Pip

Like the pip in fruit / the seed of an idea / the precious roots of meaningful human connection : Pip is your vibe mascot, a mini-app in ZYMIX to meet other students: who are cool, just like you <3

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Inspiration

  • ZYMIX promises "discover, connect, take part", but it cannot show you what anyone is into, so finding your people is left to chance.
  • At a UCL hackathon full of King's, Imperial and LSE students, you would never know who shares your fandom. Mogik Labs wanted to fix that.
  • Pip is named after the pip of a seed: tick what you love, and a tiny pip grows into your crowd.
  • Speaking to Karol you want to hit 300K active users within the year as a GTM target - this is my solution:

What it does

  • Tick what you love through expanding categories (Music into K-pop into artists) and instantly see people across nearby unis who share them.
  • Pip, a soft mascot companion, guides you and surfaces your matches.
  • Connect Spotify to auto-import your music taste and find upcoming concerts, then match with people going to the same gig.

How we built it

  • Z.ai (GLM-5.1) prototyped the full front end in JS, HTML and CSS, and powers Pip's words and smart suggestions.
  • Fotor (Agent) designed Pip, the lifestyle and merch mockups, then animated the clips and generated the voice; Manus 1.6 ran deep research for London concert data, Spotify genre-mapping and music-matching UX.
  • Built and shipped via Cursor and Vercel, mapped out in Miro as a living board not a slide deck, with the brand pulled from ZYMIX's own logo (lime, Poppins, Inter).

Challenges we ran into

  • Scope: real streaming logins would have eaten the whole event, so we demonstrated the feature and left full integration for later.
  • Animations were swallowing hours, so we cut them to ship a working core.
  • Built it across several AI tools with almost no terminal experience, keeping one clear thread through all of them.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • A working interactive demo: tick, connect Spotify, find your people, with the concert match landing as a real moment.
  • An original, huggable mascot in ZYMIX's colours, designed as a bag charm so it could become merch.
  • Used every sponsor tool with intent, each doing a job only it could do.

What we learned

  • Protect the core: a demo that just works beats a cleverer one that fumbles.
  • A memorable character carries an idea further than an extra feature.
  • Give each tool the one job it is best at.

What's next for Pip

  • Order Pip blindbox plushies at the end of the flow, with proceeds split back to campus: 30% Student Union, 15% graduation fund, 55% to keep ZYMIX running and the app free. The more your campus orders, the bigger the pot.
  • Real streaming integrations (Apple Music, YouTube Music, Stationhead, podcasts) and live event matching.
  • Expand beyond London to universities across the UK, with Pip as a true ZYMIX mini app.
  • Pip being a ZYMIX IP: think LINE, idol merchandise that sits alongside the overall company branding

Built With

  • claude
  • fotor
  • github
  • manus
  • miro
  • vercel
  • z.ai
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