Snazz Screen Time

Well, this all feels rather exciting and nerve-wracking (but I guess that's how it's supposed to feel). My name is Justin DiRaddo and I am 22 year-old Boston University graduate (Class of '23). I was originally born in Montreal, QC, and raised in a small town outside of Albany, NY to a family of immigrant restauranteurs. For as long as I can remember, servicing others and providing a delightful customer experience has been a virtue my family has lived and breathed. Thus, I am writing this newsletter as a way to cover the exciting progress we are making with a startup venture I co-founded during my senior year of college - Snazz. Stay tuned for how to download the app :). Our big idea: to help the world get a little more focused and A LOT more present. You see, my friends and I experienced college during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time we had the ability to see several versions of the world. - One where everything was relatively normal (your typical college experience) - Another where the world felt like it was falling apart and we were at home isolated with our families (or alone) - And lastly, a world that tried to recover but still felt disconnected in many ways Upon returning for our junior year of college, a lot of us felt a sense of excitement for the very first time in a while. We were longing for connection and a return to the world of hugs, laughter, and seeing our friends right in front of us - but that never really came back. Instead, we had become accustomed to socially isolating ourselves (or at least that is what we had observed). Instead of meeting up with classmates, engaging in extracurriculars, or even going out to parties (yep, I said it), a lot of people were spending more time on Tik Tok than they were doing literally anything else. And we confirmed it. In the fall of 2022, my co-founders and I observed the following data from over 300 respondents that we interviewed across Boston with a silly old clipboard in hand. This was painful. I had to go out and put myself on the line with hundreds of random strangers so that I could better understand how they related to their devices. But it ultimately helped me arrive at what we were going to do about it. It was go time - I became obsessed. Since last year, I have been able to assemble a team of really passionate builders to help bring Snazz to life. To be honest with you, I have no clue how this happened because we got really lucky with the team we built in a lot of ways. Today, I am happy to announce that our app is available for testing. The following video shows some of the features we have but I encourage you to check out the app as we've built more into since recording. Filling out the form with intention is super helpful because it guides our decision-making around what to build next. We have endless ideas but your needs are what we really care about, so feel free to contact me with feature ideas, bugs you are encountering, or overall areas to improve the app. There are many areas I know we need to make improvements on. That's why I am so scared to share the app but I was wisely encouraged to not let "perfect" get in the way of "good enough" so here we are. We can only get to perfect if more people guide us there. I hope you enjoy 🧡

congrats on the launch, your app looks super clean and simple! what do you think is the biggest differentiator to this and apple's screen time?

Congratulations to the team from Boston University on launching Snazz, a thoughtful screen time app designed to help people be more present and connect easily, especially after the social isolation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. It's great to see such a user-focused solution coming to life.

@justin_diraddo Snazz looks amazing! It's awesome to see someone taking on the challenge of eliminating digital distractions - we could all use a little more mindfulness. Bravo on the release. Well done!

There is a form we ask users to fill out before accessing the app so we can better understand how they arrived at our product but if you would rather not fill out, the access code is: snazz1234

Amazing

🚀 Boom! Your product on Product Hunt is pure awesomeness! 👏