/ project log
Droppit , shipping, reimagined.
A cross-border fulfillment startup that turns travelers' unused luggage space into an affordable shipping network.
- Role
- Co-Founder · Product, UI/UX, Operations
- Timeline
- 2023, 2024
- Team
- 5 co-founders
- Stack
- Figma · React Native · Firebase · User Research
Recognition
- Top team, Georgia Tech Create-X Capstone
- Semi-Finalist, 2024 Inventure Prize
- 100+ Droppers pre-registered at launch
01
Overview
Droppit is a cross-border shipping startup that turns travelers' unused luggage space into an affordable international fulfillment network. It started as our Create-X Capstone project at Georgia Tech (ISYE 4706 / CS 4723-X), advanced as one of the top teams in our cohort, and went on to compete as a 2024 Inventure Prize Semi-Finalist.
02
The Problem
International shipping is broken for the people who need it most, immigrants, international students, and families sending goods across borders. In our customer discovery (224 respondents), 93% had used or wanted to use international shipping, but 42% had real issues with existing options. 16% admitted they wait to travel or rely on relatives to bring things back, and 26% simply don't buy the products they want because shipping is too expensive or too slow. The status quo: a $200 pair of AirPods routed through a forwarding service like MyUS costs ~$70 in shipping and takes 14 to 28 days to arrive.
03
Approach
Instead of competing with DHL, FedEx, and the forwarders on their own turf, we built a peer-powered network on top of an underused asset: the empty space in travelers' luggage. Shoppers post the products they want; Droppers heading to the destination opt in to carry them and get paid. We priced it as the higher of $40 or 15% of order value, cheaper than the forwarders on most items, with delivery in days instead of weeks. Two go-to-market models were modeled: an employee-handoff version (95 orders/month to break even) and a smart-locker version at airports (39 orders/month to break even).
04
Design & Build
As a co-founder I led product, UI/UX, and a chunk of the operational and compliance work. I designed 30+ high-fidelity Figma wireframes covering onboarding for both Shoppers and Droppers, product search and checkout, the trip-matching flow, in-app payments, and the locker handoff. I also drove the requirements work, mapping customer needs to functional specs and writing 20+ product requirements covering customs, payments, background checks, and cross-border legal compliance for our US ↔ Colombia corridor. On the engineering side the prototype was built with React Native, a Spring Boot service layer, and Firebase on Google Cloud, chosen for the 99.9% availability SLA and sub-100ms API budget we set for the experience.
05
Outcome
Droppit was selected as one of the top teams from Georgia Tech's Create-X Capstone and advanced to compete as a 2024 Inventure Prize Semi-Finalist. By the end of the semester we had a working React Native + Firebase prototype, a validated pricing model that beat incumbents like MyUS on the products our users actually wanted, and a pipeline of 100+ Droppers who had pre-registered to carry packages once we launched in Latin America.
06
What I Learned
The biggest lesson was that a good product spec is a forcing function for a good team. Writing the legal, operational, and engineering requirements up front, customs flows, payment edge cases, dropper vetting, surfaced disagreements early and kept five co-founders rowing the same direction. I also learned how to talk about the same idea to very different audiences in the same week: pitching investors, recruiting Droppers, briefing engineers off a Figma file, and translating customer-discovery transcripts into product requirements. The Inventure Prize pitch process sharpened all of it.