Big ideas start small.

When Ali Shahanaghi was just a child hanging around his home — which operated as his mother’s in-house salon — he didn’t have the slightest idea of the profound impact his environment would have on him, and his future ideas. As each customer came by, Shahanaghi would listen closely to the way they conversed with his mother. From talking about their day-to-day issues, to their hobbies and aspirations, Shahanaghi’s mother, a hairdresser, would bring out the inner most in people.

“She had people come in everyday throughout the entire week, so you know there were a lot introductions about who they were and what they do,” Shahanaghi said. “There’d be bankers that would come in suits and you’d find out they play the guitar or paint, and then there’d be other customers who’d be looking for painter for their home.

“And it’d be my mom that would connect them with one another, and she’d continue introducing these different people that she knew would work together great just by talking to them while cutting their hair,” he said.

From there sparked an idea that Shahanaghi would later turn into reality over a quick process of two years: Swishlinks, a professional social networking app that could connect people through aspects outside of just formal employment.

Recent DePaul alum Isabelle Golczynski is in charge of the marketing and public relations aspects behind the app. She described its function as a social networking app built around the millennial mindset.

“We don’t want an app that is just there to present an online resume,” Golczynski said. “What Swishlinks does, is it showcases not only your experience professionally but also your side hobbies, your experience in and outside the office, your aspirations and goals.” Golczynski said.

“It shows the full person, not just the corporate side you see with social networking sites like LinkedIn,”

The app is currently set for a soft launch on Oct. 17, where it will begin beta testing and gathering early user behavior for tweaks and updates before its official launch on Nov. 7 at the Web Summit in Portugal, Europe’s largest technology marketplace.

Excited for the trip to Europe to showcase their finalized app, Shahanaghi reiterated that the social networking platform was not made with intentions to compete with LinkedIn, but merely fill its gaps.

With a staff of only 11 people — ranging from marketing, graphic designers, and developers, Shahanaghi said the teamwork behind their workers is his biggest reminder to the purpose of his app.

“Almost everyone on our team was hired through mutual connections from one another, through knowing the person’s skills and talents but also their personality and work ethic. We had one person on our team that was hired through the traditional sense of an interview,” Shahanaghi said. “When you have all these different roles on the team sitting together in one office, we can bounce ideas off one another and share feedback and user behavior with each other.”

For many students with the same aspirations and dreams of ideas that’ll make them the next Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs, there is always a fear of failure.

DePaul computer science student, Ricky Torres said he’d love to one day runs his own social networking site, but betting it all one idea is a risk he doesn’t know if he can take.

“You have to be willing to say, ‘this idea is worth it all, the risk of being broke and considered a failture,’” said Torres. “You hear stories of all these startup companies out of Silicon Valley, and you just dream of that one day being you and your company.”

Though for Shahanaghi, he believes the worst fears of the company are behind him.

“Our challenges have already passed, it was hard to get the right staff together and to take an idea on paper and actually produce something with it. But that’s over,” Shahanaghi said.
“We have a talented team of people behind this, and it’s the trust that we have with one another that’ll make this a successful app,” he added.