The college experience no longer has to be microwaved ramen with a plastic aftertaste because the dining hall closed early, nor settling for appetizers at restaurants while friends indulge in full-course meals because their wallet felt a few bills too light. It doesn’t have to be about choosing the “custom amount” tipping option when prompted.
These outdated college norms are being challenged by the up-and-coming Revello app, a platform that monitors and stores all local deals and discounts for dining, shopping and entertainment for users. Behind this innovation are two Texas A&M students who created the plan in their dorm room at 2 a.m., industrial engineering junior Yuval Marom and computer science junior Jeff Slobodkin.
Marom and Slobodkin both credit their distinct upbringings for influencing their passion for their craft, with Marom crediting his experience at the European Innovation Academy, a program in Portugal, that honed his skills in entrepreneurship. Slobodkin commends his father, who also works in software and has acted as his inspiration.
“He kind of got me hooked a little bit in middle school where I built my first app in like sixth or seventh grade,” Slobodkin said. “ … And from there, I kind of carried that into high school.”
Despite their contrasting backgrounds, Marom and Slobodkin both allude to their time together as freshman-year roommates as a major stepping stone to where they are today.
“We would just be like up until two, three in the morning sometimes talking about this idea of wanting to do things that aren’t conformed to society,” Marom said.
It was during these late-night brainstorming sessions that the idea for Revello sprung up. Marom credits his own experiences with financial shortage as his inspiration for the app.
“Some of my best memories are having a drink with friends or going out,” Marom said. “Sometimes, the thing that’s prevented me from doing that is money.”
Once the inspiration was set, a Reddit community was the key catalyst that fueled Revello’s birth. Students had originally, and inefficiently, shared local deals over Reddit and then communicated to update those deals on a laggy, hard-to-read and unorganized spreadsheet. Slobodkin saw this and knew just the solution.
“It’s like, why don’t we just find one consolidated place for [the deals], or create one for all these people to find them?” Slobodkin said.
But an idea is just half of the journey. Once the plan was in development, Marom and Slobodkin began encountering roadblocks. Slobodkin said onboarding businesses was a huge challenge, and despite Revello being an app programmed on a computer, it had taken much more manual labor than expected.
“We went door to door, knocked them down and just asked every manager for deals and their information for each of the deals,” Slobodkin said.
Marom added that even when they had compiled their deals, another challenge was convincing people to actually use their service. They hadn’t originally developed Revello as an app — their prototype model was actually a website named collegetowndeals.com, and it had struggled as potential customers believed it to be a scam.
“[The website] forced you to sign in, and so they thought that we were trying to steal their information when they signed up,” Marom said.
However, Marom and Slobodkin stuck it out, and sure enough, the website took off once it gained momentum. Users were sharing it through social media and group chats and even saving it as a shortcut on their phones — the demand for a streamlined compilation of the latest deals was growing.
Having seen the increasing traffic on the website, Marom and Slobodkin decided to slap on a logo and adopt the name “Revello” — inspired by the phrase “Hello Reveille” to reflect Aggie pride. With some programming to wrap it all together, collegetowndeals.com became the Revello app.
“We’ve hit like a new user milestone of 2,000 users just recently,” Marom said. “ … And we also signed up Gumby’s as our first paying customer.”
With new deals continuously added, an increasing user base and new signed businesses, Revello is expanding with no intention to slow down. In light of Revello’s success, Marom and Slobodkin have future ambitions beyond their app. Slobodkin plans to accept his offer to work for JP Morgan as a software engineer after he graduates in December. Marom is going toward an entrepreneurial path, hoping to work on his own tech startup.
“A lot of people, I think, tend to go into some kind of job offer,” Marom said. “ … My plan is to take at least a year or two to just really dive deep into some kind of idea that I’m really passionate about and try to find my own company.”
Slobodkin further reinforced his vision with a sense of purpose toward his work.
“Value comes from building something for people as a service, even if it doesn’t make you a bunch of money,” Slobodkin said. “ … There’s pride in that that you can look back at and be proud of. That’s important to me.”
