Local college student helps create new application for social-media users

For some college undergrads, venturing into the tech world might be intimidating. But Josh Jacobs and his partners at Waves believe their young age is their leg up in the technology and social-media industry.

In January, Jacobs, a 2022 Aspen High graduate going into his sophomore year at the University of Colorado Boulder, connected with fellow undergrad Bruce Weaver, who had the idea to create an influencer marketing platform that allows brands to connect with average social-media followers rather than big name influencers with millions of followers.

“The initial vision behind it came from us understanding that (user-generated content) is performing well within the last two to three years,” Jacobs said. “That’s why you have companies like GymShark and other business trying to replicate the process of sending out their products to real people and having those people create promotions for them because the conversions on sales are significantly higher than that of an Instagram or Facebook ad.”

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The partnership between him and Weaver resulted in a new app, Waves, which is scheduled to launch in early August. Once it is up and running, the app will connect social-media users with anywhere from 500 to 10,000 followers with brands looking for people to create content on social media for them.

“The way we have it structured is that once (users) are on the platform, they can browse for brands that match their areas of interest,” Jacobs said.

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After finding a brand that matches their interest, users are able to purchase products at varying discounts. Once the user receives the product, they have seven to 14 days to create the promotional content, he said.

“If the promotion is not done within the time frame, the (user) is charged the full price of the product. On the other side, the user will get paid if the promotion reaches 1,000 views or more,” he said.

All profit is performance-based and dependent on the brand a user is working with. The amount a user gets paid is directly dependent upon their alignment with the brand and the level of subtlety they use in the promotion, he said. The platform doesn’t use affiliate links. Instead, they just have the user tag the brands they are working with.

To track attribution of sales, Waves uses polar analytics to see how many people click from the user’s promotion to the brands socials and directly to the website to purchase.

The app is working with a range of brands, from fashion to skincare to fitness. The majority of brands are online stores.

The Waves core team — consisting of Weaver, Jacobs and developers Roger Nowakowski and Justin Schwartz — moved out to Austin, Texas, to work on the platform full time.

“We’re working all week, weekends as well. We also all live together, so the work is really nonstop,” said Jacobs.

There’s no one who knows social media better than Gen Z, which is what gives the Waves team their edge, they believe. Nowakowski, who is 19, is the app’s lead engineer. Software developer Schwartz is fresh out of college.

“Our whole strategy for growth is predicated on hiring and continuing to cultivate an environment of young, ambitious and highly-qualified employees,” Jacobs said. “I think it can go two ways. They could look at us and think we’re young and inexperienced, and we won’t be able to provide value to someone who is more experienced. At the same time, they could look at our young team who has been able to create this platform that’s highly-functional and see we are ambitious and taking initiative to start something while in college.”

Waves is not his or Weaver’s first entrepreneurial venture. While at Aspen High, Jacobs went through the process of designing and patenting a consumer packaged goods innovation, which he won a scholarship for. Weaver ran a social-media marketing agency while in high school, Jacobs said.

Additionally, he said growing up in the valley afforded him the opportunity to pick the brains of highly-successful business people.

Within the next few weeks, Waves is expanding their model to incorporate restaurants, festivals and experiences. They are also building a function that will allow for users to post and spread messages for non-profits and charities nationally and locally. It plans to do a private launch with 10 to 15 brands and their own people on Aug. 1. If all goes well, they hope to do an official launch a week or so after.

“There’s definitely ups and downs with any startup. Everything is tentative, and even after raising funding, which was a huge milestone that all of us were happy to get to, there’s still a lot of unknowns. It’s definitely not all sunshine and rainbows, but overall, I think all of us are pretty well equipped and happy to deal with the tenuous nature of the ups and downs,” Jacobs said.

To reach Audrey Ryan, email her at aryan@swiftcom.com.