The latest Wellesley, Mass., business news:
BaboBot catches on at Babson. Now will businesses bite?
The students behind BaboBot—a free instant messaging tool that hundreds of Babson College students and others at the school check daily to get cafeteria menus—have bigger plans for the technology they launched three years ago.
BaboBot is the brainchild of juniors Axel Petochi and Mauricio Szajman, who started together at Babson and remain roommates off-campus (Szajman has transferred to Boston University to study computer science).
They created the BaboBot webscraper as freshmen. “Our original inspiration was just making our lives simpler as students, going to the cafe quite often before and after workouts,” says Petochi, a business student in his junior year.
The messaging tool caught on initially by word of mouth, then the creators started promoting it via flyers and posters, which attracted hundreds. BaboBot now has close to 700 users and is growing 10% month over month. “We have about 25% of the community on the platform,” Petochi says.
Now that they’ve got the Babson community’s attention, they are using BaboBot as well for marketing some school events from student organizations. They’ve also begun speaking with Wellesley businesses to help them reach the college crowd.
Beyond that, the students are looking to introduce BaboBot to more schools (it’s already at United Nations International School), and to develop a full-fledged app that could be used by students and parents to easily access all sorts of information, including athletic schedules. That web app is slated to be ready by the first semester of the next academic year.
Looking ahead, Petochi says both students plan to head to New York after graduating and pursue a business involving their technology.
“We’re applying our entrepreneurial education to real-world applications,” Petochi says.
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Goddard School celebrates 1 year in town
The Goddard School of Wellesley (141 Linden St.), which specializes in early childhood development, on Nov. 2 celebrated its first anniversary in town. That flew by, just like the way the kids who attend grow up.
The event featured a petting zoo, face painting, a visit from cartoon characters, and more.
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