In this interview on the Professor Kev Show, Armaan Agrawal, a senior international computer science student at Northeastern University, discusses his campus‑focused app Feedshare. Armaan explains his motivation for studying in the United States—particularly the Northeastern co‑op program—and how that experience inspired him to address food waste on campus. Feedshare lets event organizers post surplus food, sending notifications to students who can claim the leftovers for free, thereby reducing waste and providing free meals. Armaan recounts the technical and procedural challenges of building and publishing his fourth app, including navigating Apple’s review process, creating marketing assets, and handling privacy policies. He highlights the app’s rapid early traction, emphasizing the network effect: one download can lead to many friends joining because the service offers free food. The conversation then shifts to monetization; Armaan wants to turn the free service into a sustainable business, noting the difficulty of delivering lasting value, marketing, and attracting advertisers. He proposes leveraging influencer partnerships and building apps that solve concrete problems to create a transformation for users. Finally, Armaan shares his future outlook—continuing to build apps, seeking partnerships, and providing his LinkedIn as a contact point.
Chapters
Hi and welcome to the Professor Kev Show. As you see, I got my buddy Armaan with us and he's from Feature. Hello my friend, welcome to the show.
Hey, yeah, my name is Armaan Agrawal. Uh, I'm a senior at Northeastern. Uh, I'm originally from Japan actually, so I'm an international student here. And yeah, I'm a computer science student. The reason I got into it was because it's one of those fields where you can just get into anything. Like if I wanted to do health, I can, you know, build stuff for health, get into finance, or just build apps on the side. Yeah.
So what made you want to come over from Japan to study here in the States, at Northeastern in particular? I also graduated from Northeastern, so that's our common ground.
Yeah. I mean, everybody that goes to Northeastern says they come here for the co-op program, which is true. Real-world experiences, like, is so, so amazing. Um, and the reason I came to the US is just because there's so many opportunities here, so many great people that are doing, like, the coolest things in the world. And just, I thought Boston would also be a place to meet some of these people, maybe learn something from them.
That makes sense. Let's talk a little bit about Feedshare. As we talked a little bit before the show, I am one of your number one fans. I just love the idea and stuff. Tell us about what Feedshare is, why you started it.
Yeah, I really appreciate that. So, Peach, I'll give you— I'll give a basic rundown for people who are not familiar. Feedshare is an app that lets people who are running organizations, like on campus, if they have extra food from catering, pizza, whatever it is, and it's about to be thrown away, they can put it on the app and a notification gets sent out to whoever has the app, and they can come and take how much ever food they want. And so far we've had at least— I launched it over 3 weeks ago maybe, and there's been like 10 events where there's just so much food. And whenever you come, they're super glad that people have come to save the food and it doesn't get thrown away.
That's the thing is it's so challenging to order food for events because I've been part of events where we messed badly, meaning there were so many people attended and we didn't have nearly enough.
Yeah.
Like you look at me going, Armaan, put down that second slice or put down that second scoop. You know, we need it for other people. And then other events where you're hoping 50 people come and 10 come and you're like, oh geez, now what do we do? So it's, to me, it's just, it's a common sense solution, but doesn't really happen. I want to talk a little bit about the app because, I mean, maybe as a computer science person, building an app was easy for you. What was the challenge there?
So I've built a few apps before. The first app I built was last year. And that was very briefly, that was a app that's kind of like TikTok but for news. And so you can like scroll through it, get the latest information without addiction, like without all those videos popping up at you. And that was very difficult, you know, first app, first time putting it on the App Store and you have to go through this whole Apple review process. They like actually click through your app and figure out where there's issues and I got it sent back to me like 10 times before they got on the App Store.
Yeah.
Because, you know, they, they try to find any issues they can.
Yeah.
Yeah. And then, you know, you gotta put all the screenshots on, like the marketing material, privacy policy, all that sort of business stuff that I, you know, I was not familiar with that stuff at all before that. But now this feature is my 4th app, so it was a lot easier.
Yeah.
Now I know, like, I got it in the first try, so A lot better now.
Yeah. So now all the students have to do is download the app. And as long as the event person has the app, they can just do a shout out, hey, we have food in this building. It's free. Come get it.
Exactly.
It must be cool, like for students. Like, I mean, even me as a person, I like free food. Who doesn't, right? Sometimes we, you know, we make the assumption, you know, that everyone has a meal plan or, you know, but I— we were talking before the show. Especially like a nighttime event. You know, a lot of commuter students come in after work, maybe they have time to eat, and just being able to, you know, get some free food on the way into class or right after class, you know, saves them from, you know, having to stop somewhere or maybe just go hungry. So it just to me is kind of a natural humanitarian thing to do and stuff. Now the people downloading it must love you. They must be like, this is an amazing thing. How's the feedback been so far?
Honestly, I like making apps like this because, uh, you— it's like if one person downloads it, now all their friends have it too. And there's like a network effect because like, who— it does— it's free. App is free and you get free food. It's like, it's like a killer deal.
Yeah, it's a double free. Can't go wrong. But all kidding aside, you know, we're joking a little bit about that, but if my friend tells me they got free food, I'm like, how? You know, oh, I have this app, and I'm like, what is the app? You know, I'm downloading it immediately. I mean, right, you know, it just makes perfect sense and stuff. So, so tell me about the future. What are you hoping to do with this app, and are there more apps in the future?
For feature, I think this is it. Like, there's nothing— I don't want to add more features.
I'm sorry, I meant, I meant for your future. Will you be building additional apps? I think the answer to that question is yes.
Yeah, I love building apps, but now I want to try to like make it monetized. So this is free. It's great. And I want to try making some money through it. And I've, that's been a whole different journey for me as well. The hard part with that is like, is actually providing something valuable. So most apps are like, are a little bloat. Like I use, download them. Use them for a day and then never touch them again.
Sure.
So learning about what people actually need, then marketing, marketing them, like, uh, getting them in front of people's eyes is something I'm very— I'm looking into now.
Like you said, that must be a challenge, all, all kidding aside, because exactly what you just said, you know, you see this app, any app, you download it, you maybe use it for a day or two, or for, you know, for the event you went to, and then you like, you look at it down the road going, what is this app on my phone? Why is it there? You know, and you delete it or whatever. So again, to draw the advertisers, you have to have users, active users and stuff. So now it's finding, you know, who's looking for those students that are using the app, right?
Yep. And my plan for this, so the apps in my opinion that work best offer some sort of transformation. So like, uh, you might have seen challenges online, like, okay, in 30 days I'm gonna lose 50 pounds. Maybe that's too much, like 25 pounds of weight.
I know what you mean. Yep.
And what if there was an app that helped you do that? You would open it for those 30 days, right? And as an add-on to that, it also lets you market it because now you can find an influencer online that talks about these things and you say, okay, let's do a, like, let's do a partnership. You market the app and I build the app, I'll maintain it forever and we both can, you know, you, we reach your customers and they get a solution as well. Like they get value out of it. So I don't have to do all the marketing myself, essentially.
Yeah. And that's, that's what's hard. You're trying to be the app builder and the marketing department, you know, and those are different skills for sure.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So tough.
Yeah, it really is. But that's, that's a challenge all entrepreneurs face. A lot of us want to build our business and we don't want to do the marketing part. We don't want to have to go and try to sell something. We just want you to mysteriously find us and download it or call us for our services. So yeah, so what's the best way to reach out to you if people want to learn more about the app or maybe want to talk to you about finding a way to partner together?
My LinkedIn is the best. Yeah, I can share my LinkedIn. Actually, you, you'll definitely have it.
Yeah, yeah. Like I said, so I'll use that. So I had a lot of fun chatting with you. Thanks for taking a few minutes to come on the show and thanks for being my friend.
