It started with 1,800 elevator screens
A $600 Facebook Marketplace buy turned into DormWay — the OS for your GPA.
Act I
The $600 pallet
It wasn't a business plan — it was a late-night impulse buy.
I was streaming on Twitch, saw a listing for 1,800 seven-inch elevator LCDs for $600, and bought them on the spot with no plan and way too much confidence.
Then one message flipped it.
Ethan was watching because his son pulled him into the stream. He worked in digital product and was always hunting for the next thing, and he typed: "Make a smart mirror."
Marketplace receipt
Chat message
"Make a smart mirror."
Live, 11:32 PM
Early prototype: Raspberry Pi + 7" LCD
Act II
The mirror phase
The idea was simple: a smart mirror in every dorm room. You brush your teeth and your schedule is right there — assignments, deadlines, campus alerts.
Ethan and I spent months speccing hardware, building prototypes, and planning logistics, and then we hit a wall. Hardware is hard.
Manufacturing, shipping, installation — nightmare. But it showed us the real problem: students didn't need another screen — they needed control over the screens they already had.
The value wasn't the mirror — it was the timeline.
Act III
Scaling it up
We ditched the mirrors and went all-in on software. At first, DormWay was Michigan-only: transit, dining, campus maps.
Then we showed it around and people asked, "Why can't my kid at another college use this?" That question stuck.
Canvas is Canvas whether you're at Michigan or UCLA, and a PDF syllabus is a pain at Harvard or a community college.
We stopped building for one campus and started building for every student.
The why
Driving without a map
College throws you into adulthood and hands you five apps to run it.
If you've ever missed a deadline because it was buried in a syllabus PDF, you get it.
Trying to manage it is like driving cross-country using only street signs. Miss one sign, you miss a deadline, and that's a letter grade.
DormWay is the GPS for college.
We don't just show the map — we reroute when traffic hits, and we pull Canvas, syllabi, and the rest of your school life into one timeline so you can stop navigating and just drive.
Chaos
Five apps, three calendars, one stressed student.
DormWay
One timeline. Zero guesswork.
Outcome
You know what's due before it's due.
Founders
Built by students, on purpose
Fast, curious, and a little scrappy.
Riley Crimmins
CEO & Co-Founder
Former Twitch streamer who impulse-bought 1,800 elevator screens for $600 and turned them into the first DormWay prototype. Now he leads product, obsessed with making the student timeline feel effortless.
Ethan Kaplan
CTO & Co-Founder
Product strategist who spotted the pivot early and pushed it through. He turns messy campus systems into software that actually scales.
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