Alum wins $10,000 to lead development of app connecting music fans
4 – minute read
At one point during his undergraduate years at Florida Gulf Coast University, Abraham Joseph found it challenging to make new friends on campus. Then, one day, while walking through his residence hall, he heard some of his favorite Afrobeats emanating from a room where a few fellow residents were hanging out. The song — by Nigerian singer, songwriter and producer Burna Boy — made Joseph stop in his tracks. He approached the students who were listening to it.
A friendly conversation ensued, opening the door to what Joseph called “a deep bond” over shared musical interests and a mutual love for cultural topics. It was “the beginning of a lasting friendship, which ultimately made my college experience 100 times more enjoyable,” he said.
Joseph earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology last spring and is now enrolled in FGCU’s entrepreneurship master’s program. He hopes to build on what Burna Boy did for him and his friends on a larger scale. A significant part of this entails BoomBox, a promising app under development. This app will function as the centerpiece of a business that connects people in proximity through similar musical tastes, he said.
BoomBox was the winning entry in the most recent TechXpedition Babcock Ranch Startup Challenge, an FGCU Foundation-supported pitch contest held last April in Babcock Ranch, Florida. Joseph created this app with the help of a support team that included Jazmin Mesias, Luna Mesias, FGCU juniors Nika Faris and Ketnie Domond and 2023 grads Carl Koko and Hariel Terimlus.
BoomBox will glean songs from Apple Music or Spotify accounts to pair individuals across platforms based on genre, artist, mood, lyrical content and beats per minute. It aims to help users build friendships and local artists find collaborators, according to Joseph. It will also enable users to post songs or lyrics on a feed page where they can write about the memories or correlations the music holds for them.
“Our goal is to go beyond superficial matches and help people find meaningful connections, whether for dating or forming friendships based on shared musical preferences,” Joseph said.
As the TechXpedition winner, he received $10,000 in pre-seed startup investment funding to support the building of a prototype for the app and start a company charged with getting it to market.
During the competition, Joseph and his team were mentored by Scott Kelly, assistant director of the Rist Family Foundation Institute for Entrepreneurship in FGCU’s Daveler & Kauanui School of Entrepreneurship. He noted Abraham had been actively engaged in the school for several semesters before TechXpedition and was a regular participant in the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO) Club.
“His team demonstrated exceptional initiative and required very little guidance,” Kelly said. “Abraham quickly attracted a group of eager participants who were excited to collaborate on his app idea. Over the course of the weekend, he successfully recruited friends from outside the event, forming a dynamic team that developed a semi-functional prototype. Their hard work culminated in a pitch to a panel of esteemed entrepreneurial judges.
“I’m excited to see the amazing things they will accomplish.”
Joseph has enlisted the help of an FGCU student majoring in digital design — first-year student Ronel Cherry — and nine current or former software engineering majors. They are: 2024 grad Danny Joseph; senior Johnny Mai; juniors Jonathan Howard, Henry Ramirez, Vivian Procacci, Philippe Lucien, Dominique Lucien and Fedmichard Francois; and sophomore Jordan Roberston.
Joseph plans to serve as the CEO of the company building the app. He is counting on the entrepreneurship program at FGCU to help him “grow and scale BoomBox to its fullest potential.”
“I believe leveraging the expertise of professors and utilizing the resources provided by the school will enable me to achieve this smoothly while also growing as a CEO,” he added.