Work on Pool
Pool is a startup built by a UChicago student. It is live in Hyde Park with 2-for-1 12 oz açaí bowls at Deep Purpl (from October 8), 2-for-1 subs at Subway 53rd Street, 2-for-1 half chicken plates at Nando's PERi-PERi (from October 8), 2-for-1 Philly sandwiches at B'Gabs Comfort Cafe (from September 30), 2-for-1 jerk or honey wings at Ja' Grill, 2-for-1 Wagyu Steak Frites at Chemistry, 2-for-1 wraps, salads and bowls at Litehouse Whole Food Grill, 2-for-1 chicken shawarma wraps at Cedars, a free refresher with any treat at StruggleBeard Bakery (from September 29), a free third taco or a free drink with a Taco Dinner at 5 Rabanitos, 2-for-1 Indian combo meals at Rajun Cajun (from October 1), 2-for-1 chicken and waffle bites at Dawn A.M. Eatery (from October 1), 2-for-1 lattes at Sweet Drip (from October 1) and 2-for-1 sushi, pizza and more at The Sit Down Café & Sushi Bar (from October 1), starting Monday, September 28. It has real users and a restaurant side to run. If you want work you can point to in a year, this is a good place to do it.
Stage
Live in Hyde Park
Stack
React Native, Go, Next.js
Who
UChicago students
Where
In person, Hyde Park
Engineering
The app is React Native and Expo, shipped on iOS and Android. The backend is Go on AWS with Postgres behind it. This website is Next.js. You would work on the thing students open at a counter, so it has to work on a bad connection in a restaurant with someone waiting.
Realistically, the first month is a bit of everything. Most of it is growth, onboarding the rest of the interested restaurants and getting operations running properly. That is the work right now, and it will be something else by December.
There is no ticket queue and no six-week onboarding. You pick something up and ship it, and students have it that week.
Growth and campus
This means getting Pool in front of students and getting restaurants to say yes. In practice that is search, writing, reels, and walking into places on 53rd to ask. The guides on this site are part of it. They help people find Pool without ads, and there is a lot more of that to do.
If you have never done marketing but you can write clearly and you are not scared of talking to a restaurant owner, that is most of the job.
Who this is for
This is for people with agency. You don't need to know how to do the work already. You need to adapt fast, learn a lot, and be willing to find out you were wrong about something you were sure of. The best way to show that is something you have made, however small, like a repo, a club you ran or a thing you sold. It doesn't need to be impressive, only finished.
The work is in person, in Hyde Park, because Pool is about restaurants you can walk to.
What to expect
This is early. There is no large team, no established process, and a lot of the work is unglamorous. Nobody here is going to hand you a well-specified task. If you want a structured internship with a mentor and a curriculum, a bank or a big tech company will do that far better than Pool can, and you should take that instead.
Here you see all of it. In the same week you will see a restaurant deal, the backend, the app and the search traffic, and the decisions you make will stick.
What doesn't work here is needing to be told each next step. If every task has to come from me, I am doing the work twice, and neither of us gets much out of it. The goal is that you leave able to build something of your own.
How to apply
Send a note through the contact page. Tell me one thing you built and what broke. That tells me more than a CV, and it is the part I read closely.