Founder Fuel: Helping people make connections

The entrepreneurship ecosystem at Waterloo Engineering nurtures promising ideas into thriving enterprises. In our weekly Founder Fuel series, we look at new ventures and how they have benefited from that crucial early support.

After a stint in Silicon Valley, Spurrya Jaggi (BASc ’18, mechatronics engineering) created a social connection app called Lichi that makes it easy to build friendships through low-key meetups in bars, restaurants and cafés.

Jaggi combined her engineering degree with courses from the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business. One of her course instructors challenged students to create something that could help 25 million people.

“After the pandemic, a lot of people found it hard to make social connections,” Jaggi explains.

The platform came together in less than three months. Meanwhile, a savvy social media campaign allowed Jaggi to collect the email addresses of 500 potential customers before she wrote the first line of code, while Instagram buzz led to a pre-launch interview on CityTV.

Today, Lichi has hundreds of users and an enthusiastic response from meetup participants.

Go to Forging connections in a post-pandemic world for the full story.