Downtyme: Saving you from your Smartphone

Rough Draft Ventures is excited to support Downtyme in its mission to save you from your smartphone. Aimed at the ever-busy college student, Downtyme is a mobile app that allows you to seamlessly schedule your free time with the people you care about most by gathering data about your schedules, locations, and relationships.

“I found myself alone in between classes… I couldn’t find any friends to hang out with during that time, so I would spend it on my phone,” explains founder, Barron Roth, a current junior at Boston University studying computer engineering. He decided if there wasn’t a solution – he was going to build it. In his introduction to software engineering class, Barron and co-founder, Luke Sorenson, designed the app for their final project. The team quickly grew to include two fellow BU engineers, John Moore and Timothy Chong, as well as Luke’s older brother and business student, Nick Sorenson. Together, these students are solving the quintessential college problem: making time for friends and fun while juggling classes, organizations, internships, and jobs.

After months of scrappy coding over winter break, the team launched a Beta version of the app for Android and iOS at the end of March 2014. They received over 500 downloads the day of launch and by the end of Beta in May 2014, they had over 1,500 users. Since then, the team has been working on an official release set for January 2015. Downtyme has also been busy in the press, with a pitch at SXSW and features in Business Insider’s “21 Products That Teens Love” among other compliments on Gizmodo, Bostinno, and Product Hunt.

The team doesn’t want to stop at college students though, they want to impact professionals seeking to coordinate meetings and parents looking to sync up with busy schedules. Downtyme wants to change the way we schedule our time.

“We all feel that this is something we’re really invested in; we see it as an investment in our future,” says Barron.

And we’re just fueling the fire.