Quae, the brainchild of two Stevens students, Brendan Probst ’23 and Samuel Schmitt ’23, is a community voting platform all in the palm of your hand. The mobile app is still in its infancy but has already garnered attention from Stevens students and Hoboken residents alike.
Probst and Schmitt met in a course, and in a funny turn of events, decided to build an app to be excused from sitting the final exam. But this was just the beginning of their friendship. Both enrolled in the Launchpad entrepreneur program at Stevens, and it was here where they went from friends to business partners. The duo bonded over a central topic—representation.
Specifically, representation in local politics. They believe “representatives struggle to get authentic feedback from their constituents on a consistent basis and citizens struggle to voice their concerns to their leaders. Quae solves this by encouraging citizens to vote every day.” The duo, inspired and with a mission, set out to build the app. However, they weren’t without their obstacles. Neither of them had seriously built a mobile app, so there was an immense amount of planning. Not only did they have to focus on making a functional app ready for users, but also reach out to city representatives about the practicality and feasibility of their idea. The app launched in September 2020.
Even so, in the short while that Quae has been out, Probst and Schmitt have managed to create a partnership with Stevens Student Government Association (SGA), making it the go-to platform where students can voice their opinions and engage in campus-wide matters. They can create polls where the results are then passed along to a representative in the SGA who can raise the concern. We have already seen the change Quae can bring to campus; just last semester, the library hours were extended due to a large portion of students voting on the matter.
Now, Quae is open to Hoboken residents. To ensure that only Hoboken residents may contribute to the Hoboken community forum, Probst and Schmitt have devised verification events. These verification events are weekly; the location of the event can be found through their mailing list. The duo usually sets up around Hoboken where residents need only provide their state ID to be verified. Alternatively, Hoboken residents can verify online. Currently, all verification requires a $5 dollar payment to process.
Things are looking bright for the duo, Quae has made a lot of progress recently. Just this month they hired a head of marketing who will focus on community outreach. They are also currently looking to get more people on the team. One thing is for sure; they may not be able to change people’s behavior—those that don’t care for politics—but as Schmitt said, “it’s not about solving these huge problems, it’s just to get them to check every day […] are there any problems people are facing today, can I help my fellow community members.”
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