By Andrew WroblewskiStaff Writer

Lucas Gallardo, a senior political science major, came up with the idea for Boyfriend’s Bestfriend, an upcoming application for Apple’s iOS platform, in the fall of 2012.  Since then, Gallardo and his partners, Alex Spiteri, a junior entrepreneurship major, and Henry Rood-Matza, a junior entrepreneurship major, have refined the idea of the app, won second prize in two separate Capital One competitions, are now competing in a third competition—also hosted by Capital One—and are prepping the app for a public release, which will take “about a month” according to Gallardo.

The core idea behind Boyfriend’s Bestfriend is to make the lives of boyfriends and husbands a bit easier.  In order to do this, users of the app can input important dates that pertain to their significant others (birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc.) and then receive notifications to remind them when said dates are incoming.  Along with this, the application will also ask users personal questions about their significant other’s interests.  This is so that the application’s gift suggestion feature will produce personally tailored gift ideas according to the user’s significant other’s interests.  The app will also have: a calendar, notepad, relationship tip of the day, and a “QuickFix” section.  Gallardo and his partners believe the application will help improve “overall relationship happiness”.

Gallardo first came up with the idea during the fall 2012 semester when he enrolled in Entrepreneurship 122, The Entrepreneurial Challenge.

“I basically felt that guys have trouble finding gifts for their girlfriends so I thought, ‘there has to be an easier way to do this’,” said Gallardo.

This class has been taught by Richard Hayes, an associate professor at Hofstra, for the past four years.  The class spans over two semesters, also consisting of Entrepreneurship 165, Research in Current Entrepreneurship Issues, which students take in the spring semester after taking ENTRP 122.  During the fall semester, students pitch ideas and create presentations for them.  Students form groups based on which ideas they would like to further explore.  The students then refine the ideas throughout the semester and eventually get to pitch the ideas to Capital One.  The groups of students then competed against each other for grant money.

“I originally thought it was a very clever idea,” said Hayes.  “[Gallardo, Spiteri, and Rood-Matza] put a lot of time and effort into refining the project.”

Boyfriend’s Bestfriend ended up taking second place in the Hofstra Capital One competition.  For the first time this year, though, a cross-campus competition was also introduced.  This allowed the top two projects from Hofstra to compete against projects from other students from LaGuardia Community College and New Jersey Institute of Technology.  Boyfriend’s Bestfriend took second place in this competition as well.  Hayes was inspired by the group’s persistence and drive throughout this venture.

“[Gallardo, Spiteri, and Rood-Matza] could have easily just given up after placing second at Hofstra, but they didn’t and instead kept at it and made the project even better,” said Hayes.

The next step of the completion will take place in the digital space.  Videos of student’s projects will be posted to the Capital One Facebook page and whichever group receives the most likes on its video will receive $3,000 in grant money and $1,000 to donate to the charity of their choice.  Gallardo was especially excited by this prospect as, if Boyfriend’s Bestfriend wins this competition, the charity money will be donated to the St. Jude Cancer Association.  The St. Jude Cancer Association is the official charity of choice of Gallardo’s fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon.

Aside from the competition, Gallardo and company hope to see the app be available for public download in about a month.  The app will be free for users to download and will be exclusive to the iOS platform.

“We picked Apple because I personally have an iPhone and it’s tough to program for two different services,” said Gallardo.

Hofstra guys seemed to be anticipating the release of the app.  Alex Portno, a junior math-economics major, who admitted to be a bit forgetful when it comes to remembering important dates, was immediately excited by the idea of the app.

“I think buying gifts is a tough part of a relationship,” said Portno.  “If I had an app that could give me ideas on what gifts to buy it would be great.”

Portno did think it would be nice if the app wasn’t exclusively for use by boyfriend’s and husbands.  Portno believes that it would be great to have an application that can also give general reminders and gift suggestions for birthdays and other important occasions for family members and friends.  As of now, though, it does not seem that Boyfriend’s Bestfriend will be heading in that direction.