We spoke to a Temple alum who co-founded an app that lets you drop piñatas

When you first step onto Temple’s campus, students are told from the beginning about the ambitious student community  and the alumni connections we have as Temple Owls.

While many of us will go on to our respective career paths, many Temple alumni will return back with a project or accomplishment to share with all of us like Kevin Chemidlin—a class of 2014 graduate who helped co-found an app called Enye.

Kevin graduated with a degree in Computer Science in 2014 from Temple and was a founding member of Owlcappella and president for two years, an Owl ambassador, and active in the Honors community.

The Tab Temple interviewed Kevin about Enye and how the app will help students find exclusive deals and experiences.

Can you explain about the app?

Along with my co-founder Jacob Jordan, I’ve developed an app called Enye. With this app, you can drop digital piñatas on a map. These piñatas can be accessed by the public or by people who specifically drop it for you. However, they can only open up the piñata if they’re at the location where you dropped it. So the context of that piñata will ideally connect you with some sort of experience of that location. It could be a secret restaurant item or historical snapshot of where you are standing right now. There could also be scavenger hunts or just creative things that could be placed at the location you’re at.

The inspiration of it is the fact that there is so much cool stuff around us that we do not know about, but there are people who do know about them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked by a cool event and didn’t even know it was there. The idea with Enye is that you can find those exclusive places or things you would never have found by yourself.

Kevin in black & Jacob in blue are the co-founders of Enye

Will you guys be promoting your new app around Temple University?

We are planning to be around campus and also to have content around for students to find by using Enye.

Our app will be available for free on the app store and we’re planning to have a couple of piñatas for students in collaboration with a few businesses and organizations. We’re hoping anyone who is creative and anybody who likes social media will go on the app and think of cool piñatas to post around campus that people will like.

Could you explain the point system your app will be having?

The point system is called confetti. You can’t post unlimited public piñatas since people would just post a million selfies everywhere! The user needs to earn and spend confetti on our app in order to post more public piñatas. You could earn more confetti by just simply using the app and opening others’ piñatas. But, you can post unlimited piñatas solely for your friends without having to worry about not having enough confetti.

Do you feel like Temple University prepared you to make this app?

On the entrepreneurship side, OwlCappella helped me, but Temple certainly helped me with my technical skills from the Honors program and Computer Science department. I learned how to code and how to make this app which is one of the reasons why I’m launching the app here. I attribute so much of what I learned and what I do today to everything at Temple; my friends, my connections—this university has given me so many opportunities. It’s only right that Jacob and I start our app here since this community has been so good to me that I wouldn’t want to start it off anywhere else.

What’s your advice to students who wish to make their own app one day?

Just do it.

For two years I’ve known I wanted to do something on my own, and I have a great job as a software developer, but I’ve always had that entrepreneurship itch. I would say to anyone who has that itch to scratch it because it’s too easy to build a life that does not fulfill your dream. Don’t be scared and you’ll be amazed with the amount of support you’ll have.

You can download Enye right now on the App Store.

@gailvivarx3