Three students from the McGuire Center of Entrepreneurship have created a website that makes it easier to complete a bucket list.
Max Cutler, a finance and entrepreneurship senior, Beth Krumbein, a philosophy, politics, economics, and law senior and Antonia Tichindelean, a business management and entrepreneurship senior created a free site known as Bucketlive, which provides users with information, mentors and solutions to achieve their bucket list.
“It’s kind of like Pinterest,” Cutler said. “People have dreams that they want to accomplish, so people upload a picture of their dreams and people can like it and experts can comment on it.”
It took about three to four hours to go through all of their ideas before determining the concept for
Bucketlive, Tichindelean said. The team originally didn’t know each other, but in the entrepreneurship program, students are required to create a venture team their senior year, said
Jim Jindrick, the venture mentor for the McGuire Center.
“It was very time consuming,” Cutler said. “We all wanted it, but at the time we didn’t know each other well enough.”
The site went live the end of March and has had more than 1,200 visits, according to Google Analytics, Tichindelean said.
Currently, there are 24 communities, such as skydiving, hiking and a Kenyan safari, available on the website. Users can click on a community and within it there will be mentors and content on how to make dreams a reality, Cutler said. What sets Bucketlive apart from other travel sites is having a social aspect and adding the motivation to accomplish a goal.
“Other places, you book your trip and there is no social interaction,” Cutler said. “A lot of people want to meet people on their trip. A lot of the times it’s who you’re with that makes the experience.”
Some students expressed interest in the site even though they don’t have bucket lists of their own.
“We’re young, so I guess some people have bucket lists and some people don’t,” said Stephania Vasilieva, a systems engineering sophomore. “But I think it would help a lot.”
Jindrick helped the team find their market focus for the website, as well as offered ideas as to where the team wanted to take the project in the long run.
The students have a yearlong timeline on how they want their business to grow. For the first five to six months, they will be working on making Bucketlive an expert blog and recruiting mentors and experts that people can ask for advice, Cutler said. Then, they will be working on making it a more complex site and around the ninth month, they will attempt to sign on businesses both locally and nationally, Cutler added.
After expanding in the adventure travel market, they were thinking about expanding into the lifestyle market as well, which would involve things like learning how to cook, Krumbein said.
“We have a lot of work to do, but we’re really excited about it,” Cutler said. “We’re really passionate about this idea.”
Cutler, Krumbein and Tichindelean will present in the McGuire New Venture Competition and Showcase on April 26.