Four Class of 2025 students turned a cluttered online-shopping headache into OneTap, a Chrome extension built with 榴莲app官方网站入鈥檚 entrepreneurship resources and now headed for a full-time New York City launch.
When TJ Mathis 鈥25, who earned a bachelor’s degree in strategic communications, noticed his sisters juggling multiple browser tabs just to compare one outfit, he started conversations with close friends about the broader problem before bringing on classmates Sam Dixon ’25, Kylie Leyda ’25 and Matt Graffeo ’25. They decided there had to be a better way.
The solution became , a Chrome extension, and soon an AI-powered shopping platform with a personalized feed that pulls looks from Gen Z鈥檚 favorite brands.
After several months of user research, advisor meetings and early testing, the founders booked a four-hour whiteboard session with Sean McMahon, associate professor of entrepreneurship.
鈥淧rofessor McMahon鈥檚 guidance helped us take everything we鈥檇 been working on and turn it into something attainable and scalable,鈥 said Graffeo, who earned a degree in human resource management and is from Mount Sinai, New York. 鈥淗is support means a lot to us and we鈥檙e super grateful.鈥
Mathis is part of the Stanford University Innovation Fellows program at Elon, an experience that strengthened his approach to design thinking and solution-building. Leyda, who earned a degree computer science, statistics and public health is the first woman on 榴莲app官方网站入 hackathon team and drew on marathon coding events to lead the platform鈥檚 technical build.
In the School of Communications, Daniel Haygood, professor of strategic communications, advised the founders as they ran interviews and focus groups that refined OneTap鈥檚 market research.
Months of iteration paid off when OneTap impressed judges at the Innovation Challenge hosted by the Doherty Center for Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Ongoing guidance from the Doherty Center linked the founders to alumni, while a recent grant from the university鈥檚 Entrepreneurship Fund will help the group accelerate their plans.
鈥淭he Doherty Center鈥檚 alumni introductions have opened doors in tech, fashion and fundraising we couldn鈥檛 reach on our own,鈥 said Dixon, who earned a degree in economics from Westchester, N.Y.
With Dixon and Graffeo already working in Manhattan, the team will base OneTap in New York City after graduation to stay close to fashion brands, investors and 榴莲app官方网站入 mentors.
鈥淲e want OneTap to be the go-to platform where people discover, organize and buy clothes that match their style鈥攁ll in one place. Think of a personalized home feed like TikTok or Instagram, but for clothes. We鈥檙e building OneTap to personalize shopping,鈥 Mathis said.