These UNC-Duke business bros created a lotion to stop sweaty hands

What’s the number one best-selling antiperspirant on Amazon right now? I don’t actually know – probably Old Spice or something by Dove.

But for a few days it was Carpe Lotion, the world’s first sweaty-hand combatant, created by UNC’s very own David Spratte, a junior, and his partner Kasper Kubica, a junior at Duke.

Earlier this month, Carpe was featured in a BuzzFeed article leading to a huge spike in sales.

Kasper and David outside the Carpe office

The two star students are both Robertson scholars, majoring in sciency stuff and running their own company in just their third year out of high school. But perhaps most importantly, they also have a serious bromance.

Throughout the interview, they laughed at inside jokes and tag-teamed the storytelling, actually finishing each other’s sentences. I asked them for some photos for the story and they sat side-by-side hunched over the laptop screen as Kasper combed through old pictures, looking for a certain one.

“It was one of your profile pictures. Just scroll down through your old ones,” David said.

Kasper takes a selfie with a batch of Carpe Lotion in production

David and Kasper met through the Robertson program and immediately clicked. Their yin-and-yang personalities perfectly complemented each another, making them the perfect business partners.

“I’ve never found someone I work better with than Kasper,” said David.

David, the dreamer, came up with the idea for lotion that helps you “avoid that terrible, terrible awkwardness of sweaty hands” as a senior in high school. When he told Kasper his idea, the two began to work together, David thinking big-picture and Kasper, the pragmatist, hashing out the details.

The two spend three days a week at the Carpe office and do a lot of work remotely from their respective campuses or houses.

To handle the heavy workload of running a business and being a full-time student, David said he no longer procrastinates and has mastered the art of the twelve-minute nap, while Kasper has taken to scheduling out every part of his day, sometimes even planning his showering and eating schedule.

“If I don’t schedule it, it may not happen,” he said.

Their advice to fellow student entrepreneurs is to “be willing to accept a lot of uncertainty” and to seek out mentors.

“Don’t be afraid to ask, and don’t be afraid to try,” said Kasper.

David and Kasper worked with a small group of investors who also acted as close mentors, guiding them through the process of developing a product and managing a business.

Kasper said: “We had the passion but no idea how to run a company. There are all these little things you don’t even think about that need to come together just to even produce the box that the lotion comes in. Did you know you could buy a barcode?”

When asked about the best part of having a company, neither mentioned the money. They agreed it was the moments when happy customers call or email to tell them how much they love the product.

They played me a voicemail from a grandmother who bought it for her granddaughter, whose excessive hand sweat had caused her social anxiety and embarrassment until Carpe changed her life and gave her confidence.