Dave: Hey everyone, Dave here with another episode of the Philly Tech Connect podcast. I’m speaking with Peter Chung. Peter is an artist, designer, co-founder of Boba, and also an instructor and program manager of innovation at Oregon State University College of Business. Boba face is an alum of Penn’s Venture Lab VIP XA accelerator program, and they are relaunching in the fall of 2025 as an ordering rewards platform for local mom-and-pop shops, bolstered with over a thousand levels of boba-themed gameplay. He’s been featured in Wharton’s Baker Retailing Center and a number of Joshua Y Le exit hours. Peter, how are you doing?
Peter: Doing pretty good, thanks for having me, man.
Dave: My pleasure! I’m very excited to hear about your experience and you have a cool business, you know, it’s kind of got the consumer food and beverage vibe going on. So, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started with Boba.
Peter: Yeah, first and foremost, I did start off my time over in Philadelphia as an oil painter. I specifically focused on brunch as culture; that was actually my graduate thesis. I gained over 50 pounds doing research, and yeah, I definitely enjoyed my time learning more about the area in terms of Philadelphia and some of the cultural phenomenons like brunch, because I was kind of a country bumpkin born in Mississippi, lived in the Midwest, never heard of brunch until I moved over to Philadelphia, so it was quite fascinating for me. But yeah, aside from that, during my time at Penn Design, I dabbled in synthetic biology as an art and design medium, and I was able to create a biomechanism where you’d have a moss that would change colors according to how much carbon is in the air. I also did a graphic design stint over at a fabric company in Jersey City. Then I found this really interesting fact that the majority of mobile gamers are women. Growing up as a pimpled, teenaged Asian boy playing Nintendo 64 in the basement, talking about gaming was social suicide to the opposite gender. So when I heard about this, it was a complete shock to me. I would look around the subway, look around the bus, and it turned out to be the case that the majority of folks who were intensely looking at their phones were either doing Sudoku, crossword puzzles, and match-three games, and they were predominantly women. So, I went back to Philadelphia with a better opportunity, and I thought maybe I could bring those two worlds together—my fascination with brunch and also mobile gaming. We got the original idea called Brunch face, and yeah, I did some customer discovery work which was led by Professor Jeffrey Babin. I didn’t know anything about business, so I was just intent on learning and to also grow from that, and it caught his attention, and I was accepted into the accelerator a few months later. We did a test pilot, saw some real interesting activity in terms of the intensity of gameplay where we were able to tether real-life rewards with the game world. We launched the game, and I asked a bunch of users, and basically, it was very clear that they never claimed a free brunch, and I asked them why. It turns out, number one, you don’t brunch alone, and number two, my active users, their friends were flaky. So, I asked them what can you do that wouldn’t require your friends to always be there, and the majority of the folks who responded said Boba. So we transitioned from brunch to Boba, and this time around, we actually created a game, and the mechanics work; people play our game, and they will claim free Boba. We tried all sorts of stuff, and now we believe that the relaunch is going to now have a viable business model, and we’re very excited to launch in the fall. It’s going to be an ordering pickup ordering rewards platform for mom-and-pop shops; it’s brand agnostic, food agnostic, and we’re also going to continue to reward folks to play our game on a weekly basis and have free Boba, and also now we will have daily challenges where we’ll be unlocking special promo and discount codes for your mom-and-pop shops around your area.
Dave: Super cool, man! I feel like you’ve lived, you know, nine lives here, you’re like a cat with everything that you’ve just mentioned. And I learned already a number of things—I had no idea brunch was not really just kind of like a thing that everyone did everywhere, you know, I thought that was maybe a city thing or something. And I would never have guessed that women are predominantly the players of mobile games. I’m a bit of a gamer myself, more of like console gaming like you mentioned, but I just always assumed that it’s kind of like a male-dominated space. So very fascinating! Tell me a little bit about one thing you didn’t mention was like developer—so how did you actually create the mobile game?
Peter: That’s a very good question. I don’t have a technical background in terms of being able to create code, but I had to learn from scratch in terms of being able to manage and also recruit. From my understanding within this particular domain, there are two types of applicants in the job market if you’re a software engineer: those who have shipped a product into the market and those who have simply talked about shipping a product into the market. The great thing about startups is that you’re able to recruit talent by letting them understand, at the bare minimum, worst case scenario, they’ll be able to ship a product with you, and that you will be their champion in terms of being able to apply for positions that they might be interested in. From that particular angle, I was able to recruit some really talented folks. Our current CTO is a recent graduate from Berkeley, and he taught game development for three years as an undergrad to students at Berkeley. He also was very much intrigued by the capacity, by the opportunity to ship a product and to have support along the way. In the startup world, you know, it’s a team; teams are very important, and I think engineers also, you know, they like to do things on their own, but also, at a certain point, they realized they also need a team to really execute and to ship a product into the marketplace, which is very difficult. So that was essentially how I was able to approach that. And also, most of my friends are actually engineers, though I’m an artist and designer, and I don’t know how that worked out, but essentially, that was something I was able to use to my favor because they have a specific vernacular, a specific way in which they speak and articulate their thoughts and their feelings, so somehow that worked out for me.
Dave: Very cool. I want to hear more about Penn’s Venture Lab—you know, because I only really know it in name, and you’re the first person I’ve talked to that I think is really kind of been through it. How do you get in? Did you have to be a student of Penn to be able to apply? What was the process like, and then, you know, what was the experience like?
Peter: Well, you know, over at Venture Lab, we have some really excellent student entrepreneurs there, and also, this is not just because they’re doing great work, but they’re also just wonderful human beings. For example, the CEO of VC, her name is Rene, she’s been so supportive and understanding, and it’s always hard to do startup work and to be a founder, and it can be a very lonely space. I think the great thing about this particular community is that they understand the difficulty, the challenges, and there are going to be some really excellent individuals who have achieved tremendous things, and they will make time for you and also be your champion. I would say that, you know, beyond just the community of student founders, there are directors there that are just phenomenal. For example, Professor Babin, he was actually a jazz drummer growing up as an undergrad at Penn, and he went to Wharton for his MBA program, and now he’s a practicing professor over at the College of Engineering. He calls himself a pretend engineer, but essentially, I think, you know, you can see this interdisciplinary approach that the director very much upholds within his daily life, and then also he recruits individuals to be able to support that. We have folks like John Andic, who’s one of the advisors there to support—he was my advisor—and he was just very helpful. He even had an MBA student there at that time, Richard Grasco, a former Navy SEAL, and just, you know, was very, very helpful in terms of helping us understand some of the nuances when it comes to the food industry and also some of the nuances when it comes to how to talk to local vendors and local owners. And yeah, that’s I would say that my formative years were just, you know, it would not have been possible without the support of that particular community. Now, if you are someone who’s in the Philadelphia region and would like to have some of the opportunities to maybe listen in on some of the speaker engagements there, I highly recommend you reach out to the folks there because I do believe that it is open to everybody who is in the founder community. If you are a Penn student, I think they’re most helpful in terms of making sure that you’re plugged in and that you have some workshops under your belt like customer discovery, which, you know, for me, has been so essential.
Dave: Very cool. Speaking of ecosystems and support systems, you’re now over at Oregon State University, so you’ve transitioned out of Philadelphia for the time being. I don’t know how much time you’ve had to get a feel for the startup ecosystem out there, but have you noticed any differences between here and there, and just kind of what’s the vibe like?
Peter: Well, I mean, it’s closer to California, but also, and that’s where my mentor Joshua Wee resides, but also, at the same time, I do believe that the way in which they kind of approach startups is a little bit different here in Oregon. You know, Intel has a very strong footprint here in terms of their semiconductor leadership through Nvidia. The CEO is a former student at Oregon State University and is making a major donation within the College of Engineering. We’ll be having a supercomputer here very soon in terms of AI. I do believe that in terms of hardware, just Oregon State’s engineering in the semiconductor side is just quite remarkable, and then yeah, in terms of robotics as well, Carl Mundorf of the OSU Advantage Accelerator has Agility Robotics, which just recently was featured in Time Magazine, and they’re also at the forefront there. They’ve been, and they already have a testing, they have paid test pilot with various commercial contracts, and it’s just fascinating to see that there is a different kind of way of doing things that still is very growth-oriented and very viable. And I think the students here are also a little bit more open to collaboration. I would say that in terms of Philadelphia and the East Coast demeanor, definitely we kind of have like that Philly shoulder, that Philly shrug, and also at the same time, you know, there are some strengths there, and also there are some weaknesses there, and the same goes for Oregon as well.
Dave: Very cool. You know, what, so you’ve got a launch, you know, that you’re preparing for in the fall of this year, kind of a relaunch. So what’s kind of the big next step, I guess, that we can expect from Boba face?
Peter: Well, we are within the Exit Hours community, Exit Hours community led by Joshua Wy and the partners of Gumshoe Ventures, and definitely every step along the way, I’ve been receiving support and making sure that when we launch, we’re going to be able to provide more orders for local mom-and-pop shops, more engagement, and we’re also going to make sure that students are going to have a new, more delightful way of enjoying pickup orders. And also, there is a pain point here on this campus that after 800 meters, they just don’t know where to go in terms of food. We’re going to make sure we address that, and yeah, we’re going to think small and making sure that we’re able to really test, prove our white paper, but you know, you definitely don’t want thinking small to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. We want to also make sure that we’re positioned for growth.
Dave: Very cool, Peter. For people that want to get in touch with you, learn more about what you’re working on, where should they go?
Peter: Well, right now, I do have a website, it’s called dub.com, but you know, honestly, I’m actually very much available on LinkedIn. My email is chung.ch.p@gmail.com. I’m always seeking out folks who are working on something that they’re very passionate about, and I want to make sure that I make myself available. I know how lonely it is, I know how difficult it is, and my time here at OSU, I essentially just tell students what not to do and all the mistakes I’ve made, and somehow that’s been a real value here, and I would love to be able to share that with folks who are also interested as well.
Dave: Well, thanks for sharing your insights on today’s episode, Peter. I appreciate your time.
Peter: Thanks, Dave, and really appreciate the great work you’re doing.