North Central College students launch app on food
Two North Central College students have launched their first app based on their favorite thing, food.
Naperville residents Jeremy A. Markham and Kyler W. Juckins, both 20, are co-founders of DinnDinn, a so-called virtual fridge for the dishes, drinks and desserts you love or hate. This app gives you the chance to track your own, as well as those of your friends and family.
DinnDinn is a free app available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play store. Links to these app stores can be found on the company’s website at www.dinndinn.com.
“It allows you to follow your friends, celebrities, and food connoisseurs to see what food they love or hate, take their recommendations and express your opinion too,” said Markham. “On DinnDinn you can become ‘TasteBuds’ with other users by following them. And from there, you can see their ‘fridge,’ tastes, and TasteBuds too. There is even a virtual tongue where you can meet people based on your actual tastes, sour, sweet, bitter, salty, spicy.”
DinnDinn was financed by the venture capital firm, Aspen, Colo.-based Youth Venture Capital.
“We first contacted Andy Godfrey of Youth Venture Capital when we were only 18 years old and were lucky enough to bring him on as part of the team just before our 19th birthdays,” Markham said.
The two entrepreneurs met while students at Naperville North High School and originally intended to be mechanics. But a teacher there encouraged them to try other things, Markham said.
The idea for DinnDinn came about unexpectedly while they were talking about ideas for an app while sitting at the kitchen table a couple of years ago.
“I think that’s the best way for these things to happen though,” Markham said. “You can’t just sit down and will yourself into thinking of the next great app or invention. Once the idea for DinnDinn was on the table, so to speak, our love for food and experience working in the food industry helped us to further expand on the idea and help get us on our way to where we are today.”
Markham said he’s glad the whole process evolved the way it did.
“It seems as though sometimes companies have really great potential because they have a cool and innovative product, whether it be a mobile food app or a toaster, yet they don’t succeed in making it all it can be because they focus too much on trying to get rich quick,” he said. “With DinnDinn, financial success is an obvious goal as this is, after all, a business. But because we love the one thing this app revolves around, it’s a much better product and it’s something that we both enjoy working on everyday.”
Surfing: Chicago-based Linly Designs, an interior design service provider with two showrooms in Clarendon Hills and Highland Park, has launched FineStems.com, an online retail site that features luxury silk florals and home accessories available across the United States. FineStems.com allows Linly Designs to expand their reach beyond the Chicago area and present their design pieces to a national audience, the company said.
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