How a Twitch Streamer and a Tech Exec Turned a Joke Into DormWay
The unlikely origin story of a student-first campus assistant
Six months ago, I was a junior at the University of Michigan, streaming Minecraft to thousands as ImagineRC. Today, I’m co-founding a company with Ethan Kaplan—Chief Digital Officer at Universal Audio and former head of digital at Fender.
How we got here? Definitely not the typical startup story.
It Started With a Joke
One random afternoon about a year ago on stream, I told my chat I’d just impulse-bought 1,600 seven-inch LCD screens. No plan. Just chaos.
In the chat? Ethan Kaplan— lurking as a VC researcher digging into gaming communities, trying to find the Next Big Thing. When I dropped the screen bomb, he messaged after stream:
“Sounds like you’re halfway to building smart mirrors for dorm rooms.”
It was meant as a joke. But something clicked.
From Screens to Something Bigger
The next day, we started bouncing ideas in a shared Freeform doc. At first, it was all about smart mirrors. But the more we talked, the more it became clear:
Students don’t need another display.
They need something that understands their lives.
Every college student I knew was buried in fragmented systems: Canvas, Gmail, GroupMe, Discord, and a dozen unread PDFs. The problem wasn’t productivity—it was context. No one knew what to do next or why it mattered.
We sketched, mocked, tested. And then one of us said it out loud:
“Let’s just build this. Lets make this a company.”
Two Lanes, One Vision
Our partnership works because we don’t try to be the same person.
I bring:
• A student’s lens on what’s actually useful
• An instinct for what feels natural and “vibe-coded” (not vibe coded)
• Experience building digital communities from scratch
Ethan brings:
• Technical architecture and systems thinking
• Experience scaling software from zero to millions
• Product judgment honed over years of shipping products at scale
When we disagree, we test. When we align, we move fast. And we never let “how things are usually done” get in the way of what actually works for students.
Building DormWay
What started as a side conversation about dorm mirrors turned into a mission:
• Sync class schedules automatically
• Parse syllabi into structured assignments
• Know when you’re walking to class and surface useful info
• Suggest study windows that match your actual behavior
• Guide students to campus resources before they’re overwhelmed
DormWay isn’t another calendar. It’s an ambient, context-aware assistant designed around student life.
And it’s real. The app is built. We’re getting ready to launch at the University of Michigan on Move-In Day (August 16).
Just the Beginning
DormWay started as a punchline in a Twitch chat and became something neither of us could’ve built alone.
We’re not building for institutions. We’re building for students—because we are students (or were), and we’re tired of software that doesn’t get how college life actually works.
More soon.
In the meantime: stay chaotic, stay curious, and don’t sleep on your Freeform docs.
— Riley
CEO + co-founder, DormWay