The Idea Village is a New Orleans-based entrepreneurial support organization that runs two accelerator programs: VILLAGEx and ENERGYx. Seventeen ventures are currently going through the programs, which will culminate at a demo day in April.
This new interview series, Startup Spotlight, is designed to highlight each of the participating ventures. First up is Oh Shoot, a service-based scheduling platform that enables the gig economy on college campuses.
Describe your company in two sentences or less.
You can think of Oh Shoot as a TaskRabbit tailored for college campuses. Students who are in need of high quality, convenient, and guaranteed services can book and pay for trained students who are looking for flexible ways to make supplemental incomes on campus.
How did you come up with the idea behind your company?
About 2 years ago, we started fixing phones out of my dorm room with my roommate Josh to make an extra buck. After a couple weeks, we realized there was a lot of demand for an on-campus iPhone repair service as our dorm room business became more popular. In fact, while looking around at our peers, we realized that there was a strong demand for more services than just iPhon repairs on campus.
Why is your solution the best one for your customers?
Customers can book same-day tutoring appointments with an Oh Shoot tutor to earn an A in a class. On the other side of the platform, students like our first ever contractor Michael, can work to pay his student debt. Michael had to take a significant loan out to attend Tulane, and now he is earning over $1000 a month fixing phones to pay down his debt, has full control of his work schedule, and all this income is earned right on campus.
And why are you the team to make this happen?
Philip Brossy (Co-Founder) is a hustler who has a ‘get it done’ attitude. Philip has had entrepreneurial ventures since middle school, when he was selling glow necklaces and bottled water after acquiring the goods at wholesale prices. In high school, Philip had a business where he was selling hundreds of textbooks a week at Episcopal High School, a rigorous and highly-ranked boarding school. Furthermore, Philip was taught how to invest by ripping apart 10k’s and 10q’s of publicly traded companies since freshman year of high school, having a retired hedge fund analyst as a weekly mentor. Philip is proficient in financial analysis, company operations, marketing, and getting anything done.
Josh Weiner (Co-Founder) is a self-trained Graphic Designer and formally educated software engineer. He began his career early, learning to utilize the Adobe Suite products in middle school. In high school, he marketed and sold his graphic design and website design abilities to many local Chicago businesses. When he got to college, he made a commitment to learn how to develop professional software. He is a computer science major and also attended the country’s most rigorous programming boot camp, Fullstack Academy, a 17-week program focusing on the industries’ best practices. He and his team of Fullstack engineers built the Oh Shoot platform in a number of weeks. He is now focusing on refining the platform and building a robust data science component to the platform. Aside from Oh Shoot, Josh has built a full-scale banking tool Cash Map (Node.js / ReactNative), data analysis scripts in R for a small investment fund, and a multitude of websites for businesses.
Why do you think New Orleans was the best place for you to found this company in?
Are you kidding me? very pro business, huge growing startup scene, phenomenal people, great food, great charm, and one of best places to stress break with great places to drink!
Tell me about a current goal you are working towards with your company.
We are currently working towards 100,000 customers and going from the 100 part time jobs we have created to 10,000 part time jobs in the future.
What’s a challenge you are currently facing as a company?
Customer support for thousands of customers and a quick way to onboard student contractors.
What has been your proudest moment so far as one of the founders of this company?
Our proudest moment is that a couple of the student contractors are able to make over $1,000 a month to pay off student debt. That is very powerful to use.
What’s a fact about yourself that people would be surprised to hear?
Philip ran a marathon and won his age group when he was a sophomore in high school.
Josh was diagnosed with dyslexia in the 1st grade, so he began to learn how to code.