Four Class of 2025 students turned a cluttered online-shopping headache into OneTap, a Chrome extension built with Elon University’s entrepreneurship resources and now headed for a full-time New York City launch.
When TJ Mathis ’25, who earned a bachelor’s degree in strategic communications, noticed his sisters juggling multiple browser tabs just to compare one outfit, he started conversations with close friends about the broader problem before bringing on classmates Sam Dixon ’25, Kylie Leyda ’25 and Matt Graffeo ’25. They decided there had to be a better way.
The solution became OneTap, a Chrome extension, and soon an AI-powered shopping platform with a personalized feed that pulls looks from Gen Z’s favorite brands.
After several months of user research, advisor meetings and early testing, the founders booked a four-hour whiteboard session with Sean McMahon, associate professor of entrepreneurship.
“Professor McMahon’s guidance helped us take everything we’d been working on and turn it into something attainable and scalable,” said Graffeo, who earned a degree in human resource management and is from Mount Sinai, New York. “His support means a lot to us and we’re super grateful.”
Mathis is part of the Stanford University Innovation Fellows program at Elon, an experience that strengthened his approach to design thinking and solution-building. Leyda, who earned a degree computer science, statistics and public health is the first woman on Elon’s hackathon team and drew on marathon coding events to lead the platform’s technical build.
In the School of Communications, Daniel Haygood, professor of strategic communications, advised the founders as they ran interviews and focus groups that refined OneTap’s market research.
Months of iteration paid off when OneTap impressed judges at the Innovation Challenge hosted by the Doherty Center for Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Ongoing guidance from the Doherty Center linked the founders to alumni, while a recent grant from the university’s Entrepreneurship Fund will help the group accelerate their plans.
“The Doherty Center’s alumni introductions have opened doors in tech, fashion and fundraising we couldn’t reach on our own,” said Dixon, who earned a degree in economics from Westchester, N.Y.
With Dixon and Graffeo already working in Manhattan, the team will base OneTap in New York City after graduation to stay close to fashion brands, investors and Elon University mentors.
“We want OneTap to be the go-to platform where people discover, organize and buy clothes that match their style—all in one place. Think of a personalized home feed like TikTok or Instagram, but for clothes. We’re building OneTap to personalize shopping,” Mathis said.