One year after “Stanford Hates Fun” swept campus, resulting in tree suspensions and the election of current ASSU executives on a fun-focused platform, promoting a freer, more vibrant campus culture The movement inspired Stanford’s latest round. Number of startups: Party apps.
The two apps, Wristband and Mixer, each aim to be students’ go-to platforms for finding events and RSVPs across campus. Both apps began marketing their services to students this quarter.
As of now, both apps have very similar functionality. Both Listband and Mixer allow users to track events they have registered for while promoting upcoming parties and conferences on their apps. Both apps allow organizations and individuals to register events on the site and limit who receives access to the event. When you open the app, the biggest difference you’ll notice between the two apps might be the different color scheme.
“Last year, we had a really hard time finding events on campus,” says Mixer co-founder Ameya Jadhav ’26. Tristan Ketterer ’22, co-founder of Wristband, echoed similar sentiments: “There hasn’t been an easy place for people to learn that information and figure out what to do.”
The main difference between the apps is in the introduction to campus.
Recently, wristbands have promoted events such as Kappa Sigma’s Eurotrash, Sigma Phi Epsilon’s White Lies, and ASHA’s annual garba. Mixer promoted a variety of smaller events, performances, and meet-ups, including a screening of “Friday the 13th” on Oct. 13 and the Stanford Concert Network’s “Welcome Back Show” the next day.
Despite this apparent slight difference in startup audiences, many events are cross-listed between the two platforms. At the time of publication, 10 of the 14 events publicly advertised on wristbands were the same as 10 of the 27 events currently advertised on Mixer.
Ketterer said he plans to eventually expand the business beyond Greek Life events, but Wristbands has been marketing its product to fraternities since the beginning, and has been trying to improve the app and help fraternities use the app. Ketterer said the company had provided financial compensation for the incident. Ketterer declined to comment on how much each fraternity received.
“We realized that a large part of Stanford’s social life revolved around Greek life,” Ketterer said. “We approached fraternities pretty early on about collaborating and creating the ability to host events.”
Meanwhile, Mixer is currently actively marketing to non-Greek students and student organizations. “I think the hardest part is actually getting adopted,” Jadhav said. He believes that Mixer’s broad focus on all types of events, including group meetings, performances, and cultural events, will attract a wide range of students to use the platform.
“Mixer reached out to us,” said Emily Deng ’25, co-chair of social life and inclusion at ASSU. “I’ve never heard of wristbands.”
The Mixer team will begin offering perks to groups that advertise exclusively on the platform. “They will give out gift cards to random people at our events, or give out swag if that person is on Mixer,” said Anusha Dwarkanath ’26, president of Stanford Nupur. Told. Jadhav acknowledged this, saying the planned promotions were “just a short-term advertising scheme to make a profit.” [more] Mixer students. ”
According to Dwarkanath, using Mixer is easy and simple compared to other forms of advertising email lists. But she said that when promoting her own group, “it’s all about where the people are.”
The wristbands also sparked some early controversy over the treatment of Eurotrash, the year’s first Fratrash party and an annual tradition at Stanford University. Ahead of the event, Ketterer designed a flyer urging people to “get a wristband” for Eurotrash. Many froshes felt that this poster was misleading and led them to believe that they needed a wristband to attend the party, even though Eurotrash is a university-wide event.
In response, Ketterer posted an apology to Fizz using a screenshot from his notes app. In the post, he apologized for the situation, assured users that his gaffe was not intentional, and expressed remorse for his actions, saying they had caused “huge confusion.”
“I stand by what I said,” Ketterer said. “While it was not my intention to mislead people, I am aware that it happened and I am truly sorry for it.”
Mixer is currently uncontroversial, but it may lose the user adoption war. Ketterer said the wristband currently has about 1,500 users using the app. According to Jadhav, Mixer has 310 active users.
“A platform that aims to aggregate event information and have event organizers post their event information requires human resources,” Ketterer said. “But people only want to participate on a platform like this if there is a poster for the event.”
But neither app can match the broad reach of The Cards. ASSU’s weekly email floods a faculty-wide mailing list with campus events and opportunities, ostensibly reaching his more than 7,700 undergraduate students. Unlike both apps, “The Cards” only promotes campus-wide events such as parties, sporting events, and neighborhood meet-ups. Additionally, organizations do not necessarily have to register events themselves. In some cases, Deng Xiaoping and co-chair Annie Lerer ’24 simply ask organizers to approve the list.
“Everyone checks their email, because we have to check our email too,” Deng Xiaoping said. “It’s great to have access to the entire undergraduate mailing list as part of ASSU.”
Both Jadhav and Ketterer seemed unfazed by competing products. “All competition is healthy. I’m glad there are other people trying to solve this problem,” Jadhav said.
However, most students interviewed agreed that one centralized app for events would be ideal.
“The fact that there are multiple apps that serve the same purpose is frustrating,” says Will Kousser ’27.
It’s still too early to tell which platform will come out on top. But both founders seem confident about the need for their products on campus.
“I envision that one day this one app will be used by all groups on campus and integrated into all different groups and all different types of events in a very seamless way,” Jadhav said. I did.