC entrepreneurial community is vibrant and fun. Here is a quick pic I snapped of a dinner get-together after a popular monthly event called Hackers and Founders (@hackersfounders) from the @ScoopST team. Up front are Geoff (@topguest - @just GLew) and Carter (@carterac - @art_sy). Good people + good ideas + good food = good combination.

We went through our first batch of shirts rather quickly, so we decided to order some more - this time in a much sexier blue than the original.  We are so fashionable.

Want one?  Shoot us an email and we’ll send you one, but only if you promise to send us back a picture of you wearing it (preferably while doing something ridiculous).

Check us out in the New York Times!

RandormDorm is the first college-only random video chat service.  We originally planned for this to be feature directly on GoodCrush.com, but felt that making it its own unique site would help us reach out to more students at more schools.

You may have come across other chat sites on the web before, but what makes Random Dorm so much better is that you can now limit your chat experience to your peers at schools across the country.  No more internet perverts and old people!

We’re really excited to be chatting with you guys in the weeks and months ahead, and are currently busting our butts to roll out new features.  We’ll keep you posted on what’s new.

Click here to visit RandomDorm right now!

Hey friends

Just wanted to reminder you to become a fan of GoodCrush on Facebook!  Becoming a fan is the best way to stay informed of all of our new features and special offers on the way.  It also makes us feel special and popular!

We’ve been way busy here working on a top-secret project that is so unbelievably awesome that your mind is going to melt and then explode when you hear about it.  (in that order)

Stay tuned…

Last week, Jon at Dogpatch needed some photographs taken around the office for an internal presentation of theirs.  Being that i’m the only one with a camera, I volunteered to snap these for them.  

As we’ve mentioned before, some of the coolest and most innovative new start ups are housed here at Dogpatch, so impress your friends by getting to know them here first before the rest of the world does.

This is Joe from Jibe, a new job-search platform that understands jobs these days have less to do with how impressive your resume is, and more to do with the people you know.  Because of this, Jibe makes use of your Facebook and LinkedIn connections to let you know which of your friends are in the best position to give you a nudge in the right direction.

Jibe recently changed their name from ‘Local Bacon’, so when I first started working here, I had thought for the longest time that their site had something to do with livestock and/or farming.    

Here are Dave and Alexis from Postling.  Postling is an awesome solution for businesses with a billion different blogs and social networking accounts to juggle, by allowing them to manage any and all of them from the same hub.  

The guys at Postling are also some of the masterminds behind Etsy, which lets you buy and sell paper cranes and other hand-made stuff online.

Dave and Alexis get custom-made ice cream delivered directly to the office each month, and seem generally excited by all food products.

This is also Dave.  If you call anyone at the office “Dave,” chances are 80% that you’re probably right.

Dave is the brain behind Socialcord, which powers SMS based content subscriptions for companies looking to reach their user-base via text message.

Dave is a popular dude, and has more visitors cycling in and out of the office for him than anyone.

This is Dave from Scoop St.  

Just kidding, this is actually Justin, but Scoop St does also have a Dave.

We touched on Scoop St last month, back when we collaborated with them for the raffle giveaway at our launch party.  Scoop St allows you to discover some of the best that New York has to offer at ridiculously cheap discounts.  Seriously, really cheap.

Anyway, that’s all for now.  There are plenty of other great start-ups here like Assured Labor, SEC Watch, and Zozi, but I took these photos on the day of a snow storm, so hardly anyone showed up to work.  We’ll cover the rest of them sometime in the near future.

Apparently some of our Princeton users made a full-length movie about GoodCrush - in particular, the most crush on person in the country: the CrushMaster, Alex Hwang. Check it out and enjoy!

Part 2 of an ongoing series - meet the crew behind GoodCrush!  Today we have Matt Weiler, who runs our online marketing and mobile campaign

Who are you?

Matt Weiler aka GoodCrush Jack of All Trades.

What’s your favorite part of coming to work?

The working environment at Dogpatch Labs is incredibly unique.  Having the opportunity to work closely with young bright entrepreneurs inspires creative thinking and collaboration.  Plus, our awesome location near Union Square is an added bonus.

Favorite part of the site?

Currently under development.  Stay tuned!

Lets say your biggest crush ends up being a match. Do you make the first move?

Absolutely.  The risk of rejection has been eliminated!

What do you do outside the office?

I’m an avid baseball fan and spend most of the year following the New York Mets.  I also play piano and enjoy swimming.

What ‘Jersey Shore’ cast member would you most liken yourself to?

The Situation.  People often tell me that my abs resemble his.

As you may or may not know, GoodCrush first began as a pet project of Josh while as a student at Princeton in 2007.  Although the old GoodCrush didn’t have all of the fancy bells and whistles that it does today, there was a charm and simplicity to it that definitely lent to its huge success at Princeton.  For example, here’s a look at the old CrushFinder:

Pretty sweet and to the point.  What you see above is also the old version of our logo.

What’s even better is that there were six “commercials” made that coincided with the Princeton launch.  Here’s one of Josh as a young tike, from way back in 2009.

Not sure what happened at the end there..

A bunch of these videos also took the form of “crush files” - which were meant to look like students spilling their guts about crushes they haven’t quite approached.  For a couple of college kids, the acting isn’t half bad.

If you click the video above, you can check the rest out on youtube.

GoodCrush has been fortunate to nab an exclusive interview with Stephen Pollard, who has taken the time out of his busy lady-killing schedule to answer a few questions for us.

Who are you?

My name is Stephen Pollard but many people call me spollard, peter, or spollardarity.

Why are you such a stud?

There are too many reasons to list here but I’d say the biggest reason is my muscles. What can I say? Chicks dig rock-solid abs and massive shoulders. The bulging biceps round out the studly image.

What is your favorite physical feature? (about yourself)

I’ve heard an awful lot about my hair recently and I have finally given in that this is my favorite feature. I used to think that my muscles were my favorite feature but now I’ve realized that the muscles only make up half the man. The angsty hair is the final and most important piece.

What percentage of missed connections at Princeton, would you say, are about you?

I’ve heard estimates as high at 90.3 % but the numbers seem rather skewed. I’d say 99.4% is more accurate.

What are your thoughts about Alexander Hwang, who has recently surpassed you as the #1 most-crushed?

He is the reigning crushmaster and I owe him my allegiance. His suave yet powerful presence has swept many women off their feet. Few have ever recovered. He received more than 4 times the crushes I received and he is at least 4 times the man. I can only hope to learn the mysterious ways of my crushmaster so that one day I might be half the man he is today.

Any words of wisdom you can share for guys out there looking to become as studly as you are?

Fellow men, Watch and Learn. Alex Hwang is The Man on campus so whenever he is with you, pay attention. Perhaps a little of his manliness will rub off. I have studied under him for a year and a half now and I know that I am crushable only because of Alex Hwang. He is my inspiration and without him I would be utterly uncrushable.

A user at Stanford submitted this to us a few weeks back.   I’m not sure what to say about this.. so I’ll just go ahead and post the video without commenting on it.  I’ll leave it up to you guys to chime in on our Comments section below.

Here’s a new feature we’ll be running from time to time: get to know our campus representatives at schools across the country!  Today we have Joe Benson from Murray State.  That’s in Kentucky, btw.

Who are you?

I am Joe Benson

How did you get involved with GoodCrush?

Some say that it was my destiny; that I am fulfilling the ancient prophecy which reads “The hairy one will find Goodcrush via tweet from a friend” then later it reads “seeing his intentions were pure, Weinstein sent the hairy one back to his land with Goodcrush in hand” That is basically how it happened.

What’s your favorite part of the site?

I love reading the missed connections but I will admit, nothing compares to receiving word that someone has a crush on you.

How often do you wear the GoodCrush cupid costume?

In public, about once every two or three weeks. In private, every night.

What do you do in your free time away from connecting student bodies?

I love photography and spend a large chunk of my time shooting assignments for class but in the rare case that I get free time, I hike and shoot nature.

You recently changed your facebook profile picture to Jack Black for doppelganger week. What do you two share in common?

Most people look at the two of us and notice that we are both gorgeous, sensitive, hilarious, humble individuals; but I think the thing that sets us both apart is that we don’t let our fame and fortune go to our head.

So we’ve all decided to play hooky today and not come in to the office.

This, of course, is due to the blizzard-hurricane, or “blizzicane,” currently rocking New York.

The snow hates us.  If you remember back when we launched two weeks ago, another blizzard prevented us from mailing supplies and spreading the word at east-coast schools like George Washington and George Mason.

The snow must also hate anything named “George”.

Check out these awesome duds that our web host, Heroku, just sent us!  We received a care package from them today full of t-shirts, stickers, gift cards, and all sorts of cool schwag.

Their package was a bit of a thank you for the Heroku network we just installed on GoodCrush, to help them download a dose of love off their servers (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Being a small office, they’ve yet to post any missed connections - though I’d be curious to see what an office-missed-connection would look like.
“I saw you at the water cooler.. on my way to the copy machine”, maybe.