Ricardo Villarreal (ENG’20) & Coco College: Redefining the Student Marketplace
Already frustrated by the high cost of new college books and supplies, Ricardo Villarreal (ENG’20) was further motivated to launch Coco College after a friend was robbed during a Craigslist transaction. From a beta website to a fully operational mobile app, Coco College helps students buy and sell used goods without the fear of dangerous or fraudulent transactions.
INNOVATE@BU: How do you create innovation?
RICARDO VILLARREAL: Innovation is inspired by problem-solving. Anytime we sit back and think of a better way to solve a problem, creativity strikes in. We begin to imagine, to conceive, and to envision a better solution. That is how innovation is created.
Who or what inspires you to create impact?
The sole thought that we’re building something that goes beyond ourselves is what inspires us to make an impact in our society. When we see the faces of people and know that we truly created value and helped them solve a problem is the ultimate satisfaction and all the inspiration we need to keep moving forward.
Tell us, how did Coco College begin?
In my first semester at BU, I spent over $600 only on books, $300 on dorm supplies, and an extra $300 on a bicycle. The year after that, when I moved into an apartment with my friends, one of my roommates decided to search for a cheaper alternative to buy a used TV. By mistake, he turned to Craigslist and unfortunately, he was a victim of a robbery attempt. After this experience, I called two friends at USC and we spoke about our deep frustrations at the flaws of all existing marketplaces, especially when it puts students in jeopardy. We analyzed how we could redefine a marketplace for students in which safety, exclusivity, and easiness to sell would be the utmost priorities.
What problem are you hoping to solve with Coco College?
Every semester, millions of students are forced to spend large amounts of money on buying books, TV’s, couches, and other college supplies. Coco aims to help the 70% of students with loans lower the average spending of $1,200 a semester with a platform where students in all grade levels can buy and sell their stuff to each other in a safe mobile app. By requiring specific university emails to join, Coco strengthens college communities and avoids fraudulent users and massive audiences on other platforms.
What has been the biggest challenge or obstacle you had to overcome in your role or for your new venture? How did you do it? What did you learn from the experience?
The biggest challenge has been finding ways to create efficient marketing campaigns. Marketing is an essential tool for a company and keeping customer acquisition costs low is important for startups. We overcame this by collaborating with mentors at Innovate@BU and USC Blackstone to elaborate ideas and to form focused test groups that would measure our initiatives. This helped us create impactful strategies like the ambassador program and helped us partner with student groups within both universities.
Who do you turn to for mentorship and advice?
The combination of customer advice and mentor experience is what helps us shape our decisions. We first talk to our user test groups to find what they want and then consult with advisors. Every time we stumble across a problem, we meticulously analyze it, propose solutions with both teams, and finally execute accordingly.
What is one major accomplishment you’re most proud of?
Our major accomplishment has been validating our MVP (minimum viable product) website and creating the new and improved mobile application that just launched at both BU and USC. This was done by organically acquiring student users that made day to day transactions and urged us to continue and improve. For us, a happy customer leads to a successful company.
What advice would you give to someone starting their own innovation journey right now?
A piece of advice that I would have loved to hear at the beginning would be to always focus on the customer. Be customer obsessed. Any time you’re developing a product or an app, ask 200 or 300 people if they like the user experience and interaction. This might slow down the process of production, but the ideas and validation outweigh anything else.
Where do you hope to be in two years?
Two years from now we want to connect all users together and expand to over 50 different universities. The motivation of making Coco the standard peer to peer platform where college students feel a positive impact is what keeps us going.
What’s next?
What’s next for us is expansion: growing to 10 more universities by the end of the year. We are also extremely enthusiastic about collaborating with mentors and advisors in our upcoming term with the BU summer accelerator program. This will be an inflection point where we’ll seek university partnerships across the country to create the standard platform we envision.
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